Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Carol Evers has a weird medical condition that causes her to drop into a coma that is difficult to distinguish from death. Her husband, Dwight Evers, plots to take advantage of this, bury her alive, and inherit her money. James Moxie, outlaw and Carol’s regretful ex, gets word of the situation and rides to the rescue.

Things I liked:
*Fascinating, original concepts: the character Smoke, "the Rot", the premise itself, and the Trail
*Sheriff Opal. Funny dialogue and behaves like a detective.
*Women who are brave, rescue themselves.
*Bit of weird western, bit of steampunk, bit of supernatural

Things I didn’t:
*The primal fear of being buried alive was never explored. Felt like false advertising.
*There was a lot of awkward, obvious expository or melodramatic dialogue.
*Information revealed in one scene was often repeated in the next. Such a waste of time that could have been used expanding more interesting backstory/character.
*Worst of all, too much telling rather than showing.

I want to see how/why Carol is so threatening to Dwight’s masculinity. I want to see Carol be likeable to everyone in the town. (view spoiler)[I want to see John Bowie’s murder and Carol’s past interaction with the Rot. We learn how Smoke lost his legs but how did he become a pyromaniac? I want to see Carol struggle with the mechanics that her mother designed for the coffin. Learning of her escape through dialogue and exposition made the ending a bit anticlimactic. (hide spoiler)]

After reading this and Incidents Around the House, I think Malerman has some cool ideas but his writing is not for me.