Friday 27 August 2010

URBAN FANTASY REVIEW: Supernatural: Heart of the Dragon - Keith De Candido, Supernatural: War of the Sons - Rebecca Desertine

Release Date: 27/08/10

BOOK BLURB:

This is a supernatural novel that reveals a previously unseen adventure for the Winchester brothers, from the hit ITV series! Twenty-three years ago, Sam and Dean Winchester lost their mother to a demonic supernatural force. Following the tragedy, their father taught the boys everything about the paranormal evil that lives in the dark corners of America...and how to kill it. On the hunt for Lucifer, the boys find themselves in a small town in South Dakota where they meet Don - an angel with a proposition...How far will the boys go to uncover the secret Satan never wanted them to find out?


REVIEW:

With a change of authors, I expected this offering to be marked improvement on the previous outings. Unfortunately it was sadly yet another failure in the published world of the Winchester Brothers. The story was weak and I felt, after season five, that I’d heard it all before. The first couple of pages was ridiculous as the author seemed to have mixed Sam and Dean up, the tale then changed tack and you could see that this book had more than one writer as it wasn’t a smooth transition. Again the characters didn’t come across and had I read these novels prior to watching the TV series, I would never have bothered. The author’s really don’t seem to know the characters, the plot outline goes into a “where can I put them now that I have time travel available” scenario and the overall effect is a complete waste of time. As mentioned in the other review, give the fans a chance to write a tale or two even if its just a series of short stories, they’ll be more successful, they’ll have a better grasp of the characters and the tales presented will be something not only novel but more on the tack of the original concept.



Release Date: 26/02/10

BOOK BLURB:

This is a supernatural novel that reveals a previously unseen adventure for the Winchester brothers, from the hit ITV series! Twenty-three years ago, Sam and Dean Winchester lost their mother to a demonic supernatural force. Following the tragedy, their father taught the boys everything about the paranormal evil that lives in the dark corners of America...and how to kill it. Bobby Singer alerts Sam and Dean to a series of particularly brutal killings in San Francisco's Japantown. It's been 270 new moons since the last time, and it looks like the Heart of the Dragon is back...


REVIEW:

To be honest Keith is an author who seemed to have gotten the job because of who he knew over talent. Whilst this, at times, can lead to a reasonable offering, the reader prefers that the tale that they’ve spent their hard earned money upon was written by an author who not only knew the characters backwards but also managed to give the readers a tale that had at least some basic research done towards it. (For example their use of Doragon instead of Ryu or Tatsu for Dragon.)

Add to this, the usual problem with this author’s previous outings that he hasn’t gotten a grip on the mannerisms of Sam and Dean (from what little we actually get of them in this title) and overall I felt pretty cheated. Within this offering, the brothers bicker, they unfortunately didn’t mesh as the fans demand and with so much reference material available felt that the author was looking more to his bank balance rather than fulfilling the readers brief.

Whilst the overall concept was interesting alongside the depth of character history available for the author to have tapped into, the story felt slow, badly created and overall pretty lackadasical and I felt that perhaps that it might be better to run a competition for the fans to create their own Sam and Dean Tales with the chance for publication. It would be more accurate, it would get back to the original series concept and would all in, definitely be the full experience that the reader not only deserve but demand rather than an author who writes a whole tale around what could have been a reasonable novella.

1 comment:

Angela Addams said...

I've been told that I would really like this show...perhaps I should pick up the book and try that out first.