Instead, Priest gives up on exploring the eldritch elements of the town, or exploring Jess’s gray morality, or giving anyone a satisfying ending. I don’t mind that in itself, but if you can’t have a character-driven narrative, at least have a plot-driven narrative. A lot of time, Priest would explicitly write in a connection that would have been more fun to discover on your own – it almost feels insulting to the reader’s intelligence at that point.Īlso, much of the plot was left unresolved. Actually, that was my problem with this book as a whole. The dialogue was expository, too, with characters often saying exactly what they feel. I often had a hard time differentiating between Titus and Dave, two male characters, because neither of them seemed to have any defining personality traits. Still, the book as a whole was a bit of a let down for me, especially coming off of the success that was Anderson’s The Boatman’s Daughter.įor one, almost all of the characters felt incredibly dull. The spooky, supernatural elements of the story were really compelling the fact that everyone in the town accepted the existence of ghosts, of talking dolls, of dogs in trees. Blacking out, the husband wakes up on the road to find his wife missing, and no bridge in sight. Driving to their campsite, they pass over a bridge that’s not on any map. The story takes place in a small town in Georgia, following a couple on their honeymoon. The Toll by Cherie Priest was my next venture into Southern gothicism, with a promising tagline and narrative.
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