Ian's Book Review - The Eight

In a word... trainwreck.

This was a pseudo-recommendation by Mom, who's usually spot-on. However, I can't say it was a full-on recommendation as she kind of hemmed-and-hawed when I pressed for details. It's a fairly intriguing concept, but the writing is simply horrible. Some of my issues with the book...

• I have no idea what 'The Eight' refers to. There were hints about this to start the book and references to figure eights throughout, but no fulfillment - and not in a cliff-hanger, come back for more type of way. It's like she just decided to ignore it or forgot what she had titled it.
• Over half the book is written from the first-person perspective of one of the main characters. As my sophomore year history teacher constantly reminded us on term papers, writing in first-person is an automatic 'F'.
• Freemasons! The f$%king nuevo-cliche of suspense novels. However, in The Eight, they are introduced ominously and with grandiose and then simply never mentioned again... which seems to be a recurring theme throughout.
• She ends over a dozen chapters with hack phrases like, "Little did I know things were about to get much worse" or "But I was about to find out just how dangerous this game really was" or "However, things were about to get much clearer". Worse still, she then fails to follow through on these teasers. I must've reread three chapters trying to figure out what the hell she was referring to.
• Constantly referring to 'The Game' - and actually capitalizing 'The Game' as if it's a proper noun. I blame Survivor and other lame-ass "reality" shows for this trend. "It's all part of The Game." "I'm just playing The Game." Shut the f$%k up already...
  
• The ending. Oh, god. The ending of this book makes a Michael Crichton ending look brilliant in comparison. It's lame, it doesn't makes sense given the context of the rest of the book, it's stupid, and worst of all, it's lazy. Imagine watching the movie 'Hoosiers', and rather than showing the final game against South Bend Central they just jump from the state semi-finals to the scene where they show the state champs picture back in Hickory's gymnasium - except in the picture Jimmy Chitwood is mooning the camera. That's the ending for The Eight...
  

I felt like Dad reading this book - I was continually annoyed and frustrated with Neville's inability to develop the story and characters and her horrible writing, but I still read the whole damn thing anyway. Damn you, Katherine Neville...