a peculiar thing to have happened over the last year or so is my experiencing a lack of interest in reading. not entirely sure you are interested in such a plight, but then again here you are reading this. moving away from that slight (sorry). can't really understand why. perhaps i have just been too busy, and vaguely social, look you see, to read, yet also i am aware of a lack of motivation to do so. i am not sure this is something to be concerned of, what with various medical concerns being warned of when one loses interest in things, or just me simply not being in the mood for reading.
of more relevance, and quite possibly the reason you are here, is that i have done some reading, albeit taking far longer with it than usual. not, as i encourage people to see it, that it's a sort of race. as would be the standard for such posts i've finished off reading two (2) novels. and so for the sake of having something on this blog, here we go with my thoughts.
keeping with the "tradition" or style of how i do these, this is to be the last paragraph which is certain to be free of spoilers. for a brief overview, the long awaited, much anticipated Year Of The Locust by Terry Hayes is sheer brilliance for about 400 pages and then isn't. one that somehow slipped me by on its original publication three (or so) years ago is The Twist Of A Knife off of Anthony Horowitz. it once again features the author himself as a quasi-fictional character and narrator. sadly this one is just a bit too much on the "meta" side of meta, which might well be why i didn't catch it on initial release.
from here on out, then, one of them *** SPOILER WARNING *** things is very much in place. if you have an interest in either novel yet for some reason have paused to consider my view on either, well, you are best off working out if you should read them or not from the previous paragraph.
plot? with mercy not a sequel, but a standalone thriller. sometimes i think authors in this weird century overlook that they can write a one off novel with no care or thought for follow ups or "expanded universe" shenanigans. oh yes, plot.
the narrator / protagonist (of many names) is a "denied access agent", meaning he gets sent off to all sorts of dangerous places where the Americans aren't allowed an official presence but suspect that those places have some quite naughty people who mean to do harm to their way of life. it just so happens they stumble on some disturbing news, that a feared terrorist believed dead (nicknamed The Locust with an initial lack of name) is very much alive and planning a "major" strike on America. so off our narrator is sent to sort it out, kind of, with the plan being to discover what the event will be, stop it and if at all possible actually make sure this feared terrorist is dead. it doesn't all go smooth.
i can comfortably say that the first 400 pages of this novel are superb. all of it is truly gripping, riveting reading, with some surprise twists and turns in the somewhat generic plot, all presented with some wonderful prose and exceptional turn of phrase. everything about the first 400 (or so) pages is very much something that makes a reader go "yes", and made the lengthy wait for the novel worthwhile.
not so much the last 200+ pages. you all saw that spoiler warning, yeah? well, i am sure this has all been covered online over the last two or so years. there was a lengthy "delay" in the publication of the novel, and the excitement went away quite quickly when it came out. i would imagine the "delay" was due to publishers begging, pleading and insisting that the part where the novel goes "Hunt For Red October time travel what the f*** is this a rewrite of The Final Countdown film" be changed, and that the novel not become some ludicrous, ineffective science fiction mess. alas, and sadly, The Year Of The Locust becomes the personification of how "subvert audience expectations" can go really, really bad.
once again i draw your attention to the spoiler warning. the whole "time travel submarine" idea is just completely f*****g stupid, even when allowing for a "suspension of disbelief". it undermines the other parts of the novel. the technology which ("accidentally") lets the sub travel in time was first used on a radar defeating missile. how come that missile worked as intended and did not time travel? leaving aside the bizarre way in which the narrator survives the (conveniently precise timing) time travel in the sub, how on earth could they have set it "back" to present day when they had no idea at all how it managed to travel "forward" in time? i am quite sure i shall not be the first to wonder such.
the truly disappointing thing is that this farcical, ludicrous "time travel" segment pretty much ruins the novel, and for no good reason. all of the plot points, even (or particularly) the "cosmic space dust accidentally gives super powers" one, could have been resolved without the submarine stuff. rather baffling that a novelist would come up with a work they must surely know was fantastic and the seek out ways to make it a frustrating, unenjoyable mess for readers.
once again this is novelist Anthony Horowitz using himself as a somewhat kind of fictional character, and once again following the investigation work of detective Daniel Hawthorne (who i take as a given is entirely fictional) in solving a murder. the twist with this one, however, is that the primary suspect in the murder (of a theatre critic who was unkind to one of his plays) is Anthony Horowitz himself.
whilst i can't recall exactly how long it took me to read this i think it took two or three months to plod through it. quite pedestrian and surprisingly dull, to be frank. the other Horowitz / Hawthorne novels were incredibly compelling reading, i think i tore through each of them in two to three days, for they were just irresistible. perhaps it is the plot premise at fault here, as you just know it's not going to be Horowitz that's the killer and also you know that Hawthorne will work it out. with so much of the narrative being about Horowitz taking a most decidedly the English way of doing things approach to fretting about being arrested for murder one doesn't really get all that much to be interested in who the actual killer is, or why they gone done it.
earlier (rather than later) i mentioned this novel was all a bit too "meta", even in the context of the overall meta concept for these books. it's quite like the author new he had a reasonably good idea for a story but one that was simply not as good as the others. still, the written style remains absolutely superb, and whilst it's disappointing overall it was still a good read. although i did get rather tired of the frequent reminders of other works by the same author cropping up in the novel.
yes, of course i shall be reading any and all other works by these authors. as it happens i have a more recently published one by Anthony Horowitz sat here, but i imagine it will be one of a few John Grisham novels i appear to have stockpiled next. not quite sure how much "brand damage" Terry Hayes has managed to do with this novel, indeed for all i know many readers may have liked the absurd, yet needless, twist. it might be that he's not allowed to do another one, but as with everything money talks.
perhaps, or maybe, my year (2024) of global travel, theatre experiences, cinema visits and celebrity encounters just took away all the time i would have usually used to read. oh well. i am hoping to find some novels that are truly engrossing (or similar), though, as it would be a shame if i ceased reading all together, or found myself doing it from a sense of having to.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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