Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Vanished 3: Bad Points and Conclusion

And now, the bad points in Kathryn Mackel’s Vanished. I should also point out that this post is longer than the last one simply because I have to explain the concepts, not because the negatives are more numerous or important than the positives.

Once again we have silliness with explosives. I knew trouble was afoot when I encountered "plastique explosives." "Plastique," yes; "plastic explosives," certainly. But don't mix the two terms, even though they're synonyms. Writers need at least a quick overview of these topics.

In the story, people are killed by a knapsack partly filled with plastic explosives and set in a handy copse. No: for one thing, the plants would actually absorb some of the blast, and for another thing, explosions alone aren't that lethal. Reality check: "The main killing power of any bomb is not the explosion itself (the shock wave is rather small because of small quantity of explosives used) but the fragments of its jacket, which are launched in all directions by the explosion. ... More than 90% of the [suicide bomber] victims injured are hit by the bomb shrapnel." There is no evidence of ball bearings or other toys in the knapsack, nor is there any mention of shrapnel. Could the plant parts act as shrapnel? Probably not: they would be relatively light and thus lack the power to penetrate anything at any distance.

In checking for an explosive belt (roughly the same amount of explosive), 15m is considered a safe distance from the blast. (And that's allowing for shrapnel.) Yet in the story, a teenager is dismembered by the blast alone, and she may well have been outside that distance.

Similar point: The geek couple encounters a phenomenon that the he-geek considers a laser beam. If so, it's apparently quite large, and as one of the hallmark problems of lasers is overheating, not only will running the thing continuously take a lot of power, it should also make the area hellishly hot.

What follows comes under the heading of De gustibus non est disputandum, which is Latin for Your mileage may vary.

Gore. A little too much gore for my taste. People get shot, blown up, eaten by monsters, etc. It's not extremely graphic, but it bothered me a bit.

Short Attention Span Theater. I don't care for stories with multiple threads and a lot of jumping back and forth. I can keep track of the details--I've been known to put a book down and come back to it a year later without problems--but I feel like a dog on a leash: Just as I get interested in something, I get yanked away. "Come on! Keep moving!" You'd better keep moving, my friend; if you stop, I may mistake your leg for a fireplug...

Asking questions without answers. I once complained of a short story, "It doesn't so much resolve as dissolve." Vanished isn't that bad, but it breaks one of the cardinal rules of writing: never set up a question and fail to resolve it. At the end of the story, we have a long list of questions without answers. Virtually nothing has resolved, and in one or two cases we don't even know whether a viewpoint character is still alive.

Now, I know this is the first installment in a series, so I expect some matters to be left open. But if you look back at the other series openers reviewed here, they did at least sketch answers and suggest resolutions to the main issues. Here, I could have understood leaving some relationships open, but I should have at least a general idea what happened. There is no solid clue.

That means that the story ended too soon. What is The Mist? If Barcester isn't in Kansas (or Massachusetts) anymore, where is it and how did it get there? Where'd the sewer monster(s) come from? Even an incomplete answer would be something.

Conclusion. So as for me, I probably wouldn't start this, on the grounds that it's not a complete story as it stands. If Mackel could bundle it with the second installment, perhaps that would solve the problem despite making the resulting book rather long. On the other hand, if you are already determined to read the series as a whole, you probably won't mind the lack of resolution.

Meanwhile, there's no lack of resolution with
The other CSFF bloggers:
Brandon Barr
Justin Boyer
Jackie Castle
CSFF Blog Tour
Gene Curtis
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Christopher Hopper
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Mike Lynch
Terri Main
Margaret
Shannon McNear
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
John W. Otte
Deena Peterson
Rachelle
Ashley Rutherford
Mirtika or Mir's Here
Chawna Schroeder
Stuart Stockton
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Linda Wichman
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Vanished 2: Good Points

So what are the good points in Kathryn Mackel’s Vanished?

The primary positive is Kathryn Mackel herself; she's evidently adept at this genre. That covers a lot of ground: It means the pacing's good, for example. The book's a page-turner. The characterization is also strong and deftly handled.

The Christian content is also generally well done, with realistic Christian role models and some worthwhile questions asked. It isn't heavy-handed, though it is fairly clear that this is a Christian universe, not just a vaguely spiritual one.

I'll leave it there, although I so dislike the brevity of the post that I'm tempted to summarize the book in a series of limericks. (Don't snicker: I could do it.) But while these positives are quick to mention, they are conceivably more important than the negatives, which will take longer to explain. We'll do that tomorrow.

