I have been a Reacher fan from the
start, loved how the character was drawn, understood the dialogue,
the plots, the scenes outlined, the logic, the lot in fact: but not
any more.
I feel short changed. I reviewed Night
School reluctantly, and had to ask if it was alternative reality Reacher. I didn't know the character.
Then I decided to track back and hoping
for redemption, maybe it was just me and my after Christmas blues,
decided to read, Make Me.
But it's shocking as well.
Even then I persisted and decided to
buy Personal. When I looked at the reviews, the real ones, the lower
starred ones. I decided to pass.
This is me talking to myself, and
wondering do people who post glowing five star reviews know the other
books, or the writer, or the character who once was Reacher? I have an opinion that people do not read
any more, at a pace to be able to concentrate and pay enough
attention to detail to comprehend the story. Or do the skim a few
lines at a time and skip ahead? ( Like checking a text to see if your
own name is mentioned).
The Reacher I know is gone, his scars
are gone, his maths ability and his ability to work out devastating
plans and exact revenge is gone. Worse still the zest in the writing
is missing, and trivial page filling gibberish is being used to pad
the size of the book. The other books always had diversions that were
interesting - like always being to tell the time of the day, or
night.
In this book he gets a few "belts
in the Gob", hard slaps around the head, and is concussed, it appears. Then shortly after
the blows he "nuts" a guy in the head and face, so hard he
knocks him over and begins to fall forward himself.
This is one of those things that I feel were thrown in, to try and build tension, but is forgotten about, in that although Reacher stumbles a bit, or falls, he is still deadly accurate with his pistol shots.
Listen Mr. Child - blows bad enough to
give you a concussion and then bouncing your head almost immediately
afterwards into another hard skull means you are a dead duck:
finished, kaput, out for the long count, brown bread, being measure
for a harp, dead to this world. But then again this is only my
opinion.
I gave this book my best try, Even read from about Chapter 49 to the end again. But no use, I'm out of the club, I can't go on. I will concentrate on writing my 20 Minute Reads for Kindle, at least if one of them is causing a reader pain, it will be over in a short time.
This book mentions hogs
in a pen and how they are fed. In Ireland in the old days almost
every family, out of economic necessity, kept pigs and fed them on a
terrible concoction that we called "Slop" or "Pigs'
Swill".
My view again: in this book I think Mr.
Child is following a similar path, writing for some kind of
necessity, it can't be money, but feeding his faithful readers with
very inferior fare: maybe even pigs' food.
