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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Two criminal empires together control all of New England. Until a beautiful woman comes between the Irish and the Italians, launching a war that will see them kill each other, destroy an alliance, and set a city on fire.
Danny Ryan yearns for a more “legit” life and a place in the sun. But as the bloody conflict stacks body on body and brother turns against brother, Danny has to rise above himself. To save the friends he loves like family and the family he has sworn to protect, he becomes a leader, a ruthless strategist, and a master of a treacherous game in which the winners live and the losers die.
Told in a conversational style, I felt like I was sitting in a booth at the back of a restaurant having an old mafia guy telling me the story. This is the first book in the trilogy so there was a lot of character and background set up. Most of the characters weren't likeable, but I found myself liking Danny Ryan. He was just a middle man, but was smarter than what people gave him credit for and more observant. I felt like Danny was just dealt a bad hand and he had no way of shuffling the deck.
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This was such a fun, non-stop thrill ride! It would be cliched to refer to City of Dreams as a modern-day The Godfather, but that would not be fair to either book. Don Winslow wastes no time jumping into the story, and once it all gets going, it is an action roller coaster of a ride. This is the first part of his trilogy, and I can not wait for the following two books.
"Some poor kids from some shitty British slum have no other choice than enlisting in the army... and getting killed by a long-range bullet shot by a guy they never see. For what? A change of flags? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
Hate to start the year on such a flaccid note. I'm at a loss looking at the near-universal praise of this book. While the structure and pacing of the book is well constructed, it was completely overrun with cliches, mob tropes, and corny dialogue coming out of one-dimensional characters I didn't care all that much about. The escalation of the mob war kept my attention, but it slowly started to peter out into an overly-convoluted denouement with too many disparate things happening to too many characters.
The book's story concluded but how things ended for the protagonist rang sort of hollow and non-committal... before I realized the author intended to make a NYT-best-selling-trilogy out of this character like some Jack Reacher or Jason Bourne property. Really took the fangs out of this book since the character was so innately rooted in a New England, blue-collar setting where he spent his entire life; to see him skip off to the next serialized adventure knocked this book from a 3 star to a 2 star.
Hate to start the year on such a flaccid note. I'm at a loss looking at the near-universal praise of this book. While the structure and pacing of the book is well constructed, it was completely overrun with cliches, mob tropes, and corny dialogue coming out of one-dimensional characters I didn't care all that much about. The escalation of the mob war kept my attention, but it slowly started to peter out into an overly-convoluted denouement with too many disparate things happening to too many characters.
The book's story concluded but how things ended for the protagonist rang sort of hollow and non-committal... before I realized the author intended to make a NYT-best-selling-trilogy out of this character like some Jack Reacher or Jason Bourne property. Really took the fangs out of this book since the character was so innately rooted in a New England, blue-collar setting where he spent his entire life; to see him skip off to the next serialized adventure knocked this book from a 3 star to a 2 star.
adventurous
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
A 2022 staff favorite recommended by Andrea. Check our catalog: https://encore.cooklib.org/iii/encore/search/C__Scity%20on%20fire%20winslow__Orightresult__U?lang=eng
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I’m not the best audience for this book. This genre isn’t for me. (I read this for a book club.)