Cst's Reviews > Golem in My Glovebox

This book is pretty much at the level its predecessor was. Unfortunately it reaches this level from the other direction. It made me wait until I read the next book because I had to ask myself if I was still interested in the series.

While I found the previous book to be overburdened and ultimately falling flat, here we have a good ending that is reached after slogging through boredom.
The story is your basic serial killer/scavenger hunt affair with a bit of a roadstory in as well. And almost none of those really works.
The serial killer works well enough providing a villain that works out well as threatening hazy presence despite only really appearing in the latter part of the book. This keeps up even through direct confrontation, even though the explanation of the powers used is flimsy at best. (view spoiler)[ More the shame that ultimately she is once again only another miniboss on the way to the final confrontation. A neat cut might have worked better. (hide spoiler)]
But the serial killer has a scavenger hunt planned and that is where the story goes off the rails. A good scavenger hunt can keep the story going and provide both structure and suspense. The one in this book provides a structure without any suspense and even fails in progressing the story. The conclusion is clear as soon as the hunt begins leaving the whole construction as a handy “x kills required until the end”-counter. In the end, this did become useful again because it showed me how long I still had to go.
And I checked often. Because the other story element was a roadtrip across the USA but in a way that takes out all the fun those things can have. Since driving somewhere for hours and days is pretty dull most of it is skipped over, leading to a succession of motel rooms where not terribly interesting things happen. Much of the book consists of “hearing about a problem – driving there – dealing with the problem – driving back” and repeat. The problems never get that interesting except for one entertaining interlude by the Leprechaun mafia.

In the end, there just was not enough. The time spent on the road heavily outnumbers the time something happens and even then it is not enough. Decent beginning and end are connected by three quarters boredom.
While reading I had the thought, that both this book and the previous one would probably have made better books if you took all the ideas and plots and mixed them more evenly, maybe that says everything about the level of entertainment I had.