Mike Finn > Recent Status Updates

This is astonishingly, almost overwhelmingly good. It has so many layers and they all move together in an intricate ballet of ideas, action, moral codes, human failing and strong personalities that is absorbing in its details and fascinating in the shapes it carves into my imagination, like sparklers moving through the November night sky making shapes that are only visible when you play back the video afterwards.

The writing got a little better but I still setting this book aside. I don't want to spend any more time with Sebastian Synard. The man presses too many of my buttons. That probably means he's well-written. It definitely means I'm ditching the book.

I'm two chapters in. This isn't working for me yet. The story is told from Sebastian's point of view. His internal monologue delivered in a brusque staccato that I find annoying, mostly because it's so disjointed. It doesn't help that I find Sebastian hard to like. He comes across as smug and complacent.
Still, he's just found the dead body. Maybe things will pick up as the investigation gets underway.

This is fun. It's a light, fast read with a lot of action, a relatable main character and a whole set of mysteries to unravel. I hope it becomes a series.

The first two stories are grim, made grimmer by the civilised, cultured matter-of-fact tone of the two retired men as they kill for their country.

This is a torrent of a book: lots of characters, lots of narrators, a huge scope, fun ideas, a little bit of snark and some tense action.
I'm just going to go with the flow on this and let myself be entertained and amused and maybe learn a thing or two.

I'm done. Not my kind of horror novel. The plot is excuse for sewing together a series of gory kills by the seamonster. The bad guys are cartoon villains. The old woman has no depth. Even her memories are romanticised clichés.

With 90 minutes left. I'm fairly sure the billionaire, his son and their minions are about to meet a well-deserved, graphically described, gory death but I've just realised, I DON'T CARE.

This is very well done. Having Watson write this at the end of his career as a remembrance of earlier times is an inspired idea that always Watson to provide context as he reflects on events and personalities and relationships. While the tone of storytelling feels authentic (or close to it) the story is more complicated and has a bigger scope than most of Holme's stories.

This is beautifully written and flawlessly narrated.

The presence of the humans is disquieting. I can't see how this is going to end but most of the outcomes are upsetting.