Book Review: The Shattered Gates by Ginn Hale

Title: The Shattered Gates (The Rifter Book 1)
Author: Ginn Hale
Published:: Bellingham: Blind Eye Books, 2012
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 341
Total Page Count: 142,969
Text Number: 420
Read Because: reviewed by rachelmanija, borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The strangest thing in John's life is his tattoo'd, knife-bearing roommate—until he opens his roommate's mail to find a key that unlocks a strange, magical, dangerous world. The world of The Rifter is crafted with love: it's complex, robust, and unromanticized, and while I fail to find it particularly compelling it's undeniably real. But more worldbuilding that plot happens in The Shattered Gates, and though the book never drags the series promises to run a little too long. It's the dual narratives that make it worth reading: the protagonists have distinct characters, the alternating timelines give a broad view of the setting, and there's constant mystery and revelation as the two narratives begin to overlap. The Shattered Gates feels self-published—there's typos, stiff phrasing, and it could stand to lose a few hundred pages—but it's engaging and calling it "finely crafted" is something of an understatement. Whether I recommend it hinges on the rest of the series, but I'm enjoying it so far.

Book Review: Loups-Garous by Natsuhiko Kyogoku

Title: Loups-Garous
Author: Natsuhiko Kyogoku
Translator: Anne Ishii
Published: San Francisco: Kaikasoru, 2010 (2001)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 458
Total Page Count: 143,427
Text Number: 421
Read Because: reviewed by james_nicoll, purchased used from the Book Bin
Review: In the near future, humans, even children, communicate almost exclusively through computers; real world meetings are rare and state surveillance is common. This should make murder nearly impossible, but the serial killings of Japanese youth catch the interest of a group of female students, their counselor, and a wayward policeman. This is a murder mystery with supernatural themes and an intelligently constructed futuristic setting; the intent is strong but the execution is poor. What Loups-Garous lacks is immersion, a willingness to throw the reader into the story despite the strange setting. The world is thoughtfully developed but over-explained; like Glukhovsky's Metro 2033, almost all dialog is appropriated for detailed worldbuilding, and the awkward translation makes this even more clumsy and unbelievable. The plot has a satisfying complexity, but it's padded by so much exposition that the book is frequently a slog; the climax has better pacing but a comically large scale. What Loups-Garous does well is intriguing and even haunting: its supernatural elements are largely metaphors but they're effective ones, finding the animal that lingers within mankind's hyper-industrialized, artificial world. But the book needs to trust the reader, cut out a hundred pages, and let the world—and its demons—speak for themselves. As it is, I appreciate the effort but don't recommend Loups-Garous.