Book Review: 14
We've been trying to get to the library more often these days. (As long as everything is going to stay open, we might as well try to keep the boychild supplied with reading material.) In the interests of not having a completely dead website, I'll chat with y'all about the books I find.
Last week, I read "14," by Peter Clines. It has a nearly ungoogleable title, but I'd endorse digging it up if you like creepy house mysteries. The story is set in a mysteriously cheap apartment building, with the titular Room 14 being a completely sealed and locked door. The protagonist notices an increasing number of oddities and eventually joins up with the other residents to dig to the bottom of the weirdness, which turns out to be extremely deep. The cover blurbs all raved about it being "like 'LOST'," but I can assure you that it is not, in fact, in the sense that in this book, the mysterious signs and symbols all actually have a planned meaning that resolves into a coherent plot. However, I'll concede that the tone of high weirdness and general WTF-ery is somewhat akin to the flavor that LOST was striving to create.
The prose is solidly readable, the characters are amusing and varied, and the plot follows an enjoyable mystery curve of slow build-up to an increasingly hectic resolution. You may catch a faint whiff of harem anime from the first bits, in which our male hetero protagonist meets a series of attractive women with different body types and personalities and thinks about how attractive each of them is in their own ways, but this odd thread is thankfully quickly dropped/resolved without anything actually unpleasant or irritating happening. I don't think it was even intentional, but if it ever was, it got removed in some editing pass or other.
Overall, strong endorsement from me. I might not go out to buy a hard copy for my shelves, but I'd happily pick up more by this author with confidence in my enjoyment or buy some e-book versions. Firm A-Tier. Well done, Mr. Clines.
