I've been banging away at a few comics - finally finishing Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan, getting caught up with Joe Hill's tremendous Locke & Key, making some progress with Bill Willingham's Fables and making a start on Brian K. Vaughan's Y The Last Man - so there's the reason. It's not an excuse though, when I charged through the last couple of hundred pages of Insomnia lamenting not having kept up any sort of momentum.
For momentum would have made the book a lot better. I had a few moments of thinking "christ, this is dragging" and, while it didn't approach The Tommyknockers' level, it did a fair bit of limping.
More than anything, it just didn't grab me. I liked the characters of Ralph and Lois just fine, but the book just didn't thrill me. I'll admit the closing pages hit me, but you'd have to be hollowed out not to feel a bit of something at the closing events.
Check me out, writing spoiler free reactions.
Having read the bulk of the book in November, I'm struggling to say much more worth saying. I think I've promised myself I'll hammer the next book each time I've finished the last so I won't kid either of us this time.
Edit:
I've just read Laura's review on her blog, Devouring Texts, as I generally do once I've finished a King book and, while the points she made didn't make me buzz off the book, I will admit to being a sucker for references, links, nods and winks to others of his works. The Dark Tower isn't as dear to me (yet?) but the Derry refs did have me in nerd-glee.
I found that Insomnia definitely dragged a bit, BUT it was wayyy more interesting then it would have been if I hadn't read The Dark Tower series. So maybe when you've finished that you'll want to come back and re-read this because it's veeeery interesting from that perspective.
ReplyDeleteI SOBBED at the ending. Because that's what I do. But OMG seriously Ralph!