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JulieDoe

Julie Doe

Dark Magic  - James Swain Meh. Done now, but I really skimmed the last part of the book. I expected more from Tor. Really. To wit:

(1) The writing was very thin and flat. Not sure how else to describe it. It was boring.

(2) If you were a psychic and saw a massive killing about to occur in 4 days would you (a) immediately alert the authorities even though you might risk your own freedom, (b) alert the authorities anonymously as you had been doing previously and hope they paid attention, or (c) go home to think about it, go to sleep and then go to work the next day because, you know, it is a whole 4 days until hundreds of people are killed so you have time? Guess which action Peter, the main character, chose.... Yep, (c).

(3) The dialogue was often not believable--conversations were unusually brief and characters, when told something shocking or surprising, often just went "oh well" instead of asking the questions one normally would. Like "what happened?", "is she alright?" etc.

(4) The main character's girlfriend acted like a spoiled brat, and I was unclear if the reader as supposed to sympathize with her or hate her.

(5) Although there was a bit of a twist about 75% of the way in, there was no real suspense other than that; the main character developed super-speshul new powers early on made it simple for him to defeat the main antagonist and threat to his safety. He never seemed to be in any danger.

(6) Finally, whoever copy-edited this for Tor should be fired. The rampant comma mis-use was surprising, then funny, then just pissed me off. And I'm talking about a very basic punctuation rule that has not changed since I learned it in grade school.