 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another book review. Today we are talking about John Connolly's Max. That's John Connolly, not Michael Connolly. It's Difference. The first one is Charlie Parker series Every Dead Thing. So this book I tried to read, I don't know how many years ago, and I didn't like it. I think I got 50 to 100 pages into it and I was like, no, I can't do it. I don't remember what I didn't like. I just remembered that I didn't like it. I sold, I had this one and I think two other books in the series, they were not in order. It might have been a matter of me buying the series and realizing that there were like, you know, 17 other books in the series. I don't know. Or maybe it was just that point in my life where I was done with series completely after the Sandman Slim series had upset me after like book four I think it was. It was such a huge let down. And I remember at one point in my life that I just couldn't stand it. Since then I've read the Greg Ile series, Caroline Kepnes' Joe Goldberg series, of course there's only two books in that. But I decided to go back and give this one a try because, and be completely honest with you, the whole reason I went back to try it again is because I was sent the most recent in the book, I think it's book number 18. It's called A Book of Bones, I think it's called. Atria Publishing sent me that for review. And I decided to give the first book a retry. And I'll be damned if I didn't like it. I blew right through it. I had absolutely no problems with it whatsoever. In fact, Louis and Angel are my new favorite side characters, I guess it would be. They're support characters for the main character who is Charlie Parker. In this book we're introduced to Charlie Parker in the very first chapter of the book. In fact, let me go ahead and read you the description. So that way I know what's in the description. I know what I can spoil and what I can't spoil. So, Every Dead Thing. Hailed internationally as a page-turner in a league with the fiction of Thomas Harris. I would actually agree with that. He is as good as Thomas Harris. Maybe a little less as far as the, not the research, but maybe the believability. In Thomas Harris, in his books, I remember believing every single thing. In this, there is a suspension, there's a bug flight around here. It does require a little bit of a suspension of disbelief. But this lyrical and terrifying bestseller is the stunning achievement of an extravagantly gifted new novelist. John Connolly superbly taps into the tortured mind and gritty world of former NYPD detective Charlie Bird Parker. If they'd explained why his name is Bird in this book, I completely missed it. But, I mean, I didn't really, I never wanted to call him Bird. I still don't. He's just Parker or he's Charlie as far as I think of him. Tormented by the brutal, unsolved murders of his wife and young daughter. The book opens up with flashbacks to that scene. Driven by visions of the dead, Parker tracks a serial killer from New York City to the American South who designs his buried instincts for love, survival, and ultimately for killing, awakened as he confronts a monster beyond imagining. I know the rest of this series goes more into a supernatural element. This book didn't, so if you're expecting that right off the bat, I was expecting it the entire book. It wasn't a let down or anything, but I was expecting it and it never came. But with this one, it is much more in the realm of possibility kind of deal. I think there's a bit of maybe psychic or prediction kind of deal roughly in the middle. What struck me odd about the book that I actually enjoyed a lot was the fact that the book feels like four separate novellas. Almost like a mosaic novel where everything ties together, but pretty much every part of the book. There's four different parts, four separate parts in the book. Every single one has its own ending. I thought that was super interesting. I've never read anything like it. I certainly haven't read a thriller like it. Now the book is told in a first person point of view from Charlie's perspective. I dug that quite a bit also. As soon as I finished this one, I picked up Dark Hollow, which is the second book in the series. That one opens up in a third person narrative, so I'm not sure if as the story goes along, kind of like with the pen, what's his last name? A pen cage books from Greg Iles. Those books started as a strict first person point of view, and then they went on to where like an alternating third person, first person kind of deal. Kind of like in the vein of Peter, not Peter, James Patterson. I don't want to scare you guys off, but that's what it ends up being. In this one, I don't think that's the case with Dark Hollow, and I don't think that's the case with the rest of the series, but it is something that I picked up on right away. I'm three chapters into Dark Hollow and already loving it. I plan to binge the entire series, and I will be doing a book birthday for the last book in the series because I got it for review, and I won't be getting to it anytime soon. So I'm going to start this series on Charlie Parker, John Connolly, whatever. I will be doing that. So I will send this to the publisher, so Ariel, if you're watching, this is what you're getting instead of a review for that new book, but I will eventually get to it. I promise it's just I'm enjoying it so much I want to start from the beginning. And I'm glad I did. There's a lot of stuff that happens in here already in Dark Hollow. He's already referenced some of those things, so I'm glad I started from the beginning. From what I understand, A Killing Kind or The Killing Kind is the best book in the series. I don't know. If you guys have read the series, let me know how you feel about that book, or if you think there are better books than that one, let me know down there. It's also book three, A Killing Kind Is, so I'm kind of worried, you know, does it peak that early on? I don't know. Also, one thing I would love to know, so I'm not expecting it, so I'm not, you know, wondering when it's coming, when it's coming, when does the supernatural aspect kick in? Is it in Dark Hollow? Well, of course I'm going to continue reading it. In fact, I might be done with it by the time this video goes up, because I'm way ahead with videos. We'll see. But yeah, so this book, I love Angel, I love Louis, I love Charlie Parker. Rachel was kind of a non-entity for me. I wasn't a huge fan of that character. I didn't hate her. She did nothing for me. She was just kind of there as like a love interest, kind of like a rebound after what happens to his wife and his daughter. I did find the brutality of the killer's crime scenes to be amazing. Someone who likes that kind of thing, who looks for that kind of thing in thrillers, and if it's not gory enough, or if it's not disturbing enough, you know, you're going to lose my attention. But as someone who likes that kind of thing, I thought it did really, really well. Someone did tell me that books get creepier and less gory and less brutal as they go along, but they do get scarier, so I'm looking forward to that. But let's try that again, shall we? Have any of you read any of the Charlie Parker series or any of John Connelly's books? Did you like them? Especially this one. Did you like this one? Did you not like this one? Let me know why, all the why's, why you liked it or why you didn't like it down there in the doobly-doo. And if you post spoilers, please put spoiler four and then the title of the book that you're spoiling. If you're spoiling something else in the series, please let us know that. But until next time, I have any, you have any, this has been another book review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye!