{"id":830,"date":"2012-07-20T09:03:26","date_gmt":"2012-07-20T16:03:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/books.randolphking.com\/?p=830"},"modified":"2012-07-28T09:11:14","modified_gmt":"2012-07-28T16:11:14","slug":"portlandtown-a-tale-of-the-oregon-wyldes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/books.randolphking.com\/?p=830","title":{"rendered":"Portlandtown: A Tale of the Oregon Wyldes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.librarything.com\/work\/12549161\" target=\"_self\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 12px; margin-right: 12px;\" src=\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/P\/1250006643.01._SX140_SY224_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg\" alt=\"Portlandtown: A Tale of the Oregon Wyldes\" align=\"left\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This is a book about voodoo, a hanged man, a magic gun, and zombies.  On the cover, the author is compared favorably to Stephen King, and to top it off, the story takes place in Oregon, in Astoria and Portland.  It sounds like it could be fun.<\/p>\n<p>The back cover was probably the best part.  <\/p>\n<p>The characters are all fairly shallow and single-minded.  They don\u2019t have any hang-ups or flaws.  Then the minor characters seem to be in place to help move the plot along, at times providing much more information and help than seems reasonable for their characters.  <\/p>\n<p>Not quite half-way through the book, the author decided to provide some background information on the characters.  The stories were very terse, provided new skills, didn\u2019t fit the characters, and weren\u2019t substantiated.  For instance, the marshall\u2019s son-in-law who owns a bookstore and runs a special investigation service started out as a horse thief.  The marshall turns out to be a Nez Perce indian with special abilities not mentioned previously.  <\/p>\n<p>When the zombies did arrive, the author didn\u2019t build suspense or intrigue.  He didn\u2019t even have the token character there to be overwhelmed or scared off.  They just appeared.  <\/p>\n<p>The author did have some good ideas, he just doesn\u2019t have the skill to tell the story.  This is one of very few books that I won\u2019t finish.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a book about voodoo, a hanged man, a magic gun, and zombies. On the cover, the author is compared favorably to Stephen King, and to top it off, the story takes place in Oregon, in Astoria and Portland. It sounds like it could be fun. The back cover was probably the best part. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/books.randolphking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/books.randolphking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/books.randolphking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/books.randolphking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/books.randolphking.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=830"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/books.randolphking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":835,"href":"https:\/\/books.randolphking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830\/revisions\/835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/books.randolphking.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/books.randolphking.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/books.randolphking.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}