Martyr's Creek Book

Such a disappointment.

This book had huge potential and it just fell flat. I was well into it (over a hundred pages) and I still didn't really know or care. But once you get that invested, you need to carry on because surely the turning point is just around the corner and things will become better.

Nope.

If anything it just got more muddled.

First off, the plot had several characters that each had a strong story line. Now I don't know about you but I've found that when an author starts with a specific character, the book essentially follows him or her and has the other characters intertwining around that main line so there's a sense of flow toward the inevitable climax of resolving the said dilemma or crime or whatever. I found that the story balance shifted imperceptibly but almost immediately so that you were much more emotionally invested in the other character than you were with the first. As well, I found that the story shifted to follow this next character with the initial one falling to the periphery of the action.

It was very disorientating actually, especially when another shift occurs.

Secondly, the heinous crimes were very - hmmm - impotent. The tension would build then it would just - fade. Like you knew something happened - something violent, or sexual, or dastardly, (something that was key to the story in any event) - and all of a sudden you're whisked onwards in time to the 'just-after' time. To me it was just like the memory modification scene in Harry Potter, only you never get the satisfaction of seeing the reason why it was so pivotal.

This plague of vagueness was rampant in the entire story and it really lets the air out of the balloon.

Thirdly, although this story has two actual historical figures and the mythological legend of the wandering Jew, you really are unaware of it. Not that I expect to be mollycoddled on it, I also don't use the book cover synopsis to give me the book details, nor should the author expect his readers to. Thankfully the sources and acknowledgements at the end fill most of that in but I felt a little cheated somehow to not know this information at the start. (The legend of the wandering Jew however, is not referred to at all.) Maybe that's just my pet peeve though.

I won't give up on Stephen Gallagher's writing completely. I'd like to try another one of his books. This particular story was disappointing only in that it had so much more potential to be incredibly awesome.