Summer Holidays reading – Challenge progressing well.

After waiting nearly a year for having more than four days off together, my lovely two week summer break with the family is over.  And here we are, early September 2017 with my reading challenge of completing 50 books in one year progressing nicely with me completing 76% of my target.

 

Book #36 – The Bomb Maker by Thomas Perry

The Bomb Maker is an interesting story about a genius bomb maker, who uses his weapons and intelligence to wipe out half the LA bomb squad in one fell swoop, and from the off set the story has you gripped. To try and stop this apparent campaign and mad man, the force go to former bomb disposal expert and trainer Dick Stahl, hoping to catch our baddy before more mayhem and harm is done.

And the story does start off well, with me thinking I’d stumbled on a cracker of a read here. But alas, my interest soon waved. I think the style, and maybe initial editing, irritated and put me off. I couldn’t help notice a lot of conversations started with Dick Stahl said “Don’t cut the red wire…blah blah blah”. We’d get another line, and then, Dick Stahl said “That’ ok, I don’t like red”. Lots and lots of Dick Stahl said “bombs go boom”, Dick Stahl Said “you get the idea?”, Dick Stahl said “Aaagghhhh”.

Couldn’t he have just grumbled “We get the idea Dave”. He then slowly walked away and muttered “Ok Dave, enough already!”. Anyway….with all that said, this book is a nice idea, liked getting the bombers perspective as well as the chasers! But I’m giving this book an ‘OK’ two stars out of five. Towards the end I was just relieved to finish so I could start another read, and that been said, the end was a bit limp.

Book #37 – Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky

I didn’t realise the computer game (which I’ve never played) Metro 2033, was actually a book written by Russian writer Dmitry Glukhovsky, and reading that this is a cult classic, was tempted to purchase and read. Metro 2033 is about the Moscow Metro system, the year is 2033 and mankind had nearly wiped itself out in a nuclear war some years earlier with any/all survivors of this disaster taking refuge in the said Metro subway system.

Our hero is Artyom, a young man who will travel all around this Metro system to initially pass on a message, but as time and events occur, this mission develops and becomes a lot more important. What I really loved about the book is the continued atmosphere of dread, suspense and claustrophobia which is maintained throughout. The world building of the Metro itself is brilliant. This is the area where the book stands out for me. With the various stations, political factions (communists, capitalists, fascists, independents, mutants, cults) and mainly the oppressive and dominatingly dark tunnels. There is also danger, violence and some gore sprinkled around, especially considering how creepy some of the hostile forces Artyom encounters on his journey are.

So yes I really enjoyed this book. But I am harshly going to drop a star! Why? I hear you scream. For me, something I would normally ignore the odd time, but there is a few, little editing hiccups. But also for me, the overuse of dreams got tiresome, especially at times when you don’t always realise that this is what is happening, so confusion set’s in. Only to end up shrugging your shoulders and feel two heavy pages of reading has been done for no reason. Kind of.

So a really good book, with fantastic world building that does suck you in and make you feel part of it and a little oppressed.

Book #38 – Faulty Bones by J.M.Fraser

This is a difficult book to both rate and genre place. Faulty bones is about two professional gamblers/drifters (Amy and Mike) crashing through life without having much to show for it, who team up in this story to try and survive and get loads of cash. So far so good.

I’m going to do my best to not add a spoiler, as for me, what I enjoyed was trying to figure out what was going on. I didn’t read any other reviews or blurbs, I jumped straight in. And this is a modern day story, with for me little hints or flavours of stories like Fight Club and the insomnia type film Memento starring Guy Pearce, where you know something is-a-miss but can’t quite work out what it is. So was fun trying to guess what oddity we was seeing.

The initial story is of these two down on their luck poker players, that get roped into a mafia type scam, and find themselves getting deeper and deeper into trouble. So we have a caper type scam story, which later stumbles into fantasy territory. Enough said by me, as I said, I’m not adding spoilers.

But I’m giving this story three stars, which is still a ‘Liked it’ rating. Just a lot of character, relationship reveals towards the end I felt all got a bit much and disappointing for me at the end. Would of been better in my opinion with one or two less, kept it more realistic and grounded, twist us readers more in later books maybe if the author feels the need too.

But still an interesting, caper type modern day book worth a read.

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