Sunday, May 22, 2005

The Nine Planets by Edward Riche

I did not enjoy this book. The main protagonist (who is also the first-person narrator) is a singularly unpleasant person, so I simply did not enjoy spending time in his head. The secondary protagonist is more interesting, but nothing is done with her character. She literally just wanders around. At the end of the book it seemed like the main protagonist was going to get some comeuppance and I was eagerly reading ahead so I could watch it happen, it was all being nicely lined up and I was ready for a glorious burst of schadenfreude, and then the book just petered out in a trickle of sentimental pap.

There must be readers out there who enjoy books with unpleasant, unsympathetic protagonists because I keep stumbling upon these kinds of books, and they're often critically acclaimed. However, I do not enjoy spending time inside the heads of asshole characters unless I get a good, solid, Nelson-style "HA HA!" out of the book (which happens all too rarely), so these books don't work for me. I only wish critics would make it obvious that they are giving certain books good reviews because of the unpleasant, unsympathetic characters, so I would know to avoid those books.

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