Bryan Thomas Schmidt’s Reviews > The Night Pool > Status Update

The Mei-Haloke thing is a bit murky. Are they Lesbians? What draws Haloke to long for Mei like that is never truly spelled out directly and Mei never has POV scenes.

So far only one male character has three dimensions or close. The rest are cardboard cutouts. While the female characters are all very well developed, even minor ones. I think the author’s biased as a feminist is probably responsible for this, and I think she could work on writing better characterization despite her own personal biases in the future and have a much stronger book.

Chapter 29 proves unique and interesting. Still moving a bit slow for my taste but getting better.

It bugs me that there are no decent men represented or men with kind or decent qualities at all. They seem to be all heinous which may be a feminist west dream but would not be historically accurate. Yes, gold rushers were a cold, tough breed generally and life was unfair and harsh for women among them but I worked for History Channel on two shows focused in this time period and there were always decent folk around

It has short chapters but still feels very slow. 12 chapters in and still being introduced to core characters. Not much has happened. There have been hints of danger but it is a very slow build. The prose is decent but narrative heavy over dialogue.