Task: Sentiment Analysis
Input (English): Her Weakest by Far . I've read all of Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon books and enjoyed every one of them until I reached Hard Truth. After writing so many intellligent, suspenseful stories, Barr has joined what seems to be an open competition among mystery writers to see who can come up with the most despicable crime. Murder's not nasty enough? How about the murder of children? Still not gruesome enough? Add incest/rape/torture...you get the picture.    Ostensibly such books are meant to give the reader insight into the minds of evil villains, but really, who cares? The kind of evil depicted in these books is not just disgusting but banal. It's like bad language in humor--in general, it's just a cover for bad writing.     In Hard Truth, Barr outdoes all of the competition for sheer nastiness, in the process leaving out the features that make her other books so enjoyable: the charm and intelligence of her main charcter, the well-reasoned defense of nature, the lush descriptions of each story's setting. I found this book neither enlightening nor remotely enjoyable. I give it two stars for an interesting but largely wasted character (a recently paralyzed ice climber), but otherwise I'm sorry I spent my time and money on it
Output (English): NEG