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Die Plage (2010)

by Charlie Huston(Favorite Author)

3.66 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

3453407318 (ISBN13: 9783453407312)

languge

English

genre

Horror

publisher

Heyne

review 1: An oddly appropriate novel to start reading on a midnight flight to Tokyo. I enjoyed the shifting styles of this book as is jumped from one perspective to another, their 'voices' slowly becoming more indistinguishable as their stories became more intertwined. The main character is a drug dealer in a world where Sleepless is an insomnia-like disease gripping the population. This perspective alone makes it very different from any books in this genre. Add to that the ruthless but aging mercenary as the second protagonist and I was pleasantly surprised overall.The plot is relatively simple but the execution is refreshing, and it helped me sleep, so 4 stars it is!
review 2: Huston does not write "easy reads". That's not to say that his books contain an inordinate a... moremount of $5 words or hard to read prose, but rather it's hard to keep track of who is talking due to his refusal to use dialogue tags ("he said", "she said"). I often found myself rereading sections because I'd lost the thread of who was talking. It's actually pretty easy to do when you're reading a lengthy back and forth between two characters. However, the lack of tags does contribute to the overall bleak tone of the story. That being, a plague of terminal sleeplessness has infected the populous. The story follows two characters, an undercover cop and a contract killer. Huston's unconventional (other writers write without tags as well) there are some oddities that kept me off balance throughout the book. There were several scene shifts where I lost track of what I was reading which forced me to reread some sections. There was also a lack of descriptions that I found flawed. For example, when the main character was referred to as "Park", with no physical descriptions included, I automatically pictured an Asian (Korean) male. Turned out he was a blonde haired Caucasian but that wasn't until much later in the book (his full name was Parker T. Hass.) The other main character...we're not even given his name until well into the book. What threw me is that the story is written with intermixed point of views of Parker (first person and omniscient) and first person with Jasper. So at one point I was wondering is this Park or Jasper. It wasn't until later that I got into the flow of the book and could more easily see the distinct voice of each character. Again, it wasn't an easy read.Huston's style can be severely off-putting but it is usually works for the stories he writes. Not always, but usually. Sleepless turns out to be one of them. It's far from his best work but if you can get over his unorthodox style you might be pleasantly surprised. less

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