Nina Nenova

Translated from Bulgarian, this novel is an uneasy blend of literary fiction and murder mystery. Bizarre happenings in an upscale desert oasis retreat -- is it due to supernatural beings or is someone manipulating events? Or do the laws of physics for some reason behave differently at this specific location, allowing dark matter to interact with 'light' matter (regular everyday things)? Then murders start occurring... It was hard to follow in places but I found the ending satisfactory (though the epilogue was a tad pretentious).… (meer)

Uneasy combination of science fiction, murder mystery, and general strangeness creates a nice atmosphere and draws the reader in, but proceeds to meander through a lot of semi-nonsense before coming to a rather anticlimactic conclusion. Lots of good ideas here, but it needs much more focus. The author never succeeds in bringing most of the fairly large cast of characters to life. Her habit of ending a few chapters with revelations that only the characters can understand is also annoying. Or maybe i wasn't reading closely enough - but that's hardly my fault!… (meer)