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Jump to navigationJump to searchStrindberg's Star by Jan Wallentin (view source)
Revision as of 07:35, 18 June 2012
, 07:35, 18 June 2012no edit summary
Unfortunately, this does expose some of the weaknesses in the story. For all these differing elements to come to requires a fair amount of ''deus ex machina'', where things happen suddenly without explanation. This goes beyond the simple setting up of characters in a locked room with an easily discovered window, which also happens, to the easy accessibility of a way to cross borders undiscovered, to long dormant talents suddenly reawakening just when they become essential to the plot. Suspension of disbelief is always required in thriller novels, but here the reader needs to suspend it over a canyon and let it go. Perhaps the most annoying occurrence was when Titelman, who had been secretive for most of the novel, suddenly decides to trust a shady character who then turns out to have been related to the mystery all along. Admittedly, the plot couldn't have worked any other way, but it became quite annoying after a while.
The other major issue I had with ''Strindberg's Star"" '' was that the characters didn't have any redeeming features. I always like to be sure which side I should be rooting for in a novel as it helps me to become more involved, but I didn't find that here. The supposed hero was someone with a serious drug habit to help him through the day and his accomplice was quite a cold and distant person. The people attempting to stop him would stop at nothing and had a Nazi background, but seemed more dedicated than our hero. This was further muddied by late revelations where characters who had been bad found something inside them so they could help our hero and his apparent friends betrayed him. Thanks to the movements between genres of the plot and that of some of the characters, this was never a novel that hooked me. Indeed, the most likeable character here were the metal ankh and star of the title.
What Wallentin has left us with here is a very good idea that, sadly, comes across as being poorly executed. However, there is enough here to suggest that with the range of ideas, he may well have a bright future as a novelist once he settles into it a little more. The imagination is here for him to become a success, but it needs some of the rough edges polished off a little before that happens. I await future developments with interest, but this debut novel has a little too much working against it to set Wallentin alongside his Scandinavian predecessors just yet.
