THE LOCH

WELL, THIS ONE WAS DIFFERENT!

The story was written by your go-to guy for BIG FISH EPICS, Steve Alten, copyrighted 2005 and published by good old Tor Books.

I have to start right out by telling you that I began reading this one, then SET IT ASIDE FOR MONTHS because it was BORING ME TO TEARS. The first 200 or so pages were nothing but BLATHERING about the protagonist's lousy childhood and bleak romantic and job prospects. Tell you what, the closer I get to entering the water forever, the harder it is to sit through all this yip yap about some human's CHILDHOOD ISSUES. Until we have some more cultural turn-over in the USA, THIS IS WHAT WE ARE GOING TO BE STUCK WITH when reading a book geared for a human audience.

Obviously, I eventually picked it up again, because, hey, HERE WE ARE. It looks as if I set it aside just when Steve decided to get to THE GOOD PARTS. You know what I mean. The parts about THE LOCH NESS MONSTER. The pace picked up nicely -- I finished the last 3/4 of the book in a day -- and the solution was actually COMPLETELY SATISFYING, not to mention imaginative. There was some pretty good action in here, a very nice suspense level and a delightfully unlikely ending. Alten did a good job of helping me see it as it happened, and you know not every author is good at THAT.

TOO BAD THEY GAVE THE WHOLE STORY AWAY WITH THE JACKET ILLUSTRATION, AND THEN DID IT ALL OVER AGAIN IN THE FIRST FEW PAGES OF THE BOOK.

Well, OK, they didn't give the WHOLE story away. But to a fish reader, it's pretty obvious. I also had to shake my head when I saw that the hero guy went in and dealt with the situation at last, not because it was the right thing to do or because he was the best man for the job, but because he needed to RESOLVE HIS CHILDHOOD ISSUES.