Happy Reading

Toni's bookshelf: read

The Godfather of Kathmandu (Sonchai Jitpleecheep, #4)
Ape House
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
Operation Napoleon
Walking Dead
The Sentimentalists
The Heretic Queen
The Midnight House
Cross Fire
Peony in Love
Absurdistan
Nefertiti
Finding Nouf: A Novel
City of Veils: A Novel
First Daughter
A Place of Hiding
Amagansett
Peter Pan


Toni Osborne's favorite books »
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Saturday, November 22, 2014

"Dark Digital Sky", by Carac Allison

Book 1, in the Dark Pantheon Series

This series is contemporary pulp with a tech undertone, quite geek noir and somewhat of a thriller. The story is quite innovative, a bit twisted and intense at times one that explores the threats of the digital world. The characters are definitely pure fiction. Its main character is hard to like, a bipolar, manic-depressive, a man controlled by drugs and drinks and one that lies to get to the truth.

The main story starts simple. A Hollywood over-wealthy personality contacts Chalk, an ex-FBI agent currently a PI who is very successful in his private business work. His request is to find his 3 sons that he’d fathered through a sperm bank many years ago. He is dying and wants to meet his sons before it is too late. Eventually the story moves on and the three young men are recruited in a conspiracy that includes crashing drones on US soil.

Mixing into the main plot at different stage of development is a plethora of distracting subjects: a story around a Japanese sword, lots of geek techno talk, movie buff talk, dog fighting sidebar, world of wrestling sidebar and a lot of other gibberish.

I had issues with this novel from the start. The story is rather disjointed and the style is too clunky for my taste, lots of 2-3 words sequential sentences starting with pronouns such as “he” and “it”, I found this annoying and distracting. We have chapters jumping from one place to the other and at one point I lost track and interest. There were too many irrelevant characters introduced throughout, each with their own story to confuse the whole thing even further. This first book is a real Smorgasbord of ideas none really developed. I didn't like this book not to say it is a bad one it was simply not my cup of tea. I prefer my mysteries or thrillers to be more focused…..

On the other hand the author’s knowledge in computer science and in the artistic world is highly noticeable and may be a joy for some readers. Not being that much interested in either I skipped most of those numerous paragraphs to try kept up with the main theme which is quite captivating nevertheless….

By the end, the door is left wide open for a sequel and I reiterate some of the thoughts I share with other reviewers: leave the buffet aside and consecrate skills and wits to one recipe….



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