Final Girls by Mira GrantMy rating: 1 of 5 stars
So... I may have accidentally ordered the wrong book on Netgalley. Two books, same name, easy to get confused, I guess.
This book was a disaster. It was terrible. The only good thing about it is that it was relatively short (too short, frankly, to be considered a novel), but the rest of it was an eye-sore. The worst, poorest writing I have come across. No sense of pacing, non-existent charaterisation; full of expository dialogue. This kind of book is the reason why sci-fi and other genre books get such a bad name. Everything wrong in the world of writing is in here - heck, it even has giant chunks of text within parentheses! *head-desk*
The main protagonists are all women - there's a total of three of them and they're pretty cliched in themselves. The perfect, skinny protagonist Esther, with a haunted past and awkward social standing; the bossy, stocky Dr. Webb with a vivacious personality and genius intellect; and the shadowy assassin, Marline, who undertakes an attack on the facility Webb has built, and does serious damage to both Esther and Webb. I think Marline is supposed to be hot. I honestly don't remember.
This was an incredible waste of time. I'm not sure what the publisher was thinking when they give this train-wreck the green light. It's substandard even by a child's standard.
There's only telling, no showing. It would make any sane person want to gouge their eyes out. The pacing so atrocious - the book opens with a chase scene so bland it does nothing to coax you into reading the rest.
The author is also far removed from reality. At one point, the super successful, genius scientist at the centre of things surmises that the people working for her are all 'true believers' (because isn't that the only way to do a job?) but either only in it for the fame and glory that is impending - one that only she will bask in - or they simply don't care. I take it the author has never had to get herself a regular job, working for people too up their own selves to care about the minions trampled beneath, because if she had, she wouldn't have painted the good doctor's staff as black and white as she does.
I feel like the author gave up on internal logic and facts to get to the final twist. The twist is interesting but doesn't flow with all that went before. The bad guy, Marline, was greatly hyped and became an integral character in the scenario, but in the end her arc and storyline were not developed or concluded. I couldn't quite figure out how Esther became the main target of the 'attack' by Marline and her invisible bosses, because all signs and logic pointed to mad scientist Webb - it's just that Esther ends up suffering long term consequences from the attack. Webb and Esther were both trapped in their minds, so how did Esther break free? How did she even know to break free? She didn't know that Webb was in danger in reality, so where did the impetus to get out and save her come from? And who cares!
Given the brevity of this book, I wonder if this is supposed to be part of series, in which case as a first book it simply doesn't flesh the world out enough for the reader to want to come back.
The especially terrible writing and too many expository asides made for bland and halting scenes. I love that all the characters are women, but it doesn't help the fact that the text itself was too poor to enjoy. Don't bother with this book - it's not worth a read. Harsh, but true.
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