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164 of 174 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Mitochlorians, October 31, 2007
Lindsay has managed to do to Dexter what George Lucas did to "The Force" in Phantom Menace: he attempted to "explain" him, and did so using the stupidest, most ridiculous idea possible. Just like the idea of The Force was ruined by "mitochlorians", the Dexter mythos has been utterly wrecked by this book.
Based on everything we've seen in the past two books, Dexter's issues were purely psychological: severe childhood trauma manifested into a disconnect of emotions and an urge to hurt and kill things. That is plausible.
But introducing a supernatural element into this is plain ridiculous. As I read I hoped that Lindsay was simply making Dexter's imagination run a bit wild, but it turns out he wasn't. Turns out our Dearly Disconnected Dexter's Dark Passenger is really the byproduct of some ancient god's magical trickery.
On top of that, the book version of Rita continues to be a screechy, cartoonish character. The TV version of her character along with the children's on-screen portrayals are far, far better than what was written in the books. Thank goodness at least the TV show continues to get better as it goes along.
Avoid this book. It ruins everything you like about Dexter.
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84 of 92 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing Departure for Dexter, October 14, 2007
Dexter in the Dark, the third book in Jeff Lindsay's series about a serial killer with -- if not a conscience, at least a code -- is quite a departure, and not in a good way. There's a lot of supernatural stuff going on in this one, which was largely absent from the first two novels. I agree with the other reviewer who said Dexter's at his best when he's pitted against a normal world -- Dexter himself is weird enough. We don't need ancient gods piled on.
The business with Dexter's stepchildren following in his footsteps is just ugly, and not especially believable. The vast, vast majority of children who survive childhood trauma do not grow up to become sociopaths; what are the odds that Dexter would find himself stepfather to two who do?
The cardinal sin of this novel, though, is that it was kind of boring. I had to force myself to get through it, and that's not something that's ever happened with a Dexter novel before.
Here's hoping Lindsay drops the supernatural mumbo-jumbo and gets back to basics for his next Dexter book.
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61 of 66 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Dearly Dissapointing Dexter, October 1, 2007
Jeff Lindsey was definitely on to something when he invented the serial-killer-gone-vigilante in Darkly Dreaming Dexter, an entertaining if not quite polished twist on both the crime-murder mystery and the serial killer tale. But, he hit his stride with the excellent Dearly Devoted Dexter, a pitch-perfect novel of sarcasm and wit with plenty of blood and character development. It's unfortunate then, that he trips over Dexter in the Dark.
As we re-acquaint ourselves with the witty blood-letter, we find him beaten and bemused. Dexter has lost it, all he's got is homicidal step-kids, a $500 a head wedding caterer, a short-fused sister and a dearly dumb-witted fiancé, but no dark passenger.
Dexter spends the entire book castrated, unable to kill or even understand the homicidal impulse. Worse, he sets about training Astor and Cody to be just like him, a disturbing and overly coincidental plot element. In fact, it seems as if Lindsey wrote the entire novel to explain why damaged kids become lurid psychopaths. It doesn't work.
The plot here is as thin as the paper it's written on. The father of all Dark Passengers wants Dexter, the anomaly of serial killers gone. The feint whiff of the supernatural that we got in the first Dexter book is back in force this time and it's a mood killer. Dexter works best when it's him against a normal world, when the world becomes as twisted as him, it all gets foggy, like a bad LSD hit.
Lindsey also stumbles on his use of, count them, four narrations. We have first persons "It" being the thing that makes people kill, these parts are boring, over written and pointless. Then we have Dexter, thankfully for most of the book. There's also a third person narrating "the watcher" at the end of most, but not all chapters, and finally there is one, count it, one part of one chapter with a flat out third person "Lindsey" narration that is completely off tone with everything else. The book would be an amateur read if it wasn't that Lindsey had already established that he can write.
There little to offer here. Dexter mopes around, fails to figure out the crime, gets captured, barely manages to save the children and ends up married, that's all you get in 300 pages. It's decidedly distracting Dexter. The book is, if nothing else, the funniest of the three novels. Dexter may not kill, but his wit is sharper than ever and his observations keen and biting. The third Dexter book pales behind the second season of the Showtime series they spawned, Dexter on the Television is, for now, better than Dexter in print.
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