Review: Loved it
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 9, 2012
Chuck Wendig takes insightful writing advice, piles on a load of funny and vulgarity and guys like me eat it up.I don't really like rating things from one star to five because when you get down to it, it's just too dumb. Stories aren't shoes. They're more complicated. Genre matters but it's not everything. Plot matters but it's not everything. Characters matter but blah blah blah you get the idea.Which is why this particular review is kind of difficult for me to write. I don't really know what I think about Shotgun Gravy except that if the three volumes to come were out right now, I'd have bought them already. So, yeah, stick five stars on this puppy and let's get on with it.I didn't really have any expectations going in which is probably odd but I think served me well as the story took some turns I really wouldn't have imagined it taking. I'm not entirely convinced the last--or maybe second to last--turn really worked but I'd buy the next story in a heartbeat so it must have worked on some level.Atlanta Burns is a great character with a great name. There's a little ick in her backstory so if you think this is YA and you're thinking of giving it to a youngish teenager you probably want to give it a read first. Also there's an occasional f-bomb.She's tough or she wouldn't have survived the ick in her past and while she's superficially cynical she also has a fundamental sense of fairness and decency that most adults can't muster. At the same time she's got a whole boatload of emotional frailties that would make you weep if you actually knew her.I'm not entirely sure why I loved this, but I did.