Welp, gave Skinwalker a try and was not impressed. Couple things turned me off: the writing, the main character, and the solve of the mystery. The writing isn’t super bad, else I wouldn’t have finished Skinwalker, but it’s not the greatest, either. It reminded me a lot of things I used to write in high school. Stream-of-consciousness styling that doesn’t actually do the story any favors. As for Jane… she’s some weird combination of super confident and rude and completely oblivious that just doesn’t mesh well. It’s off putting. And as for the ending… well, I have no idea how Jane came to the conclusion she did… and then had the actual answer spoon-fed to her. Not great.
The following are my thoughts while I was reading, followed by my final thoughts on Skinwalker.
Little under halfway through with Skinwalker at this point and I have thoughts. First: the writing style is very stream-of-consciousness until it grinds to random halts in order to describe things. Second: I have a problem with a certain turban and the hiding of weapons. It annoyed me right off the bat and has stuck in my mind as something that just doesn’t make sense. Third: get over this “The Joe, Rick” thing. Just call him Rick or The Joe. Again, annoying. Fourth: read a few reviews that mentioned Beast and how annoyed people were with her. I have zero problems with Beast. She’s a mountain lion, not sure we need to expect her thoughts to be on par with Jane’s.
Speaking of Jane… she’s definitely not even rating in the favorite heroines category for me. She’s really quite boring and inept at doing her job. And inconsistent af. We learn at the very beginning of the book that this is her first foray into working with “civilized vampires” and yet she seems to know more about how they function at times than she should. At other times it’s all “I’m learning a lot from interacting with exactly two civilized vampires.” Add to that a penchant for physical altercations instead of just straight up talking to people as an introduction and you’ve got me rolling my eyes and wondering how she’s not dead yet. Definitely nowhere near the levels of competence in characters I’ve seen her compared to in other reviews (Kate Daniels and Mercy Thompson, for example).
Three-quarters through now… Jane would definitely be dead in almost any other universe with vampires and vampire power structures. Like, yeah, it’s nice to have a little legal paperwork around to subvert a bit of the old “Master Vampire” things, but dude, you’re lucky the Master Vampire didn’t kill you for subverting his authority… or almost killing his daughter-in-law-to-be. Also, Jane REALLY needs to learn to work with cops. As annoyed as I’ve been getting with the Anita Blake novels and their constant “lets talk about how cops work” thing, having a character just straight up baiting them does not sit well with me. You want access to crime scenes, maybe make nice with the cops instead of baiting them all the time. Wtf, woman.
I honestly do not understand where the praise for Skinwalker comes from. I’ve read much better — not versions, but versions is the only word I’m coming up with — versions of this from other authors. The writing is, in my opinion, not where it needs to be to get across the information that actually needs to be given to the reader. It tries to do the blow-by-blow, super descriptive thing but at the same time doesn’t… see my confusion about the turban. I’m also still confused as to how the ending came about… just… Jane suddenly knows who done it and rushes off to deal with it. I mean, that rather sums up all of Jane’s hunting method, really. Just… ugh. I’m not going to be continuing with the Jane Yellowrock series. Not my cup of tea.
Gonna end this on some stuff I did like though. I liked the skinwalker/liver-eater mythology. Always nice to get something other than bog-standard stuff. I liked what we got of actual vampire mythos. Wanted more of that.
If you’re interested, my notes and highlights are visible for Skinwalker over on GoodReads.
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