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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointingly Dull, October 12, 2002
By A Customer
Let me first say that I was really looking forward to this book's release, as I am a huge fan of the "Smallville" television series, and wanted more than my once-a-week "Smallville" fix. I was hoping that Roger Stern's "Strange Visitors" would be a thrilling, page-turner that I would find hard to put down. Unfortunately, my experience reading the book left me feeling just the opposite. I would rather not get into the plot of the book too much, as you can read the blurb for yourself from Amazon.com's book synopsis. Unfortunately, the plot isn't a very interesting one anyway. I can sum it up this way: a spiritual guru and his partner try to sell kryptonite encased meteor rocks to brain-washed followers of his cult-like organization to improve their health, while sponsoring snake-oil salesmen type revivals, attracting Smallville citizens to become followers and contribute to the pair's evangelistic-type money making scheme. WHEW! Of course, there is a little bit more to it than that,though unfortunately, not much. The book really seems to drag boringly by until about the last forty (out of 281) pages. Also, author Roger Stern seems to write into the book a lot of very uninteresting scenes that seem totally unimportant to the plot, and in some cases, out of the complete "Smallville" context. It's almost as if Stern had to fill some kind of word quota, for which he just created several dull filler scenes, for which this reader could only wonder why. Stern does a fair job with characterization, most notably with the characters Chloe of Lex Luthor. Readers may want to take note that the novel is written to take place between two of season one's episodes, so last season's characters feature most prominently. Stern delves somewhat into the whole Clark/Lana relationship, though not as much as I would have liked. For the most part, all of the characters personalities seem to be pretty much in line with their television personas. Above all, I really found the book quite dull. It just didn't flow well for me. The few attempts at humor really didn't strike me as funny. The dialogue seemed somewhat forced at times. Also, though I understand that it can be difficult to convey action in a books written form as opposed to visual scenes on the television show, the book was somewhat lax as far as action scenes go. Stern does seem to have the setting of Smallville down pretty well, which I liked. He really did his homework on the science behind the books plot too. Lots of good technobabble!Stern does a good job synopsizing the plot-points of last season's television episodes that work their way into the book's plot. Unfortunately, that also can become quite annoying at times when the reader, who may be quite familiar with the world of "Smallville", has to read through the recaps of how Clark arrived on Earth to live with the Kents, his life, his friends, his insecurities, etc. The recaps,though, can be a very valuable tool for readers who may not have seen the tv series first. All that said, I obviously will not recommend this book. I found it really didn't have much pop and sizzle. As I read it, I just kept hoping it would get better, and when it finally did get a little more interesting, it was too little, too late. I was really hoping for a great book, but this was just not it. The story could have been told with many less pages. I was bored with it, but just pressed on until the end. There were no great plot twists, cliffhangers. Clark didn't even have a true nemesis until the very end, and even that came off as trite. Nothing made me stop and say "wow". Hopefully, Stern has a better, more interesting "Smallville" book in him. If not,I have plenty of them in me.
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