Quietus

I picked up Quietus in San Francisco (back in September) after finishing Eventide. It seemed harmless enough. Good cover, nice graphics. Okay, the synopsis on the back seemed a little hokey. I should have heard the warning sirens at the phrase "Kylie must fight for her life despite increasing evidence that she is living on borrowed time," but I think I was sucked in by the packaging. Plus, after the emotional roller coaster that was Eventide, I was ready for a plain-and-simple thriller.

This was too plain, too simple, not enough thrills. It read to me like a literary attempt at recreating the Final Destination movies. People who cheat death are living on that aforementioned "borrowed time" and death eventually comes for them. Sound familiar? Remove the Calvin Klein teenagers, special effects, bad soundtrack, and the guy from Candyman, then convert the entire thing into a 600 page novel, and you've got Quietus.

Granted, in her defense, this book came out in 2002. Final Destination hit the theaters in 2000. It's not a stretch to assume that Vivian Schilling start writing this book well before she saw its doppleganger on the big screen, or heard of it, and can you imagine the sinking feeling in your stomach to be working on a story for any number of years only to find that some Hollywood hack has not only come up with but produced on celluloid the same idea?

On the other hand, Schilling actually writes as if she's trying to recreate a movie on the page. The scenes are laid out visually, as if she was simply describing something she'd seen. Very little of what was in there served to build the characters. She just painted a long series of moving pictures. "Show, don't tell" they teach us in writing classes. It seems to me that Shilling took that too literally.

Stock characters, bad dialogue, poor craftmanship, and a recycled plot. Stay away from this one. Personally, I made it to about 30 pages from the end before we got to Monterey and I picked up the obligatory copy of Cannery Row. One page of Steinbeck made me feel there was goodness in the world again. (I will be posting that review shortly.) Sandwiched between Eventide, which is very well written, and Steinbeck, who is a master, Quietus didn't have a prayer.