So begins a prologue that is all resolution. The end. Boy, that was fast - next book.
Sarcasm aside, some people might care about how Amalie learned to keep her mouth shut and what that mouth used to spew forth. If so, the next paragraph explains that Amalie used to tell kids about demons and spirits whose presence she felt. As this must be before the days of Harry Potter and being metaphysically weird was cool, her mother suggests that unless she wanted to be mistaken for a witch and sent away, she needed to shut up. Then we get a David Copperfield back story dump that is hard and long.
Chapter 1:
Gideon Davis scrutinized the Windsor knot in his yellow tie in his rearview mirror as he waited for the stoplight to change.
Car opening cliché. I like how the last name is inserted as if this were the beginning of a formal essay or memoir. It's not wrong, just not really necessary and would have made this opening sentence shorter, which is to everyone's advantage (usually) when it comes to opening lines. Then there is back story which hints at the coming scene. The second paragraph is a GPS insert, a style of writing essential to the car opening scene cliché. Then more back story. A couple pages in, a forward narrative begins so I skip ahead to an actual scene.
First thing said:
"Konzo."
Verdict: Fail
Sincerely,
Theodore Moracht
No comments:
Post a Comment