Shift (Infected, #5) in SOS: Serious Overload of Series

Oct 11, 2014 Kelly (Maybedog) rated it really liked it

Shelves: where-grr-mine, what-lgbtqia, what-mystery, what-shifters, what-pacific-northwest, what-beware-of-dog, how-series, what-seattle, what-male-protagonist, how-ebook

This is basically two novels in one, the second much better than the first (I suspect that's why there are two complete novels in one), both with good plots, lots of action, excitement, danger, and mortal peril, again, much more of that in the second than the first. Things develop well in the relationship between Roan and Dylan which was painful in the first and beautiful in the second...mostly.

It's sarcastic and dark and witty. Roan's virus is continuing to present new and interesting experien This is basically two novels in one, the second much better than the first (I suspect that's why there are two complete novels in one), both with good plots, lots of action, excitement, danger, and mortal peril, again, much more of that in the second than the first. Things develop well in the relationship between Roan and Dylan which was painful in the first and beautiful in the second...mostly.

It's sarcastic and dark and witty. Roan's virus is continuing to present new and interesting experiences. There wasn't enough dialog, too much describing the scene as if the reader is on the outside having things reported to her (e.g., "He told her about the bar and she expressed her shock.") This was worse in the first half. There were enough unnecessarily big words to sound a little pretentious, but I prefer that over it being too simple. We were also treated to a lot of indie pop culture references to be a lot pretentious but enough of others making fun of him to make it tolerable.

But the fat hating has got to stop. Every single bad or really annoying person is fat, doughy, overweight, fleshy, flabby, has x number of extra pounds, etc. Every. Single. One.

They're usually described as having other attributes that are perceived to be ugly such as bald or having a bad haircut or being filthy or wearing stained clothing or having bad teeth. But always, they were fat. The only exception was one scene that had to have multiple bad folks so one was pear shaped and another "almost tragically skinny" with "toothpick legs." (Emphasis mine) It's almost a tragedy but not quite because being skinny is really better than being fat. This was particularly egregious. Roan and his female detective friend are talking about a scumbag who killed his wife and children.

"I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess [he was a] controlling, abusive, immature bastard.”
"Also guess unemployed and eighty pounds overweight and yeah, you’ve got a good picture of him..."

Unemployed can happen to anyone but chronically unemployed tends to be an issue with people who tend to blame everyone else for their problems and those are often the kind that end up killing people. So I'm going to ignore that one. But they're all about behavior except he's also fat.

But later, Holden admits to himself that he isn't as skinny (no, not "chubby," that was very clear, just not as skinny) as he used to be but he has a reason: he's getting older and a person's metabolism just changes as he ages no matter how hard he works out and low carbs it. So it's okay for Holden because it's not his fault but clearly the above character is a low-life and therefore of course has become obese as part of that scumbg lifestyle. The heroes are all either really good looking or their looks aren't mentioned or occassionally they're average if they're secondary players but amazingly buff. The neutral characters are always interesting and not particularly attractive but not usually fat. See where I'm going with this?

Here are my notes, catty comments and relevant constructive criticisms and all (also unedited as I am in an exceptional hurry to get this done today):
(view spoiler)

If you don't mind fat hating and you already love this series, my guess is that it will be a five star read for you. The books keep getting better and better and the same problems just keep reappearing which is making me angrier and angrier. For me, the first half was a four, second half was a five making it 4.5. I want to dock a whole point for how judgmental the author seems and another half point because the ending torqued me off so much. But the book is too good for a three star rating.

So, 4 stars. Sorry. ...more

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