Rob Morris
Big Finish Creative Team
Avoiding this place for a while as it's become somewhat toxic.
Likes: 781
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Post by Rob Morris on Oct 15, 2016 11:42:17 GMT
So... finally read this. It's... an odd one isn't it?
I don't know how much truth there is in the notion that it's an attempt at a reboot for a DS book range, but I'll be honest I totally believe it. It does feel like it was a rejected reboot that had a search and replace of names done on it. And if it hadn't been an intentional reboot then I bet DCP would have been all over shutting it down when it was published.
I'm also quite glad it didn't work out at being a DS book in many respects. It's a far more succesful reworking of the early Barnabas storyline than Marilyn Ross would create in that it does parallel the story, but it lacks charm. Grenville feels much more sadistic than Barnabas, and the sex is a bit forced (on several levels). It once again confirms my theory that all too many writers seem to think "adult" equals "sex and violence".
But at the start I found myself really enjoying it. The cut up of different time frames to tell the story was interesting framing, the early focus on Jamie/Willie and Kell/Jason told an interesting backstory - and I really enjoyed the disparity between Jamie's versions of his meeting and life with Barnabas and what actually happened.
And then... some plot elements suddenly rush by with barely a mention, "off-screen" Grenville becomes human and caring suddenly and it all starts to fall a bit flat. Then it becomes oddly cosy and then suddenly sad at the end.
Overall my word for it would be "uneven", but it's an interesting diversion I guess.
Anyone else got any thoughts?
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bobod
Chancellery Guard
Likes: 2,759
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Post by bobod on Oct 15, 2016 13:52:54 GMT
I have thoughts. But they seem identical to yours.
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Rob Morris
Big Finish Creative Team
Avoiding this place for a while as it's become somewhat toxic.
Likes: 781
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Post by Rob Morris on Oct 15, 2016 15:02:17 GMT
Great minds and all that!
The thing about Grenville being more sadistic though, I suppose that's really how Barnabas was written at first. I mean if we took Frid's performance out of the equation, early Barnabas is basically controlling and violent. It's only the performance that adds charm and that element of uncertainty, isn't it?
Grenville is basically closer to the House of Dark Shadows version.
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Post by Zagreus on Oct 15, 2016 17:00:06 GMT
I've just started this as I slowly make my way through the series of DS novels that began with Angelique's Descent. I've actually only just been through the parts of the original series that involve Jason and Willie and Barnabas waking up, but I've also recently relistened to Echoes if Insanity so while the beginning is interestingly written I find going over the same material a third time in relatively short order a little bit of a bore. I do like to imagine that this is a novel, by Willie, in his later years, embellishing the truth, and his sexual encounters, before he had someone proof-read it and tell him in no uncertain terms that there was no way in hell he was going to be able to publish it as is
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bobod
Chancellery Guard
Likes: 2,759
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Post by bobod on Oct 15, 2016 20:59:46 GMT
To begin with I was thinking of it as having been written at Windcliff with the names changed for confidentality reasons.
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Rob Morris
Big Finish Creative Team
Avoiding this place for a while as it's become somewhat toxic.
Likes: 781
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Post by Rob Morris on Oct 15, 2016 22:28:38 GMT
I find going over the same material a third time in relatively short order a little bit of a bore. I get you. I haven't been back to those episodes in a while so maybe it was more distant and that made it fresher. I can imagine a young Willie being quite the lothario. John Karlen's version to start with has a swagger to start with that I can imagine some ladies (and men) finding attractive. There are elements of Hawkes Harbor which very much ring true for the series and could be used effectively in a novel series I think. But they pop up and get smashed on the head just as soon as they arrive.
