This book belongs to the author's semi-serious works. That is, most of the book is serious, and the end is Richard's signature trash.
As a result, this is my favorite work by the author.
First, the cover, the Russian one is different from the rest. It depicts the main villain of the book in the middle, and behind him is the entrance to Funland, The Clown has an evil smile above the entrance, and homeless people are leaning against the bars. The villain invites us.
Now about the plot. There is a Funland, there are many homeless people in it, who are nicknamed trolls. They are disturbing visitors and seem to be to blame for the disappearance of people near the park. And they are hunted by a group of teenagers at night and beaten up. But how long will it last?
The book is divided into three main storylines. The first, Jeremy Wayne's attempt to join a new team, the second, an attempt by two policemen to catch trollers (they were so called in Russian translation, I hope in the original as well.) and the third, Robin's attempt to survive in the city, and even more so beside to Funland. Each of the storylines is made perfectly. In the first one, I liked the raised topic of what a person is capable of in order to join the collective, as well as the duality of trollers and how a person can degrade to a sadistic psychopath. The second was the relationship between two policemen, who were kind of nice. And the third is because of Robin. I really liked this character.
In general, most of the book focuses on the characters and their interactions. And it was done well, it was not boring during the reading, and in the end Richard decided to make a branded trash. Namely, he arranged for the characters Saw on minimal and this despite the fact that this series of films did not exist at the time of the book's release. I liked the end, even considering that everything became like in a B movie.
Now about the characters, because they should be interesting, because as I said above, the book focuses on them most of the time. And yes, they turned out to be memorable and interesting. There are also few straight positive characters here. For example, on the one hand, trollers beat up homeless people so that they do not come close to people (especially since the author showed that they are much more dangerous than it seems at first glance), but on the other hand, most of them are sadists who joined the trollers not even because of personal injuries, but simply to beat up the homeless especially Liz, and others just to join the team (because they don't want to be losers). And only one joined for normal reasons. Nate is the only adequate one among them.
I can call Robin positive. I feel sorry for her, she is kind, bright, but she can stand up for herself and does not despair even in the worst situations.
I want to take apart Jeremy Wayne, that piece of shit. In the beginning, it seems like he's just an insecure kid, but the further you read, the more you realize that this is a sadistic pervert sick in the head. And I'm not talking about the fact that when a girl tells him to meet somewhere, he thinks she means sex, because he's a teenager, the hormones are raging. I mean, when Robin was rude to him, the next day, when he saw her, he imagined ripping off her clothes and raping her. He sees in women only a piece of meat that can be touched. He says that he loves one girl looking at another, and in the end it was his fault that Robin began to be tormented by trollers and he was all with them (he even broke off when he realized that he could not rape her, so he could only beat her, especially in the stomach) I'm so glad,that in the end he became a homeless man with a broken psyche.
I like the author's writing style. It is so easy to read that you do not notice that you have already read about four pages, or even half of the book. I also liked how well he conveyed the atmosphere of the amusement park. I've never been to one of these, but the author told me in such a way that it seemed as if I had just visited one of these parks yesterday. But there is a fly in the ointment here, namely the description of women's bodies. There were a lot of them. But otherwise I liked the text.
Overall, I liked the book, it's very atmospheric, the characters are memorable, and the culmination was funny.
by mystery5009