Stuck with a 400 page slow burn novel that went nowhere

Picked up 'The Long Walk Home' last month based on all the praise here. Read 300 pages of setting and character building, then the ending just fizzled out with no payoff. Am I the only one who thinks slow burns need a solid finish to be worth the time?

1 comments

1 Comment

robin77728d ago

300 pages of nothing and then a limp ending. Man, that is the worst. I read a book called "The Ember Field" a few years back that did the exact same thing to me - 350 pages of detail about a family's old farm and then the big reveal was just "they moved away." What is the point of a slow burn if the author doesnt even trust themselves to land the plane? A slow build needs a payoff that makes you understand why all that setup was needed in the first place. Otherwise you just wasted a week of your life reading a story that could have been a short story.