Star Island

This is another book that I found at the used book sale in Maine. I had never read any Hiaasen before, but I'd seen other of works in stores and online and it had a bright cover. What could go wrong?

Title: Star Island
Author: Carl Hiaasen
Format: Paperback

This book was a struggle to get through.I sat down with it, and breezed through the first hundred pages in one sitting. I found myself thinking, "wow, this is so easy to read, it takes no thought at all." Yet after that initial session, I found myself very reluctant to pick the book back up. It wasn't the familiar hesitance about finishing a book I love and never want to end. After some reflection I realized this resistance was due to the fact that Star Island is just not a particularly good book. I had made the fatal mistake of coming up for air, giving me time to think about what I had read and would continue reading.
The major flaw with the book is that it is too self indulgent by Hiaasen. It appears that throughout the book he'd have an idea, and think "this is hilarious" and put it in. Then he would realize that he should have introduced it earlier on, and would half-heatedly edit a paragraph or two to justify the inclusion. It just made it seem it all seem like lazy writing aimed more at gags than at well developed characters or a thoughtful plot.
His characters received a similar treatment. It became clear that Hiaasen had radically altered aspects of the characters personalities to allow for some joke he thought of 200 pages into the story. All the main characters are caricatures will no depth or thought put into them. There is a weak attempt at juxtaposing nearly identical physical characters with mostly different characters, but this is poorly done as well. On top of the poor treatment of his main characters, Hiaasen would also randomly add characters as one offs for the sole purpose of moving the plot along. These were undeveloped and lazy tools that where anything to experience.
Finally, the book also lacked any form of subtlety. One can only read about a fat man being called gelatinous or jello-like and how air-headed a bimbo is so many times before it becomes painful and deleterious to the story. Hiaasen came off as a poor man's Christopher Moore. I'd recommend readers steer towards Moore instead because though his work is also flawed, it is much less self-indulgent and frustrating to read than Star Island.
2/10

Needful Things

Stephen King is one of the best known authors of our time. His works have been adapted for television and movies, many of which are well respected and even award winning. He attacks various topics from innumerable directions. I had read the first two books in the Dark Tower series and had given up, but I'd heard from many that those were different from his other work, so, when I saw Needful Things at a used book sale I decided to give it a try.

Title: Needful Things
Author: Stephen King
Format: Book
Time to Finish: 34 days

I read the introduction and first chapter and was hooked. The stories revolves around the small town of Castle Rock, Maine, where a new business has opened. It is called Needful Things, and sells exactly what you're looking for, but at a price. Part of the price is to play a trick on someone else, but the tricks, seemingly innocent at first become more and more dastardly and harmful. Soon the town is in chaos and watching it all is Mr. Gaunt, the proprietor of this new shop.

The solid premise, and King's writing is good enough to not distract most readers from the content. He's the problem with the book: being hooked for the first twenty pages does not guarantee you will devour the 630. I, in fact, did not. About 250 pages into the story I was ready to be done with the book, but was too stubborn to completely give up on it. I can read a 700 pages book and enjoy every word (A Song of Ice and Fire, King Killer Chronicles, Acacia) because often those books are developing a few characters very well, allowing them to endear themselves to the reader. In this doorstop of a novel, King spends his pages creating brief caricatures so that...SPOILERS...he could kill them a few minutes later. It's extremely tiresome and makes it so that you could not care less what actually happens to most of the characters. Creating a character 500 pages in for the sole purpose of killing some one and/or dying is lazy and meaningless to the story at large. The reader becomes so jaded about these people and their forced in stories that they are wont to roll their eyes and moan, "not another one." The multitude of undeveloped killable characters means that there is no emotional investment, and without that, readers start to wonder why they even bother. For me it was stubbornness, others may just worship Stephen King. Regardless, I'd say give this book a pass. It's not scary, creepy, or horrifying, but most tragically, it's not even interesting.
3/10

Monster Hunter International

I listened to this book a few years ago, and noticed that the most recent book in the series had been getting some press. I was in between books, so I figured that I'd give it another listen.

Title: Monster Hunter International
Author: Larry Correia
Format: Audio
Time to Finish: 12 days

The book follows Owen Pitt, an accountant, whose boss transforms into a werewolf and attacks him. He barely survives the encounter and is recruited to join MHI, Monster Hunters International. They are a group of skilled monster hunters for hire. It turns out that monsters are not only real, there are a lot of them and there's good money to be made hunting them. The big enemies for this story is a powerful being known as the Cursed One, who has bent a number of master vampires to his will. It's up to a reluctant alliance between government monster hunters and MHI to stop him before he fulfills his prophecy to "breaks time" and ends the world.

Oof, this story does not hold up to a second reading. In all honesty, I only finished because I wanted an opportunity to write my first negative review.
That said, I actually gave some thought to why this book seemed terrible this time around and came to a few conclusions. The first is that this book is pure gun porn. Correia was a fire arms instructor before becoming an author, and I think it's safe to say he's a bit of a gun nut. This becomes apparent very early on with intimate, loving descriptions of every firearm imaginable. It's kind of cool at first, but for those who do not believe guns are man's greatest invention, the weapon worship becomes tiresome. The book would likely be forty pages shorter without that content.
The second thing I realized is that this the book equivalent of a B-movie. Not a good B-movie that borders on becoming a quality movie, just a story of simple characters doing very predictable things. As one would expect, it's chock full of corny lines and over the top action scenes, but there's very little substance or heart to the story. This didn't seem like a problem, especially as early on the book is a bit tongue in cheek about how ridiculous some of it is. Sadly, as the story progresses this self-effacing sense of humor disappears and all we're left with is a cheesy plot taking itself much too seriously.
Probably the worst aspect is the characters themselves. Rather than deep, meaningful individuals, none of them has any depth. Instead we are left with caricatures and mediocre ones at that. The women are beautiful the men are defined by one feature and the goodguy always gets the girl. We know all these things to be true, so there's no sense of risk or urgency at any point of the story.
Don't get me wrong, parts of the story were fun and enjoyable, those just didn't do close to enough to salvage the book.
4/10