Amid the Shadows

What. The. Blippity. Blank.

Billed as a Dan Brown-esque mystery with a supernatural flair, this book is a complete mess. Characters come and go without any reason for the reader to care. Seemingly interesting set pieces are mysteriously introduced (in a certainly Brown-esque style), only to never be mentioned again. The relationships are improbable, the action is stilted, the villains are either bland cutouts or mustache-twirling buffoons, and huge sections of “side-material” read like blog posts on topics that interested the author (e.g., computer viruses, the crew size and configuration of a Boeing 757, etc.).

Really, it worked like this:

10% in: “Wow, this DOES feel like Dan Brown.”
30% in: Very mysterious!
50% in: Still pretty mysterious...
70% in: There's no way that any payoff can match this build up.
80% in: ...Really?
90% in: I want to give up, but I'm so close.
Completed: I'm glad I only paid $0.99 for this.