Central Park Knight has an exciting premise--an Indiana Jones style professor battling Lovecrafian monsters in NYC.
But for me, the book just didn't do it.
The characters were flat, the action was nonexistent, and began to feel that the author should be fined for his repeated violations of "show, not tell."

For me, the book was disastrous both in terms of character and writing style, but flat characters are far too commonplace to earn my fiercest ire. The writing style, make me more and more furious with each successive page. I haven't seen so many dashes or such long sentences since I stopped reading womens' novels from the Regency and Victorian periods. The author's excruciatingly long descriptions and interruptions when moving ponderously towards the (short) action scene probably were meant to build up tension, but they just made me impatient. The writing was clunky and suffered from a bad case of "instant paraphrase". Whatever occurs in dialogue or body language, rather than building the story, is superfluous because the narration reiterates and every single fact and describes, in excruciating detail, every single thought and intention behind the words.

For example, choosing a section at random, I found these gems:

Smiling back at his guide, he gave her an exaggerated tilt of the head, letting the woman know how greatly he appreciated her bit of humor. Warming to her completely, the young man began asking questions" (78)

The young man bit at his lower lip, nodding his head several times to indicate that her information was correct while keeping from making eye contact with her. Rainert's obvious embarrassment let Danielle know instantly that he was telling the truth, and the tone in her voice revealed the extent to which she was obviously impressed. Looking over her charge in a completely new light, she clapped her hands together several times, tittering" (80)

The characters did not do much to save the narrative. Take Indiana Jones, strip away all of his humor, rip his humanity out by the seams, and expel every ounce of charisma from his character, and you have our hero, Piers Knight. Yes, that really is his name. Get used to seeing it five times or so on every page. Knight is apparently handsome, genius-level brilliant, famous, daring, coolheaded, and totally inhuman and unlikable. However, somehow he also has Indiana Jones' habit of being swooned upon--and hitting on--younger women. Women in the narrative are described by appearance first and character later--if ever. The standard for female intelligence and daring appears much lower than that of the male. It grated on me that the beautiful, red-haired Bridget is seen as something special and brave by our professor because she played the role of timorous damsel and then played assistant while he saved the world. Clearly, the role of women is to simper, console, and assist the menfolk. And the women aren't even good at passion. The characters are so wooden that the supposedly emotional scenes embarrassed me.

For example, here is our touching and ever-so-realistic love scene:

So tell me, as you look into my face, as you count the lines that were not there the last time we spoke; as you scan my head, enumerating the gray hairs that I did not carry when last we met, judging by how I have aged, darling, how long has it been since....well...since?
...
"How long...'since,'" he asked her. "If I judge by the emptiness left in my heart when...when we were torn apart, it's been a hundred life times...If I were to judge the passage of time based solely on what I can read in your beauty, then I would be forced to admit that we must never have met, for you appear younger than ever."
A shift came over Ms. Lu, one so abrupt it was obvious even she had not believed such was possible. As Knight allowed himself to soften, his defenses to drop, she did the same, the corners of her eyes moistening slightly. (88)

It gets worse, but the scene is so long and agonizing I can't type any more. This overblown, pretentious, clunky dialogue dehumanized the characters for me rather than giving them depth.

Our other protagonist is George Reinert.
Reinert is obese, and Henderson just won't let us forget it. Any time Reinert steps onpage, some epiphet that distainfully describes his weight--"fat", "obese", "lumpish", "pudgy", "thick", "sagging", "overweight", "greasy", "unsightly", "awkward", "sausage-like fingers", -- is sure to be used. Maybe Henderson was trying to be tolerant, open-minded, and creative by having a fat protagonist, and that is admirable, but Reinert doesn't break stereotypes, he enforces them. Reinert is a pudgy, nerdy, tech genius who is completely socially inept, and it felt to me that the author's disgust and distain when describing his weight and his lifestyle soiled every description.

The author tells us he's smart, and we'll have to take Henderson's word for it, since Reinert doesn't display any glimmerings of it to the reader.
Here's an instance of his vaunted intelligence. Upon meeting Knight, he says, "Pleased to make your aquaintance, your lordship." Knight's response:

His greeting also struck Knight as a trifle out of the ordinary. [Really?] If nothing else, the slight oddness of it gave the professor some hope. It had been clever, [clearly the prof and I have different definitions of clever] and certainly different--two things he appreciated in anyone when he found them." (57)

So he's never heard bad puns on his last name before, and this lame attempt was the best he's heard?

