Charlson Ong

White Lady, Black Christ

This book started out as 4/5, quickly plummeting to a 1.5 halfway thru. It is 80% dialogue, and would have been okay if it wasn’t bad dialogue. Everyone TALKS THE SAME (in a forced badass, cool person way), talks so much, talks about unnecessary and irrelevant things, and talk so unnaturally, like they know they’re characters in a book. And they just know things that are convenient for the plot for some reason 😭. Everyone has a short attention span and randomly inserts things about themselves to build their character. They all act like stereotypes of action movie token characters.

I CANNOT root for anyone in this book. Everyone is so unlikeable and so flat except for Basilio and Fr. Jaguar. Tata Peping was cool and they ruined his character by making him act in the most un-Tata Peping ways near the end, and we don’t even hear from him during the climax of the story. He’s just… gone.

Action scenes were so hard to read, bcus there was too much dialogue (confusing dialogue, layouted in a way that doesn’t formalistically make sense). Action scenes felt rushed as opposed to quick paced, we go from one moment to the next and then it ended without you realizing it. It’s like watching a Scooby Doo chasing scene.

1.5 points bcus I have immense respect for Charlson Ong and his previous works, and bcus the set up for the story was great. It really seemed half baked halfway thru.

funaay

This book started out as 4/5, quickly plummeting to a 1.5 halfway thru. It is 80% dialogue, and would have been okay if it wasn’t bad dialogue. Everyone TALKS THE SAME (in a forced badass, cool person way), talks so much, talks about unnecessary and irrelevant things, and talk so unnaturally, like they know they’re characters in a book. And they just know things that are convenient for the plot for some reason 😭. Everyone has a short attention span and randomly inserts things about themselves to build their character. They all act like stereotypes of action movie token characters.

I CANNOT root for anyone in this book. Everyone is so unlikeable and so flat except for Basilio and Fr. Jaguar. Tata Peping was cool and they ruined his character by making him act in the most un-Tata Peping ways near the end, and we don’t even hear from him during the climax of the story. He’s just… gone.

Action scenes were so hard to read, bcus there was too much dialogue (confusing dialogue, layouted in a way that doesn’t formalistically make sense). Action scenes felt rushed as opposed to quick paced, we go from one moment to the next and then it ended without you realizing it. It’s like watching a Scooby Doo chasing scene.

1.5 points bcus I have immense respect for Charlson Ong and his previous works, and bcus the set up for the story was great. It really seemed half baked halfway thru.

White Lady, Black Christ

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