Friday, October 12, 2007
No, I haven't disappeared. But I was sick for a while and then there were work issues and in the meantime my notes on books just kept piling up waiting for me to post. Here's the first round of catch-up.
I finished the last three Body of Evidence books, Brain Trust, Last Breath, and Throat Culture by Christopher Golden and Rick Hautala and enjoyed the return to less fantastic ways to die and more prosaic killers. I usually find those to be scarier anyway. So overall what did I think of the series? Well, when the plots got going I found myself pretty caught up, especially during the action scenes. It was actually the college life scenes that usually knocked me out of my suspension of disbelief. The authors tended to over-describe things like Jenna's daily routine (I swear I could tell you what she had for breakfast every morning and describe the exact contents of her closet), and dropped in pop culture references that immediately seemed dated ("They found a decent radio station, hip enough to play Matchbox 20 but eccentric enough to throw old disco tunes into the mix."). Speaking of clothes: "She was wearing a light green tank with spaghetti straps, and tan shorts that barely covered her hip bones. Even that felt a little exposed to her; she could never wear some of the things a lot of the girls on campus wore. Not that she was shy about her body; she just didn't like the idea of giving every guy who passed by a free show." See what I mean? And even worse than that detailed clothing description is the thinly veiled moralizing that accompanies it. There was a little bit of this in every book and as a result Jenna never felt like an authentic teen girl to me. Her thoughts and opinions on certain things, especially when it came to her fellow students, felt more like a middle aged man schooling his teenage daughters. Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed the series for the most part, but there were too many things that didn't ring true for me to enthusiastically recommend it.
|
I finished the last three Body of Evidence books, Brain Trust, Last Breath, and Throat Culture by Christopher Golden and Rick Hautala and enjoyed the return to less fantastic ways to die and more prosaic killers. I usually find those to be scarier anyway. So overall what did I think of the series? Well, when the plots got going I found myself pretty caught up, especially during the action scenes. It was actually the college life scenes that usually knocked me out of my suspension of disbelief. The authors tended to over-describe things like Jenna's daily routine (I swear I could tell you what she had for breakfast every morning and describe the exact contents of her closet), and dropped in pop culture references that immediately seemed dated ("They found a decent radio station, hip enough to play Matchbox 20 but eccentric enough to throw old disco tunes into the mix."). Speaking of clothes: "She was wearing a light green tank with spaghetti straps, and tan shorts that barely covered her hip bones. Even that felt a little exposed to her; she could never wear some of the things a lot of the girls on campus wore. Not that she was shy about her body; she just didn't like the idea of giving every guy who passed by a free show." See what I mean? And even worse than that detailed clothing description is the thinly veiled moralizing that accompanies it. There was a little bit of this in every book and as a result Jenna never felt like an authentic teen girl to me. Her thoughts and opinions on certain things, especially when it came to her fellow students, felt more like a middle aged man schooling his teenage daughters. Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed the series for the most part, but there were too many things that didn't ring true for me to enthusiastically recommend it.
Comments:
Post a Comment
