Book 40 of 2014: Thor
Thor by Wayne Smith
Rating: 3/okay (1-5/hated-loved)
One of my favorite kind of story is one told from an animal's point of view. That's a more challenging style than it might seem, because if the animal knows too much, the story becomes unbelievable, yet if the animal doesn't know enough, the story can be impossible to tell.
Based on only storytelling and believable of the dog protagonist, I'd say this was the best 'told from an animal's POV' book I ever read. However, that does not mean this was a good book.
Though published by major company, this book was full of errors and issues. On the very second page of the book, there was a major error (wrong pronoun used for a character). Peppered through the book were lots of other errors, mostly word switching, typos, and letters or words dropped (like 'do' instead of 'dog', and 'To' instead of 'Tom"). Add on top of that that, while the dog was a very believable dog, none of the human characters were realistic or believable. There were major plot holes? errors? as well (like the cop agreeing to "I'll tell you everything I know if you tell me everything you know", then the cop told him everything... then just left without getting a single bit of info from the other guy).
The plot of the book was interesting (a dog had to protect his family from a werewolf, the werewolf just happening to be the brother of the family's mother and living with the family). I enjoyed the first two-thirds of the book, but the end was really heavy-handed and contained errors related to earlier in the book, so I started skimming.
The writing was amusingly dated, even though it was published in 1992. There were multiple references to Richard Nixon. For example:
"So," Uncle Ted said, nervously tucking his shirt into his pants and sounding as innocent and nonchalant as Richard Nixon...
Would I recommend this book? Maybe. If you like stories told from animal POVs, it's entertaining enough. All in all though, probably not. It had just too many basic editing mistakes.
Rating: 3/okay (1-5/hated-loved)
One of my favorite kind of story is one told from an animal's point of view. That's a more challenging style than it might seem, because if the animal knows too much, the story becomes unbelievable, yet if the animal doesn't know enough, the story can be impossible to tell.
Based on only storytelling and believable of the dog protagonist, I'd say this was the best 'told from an animal's POV' book I ever read. However, that does not mean this was a good book.
Though published by major company, this book was full of errors and issues. On the very second page of the book, there was a major error (wrong pronoun used for a character). Peppered through the book were lots of other errors, mostly word switching, typos, and letters or words dropped (like 'do' instead of 'dog', and 'To' instead of 'Tom"). Add on top of that that, while the dog was a very believable dog, none of the human characters were realistic or believable. There were major plot holes? errors? as well (like the cop agreeing to "I'll tell you everything I know if you tell me everything you know", then the cop told him everything... then just left without getting a single bit of info from the other guy).
The plot of the book was interesting (a dog had to protect his family from a werewolf, the werewolf just happening to be the brother of the family's mother and living with the family). I enjoyed the first two-thirds of the book, but the end was really heavy-handed and contained errors related to earlier in the book, so I started skimming.
The writing was amusingly dated, even though it was published in 1992. There were multiple references to Richard Nixon. For example:
"So," Uncle Ted said, nervously tucking his shirt into his pants and sounding as innocent and nonchalant as Richard Nixon...
Would I recommend this book? Maybe. If you like stories told from animal POVs, it's entertaining enough. All in all though, probably not. It had just too many basic editing mistakes.