Book Review: Handeland, Lori Any Given Doomsday. New York: St. Martins Press, 2008.
Word of caution here: I am not a fan of genre fiction, especially thriller fiction,and I was very surprised to hear that I was receiving this book. That being said I was pleasantly surprised to enjoy this book - at first. Liz Phoeniz is an ex-cop turned bartender who is also a psychic. She has a “sense” that her former caregiver , Ruthie needs her help. When she gets to Ruthie's house, she finds that Ruthie has been brutally murdered. Even worse, her former lover Jimmy Sanducci is the prime suspect. She soon finds out that Ruthie had special powers that Liz inherits and that she is about to be in the front lines of a battle of good versus evil, loosely based on the biblical book of revelations. Jimmy and others are also involved in this battle.
As I said I enjoyed this book at first. However the more supernatural forces that entered the picture the less I found myself enjoying this book and the more I found my belief suspended. I also found none of the characters likeable, especially not Liz and Jimmy. As I often find with genre fiction, the plot and the characters were somewhat formulaic. (Bitter ex-cops who are products of the foster care system anyone?) but I recognize for many readers that this is an appealing aspect of genre fiction. However what really lost me was the amount of gratutitous violence and later the amount of gratuitous sex. The amount of sex in the book was especially of putting . Was this a paranormal thriller or a romance novel? There was far too much genre mixing for my taste.
Readers who enjoy paranormal thrillers might enjoy this book, but as someone who does not usually read thrillers, this book seemed to be a not particularly well written representative of the genre
No comments:
Post a Comment