quackers reviewed on 8/20/2010 + 45 more book reviews

From reading the book's description and the many glowing reviews, I really expected to like this book. I love many of the things in it--scifi, ghosts and life after death--but I just couldn't get past the author's writing style. To be fair, I didn't finish the book so it might have gotten better later on (IMO life's too short to spend on books you don't enjoy).

The writing isn't so bad that Daniel's Veil is unreadable and, from the other reviews, there are obviously a lot of people who did enjoy it. It was just that, for me, the dialog and characters as well as some elements of the story didn't ring true. For example, the first character you meet is Daniel, a big-city police officer who deals with violent crime on a daily basis. I would expect a cop with a job like that to be tough, street-smart and assertive, maybe a bit damaged emotionally. Instead, Daniel's thoughts and actions felt young and naive and he is nice almost to the point of sainthood. And that wasn't the only thing that struck me as unrealistic. At one point, Daniel wakes up after a car crash covered in blood and walks to the nearest town for help. Although people call a doctor and get him a change of clothes, no one seems at all curious as to what actually happened, how Daniel got to be covered in blood, if anyone else was hurt, etc. Things like that took me out of the story.

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