4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not a bad book, but not a great one either, August 18, 2005
This review is from: The Void (Mass Market Paperback)
The reviewer from Hong Kong writes that he saw no blurbs on the cover of _The Void_ by writers he recognized. I saw one: a very favorable quote from Thomas Ligotti, a writer I consider to be at the top of today's "horror" authors, above both Clive Barker and Stephen King in ability. So I expected a lot from this book and was somewhat disappointed in it as a result.
I would class Teri A. Jacobs as a writer to watch. She has plenty of lyrical talent, but in _The Void_ she strains far too hard for effect, and the resulting novel is a young writer's mistake: everything is intense, and as a result, nothing is memorable because nothing really sticks out from all that intensity. When all is climax, the ultimate result is boredom: this 300-odd page book felt much longer; 30 minutes after I put the book down, I couldn't remember the main characters' names; the plot seemed vague at best in my memory. Even the considerable screechy, scratchy, maggotty gore sequences ran into one another because there were simply so many of them.
Give Jacobs props for her intelligence, for the research into Aztec/Mayan beliefs she evidently did and the wild imagination she throws into her vignettes of violence. _The Void_ might have worked better as a novelette ... I'm not sure. In the end, I wish her editors had had a few more long coffee sessions with her and reined in some of the book's excess. I look forward to her next efforts.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A first novelist in need of some aid, December 3, 2002
This review is from: The Void (Mass Market Paperback)
Despite some of these reviewers implying that only morons or poor readers won't enjoy this book, the simple fact is that The Void is a very poor effort. While ostensibly imaginative, the plot here is hobbled by Ms. Jacobs prose, which is so overblown that it fails to do what it should: communicate a strong story with a powerful voice. Instead, we're attacked by purple prose. Ms. Jacobs needs to set her thesaurus aside (or more likely, to turn it off on her Word Program) and write in a more direct, clear and sophisticated manner.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Awful!, August 14, 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: The Void (Mass Market Paperback)
Totally unreadable. Jacobs overwrites to the hilt until her purple prose crams in your throat. Stopped me dead by the third chapter. How'd this person get published?
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