Tuesday, November 2, 2010

The Diviners Tale, by Bradford Morrow

The Diviner's TaleCassandra performs a lost art, divining for water.  It is a gift that members of her family have possessed for years, though many people in town chalk it up to trickery.  But Cassandra sometimes knows when things will happen, and this power scares her; it is tied to what she refers to as her monster, which we are led to believe is a mental illness.  But the true monster is a murderer that has followed Cassandra for years, and now, he is out to be rid of her for good.

Reading this book made me feel like I was walking through a dream.  Things sort of made sense, but not completely.  While I really liked the concept of this story, it took way too long to really get to the action, particularly the suspenseful parts of the book.  For a long time, I really thought Cassandra was crazy, or maybe I was, because I really could not figure out what was going on, or what the story was really about.

I liked the characters, and the concept, I just felt like this story really needed to be cleaned up quite a bit, tightened up, made a little more clear and explicit.

One thing I really loved about the book was Cassandra's relationship with her father, and in turn, her sons.  It was poignant, and made her character seem much more real.  I think this story had a whole lot of potential that went unfulfilled.

A review copy of this book was provided by NetGalley.

2 comments:

  1. Nice review, Tiffany. I enjoy it when you put your feelings into the review.
    Mike

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  2. I felt the exact same way about this book! It's such a relief to know I'm not the only one. I've pretty much read nothing but positive and even rave reviews for The Diviner's Tale and I just don't get it. I found the book to have so much potential, but the plot was not well executed. The characters were great, but the plot was slow and predictable. She kept saying it was Roy so I fully expected there to be some awesome twist like it was really Charley and Roy ends up saving her from him. Unfortunately, it was Roy. *snooze*

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