It's Coming Down: Part 9 - Final Thoughts

How can one sum a work of such unique characteristics as Night Falls Darkly?

I suppose the best metaphor is it's a bit like screaming. Screaming for hours and hours on end like a deranged crazy person. It's insane and it's horrible but you do have to occasionally pause for breathe before you can start screaming again.

Thats what it's like. It's a cavalcade of duff characterisation, non existent plotting, awful storytelling and turgid faux gothic verbal masturbation, briefly interspersed with odd hints that something interesting could be salvaged if only you gave the concept to a half decent author and let him rewrite it from the ground up. We're told about all kinds of stuff that we never get to see actually happen. The main villain of the piece has a cameo at best and is instantlly dispatched with frightening ease. There is absolutely no sense of consequence to pretty much ANYTHING that happens. Side plots are briefly mentioned and then abandoned without so much as a second thought, as if they'd simply been forgotten about by author and character alike. The most notable and egregarious example of this comes in the shape of the Cuntess Von Bitchy's side quest. I.E. the reason she is even there. You may be supprised to learn she even HAD an appointed task. I'm not actually sure if I ever mentioned it. This is because it has absolutely no bearing on the plot whatsoever. She's meant to be tracking down some OTHER killer. Or checking Wikipedia she gets to investigate the murders which are not confirmed as Ripper kills. These COULD have been used in the main plot in any number of ways, if only to pad Jacks body count a little. Instead they just get ignored. It's frankly baffling. They've obviously done SOME research. So do they take the various events and mysteries and use them to weave a coherent, convergent narrative?

Do they fuck. She'd rather spend hours writing about Sancho and Binto regarding each other with the sort of naked appetite normally reserved for starving men and bacon sandwiches.

This of course brings us onto the next central point of critisism. The "Relationship" of Sancho and Binto. She is a bunny boiling head case. He spends 90% of his time treating her like a complete dick, and the other 10% covertly feeling her up. I don't claim to be any sort of expert in realms of Eros, but surely it takes a bit more than this to build an attraction, let alone a relationship or heartfelt confession of undying love? There is absolutely no reason for these two to wind up in bed together aside from the fact the plothammer decrees it is so, and thus believeability is bludgeoned into submission and we are asked to just accept the RAW GOTHIC DESTINY. The fact that after spending the whole damn book eyeing each other up the climactic tryst is over in a matter of moments is simply hilarity flavoured icing on a shit flavored cake. It's the Twilight principle to Nth degree. Get trapped in an abuse relationship with a creepy old guy, becuase apparently thats romance. Seriously,  who the fuck gets off on this shit? Certainly not me, and I AM a creepy old man. Sure it might be nice to have young ladies flinging themselves at you, but there are limits.

Now, I admit that I came into this project with open and unabashed intention of mocking the whole thing. With a title of such retarded tautaulogical redundancy how could I not. Night Falls Darkly. Dark Falls Nightly. No duh. However I did have a quiet fear at the back of mind. What if it was actually good? What if it failed to live up to the expected cliches, and I found myself actually enjoying the experience?

That these fears proved to be unfounded is somewhat of an understatement. Far from the experience proving to be entertaining enough that I had little or nothing to actually mock I do believe I have spent longer typing out these posts than I have actually reading the damn thing. Certainly The experience has taught me new ways of looking at such things. Indeed, it's only when I've gone to attempt to recount the twisted mess of so called plot that I've truly come to appreciate just how retarded some of it is. When you're reading your mind just sort of skips over it. This, to be fair, is probably for the best. After all this book is probably the nearest thing to brain damage I've ever experienced without letting a tram run slowly over my head.

Then of course there's the problems with the ending. I.E. there isn't one. The plot remains unresolved, the narrative is unconcluded and we are supposed to then eagerly await the sequel. Because of course there's a sequel. And according to amazon theres a THIRD book coming out this year. It is a problem in genre literature, this insistence on long drawn out series of books. It's expected, even required that any fantasy story must run for as long as humanly posible. There are of course rare examples where this approach works. But for every work that desreves to be a series there are ten that don't. A series should comprise of a number of self contained narrative blocks. they can build on what has come before of course. And they should work to some overarching conclusion. But each unit within the series needs to tell it's own story. For whatever needs to be carried forward to the next chapter there should still be closureon what has occured in this segment.

Needless to say, this is not how this book ends at all. it simply breaks midstream, without ever satisfactorily bothering to even explain the events detailed, let alone conclude them. I appreciate that a bit of mystery is good for the story, but this really takes things to far. It's as if the author doesn't even have any clear definition of what these shadow guard people actually are. we have no clear picture of their capabilities, weaknesses or even APPEARANCE.

If you want to write a series then for the love of god FINISH THE FIRST BOOK FIRST.

So then, in summation. Has this been an interesting experience? Yes, I think so. Is this possibly the worst book ever I've ever read? Again, the answer is yes. The worst part of course is that this has only served to confirm all my preconceptions and prejudices about this so called genre. It's terrible the way it lived up to every cliche you could possibly anticipate from such a book.

Actually, no. I take that back. The worst hing is I'm now getting spam from amazon trying to get me to buy more of this shit. It thinks I LIKE it now.

It would be less embarrasing to be getting babyfur porn to my inbox.

Well, barely.