The Devil You Know by Mike carey

[lightreads]

The Devil You Know by Mike Carey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Urban fantasy, same general map references as The Dresden Files -- loner magical protagonist with a tragical past, a supernatural mystery, that sort of thing. And if you line them up for comparison, this book is:

*Three times better written on a mechanical prose level,
*Approximately 50% less sexist,
*Equally creative on the magical front,
*Immeasurably more mature, philosophically.

And yet, I cared about it roughly a third as much.

Sometimes trying to feed the emotional centers of my brain something they'll respond to is like trying to feed a cranky and arbitrary two-year-old.

I give up.




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Comments

[ecaterin]

LOL!!! Yeah, there's no second guessing the ID, is there. I vividly remember finally deciding that Harry Potter was probably more than a flash in the pan (the movie was about to come out, and I wanted my oldest to know the stories). I whipped through books one and two going.....these are actually pretty clunky from a prose perspective, why the hue and cry? But I don't seem to be able to put them down.... And then by the time you get to books three and four, you just don't care - the story has you by the lapels and you're happy to be in its thrall.

What is it about books that are Good Storytellers that makes them so much more appealing than more literary books? Better written, better plotted, deeper thinking, richer characters....none of that are really what kick off the rapt sitting-around-the-fire-can't-look-away quality of a riveting story. What IS that quality?? It's not just superficial, titillating fluff, either. I dunno.

But like your brain, my brain knows it when it hears it. It's a good thing all my Dresden is digital, cause paperback copies would be starting to look very tattered. Not only have I read them cover to cover about 10 times in the past couple of years (lets not discuss the number of readings if I included every time I just picked up the set for comfort and read one or two books), my oldest has read them at least 3 times himself, and my youngest is just now finishing up the series to date :P