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cyranoSo I've been surrounded by people telling me what an amazing author Dan Brown (Author of the world-shattering DaVinci Code novel soon to be a major motion picture with Tom Hanks Jean Reno and Audrey Tatou) is, and how good his writing is.
Well, I just finished one of his books and OMFG awful. The characters are at best two dimensional, the heros are all square jawed beautiful super geniii, the dialogue is constructed from papier mache and tastes about the same, the text itself is awkward and Everything! Is! Extremely! Important! right up to where the three million conductors on the world's biggest computer catch fire. He tells us his characters are clever, and then he shows us how clever they are by writing about the amazingly UNclever things they say or do. Continuity is frustratingly spotty, and all of his amazingly smart clever people have some very oddly placed spots of ignorance when it becomes neccessary for the plot or to raise the level of 'suspense' for them to suddenly become uneducated morons. His subtle foreshadowings are like a battery wrapped in a wet sock which he then beats the reader with.
This did not provoke the visceral revulsion that the Thomas Covenant Septology did, as there was not the emotional involvement. I just didn't care enough about the characters or the plot. This book, Digital Fortress, gets no wags at all. Not even a limp thumping wag. Just bloody awful.
And yet I still read the whole damned thing. Because I'm not very smart and I'm very stubborn.
Maybe this is just going to be another 'Matrix'-esq thing, like Sin City. But at least with Matrix and Sin City I actually kind of liked the product.
Well, I just finished one of his books and OMFG awful. The characters are at best two dimensional, the heros are all square jawed beautiful super geniii, the dialogue is constructed from papier mache and tastes about the same, the text itself is awkward and Everything! Is! Extremely! Important! right up to where the three million conductors on the world's biggest computer catch fire. He tells us his characters are clever, and then he shows us how clever they are by writing about the amazingly UNclever things they say or do. Continuity is frustratingly spotty, and all of his amazingly smart clever people have some very oddly placed spots of ignorance when it becomes neccessary for the plot or to raise the level of 'suspense' for them to suddenly become uneducated morons. His subtle foreshadowings are like a battery wrapped in a wet sock which he then beats the reader with.
This did not provoke the visceral revulsion that the Thomas Covenant Septology did, as there was not the emotional involvement. I just didn't care enough about the characters or the plot. This book, Digital Fortress, gets no wags at all. Not even a limp thumping wag. Just bloody awful.
And yet I still read the whole damned thing. Because I'm not very smart and I'm very stubborn.
Maybe this is just going to be another 'Matrix'-esq thing, like Sin City. But at least with Matrix and Sin City I actually kind of liked the product.