 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to 31 Days of Halloween. Today we are talking about Bentley Little's The Mailman. I'm laughing because this ain't gonna be a positive review, but we're gonna jump into it anyways. So I have over 3,000 horror novels on my Kindle. Well, novel, short story collection, novellas, novel, that's all that stuff. And I wanted to start taking, I wanted to start putting a dent in there. I opened it up and one of the most recent ones I saw was The Mailman. I think I got it on sale. I had to gotten it on sale because I wouldn't have bought the book otherwise. I read the book before when I was much, much younger. I believe it's Bentley Little's first book. Maybe it's University. I can't remember. But it definitely reads like an early Bentley Little, early, early, early. Maybe it's Dominion that was the first. Anyways, it doesn't matter. Let's get on with the review. So I picked this one. I'm gonna try and read I hate reading ebooks. So maybe you could say that I'm a little, maybe you could say I was swayed because I was reading the ebook. I don't know. I don't enjoy the process, but I've read some five star reads that were ebooks. So take that into account. I don't know. Very, very first thing. And after I was done with the book, I went back and tried. Well, I did this a lot while I was reading. Bentley Little has a very, very strict formula that he goes by. Every single scene opens up with a blow by blow description of what the character is either eating or whether or not the character is feeling well. And you might say, well, of course, you want to know what the character is. I don't need to know that they had frosted flakes. I don't need to know that, you know, I don't need a whole chapter, not a chapter. I don't need a whole paragraph or eight. And there is several that it's that long of just catching you up to speed on their day. Get into the content that I want to read. Once you build up the characters and everything, I just but a lot of a lot of older books, especially are like this older horror, because they had to hit a word count to be published to begin with. And I feel like Bentley Little has always written novel length novellas. You can cut out much of the description because it's always reiterated either in dialogue or later on after you actually get to the meat of the story. And that's another thing that you're going to see is you're going to see repetition constantly. You're going to care something's going to happen to a character. That character is then going to go and talk to somebody and rehash their entire story. Sometimes he will he will do something like and then I told him, you know, so on and so forth. And he won't go into detail, but that's because he's already done it three or four times already. The horror in this one is outstanding. And that's why I'm going to give it two stars instead of one. I didn't enjoy this book whatsoever. I hated all of the characters. But the horror elements when you get right down to it, the horror elements Bentley Little is not an author that you give too much of a crap about his characters. That's not why you're there. This is the literature equivalent of a slasher novel. You're there for the body count. You're there for the weird shit. And then this book has all of that stuff. But but as far as, you know, you're going to catch a lot of stuff, especially, and it's going it might even ruin you for Bentley Little when you go and you read these books. And you've watched this review, you're going to start seeing these things. And if I do that to you, I apologize. But it is what it is, man. And every single one of his books is like that. I think the only one that is not is the ignored. That is a very touching book. And I really love that main character. Just the idea behind it really, you know, really touched me. It really I resonated with with the idea of, you know, being ignored because I was bullied throughout. I've been a fat kid. I've been fat my entire life. I was 11 pounds when I was born, my poor mom. Anyways, I was a C-section. So ladies, don't cringe too hard. But yeah, I've always been big, always picked on. So the ignored is a highlight. Also the walking, those two concepts were just so good and original. I wouldn't cared for this. Now it's not to say that the male man is not original. Don't get me wrong. It's the issue I have here is the formula and the filler, the constant repetition of things that have happened earlier in the book at length. I'm not talking about a quick mention to keep you up to speed. I'm talking about at length. But the reason why I picked this is because I've been hard on Bentley a little in the past, especially when I really honed in on his formula is the same thing with Dean Coons. I don't read Dean Coons anymore. And I probably should have skipped this book. But it is what I read it and for the most part I enjoyed it. But here's something that I want you to try. And I mentioned it earlier, but well I was going to mention it and I got off on a tangent, like I normally do. Welcome to Edward Lawrence YouTube channel. Anyways, but you can open up this book and read the first couple of chapters. Okay, very first couple of chapters, two or three, maybe five. After that, all you need to know, all you need to read is the character's name at the beginning of the next chapter so that you know who's involved and then start reading the dialogue. Skim all of the paragraphs with narrative and you're not going to miss a damn thing. That's how repetitive it is. Because if you miss something in the narrative, it's going to be brought up later in dialogue. And I can't think of a single other author that you can only read the dialogue and be okay with the story. That's why I say he writes novel length novellas. But anyways, have you had this experience with Bentley Little? I'd love to hear from you. But main question today is, have you read an author that you can only read the dialogue? And it would be a compliment if the book didn't have brick after brick of needless information that you just don't need to know because later it's going to be talked about in the dialogue. Do you have an author like that? Have you ever tried that with a book? I do it from time to time, especially when I dislike the narrative so that I can get through the book quicker. And I knew what was going to happen. I forgot the ending. The ending is creepy as hell, which is another reason why I'm giving it two instead of a one. Because I really, I did not enjoy this experience except for the blasts of horror. And even at the end, you don't really need to see what has happened. You can literally read the dialogue and figure out what is going on. But anyways, that's been my review. Have you read this one? Let me know whether or not you liked it, loved it, hated it, knew about it, all that good stuff. But let me know why you felt that way so that we can have a discussion. But until next time, I have been E, you have been U. This has been another 31 days of Halloween episode. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye bye.