The other CSFF bloggers:
Brandon Barr
Justin Boyer
Jackie Castle
CSFF Blog Tour
Gene Curtis
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Christopher Hopper
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Mike Lynch
Terri Main
Margaret
Shannon McNear
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
John W. Otte
Deena Peterson
Rachelle
Ashley Rutherford
Mirtika or Mir's Here
Chawna Schroeder
Stuart Stockton
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Linda Wichman
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise

Monday, June 23, 2008

Vanished 1: Intro

Kathryn Mackel’s Vanished is a suspense story that begins the "Christian Chiller" series.

Fictional Barcester, Massachusetts, is the convergence point for underground high-speed trains. The trains aren't running commercially yet, just doing tests, but the first real trip will be in the near future and will involve the President of the US.

A secret service agent arrives shortly before a (literally) explosive incident that alters life in Barcester for good. (Or maybe for bad; it's hard to tell.) We get various viewpoints for all this:

Jason Logan, local cop who has pretty much lost his daughter in a custody battle. He's also got some hangups from the distant past as a Korean orphan.

Kaya de los Santos, local medic on the verge of being run out of town for a good deed.

Ben (Kaya's son), a clueless teen with good intentions and a knack for bad decisions.

Jonathan Percy and Chloe Walter, husband-and-wife physics geeks who want to put Barcester on the map just as someone else decides to take it off entirely. They're experimenting in the train tunnels when the not-truly-identified Bad Thing happens.

Alexis Latham, local store owner, gun owner, and all-around tough broad--unfortunately the standard horror-movie type who attracts monsters for no discernible reason.

Luther, The Villain. (You have five seconds to hiss The Villain.) Actually, Luther's just a guy who goes around planting bombs, shooting people, and tossing grenades. Everyone needs a hobby, and having something to do keeps him out of trouble. Also, he is not the ultimate bad guy but just his puppet.

This being a modern novel, we get to shift from one to another like a ping-pong ball in a blender. There's a lot of action going on at the same time, of course, and several non-viewpoint characters who get to be clever and/or die.

The one character that does neither one is The Mist. After Whatever happens, a large chunk of Barcester is surrounded by an eerie mist that wells up from a hole in the ground and covers the area like an umbrella. If you try to pass through The Mist, you get a generally depressing mystical (not a typo) experience. (It extends underground, too. So there.)

Anyway--tomorrow we'll look at the good points of the story, as usual, and then the bad points the next day.

The other CSFF bloggers:
Brandon Barr
Justin Boyer
Jackie Castle
CSFF Blog Tour
Gene Curtis
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Andrea Graham
Todd Michael Greene
Katie Hart
Christopher Hopper
Joleen Howell
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Mike Lynch
Terri Main
Margaret
Shannon McNear
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
John W. Otte
Deena Peterson
Rachelle
Ashley Rutherford
Mirtika or Mir's Here
Chawna Schroeder
Stuart Stockton
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Linda Wichman
Laura Williams
Timothy Wise

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Gentle Journey: A Genuine Fake Review

Well, once again CFRB is touring a book I haven't read. It's not that I don't read a lot of books; they just like to tour things I haven't looked at. However, as I've mentioned before, ignorance doesn't stop me from rabbiting on about a book. In fact, I like to think it makes my reviews less biased than those of people who have read the book.

Anyway, today's contestant is Gentle Journey by Elaine Lyons Bach. It's a Regency romance about Eden Barret, an artist who winds up being a governess--an old-fashioned word for a female governor. (No, wait: she's more of a nanny, which according to my Picture Book of Barnyard Animals and Other Relatives is a female goat.) She wants to help the downtrodden by means of Art, which presumably means giving them uplifting objects to look at while they're trudging off to the mines or other hellhole. She probably would've been more effective as a female governor.

Instead, she finds herself helping the uptrodden, in the form of Lady Diana (no, not that one), the sister and pain in the escutcheon of Colin Ashton, Seventh Earl of Edmund. He is a confused young man; should he go by "Colin," "Earl," or "Edmund"? His current light of love, the Honorable Cassandra Bradley, compassionately just says "Good Lord!" and gives him treats. (The author graciously forbears to mention whether he wags his tail.) Unfortunately the Honorable Cassandra's dishonorable brother has designs on Eden (remember her?), and they aren't altogether artistic. Meanwhile, Lady Diana is trying to sabotage any romance between Eden and Colin/Earl/Edmund. Aren't siblings keen? Maybe Di and Cassandra's brother should get married.

On the other hand, Lady Di does keep her brother from firing Eden. He'd like to fire her because she is too much like him, and he has enough trouble without picking up even more potential names. Thwarted in his attempt to remove her person, he begins to contemplate removing her last name, or anyway changing it to match his own, whichever that may be.

Will the course of true love run smooth? Will it be, in fact, a "gentle journey"? Not likely. But if you want to know, you should probably read the book already.
 
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