another link in the chain

Roman left the family business, a crematory, and its town to become an accountant to the rich and famous. His sister now runs the crematory with their father, while their younger brother Dante stays on the rolls but his actual profession is being a drug addict and ne'er do well. When the kids were teenagers, their mother vanished. Their father is widely suspected of having murdered his wife and cremated his body, but no proof was ever found. When the book opens, Roman hears that his father is in the hospital, victim of a suspicious accident. He heads home to visit his father and help out his sister. Naturally, he immediately gets embroiled in trouble.

I've loved or liked all of Cosby's previous books and was very excited for this one - especially given the crematory setting. (Cosby himself ran a funeral home with his wife.) Unfortunately, I did not like or feel connected to any of the characters in this one, and so I didn't care what happened to them. Cosby's characters are typically criminals who do bad things, but in his other books, I understand the reasons they are who they are and like them even if I wouldn't want to meet them in real life. But in this one, fairly early on, Roman - who I already didn't feel connected to - commits an act of horrifying cruelty that seems completely unmotivated.

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It's possible that this is explained later, and my guess is that the explanation is "Roman is actually a sadistic sociopath," but I lost all interest in him at that point, and DNF'd the book as I no longer wanted to read about him, none of the other characters interested me either, and the sadistic sociopath explanation doesn't help. I heard an interview with Cosby where he talks about wanting to write a classic tragedy with a very bad protagonist a la Macbeth, which makes his intention make more sense to me, but it doesn't make me want to return to the book.

Cosby is a great author but this book was a miss for me. I HIGHLY recommend Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears for very well-written books where bad people do bad things that are very motivated, and you can't help rooting for them to succeed. I recommend All Sinners Bleed for a well-written book about a good guy fighting both crime and legal bad things. I recommend My Darkest Prayer for a fun, OTT thriller with a very Marty Stu protagonist. I don't recommend this.

Thank you for writing for me! If you have any questions, please check with the mods. I am a very easy recipient and will be delighted with whatever you write for me. I have no special requirements beyond what's specifically stated in my DNWs. I'm fine with all POVs (i.e., first, second, third), tenses, ratings, story lengths, etc.

My AO3 name is Edonohana. I am open to treats. Very open. I love them.

This year I have gone for a slate of obscure-even-for-Yuletide canons plus a few less obscure canons with obscure-even-for-Yuletide characters. Some of my prompts are longer than others, but I want everything equally.

I like hurt-comfort, action/adventure, horror, domestic life, worldbuilding, evocative descriptions, camaraderie, loyalty, trauma recovery, difficult choices, survival situations, mysterious places and weird alien technology, food, plants, animals, landscape, X-Men type powers, learning to love again or trust again or enjoy life again, miniature things or beings, magic, strange rituals, unknowable things, epistolary fiction, found footage/art/creepy movies/etc, canon divergence AUs anf alternate versions of characters. I particularly love deadly/horrifying yet weirdly beautiful settings, especially if there's elements of space/time/reality warping as well. And many other things, too, of course! That list is just in case something sparks an idea.

( General DNWs )

( Crossroad - Barbara Hambly )

( Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin )

( Fire Dancer Series - Ann Maxwell )

( Ki and Vandien Quartet - Megan Lindholm )

( The Last Hot Time - John M. Ford  )

( Lyra - Patricia Wrede )