I really tried to like this book. I did. It seemed like something of a reimagining of Terry Pratchett's Guards, Guards!, where ancient dragons hidden in pockets of time are called out, not into Anhk Morpork, but into prosaic NYC, and it looked fun. But the writing style and flat characters murdered any enjoyment I could have gotten out of the book. I will admit that instant paraphrase probably bothers me more than other people, so maybe others will enjoy the book more. But with the number of truly deep and great books out there, I wish I'd spent my three hours and twenty-six minutes differently. ( )

The book begins with a very interesting prologue. Then we are introduced to Professor Knight who is coordinating an activity that will save the world. I wasn't sure if I liked or didn't like Knight, which isn't a good sign for the main character. His assistant, George, is much more interesting.

I read the first third of the book quickly, then got bogged down. The last third of the book became tedious and I found myself wanting to pick up the next book on my TBR stack. ( )

Disappointment is an unfortunate thing when it comes to reading. Sometimes a book doesn't live up to the expectations set up by the cover copy. It's not often that this happens to me. I've found books with such problems to be average or even below-average, but it's a rare thing that a book leads me to write a review like the one below. Central Park Knight promises adventure of the Indiana Jones variety, magic, dragons, and massive battles. In many ways, Henderson's delivers on these promises, but not without an inconsistent plot and a slew of other problems, all of which make this novel a weak addition to the urban fantasy genre.

Central Park Knight follows Professor Piers Knight, curator at the Brooklyn Museum, a bit of an adventure, and wielder of ancient magics and other arcane things. Of course, those last two are reluctant additions to his relatively simple life at the museum; Knight doesn't want to be a hero. But whenever monsters and other terrors threaten to the destroy the world, he knows he's the only one who can do something about it. So begins Central Park Knight: Knight uses all his knowledge to stop a beast from beyond from ending Earth's days, but even in the aftermath,
more dark things are stirring. An old lover once thought dead appears in his office, rumors surface of dragons stirring from the Earth, and talk of new, more terrifying ends reminds him once more why he can't have a regular curator's life -- because Piers Knight is the only one that knows how to save the world from forces beyond its imagining.

The opening chapter of Central Park Knight is my favorite part of the book. It's only vaguely tied to the actual story, but it gave me the impression that Henderson's novel would resemble something akin to a New Weird novel. The chapter consists of selections from a fictional academic talk about the existence of dragons and the study of them. It's fascinating, fun, and set a tone for the book. Henderson, however, never follows through, leaving much of what was compelling about the opening chapters behind for a story that never hits its stride. Therein lies the problem:

Central Park Knight is riddled with plotting and writing problems. One of my biggest pet peeves in literature is random POV shifts, of which Henderson seems to be an expert. Viewpoints often shift in the middle of chapters -- and sometimes even in the middle of paragraphs -- in order to tell us what other characters are feeling at that moment. More often than not, these shifts give us nothing useful to work with as readers, sucking life away from the primary POV of that chapter (usually Knight, but sometimes one of the dragons or George). The shifts are jarring, too, and draw too much attention to themselves, which is the greatest issue here. Once you yank me from the story, it's hard for me to get back into it without focusing once more on the prose. Popular prose styles aren't meant to draw attention to themselves; that's left to more complex and poetic writing, in which language is sometimes more subtle and nuanced. Instead, popular prose should flow and give the reader the space to imagine what is being relayed on the page. The POV shifts made this a daunting task because I could never be sure that the POV on the page would stay firm long enough for me to focus on the character, the scene, or the emotions of the moment.

