"And so it was" that I am disappointed in this one. For those that read this one, did you notice how often he used that phrase? It started to grate on my nerves. Queue a pause in reading and a review of my manuscript for over used phrases.
I came into his book with a lot of hope. To date I had heard about Psycho, Hannibal Lector, and Stephen King. But, I hadn't read them before this class. But, so far, the only pieces I hadn't heard about at all were Church of Dead Girls and The Sculptor. Based on our fearless leader, there's a reason for that. I felt like this had a lot of potential but there were too many things that just felt..... blah. Seriously? He's super strong? But a recluse as well. That didn't feel believable. Now, I'm not saying that Dan Brown's books are the best, but, in the aftermath of his Angels and Demons and DaVinci Code novels, I really felt like this was trying to ride on the coat tails of that success by bringing in the symbolism and art masterpieces for the villain. Especially since when a single, beautiful, expert on Michelangelo is there to help the authorities. Yeah, it just felt too similar. And at parts it felt like a personal love letter to Michelangelo.
But, what the villain does to the victims was definitely intriguing. I don't claim to be well versed in horror and murder stories but I don't think I would have ever thought to turn victims into pieces of art. That definitely takes a unique look at life and art to have come up with that. While I didn't like the novel as a whole, it was interesting to see how someone can fixate on something. Our last book it was Annie Wilkes fixating on Paul/Misery and Paul fixating on finishing his novel. This it was his work. I think that is a very telling attribute to psycho killers in life and fiction to see how many of them view what they do as "their work?" That in of itself opens a wide world of psychosis and study.
I think we share the same opinion here. I didn't really like the execution of the story; however, I think there was a lot of potential in the base plot. I liked how the killer killed his vitims and turned them into statues. But that was about all I liked from it.
ReplyDelete