by Gerald DiPego
"The forest did not tremble at the rush of Til Shark-is, and the forest things did not shatter." Sharkis, a woodsy handyman, is supposed to be one of those larger-than-life figures who run around the mountains like Paul Bunyan, faster than the wind. What's the rush? a puzzled reader may ask. The novel also includes a big bear of the sort that is familiar from better fiction, a couple of oversexed females out of lesser works and a dumb lawman who seems ripe for a TV series. DiPego, a screenwriter, seems to be trying for an epic, but his language is a major obstacle—it's pseudopoetic and obscure when everything else is simple-minded, plot and characters especially. At the end the hero takes off into the forest with a beautiful young girl whose mean father has designs on her. She can run really fast too. (Delacorte, $8.95)
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