Yes, I know you are thinking "Why are you reviewing an old book from 2004 when there are so many new ones to review?!?!" and my answer to you is "Pfft. It's called Random Boom Reviews for a reason" and also "I was reading it before I started the blog and I'm lazy".
So, THE RECKONING. Is it good? Yep. Is it weird? Yep. Is it worth reading? Yep!
Basic plot premise is a crew looking for missing U.S. soldier remains in Cambodia get a tip about a missing crew, and head off into the vast wilderness to go about finding said remains.
There's a lot more to it than that, but like I said, it's a basic plot premise.
I haven't liked all of Jeff Long's work, but I did like this one. It's interesting, the plot is officially something I have not seen done before, and the story is handled in a very unique way. There aren't any political leanings in the book, it doesn't feel like the author is trying to beat you over the head with his own ideology at all. There are pro and anti war characters, yes. There are discussions of things like the Kent State massacre, but it makes sense in the book given the way the characters were written, and at no time did I sense a soapbox for the author to stand on.
It's a horror/thriller with supernatural elements to it, and basically it's pretty creepy in places.
Minor spoilers about some of the book.
Gonna get on my own personal soapbox for a minute. I hate rape in books. It's virtually (99.9999999999999% of the time) ALWAYS pointless, and is an incredibly lazy way to either add "adversity", have the woman "overcome the odds" or "have a reason to enact vengeance because this time it's PERSONAL."
A truly lazy writer will make a rape the hallmark of the character, or it will be something she "overcomes" and goes forth to smite evil in the name of... well, not getting raped again I suppose. Either that or she will just exist to get raped/killed and that's it. That is creepy and you guys need to stop that. You can have a strong female character in books and not have rape involved at all. It's lazy writing and you should feel bad. If I had a rolled up newspaper I'd swat you and say "NO!" if I could.
The main character is a rape survivor, and I honestly can't decide if that is a good thing or a bad thing, because while it adds pretty much nothing to the story overall it doesn't feel like she was included to be rape bait like we see a lot of characters in horror books.
Anyway, that's not the point behind this character. It adds a backstory to her but I can't decide if it explains her actions in the book better than just being a normal lady who hadn't been abused as a kid. Hence me wondering if it's a good or bad thing.
Please note, she doesn't get raped IN the book , it's part of her backstory since the book is told from her perspective and she mentions it a time or two. Well, there is a weird bamboo thing that happens but that's less Evil Dead and more just "Well, that's odd".
So, that's a lot of paragraphs about the virtual sex life of a main character of a book.
Other characters don't really get played up as much since it's told from a first person perspective for the most part, but it's not like a cardboard cutout of a horror movie where there's Black Guy, Crazy White Dude, Nerdy Guy, Slutty Girl, Jock and OMG I CAN'T EVEN Valley Girl. The characters here are pretty 3 dimensional, and are fairly well written.
The main star of the book, though, is a lost city in the wilderness that we get occasional glimpses of but never really get much of an idea of what it looks like. It's always entrenched deeply in fog, with lots of horribly creepy things possibly around. The city itself is pretty amazing, and gave me a real Silent Hill kind of vibe, minus the weird monsters and sirens.
All in all, the book was pretty good. The ending was an interesting one, and the story keeps you entertained and flipping pages up until the end.
I'd rank it 3.75 dog tags out of 5.
Goodreads link so you can go buy it if you want to read it (which you probably do):
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/239074.The_Reckoning
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