01-15-2012, 04:38 PM
I just finished this book and enjoyed it. My only previous experience reading Barbara Michaels was Houses of Stone, which I disliked intensely, and did not finish.
It appears (at least from these two books) that the characters in Barbara Michaels' books tend to bicker a lot. The bickering is of a petty, egotistical nature and creates an unpleasant, irritating mood; it may serve to reveal character but it does not, in my opinion, advance the plot in any way. In Houses of Stone I found myself so bored with the characters that I simply threw the book aside. The characters were such terrible self-absorbed creatures that I had absolutely no interest in their plight and I just wished them all to hell.
In Ammie, Come Home, the characters do bicker (the two male alphas), but at least this adversarial relationship mirrors an important conflict in the story, and this mirroring is handled with subtlety.
Ammie, Come Home is a fine example of a character-driven ghost story, though I would call it a borderline "Gothic" if at all. Granted the story takes place in a historic old home in Georgetown, replete with a revolutionary war legend and rooms with cold spots. But the mood isn't what I would call gothic; it feels very contemporary even if set in the late 1960s (and rather dated now), and the tone is too chatty for the gothic atmosphere to ever really settle. Michaels' books seem to be very busy, and there isn't much calm between thunderclaps to reflect, brood, and gnaw one's nails about when the next one is coming. Being character-driven the book contains a lot more dialogue than the standard gothic, though there is certainly adequate description of the setting. On the other hand, the house itself is definitely a character in the story, one of the traits of a gothic. And Michaels does a very good job helping the reader to see the story, as if watching a movie.
Based on how much I liked this book, I would like to read more Michaels/Peters/Mertz books, but having been prejudiced by my unpleasant experience with Houses of Stone, I'm not sure where to go next. Any recommendations?
It appears (at least from these two books) that the characters in Barbara Michaels' books tend to bicker a lot. The bickering is of a petty, egotistical nature and creates an unpleasant, irritating mood; it may serve to reveal character but it does not, in my opinion, advance the plot in any way. In Houses of Stone I found myself so bored with the characters that I simply threw the book aside. The characters were such terrible self-absorbed creatures that I had absolutely no interest in their plight and I just wished them all to hell.
In Ammie, Come Home, the characters do bicker (the two male alphas), but at least this adversarial relationship mirrors an important conflict in the story, and this mirroring is handled with subtlety.
Ammie, Come Home is a fine example of a character-driven ghost story, though I would call it a borderline "Gothic" if at all. Granted the story takes place in a historic old home in Georgetown, replete with a revolutionary war legend and rooms with cold spots. But the mood isn't what I would call gothic; it feels very contemporary even if set in the late 1960s (and rather dated now), and the tone is too chatty for the gothic atmosphere to ever really settle. Michaels' books seem to be very busy, and there isn't much calm between thunderclaps to reflect, brood, and gnaw one's nails about when the next one is coming. Being character-driven the book contains a lot more dialogue than the standard gothic, though there is certainly adequate description of the setting. On the other hand, the house itself is definitely a character in the story, one of the traits of a gothic. And Michaels does a very good job helping the reader to see the story, as if watching a movie.
Based on how much I liked this book, I would like to read more Michaels/Peters/Mertz books, but having been prejudiced by my unpleasant experience with Houses of Stone, I'm not sure where to go next. Any recommendations?
