 Dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun Hello everybody ii here welcome back to another book review today we are talking about victor laval's the change name Yeah, um loved this book right off the bat for you guys that just want to know whether or not I like something So you guys can click away and go and grab the book yourself. I love this book. I did have some very, very small issues with some of the dialogue. It felt clunky and forced in parts, especially there not really toward the end, but maybe about the three quarter mark somewhere around there. The dialogue felt a bit forced to simply to get across story details or things that were going to be important by the end of the book. And of course when we got to the end of the book, they were used. But other than that, I had a blast with this. One of the things that I enjoyed the most was Laval. He always takes chances. That's one of the big things that I appreciated in The Devil in Silver, I think that was. That's my favorite one. And also in Big Machine, which I like slightly less than this one and The Devil in Silver. Big Machine had some great concepts. Some of the characters did not float my boat as it were. I did appreciate the main character and whatnot. But in this one, I loved everybody that was on screen. I especially liked Wheeler. But one of the big things, as far as I don't want to give any spoilers, but I especially liked Wheeler's character. The main character, Apollo, was great too. But what I especially liked about this book was the fact that the father was the hero. It was his journey. Usually when you read books about either stolen children or avenge stories about dead children or whatever, it's the mother. We follow the mother around and it's rarely ever the father. But most of the time, these books make you feel like the father is either a bystander or the father doesn't care enough about the situation to actually do anything and it always falls on the mother. It's the mother's role to defend or avenge the child. Now you do have things like death wish, things like that, but rarely in literature do you see a male character being a father, being a strong father figure. And that's what I liked most about Apollo was the fact that he was a caring father. I'm a big supporter of course of dads being dads, of taking care of their kids. It aggravates me anytime you see on Twitter where a dad goes, I had the baby set the kids today, you're not a baby setter, you're their father. But it's a pet peeve of mine and it was nice to see this time around just in this instance the father actually going the extra mile or losing his damn mind over what happens to the child in this book or what may happen to this child in this book. I'm going to leave it completely open. There are answers in the book of course, but I'm not going to let you know. Another thing that really, really cemented my love for this book is Laval's commitment to the story. He goes both barrels, he goes into the story and he commits. That is so lacking nowadays, especially in literary horror fiction. Paul Tremblay's really bad about not committing to his endings, really not committing to anything throughout the story because by the time you get to the end of his books it's like, maybe it was this, maybe it was that, I'm going to let you decide. Or you have Josh Mailerman who just kind of just leaves it all to the imagination of the reader. And there's a lot to be said about that. There's a scene in this book with something unseen at a certain part in the middle of the book that is terrific. It is not really what Bird Box should have been, not really at all, but you don't see the monster. But by the end of it, you get enough information to have filled in the blanks. And then the end is amazing. It's another thing you just don't see is a literary author going full bore into an ending. It's like all bets are off, no holds barred, let's do this thing. I appreciated it so much that there was no literary ambiguity. He says, this is what happens. This is what you're seeing. This is it. And I loved every minute of it. Is that going to upset some people? Sure it is. Do I care? Not really. But this is a great book and it's so much fun and if you have not read it, I suggest you go out and pick it up. Like I said, as far as the only problem I had with it, it's very, very nitpicky and that's with some, a little bit, little bit, probably about a total of maybe four or five paragraphs of clunky dialogue in a 430 page book. But until next time, I have been E, you have been U. This has been another book review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye. Y'all still here? Yeah, you know how we do now. Okay, so spoilers, spoiler alert for the, for the changeling. This, so here's a part, the part that I was talking about in the review with the, the part that's not seen when I guess it's the big one can swim. That was a great line. Another line is you don't beg him. You beg me. That just, that gives me goosebumps right now, just thinking about it. But the scene on North Brother Island where they're running away from this unseen thing that's just crashing through trees and shit, when the tree is thrown, like the troll just fucking chucks the tree over the hill over Wheeler and everything or kindergarten, whatever the hell you want to call the dude, when he chucks the tree, I was like, holy shit, we in this. That was great. In fact, even in the book, I think the line is a fucking tree, like a tree when smiling, when, when end over end through the, through the air, then he goes, a tree went through the air, a fucking tree, and that's what he says in the book, but then the, the part where, where, where Emma is, is killing Wheeler, where she's hitting him with the fucking pitchfork and she says, you don't beg him. You beg me. I'm like, damn, this is bad ass. In fact, I think my comment in the, in the, because the Kindle version, I was using that for notations. I do, I do have both because the Kindle version was on sale for $1.99 one day. But that, I highlighted that and I was like, bad fucking ass. That was a great scene. So much of this book, I was just like, yes. And that's what I'm missing from today's literary fiction. I read, you know, Paul Tremblay or Josh Malerman and these two, I know I keep harping on these two guys, but they are a perfect example of everything I think is wrong with horror nowadays. I know that's an unpopular opinion, I don't care. But it's just so much fun. And there was some horror elements in this that I really, really appreciated. Like when Wheeler or kindergarten, whatever you want to call him, is in the cell and you, you can only really make out like the shape of him or the shadow of him. Man, there's so much good. It reminds me of what he did in the Ballad of Black Tom. I'm not going to spoil that for you, even though we're in spoilers here. I prefer to spoil it in a video about that. But this book is great. I really don't have anything negative to say about it. And I was searching, I was really being nitpicky when I picked out that clunky dialogue, but it did, I guess because the rest of the book was so fucking amazing that anytime that he went, you know, like below the belt kind of deal, anytime he hit below the belt, I called him on it. But anyways, that's everything I got to say. Did you read it? Did you like it? Let me know. I hope so if you're in the spoilers zone, either that or you're Sarah, and you don't care about spoilers, buh-bye.