Wednesday 7 May 2014

'Wolves' by Simon Ings







You're told never to judge a book by it's cover, but if a book doesn't look good you are not going to pick it up. I read an awful lot, I work in a bookstore and yet I do judge books by their covers. And once in a blue moon along comes a book to teach me a lesson, 'Wolves' was one of them.
You see, 'Wolves' has a fantastic cover. It's dark, grainy, haunting and menacing. It has a giant wolfesque creature on it and the title 'Wolves'. The book however is NOT about wolves, there are no wolves in it, there isn't even a gang with a 'pack mentality'! The only reason this book is called Wolves is that 'Dull guy in marketing has a series of horrendous events happen to him, but just gets on with his life' was a terrible (although accurate) title.
Don't get me wrong, the book isn't badly written and there are some interesting ideas in it. Basically it's the invention of 'augmented reality' a kind of souped-up Google glass, that mixes adverts and computer games into your everyday surroundings. But the story doesn't focus on this, or on anything. The book reads like a huge series of sub-plots interwoven together, there's the augmented reality, the cheating with his best friends wife, the 'murder' of his Mother, an apocalyptic novel about a flood, changing relationships and so on. But as none of them take the main stage (as it were) you're left with a book of nothing but sub-plots, which reads like nothing is happening and yet you know lots did!
I Would not recommend this book. Lovely cover though...

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