03-18-2011, 04:22 AM
(03-14-2011, 12:36 AM)debbie60435 Wrote: Actually, I enjoy the Marilyn Ross "Dark Shadows" series! I have them all and just love them. Then again, I am a die-hard fan of the show as well.
Despite my almost constant irritation while reading any Ross book, he had some good story ideas and I keep picking up his books and saying to myself, "Well, I'll give him one more chance." I tend to rewrite the awkward, amateurish prose in my head as I go. Consider the following paragraph, from The Witch of Goblin's Acres:
Quote:As it turned out, it was just as well she didn't know what lay ahead of her. At that moment, as she sat demurely in the horse car in her tiny aqua bonnet and matching dress with white lace trim, she could not guess what the interview would lead to. Nor could she dream of the danger and threat of the supernatural which would follow. She had as yet never heard of the eerie country estate known as Goblin's Acres. And by the time she learned about it and the phantom threat it posed, it was too late for her to turn back from the terrors it held!
[Meanwhile, the kids in the Mystery Machine were wondering where Shaggy and Scoob had wandered off to . . . ]
Even if one ignores the cheap Stratemeyer-factory prose style, it's pretty hard to get around the fact that Ross never learned the difference between foreshadowing and laying on spoilage with a trowel. And I wish I had a nickel for every gratuitous exclamation point he laid down.
But oh well, we can't all be Shakespeare. I'll probably go on to give Ross "one last chance" more than one last time. His books are not without their own cartoonish allure.
