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Tor, Copyright 2010, 271 pages
ISBN: 978-0-7653-2782-6
Read: May 2011 (at age 33)
First time read
If you haven’t read it:
John Wayne Cleaver is trying really hard
not to be a serial killer. He is a
sociopath. But he’s trying… This is the first book of a trilogy – the
other two are Mr. Monster and I Don’t Want to Kill You. If you don’t have a bit of a dark sense of
humour, it might be a bit much. I loved
it.
From the back cover:
Fear
the darkness within…
John
Wayne Cleaver is dangerous, and he knows it.
He’s spent his life doing his best not to live up to his potential.
He’s
obsessed with serial killers, but really doesn’t want to become one. So for his own sake, and the safety of those
around him, he lives by rigid rules he’s written for himself, practicing normal
life as if it were a private religion that could save him from damnation.
Dead
bodies are normal to John. He likes
them, actually. They don’t demand or
expect the empathy he’s unable to offer.
Perhaps that’s what gives him the objectivity to recognize that there’s
something different about the body the police have just found behind the
Wash-n-Dry Laundromat - and to appreciate what the difference means.
Now,
for the first time, John has to confront a danger outside himself, a threat he
can’t control, a menace to everything and everyone he would love, if only he
could.
Reactions below the break:
Overall:
I picked up this book because I’ve been
listening to the Writing Excuses podcast for a few years now, and Dan Wells is one of the hosts of the
podcast. The authors use their own works
as examples quite regularly, and I wanted to see what he was talking about.
I loved the book – the characters were
extremely well done, the plot was scary enough, but not over-the-top, and the
first-person main character’s worst enemy was himself in a terrifically creepy
way. I don’t have a lot to say about
this one, other than it was good.
Rating:
5
Characters:
The strongest part of a strong book – our
hero was fantastically creepy. The
supporting characters were well-rounded and fleshed out. The big bad guy was surprisingly
sympathetic. It was just all good.
Plot:
In this book, the main plot (stalk and kill the
monster) was well done, but seemed almost an afterthought in importance to the
main character’s battle against himself.
It worked very well.
Premise:
A serial killer is stalking the small town
our hero lives in – and our sociopathic hero needs to let himself kill in order
to save his town. But once he starts,
can he stop? It’s really a fascinating
take on the monster-hunter genre.
Setting:
Small town America
Readability:
Generally excellent – good pacing, good
tension, clear, fluid writing. I didn’t
like one spot, early on, where, in the middle of a present presentation of the
story, we got “of course, we didn’t know that at the time”. This, of course, is one of the big twists in
the book – I didn’t mind the twist, but I didn’t like the way it was
handled. I would have preferred the
twist happening a bit more in the action.
Amazing what one throwaway line can do, I guess.
Other opinions:
There are a bunch – here are a few that I enjoyed. I
couldn’t find any negative ones to balance things out:
Tor.com – Perhaps a bit biased, coming as it does from the publisher’s website, but very well written.
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