Anthony Zuiker's Level 26: Dark Origins reviewed by jseger9000
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1jseger9000
I was looking for a quicky read to finish the year, so I picked up Level 26: Dark Origins.
This is a first draft cobbled together during spare moments at work, so I am concerned with how it flows. Please feel free to critique any other issues you see as well.
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There is a master serial killer on the loose code-named Sqweegel(!). He has never left any speck of evidence because he wears a full body, latex ‘murder suit’. Steve Dark, a retired federal agent (retired due to his previous run-in with Sqweegel) is forced out of retirement to investigate.
Level 26: Dark Origins is the first novel in a proposed trilogy. Conceived by CSI creator Anthony Zuiker and written by comics author Duane Swierczynski, it is calling itself the world's first digi-novel(tm). What that means to you is that every twenty-pages or so there will be a web-link. Going to that link will result in a short film clip. I didn't feel like providing my email address to sign up to the site, so I have not watched the clips myself. They are not necessary to follow the novel anyway.
The writing is smooth as silk. I read fifty-six pages on my first go. Any time I would sit down with the book, twenty pages minimum would zip by. The style used was so easy-going, I felt like I was speed reading. This might sound like a knock, but considering what the book was designed for, I feel like that was a real accomplishment. In fact, I had a large number of problems with the book (see below) but the flow of the writing is what kept me from just abandoning it.
As fast paced entertainment, the book works. But if you give things even a moment's thought, it collapses. Dark is a retired federal agent, his wife is never shown to be employed at all. Yet they live in a million dollar Malibu beach home filled with designer items. How? Dark's old boss is forced to recruit Dark under a literal threat of death. Why? This just seemed ridiculous and didn't add anything to the story. It seemed like lazy storytelling to me. Like a ticking bomb was easier to use than characterization.
The characters are too flat to empathize with much, the seemingly psychotic Secretary of Defense feels pointless and over the top and the killer doesn't have enough background provided to make him interesting and seems to comic-booky supervillain. All of this together makes it awfully difficult to suspend my disbelief enough to really get into the story. There's nothing here that hasn't been done a million times before, and done better.
And that I guess is my real problem with the book. It is so obviously a product. I didn't so much get the feeling that Anthony Zuiker had a really good story idea that he just wanted to get out there. Instead I got the feeling that he had an 'entertainment concept' and started putting that package together. The novel is only one part of it and I'd be willing to bet that Mr. Zuiker had no part in the writing of it. Duane Swierczynski (who, if this was a traditional novel should have his name displayed at the same size as his 'co-author') does a good enough job at keeping the story interesting and moving along at a whip-crack pace. But there's no passion to it. No quirk or idiosyncrasy that makes the book memorable. And the nick-name Sqweegel is just dumb, no matter how they try to explain it.
This is a first draft cobbled together during spare moments at work, so I am concerned with how it flows. Please feel free to critique any other issues you see as well.
---
There is a master serial killer on the loose code-named Sqweegel(!). He has never left any speck of evidence because he wears a full body, latex ‘murder suit’. Steve Dark, a retired federal agent (retired due to his previous run-in with Sqweegel) is forced out of retirement to investigate.
Level 26: Dark Origins is the first novel in a proposed trilogy. Conceived by CSI creator Anthony Zuiker and written by comics author Duane Swierczynski, it is calling itself the world's first digi-novel(tm). What that means to you is that every twenty-pages or so there will be a web-link. Going to that link will result in a short film clip. I didn't feel like providing my email address to sign up to the site, so I have not watched the clips myself. They are not necessary to follow the novel anyway.
The writing is smooth as silk. I read fifty-six pages on my first go. Any time I would sit down with the book, twenty pages minimum would zip by. The style used was so easy-going, I felt like I was speed reading. This might sound like a knock, but considering what the book was designed for, I feel like that was a real accomplishment. In fact, I had a large number of problems with the book (see below) but the flow of the writing is what kept me from just abandoning it.
As fast paced entertainment, the book works. But if you give things even a moment's thought, it collapses. Dark is a retired federal agent, his wife is never shown to be employed at all. Yet they live in a million dollar Malibu beach home filled with designer items. How? Dark's old boss is forced to recruit Dark under a literal threat of death. Why? This just seemed ridiculous and didn't add anything to the story. It seemed like lazy storytelling to me. Like a ticking bomb was easier to use than characterization.
The characters are too flat to empathize with much, the seemingly psychotic Secretary of Defense feels pointless and over the top and the killer doesn't have enough background provided to make him interesting and seems to comic-booky supervillain. All of this together makes it awfully difficult to suspend my disbelief enough to really get into the story. There's nothing here that hasn't been done a million times before, and done better.
And that I guess is my real problem with the book. It is so obviously a product. I didn't so much get the feeling that Anthony Zuiker had a really good story idea that he just wanted to get out there. Instead I got the feeling that he had an 'entertainment concept' and started putting that package together. The novel is only one part of it and I'd be willing to bet that Mr. Zuiker had no part in the writing of it. Duane Swierczynski (who, if this was a traditional novel should have his name displayed at the same size as his 'co-author') does a good enough job at keeping the story interesting and moving along at a whip-crack pace. But there's no passion to it. No quirk or idiosyncrasy that makes the book memorable. And the nick-name Sqweegel is just dumb, no matter how they try to explain it.
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