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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
True Plight of This Book is That Toothless Vampire Lacks Bite, November 5, 2007
Having perused the two glowing reviews that were available at the time I purchased this novel, my first thought when I actually began to read Plight was that I had the wrong book. Expecting a fast-paced, humorous and exciting tale, I found it instead to be poorly written, with underdeveloped characters and background. Stillwell also has a disturbing habit of leaving out sometimes critical details that crop up unexpectedly a few paragraphs or pages later. More than once I found myself flipping back through the pages wondering, "Did I miss something here???"
Plight of the Toothless Vampire tries to venture into a hitherto unexplored area in the vampire genre by giving us a geriatric protagonist named Chester Watkins who is apparently supposed to come across as both curmudgeonly, yet lovable. In this he fails, however, as the "lovable" vampire is often just plain mean-spirited (if you'll excuse the pun). This guy is just not likable. For example, in one very disturbing scene, our hero debases and, frankly, tortures a state trooper whose only real crime was a modestly arrogant retort to one of Chester's comments. Stillwell paints the cop as a cowering and mewling wimp - a caricature I'm sure anyone who knows someone in law enforcement would find offensive. In fact, Stillwell seems to have a pretty low opinion not only of police officers (there are multiple other references to the incompetence of law enforcement in general) but of a host of other folks as well. There are scads of politically incorrect and stereotypical references to various ethnic, religious and cultural groups. Stillwell seems to have adopted an "equal-opportunity" offender outlook - guaranteed to affront nearly every reader at some point or other.
The much-touted humor in the book is largely pre-pubescent, with an overabundance of flatulence jokes sprinkled liberally with doses of gross humor concerning various bodily fluids. The book's characters seemed to find their humor much more entertaining than did this reader. Chester is also promoted as being very wise and insightful, but most often comes across simply as immature and foolish. He's not the only character Stillwell misinterprets. Two doctors who aid Chester and the "good" vampire movement are described at various times as "distinguished", "refined" and "sophisticated", yet engage in the same type of base and sophomoric speech and mannerisms as the rest of Stillwell's cast. These same doctors are also painted as being moral and upright, yet blithely use their titles and position to steal vast quantities of blood from a local bloodbank in order to feed their vampire guests -anyone familiar with the plight (sorry, but it fits) of blood donation centers to keep an adequate supply of blood on hand will find their cavalier attitude appalling.
Like many new authors, Stillwell relies far too heavily on the use of adjectives and adverbs to try to add substance to his writing. Someone somewhere must have warned him about overuse of proper and personal pronouns, so he goes way overboard in injecting other cutesy, descriptive terms of two or more words when referencing his characters. I tried counting them for awhile but gave up when I hit 300 of them before I'd even made it to page 100. (A favorite example: "the purple-faced, oxygen-deprived man.") As you might imagine, this became a bit wearying to the reader.
Not that Stillwell doesn't have some talent as a writer and storyteller. Despite the glaring flaws, there are glimmers of real writing ability. Like a diamond in the rough, however, he is decidedly uncut and unpolished. He would definitely benefit from some additional tutelage in non-fiction writing (to say nothing of some proper editing - the novel is riddled with punctuation, grammatical and contextual errors). Taking the time to do a bit more research in some areas wouldn't hurt either. It's not surprising Stillwell chose a small, obscure publishing company for this venture (I tried to Google Batfire Press and the only references that came up were to Stillwell's book - leading me to believe this is probably a self-publishing effort). No reputable publisher would have touched this one with a ten-foot pole.
In conclusion, I would suggest you save your money and time on this one and seek out a book with a little more bite.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
One word.."Editing"!, November 5, 2008
This book had great potential. Editing would have gone a long way. It is a good read if you can over look the errors and poor writting style.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Never stopped laughing, May 4, 2009
Great book! You can tell that the author has a terrific sense of humor. I thought is was a great read and looking forward to many more from Steve.
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