Stage 3 by Ken Stark is one of those books that is difficult to review; there are both good and bad aspects that can be discussed. For the sake of this review, I would like to straight away proclaim, that so as to avoid any confusion whatsoever, I will first talk about the positives, followed by the negatives.
The thing that I liked the most about Stage 3 was its premise: a fight for survival against all odds (literally all the odds) due to a deadly virus, two main characters, one of the verge of near-certain demise… sound familiar? That’s because it is. Sound conventional, therefore? That’s also because it is. But don’t be fooled by the premise.
The job of a premise is to instill conventional emotions such as fear, anxiety, curiosity or expectancy, and so, to criticize a book solely on its premise is not only wrong, but also ignorant. Thus, I will not do such a thing, not for the sake of dignity, but because of genuineness: I genuinely did enjoy the plot, which it turns out, wasn’t that bad at all! It is hardly unique in my opinion, yes, but it sure is different is marked ways from other potentially apocalyptic themed books that I have had the not so distinct pleasure of reading in the past. I would therefore, give Ken Stark high marks for his premise, not to mention his decent (but admittedly not stellar) development of potentially complex characters.
Where I began to cringe (and no, it was not where the blood and gore comes in) was when I realized that the use of language, particularly Stark’s use of diction in certain instances, becomes questionable.
The diction becomes questionable because of faulty grammatical and punctuation errors, (which could have easily been avoided) as well as the lack of a generally coherent sentence structure. The reason I was disappointed was not because of these errors, but because of the fact that they were glaring, and could so easily have been rectified. Another aspect of the book that brought its overall quality down was the lack – or in this case, the complete absence – of a literary style, both written and implied. When one thinks of the great authors of the past, one inevitably thinks “style” at some point. What made Jane Austen or Charles Dickens great? Of course one would say “stories,” but I would say something else: they personalized. They personalized their work through their respective written styles, effortlessly blending first person narrative pieces with complex third person omniscient narrative structures from time to time.
Now, don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that the author of Stage 3 is comparable to the masters of the past. No one is, and any attempt at comparison would be stupid. But what I am saying is that the use of a written style in this particular novel is actually a tool that would’ve given the story a sense of uniqueness, a sense of emotion and a hint of character (no pun intended), especially when one considers the premise and to an even greater extent, the overall story. A fight against all odds? Such a premise requires the author to do whatever he or she can to evoke an emotional response from the reader, and how can one do that? The answer is style. Style is important because not only does it give a book a certain tone and finesse, it also makes a reader really “feel” the story to a greater degree, and in the process, compels him or her to care about the fate of the characters more.
However, in the case of Stage 3, I found the prose to be far less than extraordinary – not bad – but definitely not good either. I do believe that Stage 3 could have benefitted from a greater sense of literary awareness: the potential use of prose to expand upon the severity of a situation or the nature of a character.
In conclusion, I would definitely not pan this book, because it is not a bad book by any stretch of imagination. It just isn’t a brilliant one, when it so easily could have been.