Quote from: Hudson on Feb 24, 2020, 03:11:24 PM2019 novel review blurbs roundup:
Not got
Echo yet (waiting on the paperback) but I agree completely with the other two.
Quote from: SM on Feb 24, 2020, 07:38:45 PMI thought the teens - while pretty bad - were the least of the issues with character and dialogue ... dialogue that bad is rare outside of fanfic.
I honestly remember
Steel Egg being so much worse on the dialogue front - as was
Forever Midnight by the same author.
That's not to say there wasn't some seriously ropey stuff in
Cauldron. But again, as an issue it seemed bizarrely specific to the Umiak scenes. I don't recall having any problems with the Virginia crew's chat.
It's also weird because I thought Carey's dialogue in
DNA War was generally pretty good. Some of it was certainly odd, but in that book it seemed fitting for the characters. Strange that she got it right in one novel and so wrong in another.
As a final aside, I've definitely noticed a trend with these DH Press
Aliens novels in that they typically seem to start quite well, but sooner or later go to pot -
Original Sin was sort of OK but then had no real conclusion,
Cauldron went downhill once you were off the Virginia,
DNA War started getting totally wtf in the final act, and
Steel Egg became a shitshow pretty much immediately after some halfway engaging opening scenes. From what I've heard this downward trend is true of
No Exit as well.
But f*ck it, I'm reading
Predator: Turnabout now and it's fantastic. Wish Perry, Sr. had written all his EU books this well, he's like a totally different author on this one.