Liminal States

The sum is much greater than the individual parts which are a crap western, a so-so noir detective story and an OK sci-fi - all threaded with a horror story. The idea bringing them all together is however fantastic and elevates the book far above its constituent parts.

Beginning as a western, with a blood-spattered tale of outlawery and revenge, followed by a noirish excusrion through 1930s LA and finishing with a sci-fi horror alternate/past/future as the as the final price for terrible gift of apparent immortality granted at the start is finally exacted, this is quite the genre-crossing epic rooted in cosmic horror.

I do not know how to write an introductory paragraph for my review as to what this book is about. After reading 120 pages, I'm still clueless, except that the portion I read involved two men killing each other again and again because they had stumbled on some sort of evil pool of everlasting life.

The writer can describe scenes well, especially pain, suffering, and bloody, gory deaths. I don't know if he can write a likable character, because none of them were that I read about. Mostly, I didn't mind them dying again and again because they were so unlikable, but it became boring. I didn't get to the change in the plot. I did dip into the book several places further on, reading the ending, and it was all still a confusion of no-sense. show more Obviously, this is not a book for me, although, mystifyingly enough, my daughter really did like it and recommended it to me. So, if you like disjointed thoughts, well described bloody and depressing horror, and very obscure plots, this may be the book for you. show less

Very interesting concept that evokes [a:Stephen King|3389|Stephen King|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1261866457p2/3389.jpg]'s [b:The Gunslinger|43615|The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, #1)|Stephen King|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1309288354s/43615.jpg|46575] series. And that may be its weakness too; because to be as epic in scope as this book attempts to be, it needs to feel deeper than it ultimately is.

By the end of the book, it didn't feel as though I 'got' whatever it was that the author was trying to convey. Still not a bad story and worth a read.

This is a terrible book. Overly long, portentous, badly written and humorless. ZP does seem to have done a great job with marketing, however, including a puff piece on Boing Boing, which is what convinced me to take a risk on it. There are also dozens of reviews on Amazon saying that the book is a flawless, genre-smashing masterpiece: I am very sceptical about where those reviews came from because Parsons is not even a competent writer . It's rare that I feel ripped off by a book, even when I don't enjoy it that much, but this was an exception.

A gritty western, a noir-detective mystery and a post apocalyptic nightmare wrapped up into one.

What the heck did I just read?