Brian
Almost 4 stars.
The casual -phobias and -isms are still there, but it was so much better than the previous one.
Having the occasional scenes from the victim's perspective was a good choice, it definetely elevated the whole thing for me.
I have one gripe, though... Where's the cleverness on Davenport's part? Where's the anger? He used to be known for his mind, his web of contacts and his ruthlessness, but he's not not really using any of these feats anymore...
Mark Manson had worked so hard on turning this barely-a-blog-post amount of useful material into a book that you can still smell the sweat, even five years later.
The main takeaways are that the author us had copious amounts of meaningless sex, all around the world, and that he prefers Russian rudeness to the fake American niceties? I'm not sure.
As others had said, there are some casual misogyny and homophobia, just for good measure.
Quintessential 90s police procedural, with all the racism, misogynism, and homophobia certain people swear was okay back then, because they were “different times”.
What I appreciate in this is that Sandford doesn't try to sand off the edges, Davenport is not the “one good cop”, he's probably the worst of them. It's fashionable to say that these days you couldn't publish a book like this, but the whole Davenport series was re-released starting in 2018, so it's obviously not true. But you definitely need to put away the modern sensibilities to read it.
Theft of Swords, aka. Exposition – The Novel?
It is really impressive how much wheel spinning is crammed into this. Just pages and pages of people explaining things to each other – their past, their plans, their motivations, everything. Even the conversations are monologues where people are explaining. Quite a feat.
Sullivan clearly loves these characters, and is very impressed with them, so he uses lots of words to tell us how brilliant they are. Their actions don't really show any of it, but the explanations work overtime.
This could have been a really good book with a strong editor, because the writing style is actually very enjoyable, and there are fun parts and characters throughout. But the plot is weak (especially in the first book, Crown Conspiracy), and the continuous explaining and the hyping up of the main characters gets boring very fast.
Seriously, so much explaining.
I'd like to congratulate everyone who participated in selling this book, because they did a fantastic job. The cover is really good, and the marketing copy makes it sound really interesting. But it's not.
This is a 400+ pages novel that should have been a 100- pages novella. The first half is just boring, but the second half graduates to tedious and annoying. The plot is repetitive, and the characters are so flat they might be crepes (plain, with no toppings). And they are also annoying. Their relationship makes no sense, and this is a typical example where we should care for them, simply because they are the characters in the book.
The “romance” is laughable at best, and it might be LGBT by definition, but it's like calling a cheeseburger vegetable because of the onion slice in it.
The first time you think “where is this going?” is the point where you should stop reading, because this is going nowhere. Seriously, there's no light at the end of the tunnel. If you want to finish it just to see how it ends, do not bother. There's nothing at the end. It just stops.
I rarely give a book worse than 3 stars because I always appreciate the effort (and I try to choose books I'll like), but in this case, I had to. If you want more specifics, read the other 1 star reviews, pretty much everything they mention is valid.
SPOILER: caving suit that has the facilities to amputate limbs within the suit? GTFO.
It started very well but went south somewhere in the middle... The main problem was the benefit of hindsight on the POV's part. First I thought it was an error, but it turned out to be conceptual, which only made it worse because it didn't fit with the story's structure, and made the main character look dumb. I don't mind stupid characters, but when she's clueless and making excuses for herself? No, thanks.
MINOR SPOILER
And then there's the bit at the end, where she says: “I promised Navy that this testimony would be as honest as I can make it.” WHAT TESTIMONY? I don't remember this whole thing being a testimony.
I think Jessica Meats is a talented writer, way better than average on a sentence level, but she needs a talented editor to catch these things.
(Source: Netgalley)
Geez, this was bad. The writing is very uninspired and boring, fails to peak any interest. The art is not very good, either. I think the style and the coloring are both to blame. The visuals are extremely busy, there's so much in each panel, and most of the time it's not clear at all. Trust me, I zoomed in.
I have no idea who Jess Kimball Leslie is. I got this book on the strength of the title and the cover typography. But after reading it I can safely say, I don't really want to know who is Jess Kimball Leslie. Maybe it's the classic tale of expectations vs. reality, but I thought I'm going to get a bunch of interesting essays about the intersection of technology and personal life. Instead, I got a bunch of not very interesting personal essays about. . . something, I guess? Her voice is mediocre and indistinguishable from any random blogger on any random blog.
Most of the time the focus is way off, there's just too much tangential rambling going on. I lost my interest completely in the middle of the Gawker piece, but I'm stupid so I read on. Good news? It did not get any worse than that. I know, because I kept reading. Don't ask.
(source: netgalley)