Monday, March 13, 2006

Heavy metal and you: A book review

Heavy Metal and you
by Christopher Krovatin

This book came out last summer, I read it in August, but just now got around to writing about it. The author is a college student and he was 20 when the book came out. The story is about a high school student named Sam who is a metal fan and he also dreams of having a girlfriend. He starts dating a girl who is in the preppie crowd (is that still a group in high school?). Despite being a metal fan, Sam's regular group of friends are not metal friends and most of them are in more popular cliques. The bond between Sam and his friends seems to be that they like to drink and get high. After Sam and this girl start dating, they run into the problem of them being from different groups and they can't quite adjust to each other's friends. Ultimately Sam touches on the idea of being a misfit and the misfit and the popular girl can't go out because they are from two different worlds and they break up. Yes, it sounds a bad episode of a show on Fox, however the only reason I read and am reviewing it is that the main character is a metal fan. It's obvious that the author is a metal fan and he supplies a lot of information on his favorite bands as he makes his own interests be the interest of the main character Sam. Chris Krovatin's favorite band is Slayer and many of the bands that his character likes are death and speed metal bands. The bottom line is that ultimately I found the story to be a very typical teen angst story combined with a teen romance and neither part really totally worked despite starting out with some promise. I have read young adult books like this before and the story is fairly average for the genre, but not terribly creative and the characters aren't all that likeable. Having said that, I do think the author's strong points are his enthusiasm and his descriptions. I could really picture the city and the concert he described because he painted vivid pictures and didn't have to use a lot of words to do so. His enthusiasm for the music he loves also came through, but unfortunately that was only background information because the story is about individuals and relationships rather than music. Overall it's not as good as I had hoped, but being as it is the author's first novel and considering his age I would say it shows some potential. Perhaps Mr. Krovatin can come up with a story that plays to his strengths and hopefully he can bring forth his love of music in a story that better suits him.

2 Comments:

Blogger Jay Noel said...

I used to be a high school English teacher, and that was one book I reviewed. It's very crappy, and I had students that could write better than this guy.

I tried finishing it, but I decided that having my fingernails pulled with pliers was more fun.

11:52 AM  
Blogger Metal Mark said...

Phoenix- Like I said, I like parts of it, but the plot played out like a soap opera. I am currently reading another young adult novel about a boy dealing with going to a new school and the death of his father. That is essentially the plot, but the cover and the title have to do with Jimi Hendrix. The boy likes Hendrix a lot yet that part has only been mentioned a little so far (I am maybe 1/3 of the way into it). The other odd thing is that it's written like it's supposed to be in song lyric form. This makes for a hard read when trying to read a novel this way because it seems to come in fragments. If I can make it through the whole thing then I will write it up some time in the future.

12:19 PM  

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home