Carolyne Chand's Reviews > Thrust

The relationship between Into the Fire 's two protagonists--Marcus and Wolf--gets off to fairly straightforward start in Thrust. The prose is stark, sometimes gruesome, visceral in every way, evoking the time and place: the edges of a collapsing empire, the edges of a collapsed family.

If I'm going to complain about anything, and maybe drop back by a half-star (can I do 3.9?), it's that I wish it had taken longer for the relationship to kindle. What happens between the two men is as stark as anything else in the story, but I thought they fell toward each other, and into trying something "new," without as many, well, complications as I'd have expected. I can't really call it a slow burn. But I think some other readers wouldn't have wanted to slog through a long, drawn-out misunderstanding or extended mistaken identities or hesitation. The flashbacks are enlightening about their characters and buttress the scenes in the present. And, frankly, the when the scenes start getting heated, the flame doesn't turn down. And I have to give props to the author for handling a head injury in a realistic way.

As I write this, the next book, Strike , isn't available yet, and I'm impatient to see more of the raw, harsh world these men live in. Thrust reads as a preamble to something bigger, and I look forward to seeing what's next.