2014 book: Snow Blood
Snow Blood by Carol McKibben
Rating: 1/hated (1-5/hated-loved)
(Book received free for review from Troll River Publications.)
If you're going to write a first-person story told from the POV of a dog, you must be able to get a dog's voice right. Unfortunately Snow Blood failed badly at that.
From the first paragraph, I didn't believe we were hearing a dog think. As too often happens with animal POV books, the dog knew way too much. (How does a dog know what a vampire is? Why would he care to remember what city/state his family lives in? What the local mountains are named?) In addition, I didn't believe the dog's reactions to things. (After being tuned by the vampire, the dog sees the vamp drinking a wine glass full of something red. He thinks to himself 'That better not be blood or I'm going to be sick'. Why, when a dog will gleefully eat out of a cat's litterbox, would the idea of drinking blood bother him?)
There were more issues with the book than just the dog. Why did the vampire (the first/original/oldest vampire) take a dog named Snow and rename it Snow Blood?
"Hi, I'm Thistle, what's your name?"
"John."
"I'm going to call you John Pizza now, John!"
I really should have stuck with my policy of not reading vampire books.
I got less than 10% into Snow Blood, and while I do usually try to finish books (especially when given them for review), this one was just not at all working for me and there was no use continuing.
Rating: 1/hated (1-5/hated-loved)
(Book received free for review from Troll River Publications.)
If you're going to write a first-person story told from the POV of a dog, you must be able to get a dog's voice right. Unfortunately Snow Blood failed badly at that.
From the first paragraph, I didn't believe we were hearing a dog think. As too often happens with animal POV books, the dog knew way too much. (How does a dog know what a vampire is? Why would he care to remember what city/state his family lives in? What the local mountains are named?) In addition, I didn't believe the dog's reactions to things. (After being tuned by the vampire, the dog sees the vamp drinking a wine glass full of something red. He thinks to himself 'That better not be blood or I'm going to be sick'. Why, when a dog will gleefully eat out of a cat's litterbox, would the idea of drinking blood bother him?)
There were more issues with the book than just the dog. Why did the vampire (the first/original/oldest vampire) take a dog named Snow and rename it Snow Blood?
"Hi, I'm Thistle, what's your name?"
"John."
"I'm going to call you John Pizza now, John!"
I really should have stuck with my policy of not reading vampire books.
I got less than 10% into Snow Blood, and while I do usually try to finish books (especially when given them for review), this one was just not at all working for me and there was no use continuing.