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Post by Zagreus on Oct 17, 2016 22:59:44 GMT
Given all that though, it's better written than I thought it was going to be, given the reviews. The prose itself is very easy, but, as another person in the other thread mentioned, every time it gets going and gets into a nice rhythm it seems to get broken up by trying to be "adult", ie: badly inserted sex scenes and more gory violence than would have been shown on television. It's very raw, in a sense. The way Jamie relays information to the doctor, he talks like one actually would, rambling on tangents, getting side-tracked, filling in information as it pops into your head. It's great. And the flashback portions are all fleshed out well. Grenville seems perfectly in character to me as early Barnabas, but perhaps that's just because that's actually where I'm at in the show. They haven't yet gotten to the time hopping and the softer nobler Barnabas that followed. But, yeah, Hawkes Harbor. So far, when it's good, it's really good, but then it devolves into what it seems to think serious adult sex scenes are and I can't take it seriously for a bit. Only about a hundred pages in.. It's an interesting beast, I'll give it that. So I just finished reading the part where Barnabas makes Willie stake Jason after he's done feeding on him, just to make sure he doesn't rise again. Oof. Brutal stuff. Like I said, the book is raw and well, written, when Willie isn't trying to bed everything female with two legs. About three fifths of the way through now. Since Willie Loomis Saves Collinsport seems to be down, does anybody have a handy conversion chart for character names? It's sometimes hard to keep track of who is supposed to be who, as far as the mental picture in my head of what's going on is concerned. I've decided that this novel is basically if Dark Shadows were written like The Wire. Certainly makes me look at Willie in a bit of a different light. Wish there were an audiobook of it. Wish there were audiobooks of Dreams and Labyrinth too, for that matter. A real nice character study for Willie, though as others have noted stuff just kind of happens in the background with little explanation. Barnabas turning human, various people dying, new cast members being introduced and sent off... The book starts really strong, but, like Angelique's Descent, begins to flag a bit once we get into putting to print stuff that we already saw in the show. A good, if a bit flawed, read. I went into it thinking it was a bit of a joke, but I think after finishing I'm okay with having it on the shelf with the other Dark Shadows stuff. I can see I totally wasted my time getting the HH discussion into a separate thread. That said, I agree with what you say. Porting this over here, as discussion will probably move on over in the more general novels thread as I begin the next book I do find it interesting that we got an audio that covers much of the same material with a similar framing sequence, at least for the first part of the book. I've read that there was talk of doing Dreams and Labyrinth over at BF, did Echoes of Insanity begin life as an adaption of this book at some point?
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Rob Morris
Big Finish Creative Team
Avoiding this place for a while as it's become somewhat toxic.
Likes: 781
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Post by Rob Morris on Oct 17, 2016 23:11:41 GMT
The book starts really strong, but, like Angelique's Descent, begins to flag a bit once we get into putting to print stuff that we already saw in the show. A good, if a bit flawed, read. I went into it thinking it was a bit of a joke, but I think after finishing I'm okay with having it on the shelf with the other Dark Shadows stuff. It is kind of interesting that isn't it? SE Hinton certainly seems more interested in the backstory of Jamie/Willie and that I think comes across to the reader too. Every time it follows the "proper" beats of the storyline of the show the book becomes very perfunctory. Flawed for sure, but yeah... I found it an interesting take - not nearly as bad as I was expecting. Not great, for sure but I genuinely was expecting worse and the bits that worked for me really worked - it was just that it was probably the Dark Shadows parallels that worked for me least. Happy to have it on my shelf too, though. (Didn't mean to come across as harsh, by the way, about having a seperate thread for it - I just think Lara's books deserve their own thread as do the other ones.)
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Post by Zagreus on Oct 17, 2016 23:20:43 GMT
It's interesting. Looking at the Amazon reviews and such, it's mostly fans of her other works, which I gather are more young adult(?), and her usual reader base doesn't think too highly of this. That, combined with the sort of piss-take review on Willie Loomis Saves Collinsport, certainly went a long way towards coloring my expectations of Hawkes Harbor prior to opening it up. I think it could be a little interesting to reference all the new names in this somewhere in the audios. Maybe Grenville Hawkes can be an alias Barnabas goes by during a time-travel story On that note, the names certainly grew on me as I went, to the point where they no longer look odd and just sound as natural as "Barnabas Collins" does to my ears. (Didn't mean to come across as harsh, by the way, about having a seperate thread for it - I just think Lara's books deserve their own thread as do the other ones.) Ah, no, I quite understand The other thread was orignally just supposed to be about the Parker Novels and just sort of turned into me reading everything that's been put out since Angelique's Descent and giving my thoughts. Rainy's two novels probably deserve their own thread as well, and maybe later I'll aggregate all the posts from the other thread and port them over to a fresh discussion topic.
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