Review: Rock's "The Death Clock"
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 01 19, 2013
**Mild spoilers**Really more of a 2.5, but half stars aren't currently an option.Very interesting concept, probably interesting enough to sustain a full length novel. So why the 2.5 instead of a 5? Two reasons. First, the main character. I think the reader is supposed to be sympathetic to Andie, but she's utterly unlikeable. She's an adulterer who's blackmailing the man she had the affair with, although she claims to still love him and works with (possibly under) him. She's cruel and snobby. She's not bright, although she's supposed to be a high-power professional. Because I can't sympathize with her at all, I really don't care what happens to her. Second, the language choices on several occasions pulled me right out of the story, and in a story as short as this one, that's not a good thing. While not purple, the prose was overly inflated in several places. What woman, when playing with her own hair, thinks of it as "vanilla streaked, cherry coloured hair"? Or her "cobalt eyes"? Some of the imagery used is good and fitting, but some of it is just so oddly elevated and unrealistic it's distracting.Something else I don't get, although Andie's an acquisitions professional with her own office, the ability to threaten and fire people, and an extremely haughty attitude, she takes the bus to work and home again. That does not make sense to me. If she's such a snobby, high powered professional woman, why isn't she driving herself to work in an overpriced, luxury model car? Granted, I'm in the U.S. and the story takes place in Toronto, so it's possible this is a cultural difference.