Customer Reviews

The Fallen

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Fine and fairly original is the basic assumption, that of the interaction between a powerful Judeo-Christian age-old devil and a modern-day group of gay young males in dissolute Los Angeles. It is fine and rich in potentially interesting developments as far as plot and character interaction are concerned.

Apart from this, Mr Dagon (is this surname fictional? after all Dagon was the name of a powerful philistine deity of fertility) seems to be rambling rather aimlessly among rather heterogeneous pursuits.
Is he attempting a portrait of contemporary life in LA with a special focus on the city's immoral ethics? Or is it the depiction of the LA juvenile gay world and underworld? A detour in the supernatural? A new agean essay on religions? Or perhaps a medical short essay on the effects of recreational drugs?

I am being willingly strict here, of course, but this author seems in serious need of disciplinating his literary efforts and of a good editor.
Page after page is dedicated to the description of several drugs and their effects on the human psyche. What is the goal of so many pages? They are useless to convey the sense of young people idling their life away escaping a harsh reality and a quite necessary search for their real self; these same pages are not judgemental but at the same time they do not make allowances.
What is the author's opinion of his characters? He seems constantly uncertain whether to depict them objectively, leaving the reader to judge for him/herself or whether to express his own.

This is possibly true for every topic in this book. Mr Dagon seems unable to pursue a narrative or aesthetic goal consistently. As a result the pace of the action falters and characterization, supposedly the driving force of the narrative, is unconvincing.
Last but not least the supernatural element is far from fully exploited which is a waste.
So much more a pity because the writing is not bad at all.

This is a review for both Fallen and Demon's tears

I can see how this author can deserve the criticism of being extremely wordy and needing tighter edit in some places for both books. But no, I am not taking the stars off for this. I am not writing a review as a professional literary critique, I am writing a review as a reader, and ESL reader at that, so while I can notice some glaring linguistic problems, my main issue is whether the book satisfied me. And this one and its sequel "Demon's tears" delivered such satisfaction and more. I love the books that play with fallen angels' mythology and do some creative spin on it, I especially love the books which dare to be sympathetic to fallen angels, it is appealing to me. I love how human boys (Nick and his friends are portrayed), how compassionate this author seems to be to basically all of his characters. It is a wonderful thriller that as other reviewer noticed just happen to have gay characters as main players, it is a love story too, story of understanding each other, your good and bad sides, story of wanting to grow, to redeem oneself, I loved it.

drug education mixed with religion. what's not to like? the end seems to fall apart by trying too hard, but all in all two fun reads