Wow. This book just about kicked my ass, and I'm not sure I've had more of a love/hate relationship with a novel in a long time.

Okay, let's try and get organized here...

The bad...
First and foremost, this is, at best, barely, feebly, tangentially a sequel to [book:The Fury|1765697]. Yes, Farris namechecks Gillian and Robin, and even brings them in, however briefly. But he could just as easily have changed some names, a little bit of backstory, and badda-bing badda-boom, a whole different book. Felt like he did the tie-in to increase sales...though I don't know how well a sequel coming 26 years after the first novel would do, quite honestly.

Next, there's just so much going on that it's almost ridiculous. Where, in The Fury, Gillian and Robin were very much outsiders, in this novel, you can't turn around without bumping into a special type. They're goddamn everywhere. So you've got Eden. You've got Bertie. You've got the whole commune where Chauncey lives...and don't even get me started on that whole brought-up-then-dropped-without-so-much-as-a-how-do-you-do subplot. Then you've got the spy-hijinks (spyjinks?). Then there's the whole POTUS subplot. Oh, and the nuclear events. And the cross-dressing, Vegas showgirl hitman. And... yeah, okay, getting the picture?

And there's the very odd and all-too-frequent monologues that Farris throws at the reader from various characters. They start responding to a question, or they're in the middle of a conversation, then, for no apparent reason, they just veer off-topic like a car on ice, and end up betraying some really personal detail that has nothing to do with the convo, should not have been revealed to the person they're speaking with, and doesn't sound like any conversational voice you've ever heard (outside, perhaps, of the hyper-aware and hyper-monologuey cast from Dawson's Creek...my God, that show's dialogue was brutal). Want a taste of a Farris monologue?

I give you the wife of POTUS (and by the way, I just randomly opened the book and this was on the first page I opened to...and I'm presenting it precisely the way it's written.

"By the way, I had nothing to do with Linda's untimely death. You don't just slink away from competition like me and sulk. That hurt little smile, heavy with tooth. She should have come at me with fists flying. Had me tied up and thrown into a stall with a crazed stallion. A woman who won't take a man's dick in her mouth doesn't deserve to keep him. End of story. A few tears. That's my human side. The rest of me requires no explanation. A rabid genius boils the marrow of my bones. A cockeyed soothsayer/poet/surfer told that to me. I was just fourteen. How could he have known? Probably it was just a line he came up with so he could fuck me. Boy did it work. I'd like for you to look at me now, but you won't. If we could go back just one time. Montana. Sky red as sunburn, a hawk drifting home. Your old fleabag asleep by the fire. Horses in shadow wood. Your eyes sliding in and out of me like rapiers and then we do it. Ah. Do it. The peace at our beginning. There are ways of living that are far more unpleasant than dying. I see that. You standing there. I understand. A broken spirit drieth the bones. Someone quoted me that today. I think he's in a little bit of trouble about the soul thing. I never would have expected that. I'm uneasy. Too much is coming up. All the chips are in the middle of the table. Speaking of poker. You'd have been a far better politician of you had let me teach you how to deal seconds. But that would have diminished you. The American People would have caught on the minute you started dealing seconds. I've never underestimated the AP. The Anointed Media shovels a lot of crap at the AP, as we direct it to do. But there's a knowingness deep in the collective gut of the AP. We keep the lights low and the music soft but eventually you just can't feed the AP any more crap. I know this and it's the one thing I'm afraid of. Dream about too often. Always the smoke and the dead and the blood red skies and the guillotine, waiting at the end of screaming streets. There's never time to do my nails."

Seriously. And there's at least four more of these diatribes scattered throughout the novel. I mean, I can usually bust through a book in a couple of days, but after reading shit like that, I just gotta lay down and rest my eyes.

The good
Yes, there's good.

For one thing, Farris really did take the basic concepts from The Fury and blow them out. Yes, they were kind of wasted within the framework of what amounted to more of a political thriller, but still.

For another, when Farris broke away from the bullshit writing as above, he actually wrote gorgeously. It's like he felt compelled to put that shit in to break up the good stuff or something.

Again, this book reads similar to some of the stuff [author:Jonathan Maberry|72451] is doing with his Joe Ledger series, though Farris spends more time outside the military stuff than Maberry does.

If you want my honest take on this book, I have three thoughts:

1 - Despite the title, there is no fury and especially no terror to be found in this novel's very thick 484 pages. Make no mistake, this is not a horror novel in any way, shape or form.

2 - With just the lightest repurposing, this could have made an excellent X-Men novel.

3 - None of the good stuff outweighs the bad stuff enough for me to pick up the third and fourth novels in this series. I'm done. ( )