[.ca] God Is a Bullet (ISBN 0345439880)

Why I didn't read _God Is a Bullet_:
I picked up _God Is a Bullet_, and I enjoyed the first paragraph, which is sparely and unusually constructed, if not above criticism. The second paragraph is bad, the fifth is an utter disaster, and I threw the book aside early in the eighth. Here's why. In paragraph two, we read: "They drive without sirens through Barstow, passing the ghost mining town of Calico, all clapboard and tin just north of the freeway." "Passing" should have been "and pass"; as it stands, the text implies that Calico is inside or right next to Barstow. But it isn't -- it's maybe eight or ten miles from town and a good two miles from the freeway. (And "ghost mining town" -- hmmm.) Sloppiness of language and error of fact is a bad omen this early in a book that seems (already) to pride itself on language and detail. Here's paragraph five, complete: "The wind grows worse, blowing its poisonous alkali chlorides and carbonates down from Inyo County and China Lake. Moving up through the Mojave Desert they pass the Calico Early Man Site, where scattered on the shores of ancient, dry Coyote Lake are the oldest known remains of our ancestors in North America. Here a solitary core of studied diggers found rudimentary tools of stone and arrows, fossilized fletchings, and puzzle parts of clay jugs. The crude trappings of commerce, the crude trappings of war." The first sentence is all right, I guess. But then, who are the "they" who move up through the desert and pass the Early Man Site? The most recent candidates for an antecedent are "chlorides and carbonates", but one suspects, without really knowing, that "they" refers to the sheriff's deputies. Putting aside a passing doubt as to whether the human remains at Calico are actually "scattered on the shores" of Coyote Lake (which would seem to imply careless stewardship by the managers of the Early Man Site), and another doubt as to whether Teran really meant "remains" (as opposed to, say, "artifacts"), one pauses puzzled on "our ancestors". (Is Teran, are his readers, descended from the Early Men who lived at Calico? Should he maybe have written "predecessors", or simply "the oldest known human remains in North America"?) And about this "solitary core of studied diggers" -- where to begin? Why did it take diggers to find things "scattered on the shores"? And a "core" of diggers -- what's that? (Did Teran mean "corps", maybe?) If there were several diggers, they're not really solitary, are they? (Or is it their core that's solitary? What's a solitary core?) And "studied"? Surely it's the Early Men who are studied, and the diggers perhaps "learned", or "studious". "Rudimentary tools of stone and arrows" needs some editing, or thought. And what could "fossilized fletchings" possibly be? Fletching is the act of feathering an arrow, not anything that could be fossilized. Alliteration should embellish sense, not replace it. In paragraph six, we find: "Their vehicles rock and heave over the sifting climb of slow dunes." While this sentence is kind of cool, the adjectives are spooky; and by this time I'm inclined to think Teran just likes the sounds of all these words, regardless of their meanings. Paragraph seven. The boy's "legs arch onto the seat in an almost fetal position." I'll bet Teran doesn't mean "arch" -- your legs aren't "arched" when you're in a fetal position, they're bent or flexed --, and surely it's the boy whose position is "almost fetal", not his legs'. The eighth paragraph begins: "The blowing sand is like cut glass against their skin." Like so much else on these pages, this sounds all right until you think about it for a moment. But in what way is blowing sand like cut glass? If this means anything, it has to mean that the blowing sand against their skin feels like cut glass; but that's absurd. (Find some cut glass -- a decanter or something. Brush it or press it against your skin. Does that feel *anything* like blown sand? No.) My guess is that the writer began with a thought something like "The blowing sand cut their skin", considered that glass cuts skin, inverted the words into "cut glass", and voila`, a meaningless but wordy metaphor. At this point, I was halfway down the second page of the book, it was looking like a really long evening, and I hadn't read any Chandler for weeks. So I chucked Teran like pre-stressed besoms of glittering concrete.

