Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsOOC, all Tell and no Show, repetitive descriptions, flat and boring writing
Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2018
Let me start by saying I am not a fan of Tim Waggoner's writing. I've found all of his books to be flat, slow, and often OOC and breaks canon. Unfortunately for me, TitanBooks keeps hiring him to write them, and they have me over a barrel regarding Supernatural tie-in novels and content. I can only hope they hire writers aside from Waggoner and Passarella in the future. I was only able to finish the book because I used my audio equipment to record the book using Text-to-Speech and turned it into an audiobook. Text-to-speech.
The story starts with Sam and Dean during Season 7, Cas and Bobby are both dead-- though Dean's reactions to their deaths was OOC. This story very much fills like a filler episode. There are reports of people getting killed and seemingly mummified, and soon, the boys have their run-in with "Frankenmutt", while also telling a story of the boys when they were in their tweens-- the author seems to forget there's a four year age gap between the brothers and writing them almost as though they were the same age and competing for the same girl and a tragedy of the past that very much parallels the motivations of the present.
Waggoner's writing seemed to shine most when he wasn't writing about Sam and Dean, who he seemed unfamiliar with, but when he was writing the original characters he'd created for the story, as well as the more gruesome scenes. You could tap and point them out, "Okay, this is his speed. This is what he wants and writes."
You aren't missing anything by not reading this, and you aren't gaining anything if you do. We don't get to see any character development or diving into Dean's suicidal depression after the loss of Cas and Bobby nor Sam's madness and hallucinations after the wall in his mind was broken. Mentions of both of these things feel perfunctory at best-- and they are just mentioned.
I finished the book, but found it, like his others, to be so utterly boring and flat to read. With a start-stop feel to every sentence and paragraph like a homage to Hemingway in the use of short sentences, few commas, and fewer adjectives and adverbs. All of this while also managing to be all Tell and no Show, as well as repeating, several times, details he's already described.
Would not recommend, though if you must: Text-to-speech makes it easier to get through.
