World War Z by Max Brooks

It goes by many names: “The Crisis,” “The Dark Years,” “The Walking Plague,” as well as newer and more “hip” titles such as “World War Z” or “Z War One.”

This begins the introduction. The next section, I assume is chapter one and begins like this:

GREATER CHONGQING, THE UNITED FEDERATION OF CHINA
[At its prewar height, this region boasted a population of over thirty-five million people. Now, there are barely fifty thousand...

The first outbreak I saw was in a remote village that officially had no name.

So, what we have here is a nonfiction feel to fiction; apparently, to make the story world feel more authentic  But as it sounds like a textbook, I'm losing interest, and am getting nasty high school flashbacks.

Unfortunately, with that nonfiction feel, comes an opening that is all telling, which most creative writing experts will tell you is a bad thing to do and a leading excuse for literary agents or editors to reject material by just doing a quick scan of submitted work.They love it - no need to read anything, and it saves lots of time. Plus, they get to say, "Hey, this tells and doesn't show!" So they get to sound like experts when they reject, should they even take the time.

However, with this story, I can't see it any other way - it needs to begin with telling. Just like Catcher in the Rye (though, for different reasons) and other genres where premise is a primary conflict as in dystopian. Certain genres (and first person narratives) sometimes work best with telling to start things off, and some stories are just meant to be that way. This is one. Plus, this telling reveals the narrative character.

The only conflict in this beginning is that there is a zombie war, which is conflict of the person vs. society type. For some, that's more than enough. However, it isn't enough to hook me, as I'm not the zombie type of guy. If it was a world war against a legion of creepy little Asian girls with long black hair hiding their faces all called Samara and Sadako, then I might read on.

In other words, this opening will hook if you're interested in zombies; if not, it offers little else.

First thing said:

"Who?"

Verdict: Pass (barely)

Sincerely,
Theodore Moracht

How to get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid

Look, unless you're writing one, a self-help book is an oxymoron.

Tone? Check. Clever idea? Check. Plot? Nope. Character? Kind of...confusing.

Actually, in regard to clever idea or phrase, this line may well be, but original, it is not. We can hardly blame any writer nowadays for being unoriginal, either in a statement here or there or in a plot here or there; after all, everything that can be dreamed up has been dreamed up. Art today is the art of regurgitation.The best an artist can do is say, "Hey, it might not have been mine going down but that pavement pizza that came up is."

Note: My library copy had a previous borrower stop reading for the night on page two, as evidenced from the folded page. I guess, for someone, all that wit was too much to take in one go. The next folded page is page ten, then page eleven, then page nineteen. I assume not all by the same person, but revealing nevertheless, more so about the reader than the author in this case, as the pages are short.

First thing said:

"Don't leave us here."

Despite that first thing said, the writing is quite engaging and I'm being beguiled to read on because of the content (how disconnected ideas flow nicely from one to the other) and style. As in this paragraph on page four:

This is a self-help book. It's objective...is to show you how to get filthy rich.... And to do that it has to find you, huddled, shivering, on the packed earth under your mother's cot.... Your anguish is the anguish of a boy whose chocolate has been thrown away, whose remote controls are out of batteries, whose scooter is busted, whose new sneakers have been stolen. This is all the more remarkable since you've never in your life seen any of these things.

This is positive preambling, as it entertains with ulterior motives that go beyond a mere plug.

Verdict: Pass

Sincerely,
Theodore Moracht

The Abominable by Dan Simmons

The three of us learn about Mallory and Irvine's disappearance on Mount Everest while we are eating lunch on the summit of the Matterhorn.

There is an author introduction that begins this book, but I skipped that. Glancing over it, I assume it has something to do with the making of this novel or the inspiration or something like that behind it. If I'm wrong, it's because I didn't read it because I'm not interested because it doesn't have anything to do with the story.

Back to sentence one: Here we have three men on a mountain - eating lunch when they get, I suspect, some bad news. People disappearing is mildly interesting. When it happens in the news, most people take notice. Luckily, I'm well read enough to know who Mallory is and where Mount Everest is so, so far so good. The author cleverly establishes the time period without giving us the date.

Except: It is a perfect day in late June of 1924... begins paragraph two.

The second paragraph suggests how this long novel is paced. The food they are eating is documented. It doesn't hook, but it does make me hungry, so there is that little success, assuming that was the author's intention. It's a weird list of the rucksack contents: ...a goatskin of wine, two water bottles, three oranges, 100 feet of climbing rope, and a bulky salami.

We assume they aren't planning to eat the 100 feet of rope. Oh, and next time I'm at the supermarket, I'm going to ask to see some bulky salami because when I google "bulky salami", Google can't find any. Perhaps bulky salami is referring to something else?

Page one continues on by telling us what these characters had been up to for the past six days, and reads like a creatively crafted tourist brochure. Well done.