Why I didn't read _God Is a Bullet_:
I picked up _God Is a Bullet_, and I enjoyed the first paragraph, which is sparely and unusually constructed, if not above criticism. The second paragraph is bad, the fifth is an utter disaster, and I threw the book aside early in the eighth. Here's why. In paragraph two, we read: "They drive without sirens through Barstow, passing the ghost mining town of Calico, all clapboard and tin just north of the freeway." "Passing" should have been "and pass"; as it stands, the text implies that Calico is inside or right next to Barstow. But it isn't -- it's maybe eight or ten miles from town and a good two miles from the freeway. (And "ghost mining town" -- hmmm.) Sloppiness of language and error of fact is a bad omen this early in a book that seems (already) to pride itself on language and detail. Here's paragraph five, complete: "The wind grows worse, blowing its poisonous alkali chlorides and carbonates down from Inyo County and China Lake. Moving up through the Mojave Desert they pass the Calico Early Man Site, where scattered on the shores of ancient, dry Coyote Lake are the oldest known remains of our ancestors in North America. Here a solitary core of studied diggers found rudimentary tools of stone and arrows, fossilized fletchings, and puzzle parts of clay jugs. The crude trappings of commerce, the crude trappings of war." The first sentence is all right, I guess. But then, who are the "they" who move up through the desert and pass the Early Man Site? The most recent candidates for an antecedent are "chlorides and carbonates", but one suspects, without really knowing, that "they" refers to the sheriff's deputies. Putting aside a passing doubt as to whether the human remains at Calico are actually "scattered on the shores" of Coyote Lake (which would seem to imply careless stewardship by the managers of the Early Man Site), and another doubt as to whether Teran really meant "remains" (as opposed to, say, "artifacts"), one pauses puzzled on "our ancestors". (Is Teran, are his readers, descended from the Early Men who lived at Calico? Should he maybe have written "predecessors", or simply "the oldest known human remains in North America"?) And about this "solitary core of studied diggers" -- where to begin? Why did it take diggers to find things "scattered on the shores"? And a "core" of diggers -- what's that? (Did Teran mean "corps", maybe?) If there were several diggers, they're not really solitary, are they? (Or is it their core that's solitary? What's a solitary core?) And "studied"? Surely it's the Early Men who are studied, and the diggers perhaps "learned", or "studious". "Rudimentary tools of stone and arrows" needs some editing, or thought. And what could "fossilized fletchings" possibly be? Fletching is the act of feathering an arrow, not anything that could be fossilized. Alliteration should embellish sense, not replace it. In paragraph six, we find: "Their vehicles rock and heave over the sifting climb of slow dunes." While this sentence is kind of cool, the adjectives are spooky; and by this time I'm inclined to think Teran just likes the sounds of all these words, regardless of their meanings. Paragraph seven. The boy's "legs arch onto the seat in an almost fetal position." I'll bet Teran doesn't mean "arch" -- your legs aren't "arched" when you're in a fetal position, they're bent or flexed --, and surely it's the boy whose position is "almost fetal", not his legs'. The eighth paragraph begins: "The blowing sand is like cut glass against their skin." Like so much else on these pages, this sounds all right until you think about it for a moment. But in what way is blowing sand like cut glass? If this means anything, it has to mean that the blowing sand against their skin feels like cut glass; but that's absurd. (Find some cut glass -- a decanter or something. Brush it or press it against your skin. Does that feel *anything* like blown sand? No.) My guess is that the writer began with a thought something like "The blowing sand cut their skin", considered that glass cuts skin, inverted the words into "cut glass", and voila`, a meaningless but wordy metaphor. At this point, I was halfway down the second page of the book, it was looking like a really long evening, and I hadn't read any Chandler for weeks. So I chucked Teran like pre-stressed besoms of glittering concrete.

WOW! Noir meets horror!:
I cannot praise this book highly enough. It is written third-person present tense, like a screenplay and it ROCKS. I am a lover both both crime noir and horror fiction, and although there are no specificly supernatural elements here they are certainly hinted at (the left hand path, a fascination with death, the snake that eats its tail). Boston Teran is a genius. His writing makes your eye stumble at times because it borders on poetry but he is just amazing. I have read all three of his books now and they all are great but this is the best. As I said it is not marketed as horror, but certainly borders on it and has the same anger and drive as Harry Shannons "Night of the Beast" without being specific to the horror genre at all. don't miss this one.

NY Times reviewed some other book:
Most of the action happens somewhere outside the story and is described to a man by several different people. It feels remote and uninvolving. Why does each character sound like they are auditioning for a Stephen King reading? People in the real world don't speak like this. Why do the characters in the story talk so much, maybe because, since there is no action, there has to be talk to fill up page after page. The deeper I got into this book the less I liked the writing. The final straw was a sentence that went "They ran a couple sentences around each other. Nothing special." How lazy is that?

Highest Praise for Haunting, Gut-Wrenching Noir Masterpiece:
I fear one of the other reviewers sadly missed the point of this impossible-to-put-down thriller. While It is easy to quibble with tense and word choice-in almost any book-it is very difficult to miss the artistry and truly unique voice of this amazing book. It is dark and haunting, filled with passages that stay with you into the night, characters that are both monstrous and only too real... and a plot that screams (wholly and totally believable) California crazy. This book hits the darkness from the get-go and never lets up. It isn't for the squeamish nor, evidently, the scholarly... but for anyone looking for a truly well-written ride into the nasty depths of human darkness and depravity, this is it.