|
||
Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand |
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
 |
Book Of Secrets by Chris Roberson Angry Robot Supplied for review by Harper Collins New Zealand |
Reviewed By: Simon Litten |
| Books of Secrets is the fourteenth book by
Chris Roberson, but his first in the Angry Robot imprint. For reasons of my own, namely that I was enjoying the books that I had read in the Angry Robot imprint and that Mr Roberson was an experienced author, I was expecting a better than average, well written story. I was disappointed. Book of Secrets starts as a standard journalistic detective story. The viewpoint character is a detective who is researching an opinion piece on a vaguely tainted, local worthy and gets a promising lead on some dirt. The book then becomes a road story, replete with back stories (what is this fascination with back stories?), interspersed with a series of stories about a character known as the Black Hand who shares a family name with the viewpoint character. Near the end the story takes a path much less travelled and flirts, nay, copulates in public with a brand of Gnosticism that smells strongly of Roman Catholicism (the censer-swinging chorus line from the Society of Jesus it took as a clue). And the book dribbled on to its ending. Somewhere in the mishmash that was Book of Secrets there was a really good story waiting to be told. This time around the author decided not to tell that story, but presented this muddle instead. |
||
 |
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
SFFANZ is a non-profit organisation
and registered charity designed to bring together fans of the fantastic in New Zealand |
|
Contact us by email at: enquiries@sffanz.org.nz |
|