Friday 15 February 2008

FP: Newtons Sleep

Finally, here is the review of the latest Faction Paradox book: Newtons Sleep. I started reading it just after my last DW review... which was a month ago. Yep, it's taken me that long to get through it. Not that I've spent a solid month reading the one book. I normally read to and from work, so that's a limited window... and, I have to confess, while reading this, often just staring out the window was a preferable option...

Allow me to present the very first paragraph that one reads:

Impelled as through in sympathy with the earth, a spittle's-worth of dark humour slips from between the high branches of the tree into the mild air. So it plunges from its zenith, drawn by its yearnings for the honest Lincolnshire lime. Thus does base matter descend, while pure spirit rises to join the light.

Oh your gods. I would call this turgid prose, but even that would have some movement to it!

Not to say the entire book is like this, there are indeed some passages worth the reading, but to struggle through the rest of the book to get to them isn't worth your time. I couldn't even work out who the book was supposed to be about (and don't say Newton!), as it seemed to change gears half-way through, which did not impress me (fortunately the book did later get back on track).

I will say I liked the final revelations about who was involved, didn't see them coming, should have (especially given the amount of time I had to contemplate it), so that worked well.

There weren't that many FP books out of Mad Norwegian that I really liked either, so here's hoping the next book from Random Static is more to my tastes.

[END]

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