First thing said:

"Carrel and his team were there."

Sorry Mr. Simmons, I like a lot of your previous work, but...

Verdict: Fail

Sincerely,
Theodore Moracht

Classified by Fern Michaels

Having tossed and turned for the past hour, Abby finally rolled over and looked at the alarm clock.

Nothing to write home about here, just a little insomnia. It's a really long prologue and it bores me before I can turn the first page. There's a dream sequence. I assume it's important, but as I'm one of those people who thinks dreams are insanity leaking out of the brain cells and that they have nothing to do with reality (or the story of a fictional reality), I roll my eyes.

Chapter one:

"Simpson...No I mean Clay."

The confusion is explained thus:

"I'm recently married." Well not that recently. They'd just celebrated their first wedding anniversary last month.

You'd think that after being married a year people would know what their last names are, either that, or this lady isn't that gung ho about being married. Either way, a bit ditzy if you ask me. Generally, I don't like reading about such characters because stupidity annoys me, but in particular, it's usually just the author trying to be clever at establishing a voice at the expense of plot and characterization. I mean, are readers really that sympathetic to stupid characters nowadays - you know, the ones who can't remember their last names?

Verdict: Fail

Sincerely,
Rudy Globird

The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits

The story I'm about to tell could be judged preposterous.

Is the beginning of the book a review about the book? I don't mind when writers establish voice early on, but it would be nice if it were in conjunction with a plot - you know, a story. Instead, we are promised something interesting. Couldn't that just have been put on the back of the book or on the cover?

The rest follows like this:

Fine. Judge how you must. Protect yourself by scare-quoting me as the so-called psychic, the so-called victim of a psychic attack. Quarantine this account however you must so that you can safely hear it. What happened to me could never happen to you.

The next paragraph begins:

Tell yourself that...

We get it already. This is an out of this world story that I will be sorry for putting down and never finishing. Let's dump the plug and get on with the story.

What follows is a POV mash-up. First person, second person and third person all jumbled together. I don't like when a writer talks to me, the reader, directly. It's a cheap attempt to pull me into the story and I resist - I'm willful that way. Plus, it sounds pretentious and snooty, almost as if the writer is talking down to the reader. If you like being talked down to, then by all means, read on.

I'm not the only one who dislikes this, as the library copy I'm using has the page folded on the first page. Who would stop a reading session and fold the page at page one? The next folded page is page three. The next after that is page fifteen.

Part one begins:

The attack, we later agreed, occurred at Madame Ackermann's forty-third birthday party.

This is a little better. But we already know about an attack from the prologue or whatever that was before, so this is reiterating, which is irritating.

First thing said:

"You know Julia."

Verdict: Fail

Sincerely,
Rudy Globird

Six Years by Harlan Coben

I sat in the back pew and watched the only woman I would ever love marry another man.

This has a kind of conflict that most people can relate to. I feel for the guy since I'd had a similar experience -  though she wasn't the only woman I'd ever loved.

What follows is a description of Natalie, the only woman he'd ever love. It's a scene with enough awkwardness to keep people reading, as just about everyone has been on one end or the other of unrequited love. However, the pages start to drag as the pathetic nature of rejection and self-torment rambles on until it stops abruptly with the word:

Enough.

Yes, enough; let's get on with the mystery.

First thing said:

"Hello, Jake."

Very nondescript dialogue opening. Hopefully characters will have more to say than mere superfluous chit-chat.

Verdict: Pass

Sincerely,
Theodore Moracht

Cage of Bones by Tania Carver

It was a house of secrets.

Does anyone know the word cliche in Gaelic? On the surface this sentence hooks, but when we stop and think about it, how can it? It is too broad, too general and could mean quite literally anything. It is cliche because it brings to mind every dark old house ever used by Hollywood from the 1930's on. That motif has been done to death and for good reason as it always seems to appeal to the next generation unaware the wheel has already been reinvented.

Ultimately, what we have here is a setting of sorts, and no conflict, as secrets aren't in themselves conflicts.

The rest of the first paragraph:

Dark secrets, old secrets.

And the next paragraph:

Bad secrets.

I hear my big brother's voice whispering underneath a bed sheet as he tries to figure out how best to scare me. I'm giggling.

First thing said:

"What you waitin' for?"

This author believes in the power of incomplete and incoherent sentence structure, which is really a hackneyed attempt at soliciting emotion via punctuation. Here are a few in no particular order:

Felt it, sensed it.
A solid shadow, deeper than black.
And that was where Cam came in.
Walked on.
Tried to get hold of himself.
And it was old.
Then the fence.
A horror film monster.
Stopped.
And beyond all that was the house itself.
Or nowhere. 

Maybe this is about getting revenge on a mean grade one teacher.

Last line of the book:

The tightrope holding.

Verdict: Fail (yawn)

Sincerely,
Theodore Moracht