Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
buy it for the cover pic & tack it on your wall, August 20, 2007
i am one die-hard supernatural fan. and i'm an adult. and... oh, yeah, a writer. which means, i know writers have to make a living, and i hate giving bad reviews. BUT.
honestly. did this guy EVER watch more than maybe 4 or 5 episodes of this show?
it probably goes without saying i shouldn't have expected much from this work, since it is based on a tv series. still, i bought it to be loyal and help show the CW that there are fans out there who feel it is a small sacrifice in order to help keep it on the air. i love the idea of a series of fiction works based on this show, mainly because the characters and premise are so interesting and lend themselves to myriad situations. there are certainly enough plot ideas out there to make a very, very long fiction series, and many seasons of quality television entertainment.
still. i won't give away spoilers for the book, but i certainly pray --like dean prays for layla --that the good folks at harper collins will find another writer to write any further episodes published in this series. some of the most unforgiveable faults: the guy seems to confuse the word "agoraphobia" with "acrophobia," he can't remember from one chapter to the next if it's sam's arm or hand that's broken (in the show it's actually his wrist) --and later has him performing physical feats as if the cast has simply evaporated, and makes so many character errors on things that even relative newbie fans like me have committed to memory that it's quite obvious he just doesn't know his material. and Poe!!! Poe is spinning in his grave. literary content is faulty, continuity is just nil. and no, i don't agree that sam and dean live between the covers of this book. in actuality, they breezed by in the impala, the author got a glimpse of them from the highway, and attempted to write what he thought he saw. it's as if he almost got their physical descriptions right, but the only reason i could picture sam and dean is because i KNOW them, like any fan knows them. if i didn't, i would never have recognized them from the author's characterization. they're like hollow, ghostly shadows of their true selves here. no true brotherly angst or banter. in other words, don't look for kripke's genius on these pages.
the assault on reason given between the covers of this book is flat-out insulting. supernatural is a witty, imaginative, full-on ride into entertainment bliss for anyone between the ages of 13 and 196. i held on and made myself finish this book just so i could say i gave it a fair chance. the ending... what ending? i'll keep my mouth shut and let others find out for themselves just what passes for publishable fiction in this particular venue.
as for the rest, i echo all the criticism given above, and heartily suggest that the next time h/c awards a contract for a book based on a tv series, that they have someone actually familiar with the show read the blessed thing before it's published.
fandom has dozens of amateurs who can --and do --write rings around this guy.
but as i said, if you're a fan, buy it anyway to show support for the show, which deserves everything we can do to keep it on the air.
if you're not, don't bother, 'cause you won't learn anything relevant about the show by reading it and it could make you wonder just what all the supernatural fuss is about. just watch the show on thursday nights at 9 pm on the CW.
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50 of 62 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not recommended, August 4, 2007
I honestly cannot recommend this book to anyone, unless you're a reader who's happy with anything that involves the characters Sam and Dean Winchester.
While I did think the Winchesters were well drawn and in character (for the most part), the other characters came across to me as remarkably two-dimensional and in some cases one-dimensional. Space that could have been used to flesh out the characters and make them richer and more human was wasted. (See below for more on that point.) The two major original characters (Manfred and Det. McBain), who are apparently supposed to be amusingly quirky, I found to be cliche'd and annoying - and McBain appears out of nowhere to take a major role in the second half of the book. The villain of the piece is described so poorly that he's neither "terrifying" nor "chilling" (adjectives taken from the blurb on the back of the book). In fact, the book isn't scary at all; very little attention is paid to pacing or description that would amp up the chills.
The author sets up two cases for the Winchesters to investigate and solve, and then for the most part ignores both until the last few chapters. He spends far too much time discussing things that aren't important to the storyline: Dean's passion for their host's music collection, his rabid dislike of the host's band's music, the host's unusual collection of coffee mugs and the quality of his coffee, Dean's attempts to pick up an attractive bartender and the attempts of a younger woman to pick up Dean. A short book like this needs to zero in on plot and *stay* zeroed in on it; there's just no room for wandering off the path.
