I liked Hawkes Harbour well enough, but it could have been much better. I wish I could read the version she wrote that would have been a Dark Shadows book.
I picked up a copy of
Hawkes Harbor over the holidays at a local used bookstore and finally finished reading it last night. What Misa wrote here pretty much sums up what was going through my mind as I read it.
I would love to know how close this is to what she initially envisioned and to what extent she "revised" events from the original series to suit her own purposes before any tinkering had to take place to avoid any legal issues. Some of the changes were rather interesting.
[spoiler]The connection between Jason and Liz is a departure from what DS used from Art Wallace's
The House. Though it's not as dramatic, I thought it worked.[/spoiler]
The book starts off pretty well, and I like the background we're given on the relationship between Jason and Willie, but the final chapters put characters in environments that are a bit far from what one would expect from the original series.
[spoiler]Barnabas and Willie on a cruise ship?[/spoiler]
The book seems to fall apart and become far less interesting once Barnabas and Willie are on their way toward some sort of "normal" life, and
[spoiler]I really wish she hadn't chosen to end the book with Willie's death and a heavenly reunion with Jason. I thought it was a bit cheesy. Something more open-ended probably wouldn't have been nearly as corny.[/spoiler]
Despite its flaws, though, I'm glad I read it. It's an interesting exercise in "what if?".
