Finale by Steen Langstrup REVIEWED

Here's a book I was sent by an author based in Copenhagen, for an honest review. I know very little about the author, or the title prior to this read and review.

What I have gathered is that this was originally written in 2011 in the author's native language, and according to what I've read, popular enough to warrant a  "coming soon" film adaptation, and an English translation, which has arrived now.

In it's marketing, it declares it's a novel on the "tradition of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Hostel, and Saw." Indeed, it is, especially if you consider "tradition" to be a total knock off. Also, it's hardly a novel, running at about 160 pages, much more a novella. Even still, that's a stretch, as it has enough material to warrant a short story, simply drawn out to fulfill a longer format.

Two girls working at a gas station, during "the finale", some big sports event on Denmark, that turns the place into a ghost town. Pretty lost in translation... because I have no idea what that is.

Anyway, some weirdos creep them out periodically, but lolziessss, it's just a false alarm, about forty times. Finally, one of the weirdos kidnaps them and tortures them for a bit. They break free. The end.

That's it.

I did not enjoy this one at all. First, the book is to the brim with typos and errors. I'm not sure if this is because of the translation or a lack of editing or both. Frankly, I don't care. Someone needs to proofread, beta-read, something...because this is atrocious.

Second, the writing style is really awful. It's all told in present tense, which is a truly bizarre choice that doesn't work at all. Once again, I'm not sure if this is due to the translation or what, but reading 160 pages of "she picks up the knife; he turns around; chips are falling"...the book has a strange preoccupation with chips, by the way...it's annoying and juvenile.

Third, and last, nothing happens that any horror fan, at all, could not predict. Nothing. Not one thing. There's a single twist that serves as the books ending, that I called twenty pages in. I'm pretty sure that you'll be able to catch it too.

I guess, it's got some gore and it's a very fast read.  But even that is done rather poorly, in that it's a book that really wants to sit with torture porn big boys, like it proudly spouts on it's synopsis, but there's really not very much of it and what there is, is culled from other sources of greater quality. I've read much bloodier, nastier stuff published three decades ago.   When that's all your book aspires to be, you've better turn that up to an eleven on the gore-o-meter. This thing putters around at a four.

It's just not good.

It leaves me feeling like I really need to start being more judicious about what I agree to review. Lumps of coal like this are taking away from books I actually want to read and may enjoy.

I'm giving it a 1.5/5, which it earns only by making my suffering quick.