Teel’s Reviews > Forty Days at Kamas > Status Update

Wait, I was wrong, here's mention of a computer!

Should be able to finish this morning.

The pacing is good and steady, but to me the book's quality does not justify its length. I am not bored by it, only tired of it. Perhaps it is because the tension was dispelled so completely by several characters' inexplicable visions of the future, which is worse than the bare predictability of the text because less-savvy readers would be able to overlook the latter.

In this chapter, we find references to Proust & Dostoyevsky, lest we forget the author is well-read.

"I WILL NOT MENTION MY NAME", he says, so one of the central coincidences of the book can remain intact awhile longer. And yes, he said it in all caps.

I hope some reasonable sort of explanation is given for these continued psychic visions whose only apparent purpose is to give a crutch to the author. If no explanation is given by the end of the book, surely another star removed from my rating.

The more I read, the more it has in common with The Immortals. Possibly they're both too-closely based on a particular historical reality.

Getting frustrated by how closely it's hewing to "rules" for writing, such as monomyth & formulaic character arcs & "twists", but those are author-gripes, not things that average readers would even notice - and that they apparently enjoy?

I wonder whether we'll get descriptions of "the Events" and "Civil War II"... Or if they're just there so this is all post-

The coincidence here is painful, though I know Drama (capital-D) requires it.