Ladies' Night by
Jack Ketchum
My rating:
2 of 5 stars
I'm lost for words.
Ladies' Night had a hype about it. What with the author's introduction of the book's history and how it shrank in size to its current number of pages, and how it was buried and reworked to death.
The gore didn't bother me, the "disgusting" scenes were graphic but I've seen similar things in horror movies.
Yet it didn't sit well with me.
It wasn't the lack of the source of that chemical spillage that turned women into monsters either. I've watched or read pieces of fiction that did that (not explaining the "why it happened"). Even though it isn't nice not to have or be able to guess at answers, I can deal with that.
Finally, I understood what I missed. It was a sense of direction. I couldn't see where this book was going, what lesson, if any, to be learned. But most of all, I was left with a vast void the book's beginning created and its ending failed to fill.
It was like being hungry and someone offers you to eat "air". There was nothing in me at the end, no emotion, no regret, no anger, no disappointment, no joy.
The 2 stars are for the author's creativity at coming up with tight spots and managing to get his characters out of them. They are also for the imaginative gruesome deaths.
Could it be that because this book was shortened and was worked on by several people that something fell through the cracks?
I guess that "something" is what I missed in this book.
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