Sunday, November 11, 2007

The Road of the Dead by Kevin Brooks



  • Reading level: Young Adult
  • Hardcover: 352 pages
  • Publisher: The Chicken House (March 1, 2006)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0439786231
  • ISBN-13: 978-0439786232
  • List Price: $16.99
  • I finished this book on Nov. 11
We have several of this guys books in the library and they all looked rather intriguing to me. I chose this one because of two things: gypsies and a kid I thought was vaguely psychic. Eh. I suppose I was hoping for cool gypsy curses and possibly girls wearing lots of jewelry. Not so much.
Ruben, our narrator, has the ability to sometimes "be with people" (not like that, you perv) which seems to me like a sort of astral projection/being able to sense what they are sensing kind of thing. This never gets explained or used in a way that I would use it (aka: spying on people while they are in the shower. just kidding ((no i'm not)) or I dunno...using it to find things out about bad guys) Anywho: Ruben's sister gets kilt (boo) and so he and his (possibly sociopath or at the least chemically imbalanced.) brother go to find out who did it. Now, please understand that they to not really care who did it, they just want the investigation to end so they can bring her body home and bury it (whaa?).
Anyway, of course they uncover a super plot with lots of bad guys and some ultraviolence. So...we hear this whole story about their trying to find the culprits, and lots of stuff happens and then it's the end. And...you don't really get to find out how the brother accomplished all these important things. "Does it really matter?" Ruben asks himself. Yes, asshat, I just spent 337 pages trying to find out. It matters to me. I want to know. Did Cole kill that fucker? Where was the body? Argh!
So, I'm not saying it's a bad book or anything, cause it's not. But that was some seriously weak sauce there at the end. I want to know. I'm invested. So, lots of violence, reasonable storyline, only a little predictable and a sort of lame ending. I dunno. Once again, I find myself with my thumb planted firmly horizontal. Le sigh.

1 comment:

Ms. Yingling said...

This is a good mystery for most middle schoolers-- it reads like a book for older students, so they love it. Another book from this author is Candy, which you should really pick up if you haven't. Martyn Pig is sort of strange, as is Kissing the Rain, but this one is good.