Review: Typical Niall, too much sex, not enough character
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 22, 2014
I want to enjoy the books Niall writes.  His ideas are interesting.  He puts more effort into coming up with characters than many authors and he writes in a style that is very easy to read.  Sadly, this tale showed once again why I've been avoiding his books after reading most of his Thaumatolgy series.First, Niall makes sex too important.  I agree that sex should be part of the tale, but it needs to be balanced with the action and buildup.  Niall doesn't use a lot of buildup and dialogue before his characters are tearing off clothing and falling into bed.  Worse, the sex isn't really part of the plot.  It plays out more as a sideline for Niall to bring in when he runs low on plot and wants to recharge.  Yes, in Ugly, some of the information being passed between characters is passed while the characters are cooling down in bed, but most of that could have been handled in other ways.Second, Niall's characters start out with great foundations to their personality, but those personalities don't change much.  His normal female character seems to be a highly sexed bisexual or lesbian with big breasts and an almost insatiable need to fall into bed with any other beautiful woman.  This results in a lot of rather stilted dialogue and a lack of really compelling scenes.  There also is a complete lack of tension a lot of the time.  The story has most of the emotion sucked out of it by the way that Niall builds his characters.He is an interesting read, for an over-sexed college age nerd who has only been on a couple of dates, but overall, his tales would be improved if he spent more time building the characters and less worrying about how to get the female characters into bed.  (usually with each other.)