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Darksiders: The Abomination Vault (2012)

by Ari Marmell(Favorite Author)

3.97 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0449806561 (ISBN13: 9780449806562)

languge

English

genre

Fantasy

publisher

Random House Audio

review 1: Darksiders is a sort of medley of over the top action, fantasy, science fiction, and super heroes based in mythology.There aren't a lot of books written about super heroes specifically because it is difficult to showcase the sort of action they can deliver in literature without coming off a little absurd or ridiculous.This book suffers from this exact problem on multiple levels. The author presumes, and perhaps rightly so, that readers will have knowledge of the games and their content. Therefore, the book builds on preexisting lore and does little to clearly fill in the blanks for any who haven't experienced the source material before reading. The action struggles to capture the over the top action sequences with lengthy portrayals of elaborate acrobatics that are not di... morefficult to visualize, but begin to feel tedious as the text that accompanies the seconds of action often take minutes of reading to absorb.Overall the book does capture a large part of the Darksiders feel, particularly Death's surly sarcasm and overly confident attitude. The lore feels in tune. The plot feels in sync. It all comes together to make sense without traipsing outside of the established lore.The biggest fault of the books is in the style of writing, itself. This is a story of fiction. Fantastic action scenes by super powered and immortal beings. In short, it is a work of fiction and most of what is contained within is impossible. However, the author feels the need to express any sort of extreme with the word "impossible". He jumped impossibly high, ran impossibly swift, with a strength that was impossible, holding a sword whose width was impossible. Seriously though, the word impossible/impossibly is on at least every other page and sometimes in several places on a single page. It really begins to feel like such a strange way to escape describing something.It's fantasy. Of course it's impossible. Now give more details. But worse than that is that the word is truly POINTLESS when used that way. If something seems impossible, ok it obviously wasn't. But when something is impossible--it's impossible. You can't say something that happened IS impossible without having a bit of disconnect. This author does it so often that the book was beginning to feel comically tedious at points. I found myself waiting for the next impossible episode of impossibly impossible impossibilities to impossibly occur.This one particular hang up on a useless word is not the only utter waste of space within.How many times do we need to be told that something "literally" happens. Or that something was a "veritable" version of itself? Only a few more examples... It all feels so redundant and essentially meaningless as the book plugs along.2 Stars for generic descriptions and terrible use of language. 3 Stars for capturing the characters well and maintaining the setting and feel of Darksiders.
review 2: Aside from being terribly - TERRIBLY - written, it's not bad. I like a lot of the insight into the Horsemen's background, especially how much of a bastard Death is. But seriously, the writing is BAD. The awful over-use of horrendously grotesquely terribly disgusting metaphors are the mark of a novice and the more action-y scenes were so dully written that they couldn't keep the attention of the most saintly of readers. less

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