Return to the House of Usher

Rating:
Summary: Up: A well paced dark tale. Down: Not the Master.
Review: Robert Poe pens a credible modern tale with enough supernatural undertones to tingle your spine but balanced with modern detective novel explanations whenever reason becomes over-taut. The allusions to Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher are manifold and a pre-re-reading of that classic is recommended. Characters in "Return..." are well rounded, with one or two minor exceptions (the mob lawyer from up North) and the details of the plot ahead are never easily guessed although I saw some of the underpinnings well ahead of the central character, Charles Poe, but we readers aren't blinded by his fateful ancestry. What I missed in this story was the archaic (even in the 1800's) diction of E.A.Poe and his semantic mastery. Rarely in "Return..." is there a well turned run-on sentence or a sequence of multisyllabic verbage to cause a mental tongue twister causing the reader to pause, and consider.

Rating:
Summary: Up: A well paced dark tale. Down: Not the Master.
Review: Robert Poe pens a credible modern tale with enough supernatural undertones to tingle your spine but balanced with modern detective novel explanations whenever reason becomes over-taut. The allusions to Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher are manifold and a pre-re-reading of that classic is recommended. Characters in "Return..." are well rounded, with one or two minor exceptions (the mob lawyer from up North) and the details of the plot ahead are never easily guessed although I saw some of the underpinnings well ahead of the central character, Charles Poe, but we readers aren't blinded by his fateful ancestry. What I missed in this story was the archaic (even in the 1800's) diction of E.A.Poe and his semantic mastery. Rarely in "Return..." is there a well turned run-on sentence or a sequence of multisyllabic verbage to cause a mental tongue twister causing the reader to pause, and consider.

Rating:
Summary: A great Read!
Review: This book had me captivated from page 1. The author did more than just "update" Poe's original tale--he made it his own. Although you may have an inkling half-way through of the final conclusion, if you are reading it during a big windstorm at night, you don't really notice. I would recommend this book for any Poe lover & I look forward to reading other books of Robert Poe.

Rating:
Summary: A great Read!
Review: This book had me captivated from page 1. The author did more than just "update" Poe's original tale--he made it his own. Although you may have an inkling half-way through of the final conclusion, if you are reading it during a big windstorm at night, you don't really notice. I would recommend this book for any Poe lover & I look forward to reading other books of Robert Poe.

Rating:
Summary: Poe meets the Hardy Boys
Review: Well, Poe doesn't exactly meet the Hardy Boys, but this disappointing thriller feels a bit like an updated Hardys adventure. The characterizations and plotting are simplistic, the dialogue rarely rings true, and the attempt to foist this off as anything resembling the work of Edgar Allan Poe fails almost completely. I say "almost" because, three or four times, the author does manage to get out an interesting bit of atmosphere in homage to Poe's style and to the original story of the Ushers. The novel starts with a promising set-up (a modernization of "Fall of the House of Usher") and a compelling first chapter, but falls off right away and never recovers. The supposedly shocking twist at the end will be all too clear too early on to any thinking readers, especially readers who know the original story. The book is a mystery potboiler, plain and simple (the supernatural elements are weak and explained away completely), with little to recommend it besides the novelty of the author's name.

Rating:
Summary: Poe meets the Hardy Boys
Review: Well, Poe doesn't exactly meet the Hardy Boys, but this disappointing thriller feels a bit like an updated Hardys adventure. The characterizations and plotting are simplistic, the dialogue rarely rings true, and the attempt to foist this off as anything resembling the work of Edgar Allan Poe fails almost completely. I say "almost" because, three or four times, the author does manage to get out an interesting bit of atmosphere in homage to Poe's style and to the original story of the Ushers. The novel starts with a promising set-up (a modernization of "Fall of the House of Usher") and a compelling first chapter, but falls off right away and never recovers. The supposedly shocking twist at the end will be all too clear too early on to any thinking readers, especially readers who know the original story. The book is a mystery potboiler, plain and simple (the supernatural elements are weak and explained away completely), with little to recommend it besides the novelty of the author's name.