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A review by steph01924
Shutter by Courtney Alameda
3.0
This book was good, creepy fun. It didn't blow me away, but it kept me entertained most of the time, and felt like a solid introduction to what I assume is a new series (I'd be shocked if this was a standalone, though pleasantly surprised.). I'd read a second book if one came out.
Observations
- The Helsing group was interesting and fun, and I would've liked to have seen a bit more of it (our protagonists are flying outside of 'the law' most of the time). I don't know much about the Dracula history, so I probably missed some finer 'oh, nice!' moments and deeper mythology, but I didn't feel lost.
- The idea of the camera capturing the ghost energy was different and I enjoyed the concept. But the execution of the action scenes with the mirrors and the tetra-ing and the antimirrors just didn't quite work for me. There was a lot of mumbo-jumbo that I had to read through carefully to follow along with, and it made the action scenes slower and somewhat confusing at times. This is one of those areas that I think a visual media would've worked better (I also wonder, would it look sort of...cheesy, too, if I was watching instead of reading? Flashing a camera at a ghost...intellectually not that scary looking.)
- Those cobbled together corpse-scorpions...OMG, haunt my nightmares much? With all the other freakier monsters roaming around, I kind of wanted more info on them than our run-of-the-mill (albeit powerful) ghost killer. Micheline said she'd never seen something like that before - then how did it come to be?? Is this going to be a thing in a future book, perhaps?
- Shallow alert: I couldn't stand the name 'Micheline'. I haven't had to encounter it much in my life, so this is probably the first book I've read that used it for a main character...and I want it to be the last. I looked up the French pronunciation to be sure I was reading it right, but that didn't make me like it any more. It kept catching my eye in a bad way, since my brain seemed to WANT it to be Michelle. It also kept bringing to mind the brand of Michelin tires, which is not something I ever really want to read about in my fiction books.
Observations
- The Helsing group was interesting and fun, and I would've liked to have seen a bit more of it (our protagonists are flying outside of 'the law' most of the time). I don't know much about the Dracula history, so I probably missed some finer 'oh, nice!' moments and deeper mythology, but I didn't feel lost.
- The idea of the camera capturing the ghost energy was different and I enjoyed the concept. But the execution of the action scenes with the mirrors and the tetra-ing and the antimirrors just didn't quite work for me. There was a lot of mumbo-jumbo that I had to read through carefully to follow along with, and it made the action scenes slower and somewhat confusing at times. This is one of those areas that I think a visual media would've worked better (I also wonder, would it look sort of...cheesy, too, if I was watching instead of reading? Flashing a camera at a ghost...intellectually not that scary looking.)
- Those cobbled together corpse-scorpions...OMG, haunt my nightmares much? With all the other freakier monsters roaming around, I kind of wanted more info on them than our run-of-the-mill (albeit powerful) ghost killer. Micheline said she'd never seen something like that before - then how did it come to be?? Is this going to be a thing in a future book, perhaps?
- Shallow alert: I couldn't stand the name 'Micheline'. I haven't had to encounter it much in my life, so this is probably the first book I've read that used it for a main character...and I want it to be the last. I looked up the French pronunciation to be sure I was reading it right, but that didn't make me like it any more. It kept catching my eye in a bad way, since my brain seemed to WANT it to be Michelle. It also kept bringing to mind the brand of Michelin tires, which is not something I ever really want to read about in my fiction books.