I just finished Family Business, and I had previously read Thirteen Storeys. I’m not sure if Sims’ writing style in novel format is just something I’m not a fan of, or if these books are truly over hyped.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a TMA fan. I have been since 2020. I was expecting to feel some sort of innate bias that would mean I would like these books and be more forgiving of any flaws, but that didn’t happen. If anything these books made me more critical of the podcast!
Not sure if this is really spoilers, but if you want total surprise don’t click the below portion. For, well honestly either book or the podcast.
>!it seems to me that Jonathan Sims struggles to write more than one sort of villain, or more than one sort of ending. Rich power hungry man (probably white, probably immortal) who holds some sort of both supernatural and financial power over the main cast (employer or landlord), usually with contracts that can’t be broken without threat to their lives. Rich evil guy’s greed and lust for power become his downfall, as he thinks too much of himself and is taken down by both the powers and characters he has used. The take down happens at some pivotal moment where rich evil guy is about to go through some ritual or transformation and just needs the main character to do one last thing. He does some sort of final act beforehand that cements him as the most evilest guy. Through the power of love, friendship, and the supernatural powers working against him, the main characters succeed and the death is incredibly swift and fluffy. There’s some epilogue where the cast is cleaning up the mess left behind.!<
The Magnus Archives had the benefit of having an ending I thought was reasonable. I’ll admit I’m not partial to happy endings usually, but I tend to find them unsatisfactory. Usually, it feels like some pivotal points are being brushed off so that the story can be happy.
(Family Business)
>!Diya’s grief for her roommate felt suddenly wrapped up. I don’t want to be told that she realized that holding onto her memories and cherishing them, instead of constantly focusing her lack of presence in the present, helped her move on, but I would’ve like to have seen it a bit more. All of the characters felt rather flat to me in this book. Which, yeah, it’s roughly 200 pages. Not a!< >!ton!< >!of room for character building. But even Diya felt lacking.!< I haven’t gotten a physical copy (listened to the audiobook), but I’ve seen so many folks talk about the spelling errors and name changes. I can say that the narrator was good, I’m not sure she was wonderful for a horror novel, but she was good. Honestly though Jonathan Sims’ guest part was… lacking. It was his villain voice, which it seems, much like his writing, he only has one of.
(Thirteen storeys)
I don’t have much to say on this one, I listened to the audiobook ages ago and was immensely disappointed. I liked the short stories. Jonathan sims is good at short horror stories, they were frightful at times (unlike family business). But the ending felt rushed and the whole thing was so on the nose it was preachy. I know billionaires are evil, landlords suck, greed consumes us, eat the rich and all. This felt far too direct and it took me out of the story.
The slow build up and pace worked in TMA because there were genuine arcs, there felt like there were real risks, and you were being puzzle pieces to what was really interesting world building. It took a season to figure out what was going on, and then even when you figured out the main bad guy and the plot, you still were searching for those little details. The Magnus archives, season 1-3 especially, felt like there was genuine care put into them.
I’ve never annotated a book before, and yet I can’t help but want to get the physical copies just to go through and annotate and make sure I’m not missing some great big thing in them. I just can’t bring myself to pay full price for books I didn’t like.
what do you guys think? Did you guys like these books? Am I missing something?