foxrain reviewed Dexter An Omnibus by Jeff Lindsay
None
2 stars
I have watched the series and liked it okay, so I decided to try the books. For once, I think the series is better.
By far, the best part of the trilogy is the first book, Darkly Dreaming Dexter. The two others were okay but had many annoying features and quite few good ones. Some of the annoyances, even in the first book, were small things in the content: like Dexter being, "I was right about the space being a studio", but then he describes a darkroom. Also the plot is illogical at times. For example, in the second book, a police officer (Doakes) is held captive for days by a crazy murderer that the police are chasing, but no one in the police department seems to be aware of his plight – or even care that he suddenly just vanishes. That seems highly unlikely. In the third book, the …
I have watched the series and liked it okay, so I decided to try the books. For once, I think the series is better.
By far, the best part of the trilogy is the first book, Darkly Dreaming Dexter. The two others were okay but had many annoying features and quite few good ones. Some of the annoyances, even in the first book, were small things in the content: like Dexter being, "I was right about the space being a studio", but then he describes a darkroom. Also the plot is illogical at times. For example, in the second book, a police officer (Doakes) is held captive for days by a crazy murderer that the police are chasing, but no one in the police department seems to be aware of his plight – or even care that he suddenly just vanishes. That seems highly unlikely. In the third book, the police are wondering, "Where could they be hiding a huge statue?", and not a single detective or officer in Miami police thinks of islands.
A bigger issue was how unlikeable and/or uninteresting most of the characters were. In a book about a psychopath serial killer, you'd maybe expect him to be the most unlikeable one. However, Deborah is by far the worst character in the books. She's entitled, aggressively demanding and whiney 100% of the time with no redeeming or even interesting qualities. She could have become an interesting character after finding out the truth about Dexter, but this aspect is not explored at all. Such a waste of a good plot line. I did like Cody and Astor, though.
All in all, the writing is a bit shoddy and all-around superficial. The characters (except for Dexter maybe) are superficial, the plot is superficial, the setting (police work) is superficial. Dexter is supposed to be this mega charming, sharp and ironic guy. However, his "clever" quips are usually quite unimpressive but still portrayed as brilliant (in his or the author's opinion, it's hard to say). Dexter's analysis of the people, culture, etc. around him is also superficial and very, very normative, frustratingly so. I tried to read it from a point of view that he really just doesn't understand people too well, but it didn't work. In the end, I just ended up thinking, "no wonder you want to murder everyone if you're surrounded by such dull people. After a few years, I'd probably feel like cutting up people too."
The third book was the worst of the lot. For some reason, Lindsay felt the need to give a supernatural explanation to Dexter's urges, and he ended up creating a two-penny demon/ancient god storyline in a series that otherwise seemed to aim for a realistim. It felt weird and out of place. The Dark Passenger was one of the few interesting aspects of the story, and it was completely unnecessary to give it a supernatural origin story.
At least the ending wasn't as huge of a disappointment as in the series, though. I'd even say it was mildly interesting.