Likewise, Henderson's prose is bloated and suffers from bizarre temporal orientations (which I'll explain in a moment). What could easily be said more effectively in fewer words is instead crammed full of excess verbs, prepositions, etc., sometimes to the point of being run-on sentences; such sentences are too frequent for comfort and I found myself growing frustrated when a sentence would suck up four or five lines on the page in order to tell me something that could have been told in less than one line. And then there is the strange structure of his sentences: actions which should be happening on the page are shoved aside by "as he did X, so he did Y" sentences; sentences with this structure are so frequent that the story often gets lost in their clunkiness. Throw in a handful of typos, grievous grammar errors (missing words and the like that should have been caught), and stiff/clunky dialogue (the attempts to make George sound like a modern teenager read more like an offensive caricature than a realistic person) and you end up with a book which reads as poorly as it is plotted.

The plot, as such, is where I'll end this review. The book opens with an event that, quite honestly, is far more climactic and interesting than the story we're inevitably given. This is a problem not only because the rest of the story is less developed and riddled with logical inconsistencies, but also because one of the characters we're supposed to care about in the opening scene then disappears without little more than "eh, she went home" as an excuse. I'd expect such a thing from a TV show that has to explain why one of its character (and, thus, the actor) isn't coming back (House managed to do this by killing one of its characters), but it's not something I would expect from a novel which is supposed to deal with developed individuals. Since all indications on the actual book suggest that Central Park Knight is a stand-alone novel, these kinds of issues in plotting and character put a black mark on Henderson's narrative.

There are other plot issues that I could mention, but this review is already negative enough as it is. I really wanted to like Central Park Knight. It has an amusing premise, interesting, though undeveloped, characters, and an a mythology and history that, with proper development, could yield challenging and fun adventure stories. But that's not what Henderson has done here. He's written an inconsistent narrative with unbelievable characters, clunky prose, and weak dialogue. As much as I tried to enjoy the book, I couldn't get past what was wrong with it. Maybe the previous novel is a better story with a tighter plot, but I'm not sure if I'm willing to follow Henderson there. At least, not any time soon. ( )

Review courtesy of All Things Urban Fantasy

Did you experience a sense of déjà vu while reading the first two chapters of CENTRAL PARK KNIGHT? That’s because those chapters were originally written as a stand alone short story, An Excess of Joy, included in the 2009 anthology, SPELLS OF THE CITY. It introduced us to a mild mannered curator for the Brooklyn Museum who, unbeknownst to those around him, faces down otherworldly threats like dragons and interdimensional monsters capable of destroying the world.

After reading the first line of the description, I got that warm happy feeling that usually indicates I’m about to read something really good: “Professor Piers Knight is the Brooklyn Museum’s very own Indiana Jones.” The rest of the description just increased that feeling. I guess it just goes to show that you can’t always trust descriptions. Piers Knight is a far, far cry from Indiana Jones. Did anyone else watch those Librarian TV movies on TNT starring Noah Wyle? They were campy archeological adventures. Well cross those with Howard the Duck and you have a better comparison for CENTRAL PARK KNIGHT than Indiana Jones.

The book opens with several excerpts from a century old (fictional?) lecture on the mythology and potential historical veracity of dragons. As a history buff, I found this extended intro fascinating. But once the actual narrative started, my interest plummeted. Despite an arsenal of magical artifacts that he wielded against various foes in CENTRAL PARK KNIGHT, and the numerous New York City landmarks he visited, the character of Piers Knight never came to life for me. He was just a flat character with an annoying habit of audibly talking to himself that I guess was supposed to make him seem eccentric. It didn’t. I never once found myself invested in him, which is a sad statement to make about any protagonist.

I did thaw a little when Piers Knight’s pudgy, prodigy intern, George Rainert showed up. He had fun dialog and injected some much needed life into any scene he shared. The dragons too were a highlight. They were reminiscent of Smaug from THE HOBBIT in terms of sly wisdom. Henderson did create an interesting mythology that pulled from the dragon lore of several cultures, but by that point it was too little, too late.

Overall, CENTRAL PARK KNIGHT was sadly a dull read that didn’t come close to living up to it’s description. Clearly the librarian/professor who moonlights as an adventurer battling supernatural forces is a formula that has seen well deserved success in the Indiana Jones franchise, but Piers Knight is no Indiana Jones. He lacks the charisma, passion, and intensity to be a leading man. The plot doesn’t help as it is basically a long drawn out showdown that failed to generate even the smallest amount of excitement for me.

Sexual Content:
Kissing. References to sex. ( )