“Since I started to read André Vianco's books, I always feel torn between liking his ideas and hating his writing style. And I must say that this is one of the worst books I have read so far. Which is a shame, because the story's core is pretty nice. The main idea is good, it has a solid basis, it does make sense and is justifiable. What really ruins the story is the author's lack of experience in making the story fluid, adding unnecessary details that only add the number of pages without making anything effectively useful from that.
His writing style, with short and direct sentences works pretty well for short stories with few characters, like his own book A Casa. Alas, in Os Sete, it only made me angry, because the phrases were short, but there were too many descriptive elements. Descriptions of scenarios, of characters, of feelings... and a re-description of everything all over again. I must have read the parts of the "unbearable cold" about ten times only in the first half of the book, written in the exact same way. Add that to stupid dialogs that have as the main subject how the lamps, means of transportation and electronic devices work and there you have it. A boring book.
Amidst this complete loss of time going through repeated experiences, the writer ends up getting lost within the new elements that appear later in the book. Yes, there are seven vampires, but in the end of the story you'll probably only remember one or two, because there is too much highlight in a single one.
And since we're talking about characters, there is another features that gave me the impression that the writer had a hard time with: there are WAY TOO MANY characters. This usually isn't so bad when each character is treated as an individual being. There lies the other problem: there are just so many characters, so many vampires, researches, heroes, secondary characters that you will have no idea of the purpose of reading the story of one of the lieutenants's family issues. Meanwhile, you will know nearly nothing of the main hero who's going to save the country all by himself. As a result, the vilains, who had originally awaken as pompous creatures of the 15th century will start to use some sort of speech that has absolutely nothing to do with their own kind, while the military people will start talking in a way that NO ONE speaks nowadays. In other words, their dialogs are just not natural.
Final words about this book: those who don't really have the habit of reading may find it interesting and easy to be read. The ones used to Stephen King's morbid style, Neil Gaiman's dark and mysterious worlds or Anne Rice's lusty characters may want to stay away from Os Sete.”
Hazuki Azai wrote this review Sunday, January 30, 2011.
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