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Double Negative by Robin Gilbert
01/04/2006 . Source: Sue Davies 
pub: Pendragon Press. 284 page enlarged paperback. Price: £ 7.99 (UK). ISBN: 0-9538598-4-3. Buy Double Negative in the USA - or Buy Double Negative in the UK  check out website: www.pendragonpress.co.uk
Bhark and Whindy have escaped from their village for a couple of days and are having an adventure at Hops Castle. They are beaten, imprisoned, falsey accused of murder and initiated into the delights of whoopee with the opposite sex and that's all in the first twenty four hours or so.
It took me some time to get into this book as I was resistant to the amount of dialogue compared to actual events. In the end, it proved amusing and entertaining but it didn't change my life.
I'm getting bored with smug books that are so busy laughing at themselves they forget that the reader would like to be let into the joke and whilst this narrowly avoids this it's rather close to it.
Suffering overly from verbal diarrhoea, this lacks something at its core and tries to make up for it by endless long dialogues that increase the amount of pages in the book if nothing else. It's a lot better when it just gets on with the story and doesn't stop to chat. There's a definite stop and start as it fails to get the starter in the ignition and the conversations between Bhark and Whindy just seemed to make my eyes glaze over, perhaps it was the short stattaco nature of it and all those speech marks!
The ending makes me think there's more but it will have to be a lot better than this to make me want to read it.
Sue Davies
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