Re: RARA-AVIS: GOD IS A BULLET

From: Michael Robison ( miker_zspider@yahoo.com)
Date: 08 Jul 2004


Uh-oh! Joy! Our likes and dislikes are just about opposites. Remember our opinions of a couple books by Terrill Lankford and Robert Eversz?

Haha. Hope you enjoy Teran. I haven't been having a lot of luck finding good books here recently. You ever get in a slump where nothing you read seems any good? Just this weekend, though, I started Connelly's City of Bones, and it's really good.

I'm counting the minutes before I head out to the lake for the weekend. The wife and daughter will already be there. It's a little mini-vacation for us almost every summer weekend.

miker

--- Joy Matkowski < jmatkowski1@comcast.net> wrote:
> You've persuaded me, miker, to order a copy. Thanks!
> Joy
>
> Michael Robison
> > A lot of people deplored his style as excessive,
> > garish, and childish. I liked the way Teran ran
> > freewheeling with the language. I thought he
> invoked
> > powerful visual images. Some of the more
> outrageous
> > similes and metaphors I took to be tongue-in-cheek
> > humor that served as counter-balance to the
> horrific
> > subject.
> >
> > A lot of people thought the characters thin and
> > unconvincing. I thought the characters were
> > forcefully drawn and that Teran convincingly
> evolved
> > the two main characters, Case and Bob, through the
> > novel.
> >
> > A lot of people thought the plot was flat. I
> thought
> > it was a powerful, moving, and exciting story of a
> > walking-dead man and a damaged girl fighting their
> way
> > through hell to seek redemption.
> >
> > Of all the many reviews I've read of GOD IS A
> BULLET,
> > I am surprised at how very little commentary there
> is
> > on his heavy-handed symbolism. I thought it
> enriched
> > the reading experience.
> >
> > I liked the way Teran broke loose from the tired
> > Freudian framework that's a noir standard and
> opted
> > instead for a Jungian viewpoint.
> >
> > A lot of people found the ulta-violence gratuitous
> and
> > cheap. I thought it fit the framework of the
> novel
> > perfectly. I liked his stand on vigilantism. One
> of
> > my big complaints about hardboiled is its tendency
> to
> > romanticize and glorify taking the law into one's
> own
> > hands, without making clear the moral ambiguity.
> > Teran definitely glorifies a lot of violence, but
> he
> > pushes it beyond the acceptable and makes the
> moral
> > ambiguity strikingly obvious.
> >
> > I like the philosophical overtones. At the
> beginning
> > of the book Bob is a man who has sunk into
> inaction.
> > Spurred by his daughter's kidnapping, Bob watches
> as
> > his beliefs crumble around him into an existential
> > void. Case helps him regain his life through
> action.
>
>
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