Worse than that, the Winchesters don't actually SOLVE either of the cases. As a reader, both situations came across to me as the author shoving things into place rather than the Winchesters being the driving force. Sam and Dean are simply *there* when the solution happens.
No, this story isn't an angst-fest like a lot of the fanfiction that's out there - it's the other side of the coin. It takes place shortly after "Crossroad Blues," a heartbreaking series of events for the Winchesters that the author casually dismisses with the line, "Dean and Manfred were standing by the record player discussing the relative merits of Robert Johnson's recordings (leading Sam to wonder if Dean intended to mention that he'd recently met the very demon to whom Johnson had sold his soul)..." Ouch.
Again, if you're happy with anything bearing the name "Supernatural," you'll probably feel that your money was well spent. But whether it's a TV tie-in novel or something completely mainstream, I look for good, solid storytelling with rich, interesting, compelling characters, and this book fails to hit that mark.
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19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Superficial, not Supernatural, September 6, 2007
Supposedly a "Supernatural" tie in novel, "Nevermore" reads instead like Mr. DeCandido saw a chance to write a paean the Bronx and package it as a tie in novel. Sam and Dean were incidentals as he sang the praises of his native city and inserted his own original characters--who, although more well-drawn in the book than the supposed stars of the show, were still lackluster and stereotypical. As for the plot, I didn't understand why Sam and Dean were necessary at all; they seemed to be peripheral to the story at almost all points. Through them we learned how wonderful their host's house, his coffee, and rock album collection were; we learned how difficult it is to park a large car such as the Impala in Brooklyn, and oh, yeah, Poe's house is there. About all the boys proved useful for was a Seance at the end of the book, which any decent medium could have pulled off--and spared us, the show's fans, this endless psalm of the glories of the Bronx masquerading as a novel about the show we enjoy.
The plot itself, rather than the spine-tingling and chilling story the cover of the book promised, was rather lackluster and boring. The Edgar Allen Poe references seemed more there to as an educational device regarding the glories of the locale. (Again, how cool is the Bronx, that Mr. Poe died there!) For the A plot, not only was the "bad guy" obvious from the moment he was introduced to the plot, he was so poorly drawn it seemed as if the author realized we had reached chapter 15 and, "Oh, yes, I need a bad guy." Superficially, he made sense, just like most of the rest of the book. Looks good perhaps on the surface, but with nothing there supporting the character's motivations or purpose. Same with the B plot; the twist that came with the reveal made no sense at all. And if Sam and Dean were this useless and clueless in their investigations during the show, we wouldn't have a show to begin with.
When it came to Sam and Dean themselves, I found the infamous eye-color debacle to be representative of the way their characters were portrayed in general. Mr. DeCandido said he "quickly" checked an online picture and came away with the conclusion that Jensen Ackles (aka Dean) had blue eyes. Maybe he looked at a black and white picture? Or a picture so small Mr. Ackles' eyes weren't even visible? However, once I read through the book, I understood. For all his claims of working with three or four rabid fans of the show and the ease with which he "got into [their] heads," Mr. DeCandido displayed an incredibly superficial knowledge of what are arguably two of the most complex and well-drawn characters I've ever seen on television. Even that superficial knowledge was flawed, giving us Dean as a drunken idiot (why would anyone work with him?) and Sam as a major prig (I wanted to slap him several times throughout the book.) Not to mention a major misstep in the characterization of the Winchester patriarch, John. I am not a fan of horror in any genre, yet I come back to Supernatural the show again and again because of these characters. As they are portrayed in this book, both characters are unappealing, if not repellent. Neither reaction leaves me thinking they're worthy of more investments from me in either time or money.
If the show's owners and producers were counting on luring more people in to the show through the tie-in novels, and "Nevermore" is typical of what they are satisfied with offering, they are going to be sorely disappointed with their results. I bought the book to support the show, but if the level of storytelling and characterization does not improve vastly in their future offerings, I won't waste any more of my money. I can find much better for free online.
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