Nemesis by Jo Nesbø
My Rating: 2/5 Stars
Sometimes I feel as though I’m genetically hardwired to be a contrarian. Not because I actually like being different than everyone else or going against popular opinion, nor do I actually want to stand on the mountaintop and scream “All you fuckers are wrong.” Because let’s face it, it’s easy to follow everyone else, to march in line and in step, even if it sometimes means you’re headed for a cliff or the occasional mountain lion. Nor do I get some sort of sick, demented pleasure from bashing other authors and other people’s books, because I’m right there in the trenches with you, buddy. Not necessarily holding your hand, but we’re in the same foxhole, staring out at the same battlefield, and trying to make heads or tails of the opposition. Not that writing is a war, but it sometimes feels that way, to get those pesky words down on paper, and then actually have others get behind the words that you have written, until they make them their own.
So what does all of this mean for NEMESIS? Well, if you’re looking at the date I started this novel (by the way, that is not a misprint), and the day I finished it (that’s not a misprint either), there’s a massive gap between the two. Where I know I had plenty of fun, and most of this fun was had while not reading said novel. Does that mean it’s badly written? No, absolutely not. But it felt repetitive and redundant, and I was never fully engaged in the story. To be honest, it wasn’t even really all that close of a call. But I wanted to be engaged, I wanted to be fully invested, and I wanted to like this story, because so many others have called it a great and wondrous read with high ratings and glowing reviews. But I just can’t consider myself one of them. Maybe I was built with a different set of Legos.
You see, the characters resembled emotionless pits; the dialogue felt trite and pedestrian; the plot plunked along like a Corvette ambling down the train tracks on a Sunday afternoon, to the point that I had to reread the back cover copy to figure out what it was I had just finished; and I ended up so lost within the twists and turns of the story that I forgot where the heck I even was.
If I were to sum up this novel, I’d say it made me want to kick Justin Bieber. Which isn’t that much different from how I normally feel. What I really want to find is the novel that makes me want to hug the Biebs. I’m thinking it’s not possible, but I’m going to continue to hold out hope that it’s out there somewhere, and I will continue to expend energy looking for it.