There may be -- probably WILL be -- spoilery stuff in here. Hard for me to help it. :) In two parts because the program won't let me do it in one.
...the point I'm trying to work around to, in my fashion, is that this is my metaphorical house. I know what goes on in these stories usually, I know The Rules in a Randy-from-Scream sort of way, and I honestly picked it up because I was hoping for a breezy, only MODERATELY sucky light read.
Clearly Rik E. Spoor's been reading the same books as I have, because his book kept kicking The Rules in the privates when I wasn't expecting it. I heavily approve.
Actually I've only been reading SOME of them. Kolchak was one of my main inspirations, plus getting annoyed with the genre conventions in various SF/F/Horror books I read. But many of the ones you mention couldn't have been direct influences as I wrote the first part of this book more than 15 years ago.
I can't get into that without giving spoilers, though. I will on some points of course, but hold on, we've still got some ground to cover.
You've pretty much got the story summary from that: Jason Wood's a private investigator (of the dull, sit around and research over the Internet type, not your twin-gunned noir hero with bourbon and architecture fetish type)
Well, he sometimes TRIES to talk like Film Noir. His actual conversational approach is strongly modeled on Archie Goodwin, modulo some modernization.
and he stumbles across Bad Stuff in the supernatural vein. Soon enough it's trying to kill him, but he comes across help from an Unlikely Source and... y'know, it snowballs, there's exciting action sequences, age-old monsters are defeated in new ways... you know the drill here, I hope.
Well, I hope you only know PART of the drill. ;)
Let's get some of my problems with this text out of the way. To start with, and this'll make a big difference to a couple of people on my friends list, this one's got Good(ish) Vampires and Eeevil Werewolves. (No, it's not quite that morally clear cut in practice, but let's go for generally.) Being eternally on the side of the fuzzy things, that made me sulk for much of the book. (Therefore this book does not support my private agenda and is therefore of no worth, the end. ...no, no, JOKE. Come back.) On the other hand, they can at least be entertainingly sadistic at times, always a plus. Then there's the entire chapter devoted to... eh, no, I'm not telling.
Actually, virtually all vampires are evil by any reasonable measurement. We axe one, the one main character who seems to be a vampire ISN'T, and the one NICE vampire we meet is clearly, and unambiguously, stated to be very much an exception.
Also, the Werewolves are, well, not werewolves in any standard sense of the word. Equating them to anything you've ever seen in any other book is a mistake. The use of the term is a shorthand, but it's misleading (potentially even lethal if you make the wrong assumptions from it).
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momijizukamori
The author comments on the Digital Knight review... Part 1
Date: 2004-01-19 06:46 pm (UTC)There may be -- probably WILL be -- spoilery stuff in here. Hard for me to help it. :) In two parts because the program won't let me do it in one.
...the point I'm trying to work around to, in my fashion, is that this is my metaphorical house. I know what goes on in these stories usually, I know The Rules in a Randy-from-Scream sort of way, and I honestly picked it up because I was hoping for a breezy, only MODERATELY sucky light read.
Clearly Rik E. Spoor's been reading the same books as I have, because his book kept kicking The Rules in the privates when I wasn't expecting it. I heavily approve.
Actually I've only been reading SOME of them. Kolchak was one of my main inspirations, plus getting annoyed with the genre conventions in various SF/F/Horror books I read. But many of the ones you mention couldn't have been direct influences as I wrote the first part of this book more than 15 years ago.
I can't get into that without giving spoilers, though. I will on some points of course, but hold on, we've still got some ground to cover.
You've pretty much got the story summary from that: Jason Wood's a private investigator (of the dull, sit around and research over the Internet type, not your twin-gunned noir hero with bourbon and architecture fetish type)
Well, he sometimes TRIES to talk like Film Noir. His actual conversational approach is strongly modeled on Archie Goodwin, modulo some modernization.
and he stumbles across Bad Stuff in the supernatural vein. Soon enough it's trying to kill him, but he comes across help from an Unlikely Source and... y'know, it snowballs, there's exciting action sequences, age-old monsters are defeated in new ways... you know the drill here, I hope.
Well, I hope you only know PART of the drill. ;)
Let's get some of my problems with this text out of the way. To start with, and this'll make a big difference to a couple of people on my friends list, this one's got Good(ish) Vampires and Eeevil Werewolves. (No, it's not quite that morally clear cut in practice, but let's go for generally.) Being eternally on the side of the fuzzy things, that made me sulk for much of the book. (Therefore this book does not support my private agenda and is therefore of no worth, the end. ...no, no, JOKE. Come back.) On the other hand, they can at least be entertainingly sadistic at times, always a plus. Then there's the entire chapter devoted to... eh, no, I'm not telling.
Actually, virtually all vampires are evil by any reasonable measurement. We axe one, the one main character who seems to be a vampire ISN'T, and the one NICE vampire we meet is clearly, and unambiguously, stated to be very much an exception.
Also, the Werewolves are, well, not werewolves in any standard sense of the word. Equating them to anything you've ever seen in any other book is a mistake. The use of the term is a shorthand, but it's misleading (potentially even lethal if you make the wrong assumptions from it).
Continued...