Clouds's Reviews > Hideous Creatures

So my wife got called into hospital to be induced on Friday afternoon. I grabbed the book I was halfway through to take with me, Vernor Vinge's Deepness In The Sky. I quickly finished that, and it was good. Then I picked-up one of my wife's books that she had bought, Mercedes Lackey's Aerie - the fourth in a kids series about dragon riders; that lasted a few hours and it was OK - better than I'd expected, to be fair. Without any more books to hand, I went down to the hospital shops and bought Django Wexler's The Thousand Names and S. E. Lister's Hideous Creatures to keep me going. Much patience is required when a baby has stage fright.

Quick aside: If anyone can find out what the S. E. initials stand for, please let me know because I haven't found out yet and it bugs me.

Of the two new books, I plumped for Hideous Creatures first because the blurb namechecked Gaimen and I thought the cover was lush. The pencil sketch style looks great - if I ever write a book, that's the kind of cover I'd want.

Well, the Gaimen namecheck is misleading. I can see what they're trying for - in terms of content/concept there's some similarities with American Gods - but in terms of style and delivery, Gaiman wouldn't be first to mind. The fine is heavily foreboding, strongly gothic 'fear of the unknown' flavour. It reminded me most of Jamrach's Menagerie. More a Booker nominee than Hugo - that kind of literary ballpark.

It's a story about secrets, revelations, dark journeys and haunting memories. The pacing is spot-on, which is refreshing as stories of this kind often bloat. The non-linear telling is never overdone or confusing. From an analytic standpoint the plotting is superbly balanced and arranged, and the final send-off got the hairs on the back if my neck standing on end beautifully.

But I didn't love it.

There are three main characters to carry the plot - Arthur, is the youngest son of a proud English line, sailing to America to run away from dark secret number one. Shelo is a native American, covered in tattoos, surrounded my dark magics and on a mission to avenge dark secret number two. And Flora is the daughter of a famed outlaw, looking to escape from dark secret number 3.

For me, Shelo and Flora work perfectly - they each carry a powerful sense of foreboding and hope, respectively. The issue for me lay with Arthur - his is a tale of redemption, but it's also the core story that binds the other two. I just didn't like Arthur. Nor did I dislike him. He's weak-willed, fatalistic, takes no responsibility for himself, anyone or anything, has nothing (in his present) that he loves, so nothing feels at stake... I just never invested enough in Arthur's plight to feel swept up in the story.

As a specific complaint, much is made of Arthur's 'odd' body, but never with enough clarity to make it seem worth all the fuss.

There's no denying the skill, artistry and vivid imagination at work here - but without that core character arc to really carry me, I felt more like a critic in a gallery than the rapt audience of a master-storyteller.

After this I read: Mr. Happy