Reviews

Killing Floor by Lee Child

sweetsoverloaad's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

sam_hartwig's review against another edition

4.0

I saw the movie adaption "Jack Reacher" and I thought it was awesome! Because of this I knew that I HAD to read the books, so I started at the beginning of the series. Now that I've read one I still think that even though Tom Cruise looks nothing like the 'book' version of Jack Reacher (blonde and VERY tall), he still did a pretty good job and I think the movie does the book justice.

I decided to listen to this on audio book mainly because it was available through the library, and when I can, I like to listen to books instead of read them. It means I can get through twice as many books - one I'm reading and the other I'm listening. I'm so glad I listened to this because it had me hooked almost right away.

Jack Reacher is a tough, ex-military bad ass who doesn't care who he has to kill to get answers. Normally I read mystery/crime novels in which the detective or main character catch the bad guy to put him in jail, but nope not Jack Reacher. He doesn't care about catching the bad guys - he kills the bad guys!

The story was really exciting and had me guessing the whole time. There was lots of detail and I learned a lot from this book.

Spoiler

I learnt about how American money is made

To sum up it was fast-paced, intriguing and at times very funny. I can't wait to read more about Jack Reacher.

Also on my blog

jazzrizz's review against another edition

adventurous challenging mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

reillybrown's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

caiken4's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark funny mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

sevsbenny's review against another edition

adventurous tense fast-paced

4.0

bongaca's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

nathan_verghese's review against another edition

3.0

This book is like all those procedural crime shows on TNT. Are they groundbreaking and thought-provoking? No not really. But are they entertaining to throw on and relax for a bit? Absolutely.

Why do books have to be high-brow? I foresee more cheap fiction (and certainly more Jack Reacher) in my future.

rb4299's review against another edition

medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

Read this book because of the series “Reacher.” 
I didn’t like the style of writing very much. There were lots of very short sentences, which disturbed my reading flow a bit.

paganhill's review against another edition

medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.75

I wish to start this review off with a caveat; this is not my type of book for reasons I don’t need to bore you with. I will try to keep the review objective as I can and leave my bias out of it. All I will say on that is I hope the other books in the Jake Reacher series are better than this one. I’ll never know.

Even with me realizing this book wasn’t written for me I feel it has a few issues that may pester even those that would enjoy this story. 

Jack Reacher suffers from the John Carter(of Mars) problem. Everything they do is the correct action to take. Sure, in Killing Floor there may be two times a wrong choice was made but no consequences come from the tiny insubstantial challenge. Reacher is also in the right spot everytime. His guesses are always correct. Worst of all the people around him give no push back towards this monstrous stranger taking control over the situation. He doesn’t even take it. They meekly give it to him.

There is a part towards the end of the novel where Reacher mentions what good luck this is that this happened because in the past he is just a bag of bad luck. I will give the author the benefit that maybe bad shit did happened to Reacher in the past but none of that bad luck is shown in this novel. Reacher is only perfect and full of good luck.

I enjoy the author’s writing style but the inability to have Reacher fail in even the smallest way is frustrating. 

A few other things I would have looked over if I enjoyed the novel: it feels dated but doesn’t want you to notice; it is fast paced but drags in scenes that are supposed to humanize Reacher, in dialogue, and other places; and the mysteries were not very mysterious and because of this it made everyone feel a little dumb when they were surprised by the reveals. Please don’t get me wrong the crime that was happening was good and enjoyable just not very mysterious.

I didn’t like this Suburban White Savior story. The A-Team does it better and knows what it is to be schlock.

The narration for the audiobook is lack luster.