Consistently lush in prose, these are very easy to enjoy, I found. Tonally they range wildly, but the character work remains the same. It starts with something like a more traditional hook, then becomes more like an ensemble, besides the fact heist, and then becomes mostly just character arcs. It makes the trilogy more thematic and locationally based than you might expect. I guess it really depends. After all, I didn’t even read the blurb, so I had no real preconceptions. I just had read Woodrell before and wanted to again. 

I could see why this would be wide ranging in opinions, since it really doesn’t have much for genre fiction fans, yet literary pretensions also don’t really apply, even if some of them are present. The prose and characters and are absolutely forefront and fantastic, but I never got the sense Woodrell wanted to do more than pose opposing opinions and observations about a people steeped in dichotomies. 

What that means, really, is you need to take your pleasure from the prose and characters, and they are not likeable, and they are messy. Fortunately for me, that’s what I prefer.