Mike’s Reviews > Voice of the Fire > Status Update

God, this book is pretentious and self-indulgent. I honestly have trouble believing this is the same person who wrote V for Vendetta and Watchmen. The themes and style are kinda similar, don't get me wrong, but those books are just SO MUCH BETTER.

Alan Moore writing about a sex addict is possibly the greatest example of all time of an author resting on what they're used to and refusing to expand themselves. I hate this book.

At first, I thought I might like the section about the witches being burnt - it's at least a good idea for a short story. But the ridiculously excessive sex and horror ruined most of my enjoyment. When I read V for Vendetta and Watchmen, I didn't realize how restrained they were - Alan Moore unrestrained is unberable.

The boring prose makes following the story a chore, so at times, I'm just not bothering to keep track of what's going on. Based on what I am getting, I don't think I'm missing very much.

Alright, look: there's a big difference between being open about sex (mentioning taboo things like genitals and sex when relevant) and shoving sex into everything in an attempt to be edgy. The fact that this problem is especially prevalent among the women is reflective of Moore's trademark misogyny. What I'm saying is, I'm not a big fan of this book.

This book is so boring you guys. It's not even that the plot is uninteresting - it's all in the writing style. Moore is clearly meant to be a comic book author, because his prose is overdescriptive and incredibly dull.

Yeah, this prose is pretty bad. It's too heavy on descriptions, the paragraph breaks are in weird places, the flashbacks are still in present tense for some reason, and this woman mentions her breasts way more than necessary. Moore really is better-suited to comic books.

I can tell that Moore is accustomed to working in a visual medium. The prose is weighed down by clunky, overwritten descriptions that don't really add much to the story. And even though he's (finally) writing in plain English now, I still find this hard to follow, because he's not very good at transitioning from one idea to another. There are a lot of separate elements, and it's hard to see the picture they make.

This seems like it has a lot of re-read value. And I'm not only saying that because I'm just barely following the story, although I won't deny that it's a large part of why I say it.

In the introduction to this book, Neil Gaiman laments that this book didn't get very much attention when it came out. And uh... I may have a theory for him as to why that happened. I guess this is roughly what I would expect an Alan Moore novel to be like, but still, it's been a while since I've read something that takes this much active effort to read.