Sunday, October 7, 2012

Choices in the Great Circle - Lin Conklin


Choices in the Great Circle
Quick & Dirty:
  • Long, drawn out, and forced
  • This was just a poorly veiled attempt at presenting the authors morals
  • Gave modern arguments in a historical fiction - BIG NO NO
Long & Wordy: 

Fair warning: this is a book review, where I will talk about the book.  That means you may find some of this could be classified as a “spoiler”.  Proceed at your own risk.
I have been avoiding this review for a long time, I just couldn’t get myself to write it.  I was able to force my way through the book so I figure it’s time to spit it out. I had a lot of quotes to include but my ereader had to get wiped, meaning you’re just going to have to deal with a rough overview.  You’re better off.
So this book was very long and drawn out, let me give you the plot map:
piece of story > excess dialogue > moral point that doesn’t effect the story > piece of story > excess dialogue > moral point that doesn’t effect the story…
You get the idea.  The story really took a back-burner to the very blatant pieces of moral ‘wisdom’.
The “foreshadowing” was weird (NOT ‘forsight’ if you’ve read it) Then, at the end of an issue, the author would say things along the lines of, ‘I see ______ lesson and how ____ blank affects it.  Let me move on and not apply this to my life’.  Ok super exaggerated but hopefully you catch my drift.  I think this is a classic example of ‘don’t say it, show it’.  
I found the dialogue very painful most of the time, a quick example picked pretty randomly from the beginning (around pg 24 in e reader edition), “I don’t agree with all you’ve said, but I see your point about our spectators.  That said, I guess we will be giving them quite a show!”…just WEIRD and it was like this throughout the WHOLE book.  This isn’t even a great example but I just don’t care enough to open it back up!
One of my biggest problems with this book is that it’s supposed to be about when Christianity is overrunning Paganism.  This is a historical fiction novel.  Using modern arguments.  BAD.  So basically what happened was that the author would say things along the lines of ‘just because our religion is different it isn’t wrong’….
WHAT ABOUT THE EPIC BATTLE OF GOOD AND EVIL now I’m not a history buff but I do believe that people were being intentionally scared into thinking that there was this epic good/evil battle, that good was God through Christ and everything else was the devils work….WHERE IS THIS!?  The “different isn’t wrong” argument is MUCH too modern for this story.
I dunno, this book left a horrible taste in my mouth and a black hole for all the time I spent reading it.  I don’t think that even made sense and I just don’t care.  I’m done.
 PS. it’s a huge ripoff, it’s a $6 e-book!  Go buy a good paperback instead.
1/5
***I received this book as an ARC.  This in no way effected my review.***

No comments:

Post a Comment