Slade House by David Mitchell (2015)

I don't know when I have been so disappointed in a book. Mitchell has been one of my favorite living writers: I would give his first five novels an A rating, even an A+ in the case of Cloud Atlas. I was not as enthusiastic about his just previous book, The Bone Clocks, but I found in it much to admire, although with reservations. (Reviewed in October, 2014) I would give that one a B+. This one is a C, if even that.

The plot goes something like this: once every nine years a couple of soul-sucking vampires create Slade House and lure in a victim to feed upon to maintain their long-living bodies. Beginning with 1979, Mitchell tells the stories of five of these incidents. That's it.

This maybe could have been effective if the stories were not so repetitious (the last one does have a twist), but they essentially all read the same. If the characters of the victims had been more fully explored, a reader might have developed some involvement and empathy, but their backgrounds are perfunctory and sketchy. If the incidents had been creepy or scary, the book could have been a frightfest (think Stephen King), but they are not frightening, not at all.

So I'm sorry to report that, even though David Mitchell has it in him to be a wonderful writer, I really cannot see the point of reading this book at all.