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icansdigit's review against another edition
challenging
slow-paced
2.0
This book slowly stole my soul. I grew up visiting my grandparents in Oregon in the summer and knew of Keiko. So I was stoked to find this book at a library sale for 50 cents in Oregon during my winter holidays. Prior to beginning this book, I had knocked out 4 separate books over a period of two weeks.
This book was like slamming into a wall. The story itself is fascinating, however the writing is hard to get through, with an emphasis on tangential details and stories and a heavy-handed reliance on metaphor and rhetorical questions. The book could have been brilliant if extraneous things were cut out and it was streamlined to about 200 pages. I learned a lot about Keiko, but would recommend a quick google of Keiko rather than reading this book to anyone else who has an interest.
This book was like slamming into a wall. The story itself is fascinating, however the writing is hard to get through, with an emphasis on tangential details and stories and a heavy-handed reliance on metaphor and rhetorical questions. The book could have been brilliant if extraneous things were cut out and it was streamlined to about 200 pages. I learned a lot about Keiko, but would recommend a quick google of Keiko rather than reading this book to anyone else who has an interest.
jenn_sveda's review
3.0
A good story told through bad writing. There were some passages that were almost identical that appeared pages apart - not sure how that slid past an editor. Wish this author had some sources to back up his claims, especially when he contradicts the information presented by actual marine biologists.
badcushion's review
2.0
This book is about three hundred pages long but plonks along feeling more like six hundred. It doesn't seem like there's a person connected to keiko's story, however tangential, who doesn't make an appearance in these pages; there's a page and a half on a teenage girl who works at a museum in Iceland near to where keiko is held prior to his final release, for goodness' sake. That same museum's 'stuffed fish of Iceland' exhibit is described twice in very similar language within twenty pages, which is just one of the many repetitions and unneeded overlaps in the book. The author also loves the rhetorical question, and has a huge number of variations on them: does keiko remember being free? Will he be able to be released safely? What is he thinking right now? How about now? How about NOW??
It's unfortunate that the book is poorly written, because there's an interesting story here about the captive life of keiko, and the process of returning him to the wild - the first such attempt ever. There are a number of factions involved here, and it's clear from the outset that the whale is both a moneymaker and a money drain, depending on who you ask. People with the most killer whale expertise have gotten it from the captive whale industry - a natural enemy to those who have studied and supported whales in the wild. A small aquarium becomes a way-station for keiko, but after the massive earning potential of the whale is in play, they have a vested interest in not returning him to the wild. I think some of this conflict could have added a lot to the book, had the author stripped out about nine million other players (whale fans! Whale psychics! A short history of the guy who designed the sailboat used to track keiko off Iceland!) who add nothing but chaos to the story.
I ended up skimming this book because reading it would have filled my head with nonsense, and taken about a week. It's an interesting story though; it would make a good book. Sadly, this is not that book.
It's unfortunate that the book is poorly written, because there's an interesting story here about the captive life of keiko, and the process of returning him to the wild - the first such attempt ever. There are a number of factions involved here, and it's clear from the outset that the whale is both a moneymaker and a money drain, depending on who you ask. People with the most killer whale expertise have gotten it from the captive whale industry - a natural enemy to those who have studied and supported whales in the wild. A small aquarium becomes a way-station for keiko, but after the massive earning potential of the whale is in play, they have a vested interest in not returning him to the wild. I think some of this conflict could have added a lot to the book, had the author stripped out about nine million other players (whale fans! Whale psychics! A short history of the guy who designed the sailboat used to track keiko off Iceland!) who add nothing but chaos to the story.
I ended up skimming this book because reading it would have filled my head with nonsense, and taken about a week. It's an interesting story though; it would make a good book. Sadly, this is not that book.
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