Review: Guilty Pleasures

Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


The reason I picked up this book was that I was looking for a new series to follow, as the ones I'm currently following are all waiting for 'the next book'. When I bought this book I bought The Laughing Corpse at the same time. If I hadn't I would likely have dropped this series, as Guilty Pleasures isn't close to living up to my quality standard.
What I did like about the book is the somewhat fresh (although gory) approach to UF, where the main character is an animator/necromancer - who raises the dead for a living.

As someone who aspire to someday write a book of my own, this book was very educational as it's only half finished. I don't blame Ms Hamilton for this, but would rather point at the editor that allowed this book to go to printing when it obviously wasn't done.
My main gripe with the book is that it lacks flow, as the scenes doesn't really fit together, making the reading experience jarring, at best. Ms Hamilton is a cue-card writer, dividing the story line into separate scenes, which she appears to write individually. The scenes are then numbered and 'page-broken', which doesn't help the flow. There are a lot of other authors that uses the same style of writing, Terry Pratchett is one, but he avoids the numbering and 'page-breaking' in his novels. With the division Ms Hamilton use the scenes has to be longer than four page on average - in this book the average is about three and a half, with some as short as half a page.
There are also some truly jarring scene breaks, such as where the main character Anita moves from a face-off in a back yard and together with her companions leave in a car. The dialogue continues in the car, yet she has chosen to make it a new scene - with scene number an page break.



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