Paul “Scritty” Rone-Clarke

Not a bad read. The characterisations are excellent, the plot is mostly good and the pacing, well, like many SK books, the pacing can be seen as a little slow for some people. King likes to "world build". I read quite a lot of crime fiction and at one point was involved in police work. The issue here is that Holly seems a bit too dim. Too slow to connect the dots. She speaks to members of the police force and exchanges information. The clues would surely have amounted to an idea/hunch/working hypothesis IRL long before they did in the book. If not to Holly then to the law enforcement officers she spoke to. That being said the coronavirus is almost a character in this book, and it impacts many of the interactions. So maybe that's the reason it takes the usually wonderful Holly Gibney at least 100 pages more than it should to put 2 and 2 together. Not a bad book, but not quite Holly at her best. I think in a literary sense Holly needs Bill almost as much as Bill needed Holly. Their conversations in earlier books was a much more natural way of expositing the plot. Now she sits and ruminates over endless cigarettes and we are inside her head reading her thoughts. Ok for now and then, but King leans on this form of exposition a little too often for my liking. Some of the reviews criticise the political tone of the book, however, as King readers will know he inhabits the psyche of his characters with all their foibles. He can believably write pretty deep characterisations of people from many walks of life and with many political and social beliefs. It isn't right to attribute a character's beliefs with SK, though in this case we know from what he has said publicly that he does somewhat agree with Holly Gibney. I'm Ok with that. I agree with many of his thoughts, and disagree with others. I'm not going to let the fact I disagree here and there with the author impact my enjoyment.

Over balanced. The meta game as regards builds and viable play styles are balanced to the point of grey tedium. You know before you start any season what is viable, what you need, and the exact route you need to get it. At which point you are "Generic Demon Hunter 44,176" Blizzard are not prepared to take any risks with balance. If their are imbalances Blizz apologises and fixes them, often within a season. This takes all the exploration, fun and build variation out of the game. Loot drops by the hundred - but that's all meaningless if it isn;t the one single item you need rolled with the stats you need. When a game like Diablo removes the fun from loot and exploration I don't know what's left.. Playing a game that has a more adventurous approach to player build and a less stone-cold attitude to balance was my move. It's not a terrible game. But once you've levelled a few hundred paragon points and understood that player choice is really "the illusion of player choice" the game has lost its shine. It's contemporaries - both single and multi player - are better at keeping me on my toes, experimenting, exploring and playing for fun - than Diablo 3 is.