Curtis Seidle

One star is too much. Goodman is one of the worst announcers in baseball and AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain's coverage of Rockies games is probably the worst in the league. It carries over here. Drew still covers the team so there no real behind the scenes stuff, just stories he has told on broadcasts countless times, fluff pieces to kill time over the course of a game. Nothing here more than casual fan didn't already know and nothing of interest enough that a less than casual fan would care about. Honestly, covering the team for TV is more about being a spokesman than a journalist, and that is really how this comes across.

Like a weird mix of Cormac McCarthy, H.P. Lovecraft & Terry Pratchett.

What a giant disappointment of a book. After hearing the Astonishing Legends pod-cast on the Mothman, this book was the next obvious place to look to more info. What I found was a giant waste of time. The book starts and ends with Point Pleasant and the Mothman sightings, but a huge part of it is Keel's direction-less collection of anecdotes in a totally disjointed, stream of consciousness style format. Stories told and re-referenced later, with no real reason, jumping around different time periods and different topics.

While the pod-cast gave it a sense of something mysterious and scary going on, Keel makes so many weird little joking remarks that really make it hard to take the whole thing seriously. He comes across as someone who is in a bigger joke being played, but he isn't. The subject matter obviously leads to skepticism, but when it is presented in this way, it really makes it hard to take even a little seriously.

One thing that really stuck out, was that John Keel feels like John Keel is very important. I realize that all this is from his point of view, placing him in center of every story, but he comes across as smug and self-important like everyone else's experiences in the book are in a way directed at him. Again he seems like he is above on all the people who don't have a riddle figured out, he in reality, he doesn't know the answer either. This is really an interesting story with a lot going, and it is obvious that Keel did a ton of research and legwork, it is just presented here so poorly and in such a disorganized way that makes this book beyond pointless.

I don't feel like I read this as much as survived it, as one would survive plodding through safely shallow quicksand, not deep enough to be dangerous, just a seemingly never-ending, snail paced trudge though annoyance. For some reason “Plodding” is word that comes to mind. It's not all bad, parts are quite good actually, but they a buried in the shear mass of the book.

Also, I am sure it is mostly due to the period it was written, but the characters can be ridiculously irritating at times, Perdita became extremely tiresome for me.

Adding to my disappointment, was that I was hoping for more of a post-apocalyptic story than this was, there was very little actual struggle for survival, just some people not dying while other people did.

I can't recommend this book enough. I became of fan of Benjamin Myers after Beastings, and this ranks with it among my favorites. Myers writing suits the story of the Clippers and Coiners and Counterfeiters of the mid to late 1700s so well, and as with Beastings, he brings the landscapes to life, making the moors as much a part of the book as the outlaw heroes and lawmen that walk them. Honestly a fantastic book that deserves every bit of praise it gets and more.