Review: Heavens!!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 14, 2014
I'm going to write something I'd never considered it possible to say to an author until I read this book: it needs to be 3, maybe 4!!It's an absolutely captivating premise that could have been taken so much further! I was sorry to 'lose' the characters with whom I'd become involved, each time we made another leap to another scene/time.At the risk of being completely wrong, I'm going to say that it seemed to me that Jason Gurley became at least as invested in his characters in each cameo as I did - but there were SO MANY!!  I understand how an author can "see" his characters and the surroundings in which they operate.  It's lovely for both author and reader when the characters take over the story themselves.  They begin to behave as they want to behave, not as their writer might want them to . . . all sorts of interesting things happen.  I find it very frustrating, though, when the author swiftly jumps into whatever comes next without explaining where he/she is, however briefly. How did we get here, from where we've just been? And where the heck are we now, in this place clear only to the writer?  This book had scene after scene after scene in which I (finally) became interested and invested in who was doing what and why.  And then they also disappeared!!  Damn.A few reappeared.By that time, I felt as though I'd been sitting through a 12 course banquet.  I hardly cared any more.  Which is an awful shame, because the twist at the end was a little shocking - and at any other time, would have been captivating.I honestly feel that the various worlds were each so easy to walk into, with such interesting personalities existing inside them!  Having reached that stage of familiarity with them (again), please may we learn a little more about each person and place before we're launched into another part of space and time?Understandably, in the current vogue of splitting single novels into trilogies (or worse), an author who shares segment after segment after segment in the same novel is to be praised in some respects.  I feel as though I've read three or four books, though.  Not one.This could, eventually, have been 4 books - repeat, four full books - detailing the characters and their worlds a little more, before they disappeared, never to return. I'm pushing that idea repeatedly, I know, but I thoroughly enjoyed each one, before I began to feel glutted.And that's not something I've ever said (or heard!) before.