Julio Biason
4 years ago
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title = "Swan Song - Robert R. McCammon" |
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date = 2020-11-18 |
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[taxonomies] |
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tags = ["books", "reviews", "fiction", "2020 challenge", "3 stars"] |
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[GoodReads Summary](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12972591-swan-song): |
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Swan is a nine-year-old Idaho girl following her struggling mother from one |
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trailer park to the next when she receives visions of doom—something far wider |
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than the narrow scope of her own beleaguered life. In a blinding flash, nuclear |
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bombs annihilate civilization, leaving only a few buried survivors to crawl |
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onto a scorched landscape that was once America. |
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{{ stars(stars=3) }} |
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I'm a sucker for disaster movies, so it could be that a disaster book (would |
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also pick my attention. And it did, in a way. |
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There is this huge disaster of nuclear bombs falling over US and Russia, and a |
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few survivors have to take care of themselves. All set for a good story, but |
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things get in the way of it. |
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For example, the girl in the title (and summary): It could be interesting to |
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explore how someone so young would be a survivor in a place completely |
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destroyed, but she shows some special powers that are never explained -- and |
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no, it was not the radiation from the bombs, a là Marvel super-heroes. |
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There is the bag lady in a quest that may be the only story that really fits |
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the context: A survivor of the streets, now trying to survive in the rumble of |
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civilization. |
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And there is the plot from the people who got shelter in a made-up bunker, |
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which should be used only for recreation purposes ("This is how you'd live if |
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this was a real bunker and there was a nuclear strike outside") that got caught |
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in the middle, which should be a good exploration, but end up being the story |
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that could be ripped out of the whole with very little loss. And sadly, that's |
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not just this plot that gets unnecessary stuff: Fights that lead to nowhere, |
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longs explanation of clothing people are wearing that affect absolutely nothing |
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in the whole and on and on. |
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On top of that, there is a [MacGuffin |
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device](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin) floating around that is never |
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explained how it works, how it came to be, it's used once, in a test, providing |
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a complete game changer which is never used again after that. |
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So you end up with an unexplained phenomena (actually, more than one, as the |
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story progressed), something interesting and a bunch of completely unnecessary |
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stuff. I read somewhere that there were talks to make the book a movie, which |
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would be hard for a 900+ book, but if you consider the amount of stuff that |
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doesn't add anything, sure, it fits fine in an around-two-hours movie. |
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