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After bouncing
out of a truly terrible spy book, one which was hovering so closely to one
dimensionally I couldn't make it past paragraph two, I plunged into a sci-fi
book that was only slightly less bad. So with some trepidation, I picked up
Stroud's book.
I had feared a similar fate as
the previous books, but was thwarted by Stroud's prose. The book was not a
fast read by measure of others in the genre, it took time out of the plot
to inject some descriptive ornamentation into the text. The ornamentation,
by the way, is actually very good and definitely adds to the readability and
believability of the book. The little bits and pieces really help along a
suspense novel and,judging by the others I have read, seem to be very difficult
to get right, and many sound positively corny, not so with Stroud.
The characters are as you'd expect
them to be, not so much individuals of their own accord but more the movie
characters we know from action and spy movies, which makes the reading comfortable
in the genre. They fit in perfectly with the story and do their jobs as we
know their characters would as we can easily see actors whom the parts could
be played by.
The book throws at you several
twists, turns and blind alleys and keeps you guessing throughout the book,
but it seems to me that perhaps some may simply have been ends that had just
not been tied up. These loose ends by no means diminish the work, mind you,
they are good, solid books.
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