DNF! And I hardly ever DNF! But because I am truly stunned by all the high ratings, I feel compelled to detail just how bad this one truly got so as to not let anyone get suckered into slogging through this far inferior sequel to William Johnstone's 1986 paperback pulp horror "Cat's Cradle". Since I enjoyed the first book so much, I thought the follow up would be just as fun. Oh, how wrong I was!
Everyone knows that, most of the time, Johnstone's writing is considered working man's prose for popular appeal. He also has moments of inspired nuance and layered narrative. And sometimes it seems like he let his nine-year-old nephew take a crack at writing a few lines.
"He packed while the coffee was brewing, then showered and dressed. He put his suitcase and garment bag in the car and went back into the house, turning off the coffee machine and checking to see that all the lights were off. He stepped out onto the front porch, hearing the door lock as he closed it."
Thrilling! No one can refrain from biting their nails during such suspense! You'll be on the edge of your seat as our hero... sips his coffee! Checks the stove for the umpteenth time! Scatches an itch on his nose!
But Johnstone's clunky writing isn't the real problem. By this point in his career, the prolific man had written more Western genre novels alone than 90% of professional authors ever write in a lifetime. Though he jumped on the horror bandwagon during the boom of the Eighties, he was always a Western writer at heart. Here, it really shows to a frustrating degree.
The opening premise of this novel is that the hero, who is a certified private eye and professional security agent, is hired by a wealthy conservationist to protect his spoiled rotten daughter. She is living in a remote stretch of land near the Blue Ridge Mountains. I'm sure the view is nice. But Johnstone portrays the area as being the last place anyone should ever live. Spiteful rednecks are harassing the young lady because they want her land to hunt deer and to go muddin' with their three-wheelers. In addition to inbreds slashing her tires and making obscene phone calls, there's a crooked sheriff who runs the county, so she can't even back out of her driveway without a deputy pulling her over for no reason. And the land is still infested with piranha maggots and cannibalistic demons left over from the events of "Cat's Cradle". Oh, and the place stinks like a septic tank that something died in.
So what is SHE doing there? She brags that she is wealthy. And when I say she brags, I mean she does it to the point where I started to gag, especially as Johnstone simultaneously tries to have us believe she is some kind of humble, salt-of-the-earth type who donates her wealth to charity. Ugh, I feel like vomiting just thinking about how inane this all is. Anyway, she says such endearing things like that she could afford to buy five publishing houses just so she could publish one of her romance novels. So when she also says she can afford to move to southern France instead of living in this literal hell hole, our hero rightfully asks why she doesn't. Her answer is because this is her family's property, dang nabbit! Ain't no mountain cur gonna run this little lady off'n her pappy's land.
Okay, she doesn't say it quite like that, but you get the point. Johnstone is so entrenched in his Western pulp romanticism that he clearly expects his readers to see this woman as a hero who is as American as apple pie, full of ol' fashioned pluck, and who respects the value of unspoiled nature. But he forgets that it makes no sense in this context. Her father bought the land to turn into a nature park, but Johnstone has just told us that the area is so overrun with gun-slinging white trash that it's too dangerous for any private or government interests. The girl's family owns property all over the entire world. So if she was so interested in conservation, why not make this particular property a wildlife preserve and go live on one of her countless other estates? Why does she construct a huge mansion on the land she claims to respect so much, and then act like a stubborn brat by squatting there out of spite? How enjoyable is her mountain view when she literally needs a live-in bodyguard and an attack dog and an arsenal of guns and an ARMOR-PLATED Jaguar (yep, just a good ol' down-to-earth, unpretentious gal) to even live there? Is she Batman? And only four chapters into the plot, she's besieged by some creepy weirdo in a cowl scratching at her backdoor and spooky chanting in the woods. Johnstone makes it painfully obvious that nobody in their right mind would stay in this place. But SHE does. This isn't heroic, or even courageous. It's moronic.
And it gets even dumber! She hasn't known our hero for barely a day before she spells out for him (and the reader) just how much money she makes. In detail. And it's a lot. It's like Oprah Winfrey a lot. Maybe even George Soros a lot. So this begs the question--why the hell is she living in hick-ville, and why hasn't her insanely wealthy daddy already got her surrounded by his own version of the secret service? Why is the family wasting time with hiring our two-bit local yokel Sam Spade hero?! He is a complete stranger to her, is not vetted, and carries multiple weapons, yet she lets him live with her alone in the middle of nowhere. What, is she suicidal?
So because of the way Johnstone sets up the story, I immediately was not invested. I didn't want to read about the problems of people who had every reason and resource to avoid danger in the first place. If an author expects us to care about protagonists who are wooden and uninteresting, then, for heavens sake, don't also make them too stupid to even exist!
It doesn't stop there. Unlike its predecessor, no character in this book came across as anything but juvenile at worst, and dull at best. We got guys swinging their cocks and glocks around all over the place. Sure, there was a lot of that in the first book, but here it's ridiculous.
And the supernatural elements are largely indistinguishable from the first book, only now nestled in terribly written characters and a set-up that is not compelling. We have the same gross-out, action-packed gore fest but without the charm of the original to make it entertaining. Because I could not connect with the protagonists like I could in the first one, I had no incentive to wade through all the mean-spirited blood and guts. There is literally no point to reading a Johnstone novel when you can't even enjoy his usual OTP pulp goodness. I could not stomach it, not because it was extreme or disturbing, but because the hack job perpetrated here truly made me angry for wasting an evening I'll never get back. I rarely DNF books, and when I do, I usually don't bother rating it or writing a review, because I can't fairly judge the whole product. But this? Hell, the second half of this book could be brilliant. But I'll never make it that far. Sometimes you gotta know when to fold 'em.
I'm sorry this review is so sour and negative, but if you've made it to the end of my rant, I hope you've been entertained by what otherwise is a very simple message:
I don't think this book is worth buying, even if you are like the heroine of this story and can buy five publishing houses. I usually can understand differing opinions about books and film, but in this case, I can't imagine how anyone could make it through the first act and still leave a five star rating--unless they were far from sober and were paying not an ounce of attention to what they were reading.
So if you've read "Cat's Cradle" and are remotely considering reading "Cat's Eye," I can say with some confidence that you're good just where you are. You don't need this one. You'll miss nothing but wasted hours of your life.