Book Review - Sleeping Late On Judgment Day
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angels,
book review,
demons,
sleeping late on judgement day,
tad williams,
urban fantasy
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| Cover art courtesy of Barnes and Noble |
Author: Tad Williams
Publisher: DAW (Penguin)
Publication Date: September 2, 2014
Version I Read: Kindle
Rating: 4.25/5
It's been a long time since I've done book reviews, so I figure I should get back into the swing of things. And what better book to do it with than the grand finale to Tad Williams' newest series about angel Bobby "Poor Sap" Dollar?
After the horrifying, gut-wrenching experience that was Happy Hour in Hell, I was eagerly awaiting this last book to see how everything was going to shake out. Unfortunately, I found myself not very satisfied with the conclusion. Oh, don't get me wrong, it's a good book. Like everything else Tad has done, it was very well-written and the prose and humor is great as always. But some plot threads seemed neglected, some others did not have ample foreshadowing, and the ending, in my personal opinion, did not wrap everything up well enough. These are all things I've never seen before in a Tad Williams novel, and I'll admit they bothered me.
Spoilers, ye have been warned.
Let's start with the plot. It was fine and worked within the context of the story okay, but I've seen Tad do much better, especially in terms of foreshadowing, tying it all together at the end, and having nearly every character play some sort of important role. After two books of some incredibly great, cosmic-shaking setups (Happy Hour in particular was extremely thought-provoking and made me want to see our main characters change something about the way this world was set up), nothing much came of it and several seemingly important plot points were left unanswered. Anaita being the one who created the Third Way and her motivations behind it, while they made sense, didn't feel "big enough" after what had been set up in the two previous books. The noir/mystery feel of the story is also nice (in that the main character runs around investigating a mystery and all sorts of weird stuff happens), but I'm afraid in this book it went a little overboard to the point where the plot was a little more all over the place than it should have been.
As for the ending, I'm positive the ambiguous nature was intentional, but I sure hope he's planning another book to wrap up some of the loose ends, because otherwise I'm going to start writing some fanfiction over here. (Where did Sam go? What was Eligor's deal? What was Karael's deal? What's going on in Heaven? What about Sitri and the neo-Nazis? Who the heck is Gustibus? What about the people Bobby met in Hell?) I guess I was expecting too much, but after the first two books I was really rooting for the Third Way to be a thing that would force Heaven and Hell to sort their stuff out at the very least, but ultimately that didn't really happen either. Then again, Bobby gets Caz back even though he doesn't accomplish much of anything else, and I suppose he's happy and that's a reasonable, logical outcome to what he was facing. So in that respect the ending works just fine. But I'm afraid I wanted a little more.
The characters are great as always. Bobby's narration is both funny and heartfelt, and you really feel like you came along with him on this journey. Clarence (sorry, Harrison) and Sam are also- well-developed. (Thinking about it just now, Bobby and Sam kind of have the same dynamic the Dude and Walter from The Big Lebowski have...) The side characters also serve their purposes spectacularly, like were-pig George and crazy Foxy. Unfortunately, no one else really gets the kind of development they need. The Amazons, while I did genuinely like them, come in here in the last book and took up a lot of space that could have been used for development of the other characters or important, neglected plot threads. I know we weren't supposed to find out, but Gustibus' identity was driving me crazy. (Currently, I'm guessing he's God.) I guess Eligor didn't need a ton of further characterization because he just kind of is who he is, but it would have been nice to see a little more of him. Anaita, same thing. Caz is probably the biggest offender - while it's pretty obvious why she doesn't have much to do in the story, I still feel like she was a major character (she's Bobby's entire motivation, after all) that was criminally neglected. Her being Bobby's motivation was fine - Tad did something similar in Tailchaser's Song where it worked beautifully. In this case, however, I felt she needed a lot more "screen time."
Verdict: So while I have to say this is my least favorite Tad Williams series to date (which is basically saying it's still better than most other things I've read), it is still well worth reading.
Neither Karen Lofgren nor Loyalty Press has any affiliation with the author or publisher. This review constitutes Fair Use.
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