Title: Universal Harvester
Author: John Darnielle
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 216
Rating: 3.5/5
I’m a big fan of Darnielle’s because he’s the lead singer and songwriter of The Mountain Goats, a band that I love. His lyricism is top drawer and he does a cracking job of sharing stories in just a couple of minutes, and so it’s always interesting to see what he does in a different format.
And I did enjoy this book, although perhaps not as much as I’d been expecting. It started off with a lot of promise and hooked me early on, but then it changed gears and the story headed off in a tangent. I was down with that, but I also can’t help wondering what might have happened if it had maintained its course.
I think the issue is that it begins seeming as though it’s going to be all about the story line, and then a third of the way through it changes to being all about character and setting. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, I guess it just wasn’t quite what I was expecting.
All in all though, if you like the Mountain Goats then you’re going to love this, and even general readers will like it. Good stuff!