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alanthomp 's review for:
The Tournament
by Matthew Reilly
What happens when an author who predominantly writes ultra-modern, gun toting thrillers, releases a novel set in 1546, a time when guns weren't even invented? The Tournament, that's what!
Matthew Reilly makes a departure from his usual fare and delves into brand new territory with questionable results. To me, this novel was something that I couldn't help but nit-pick at. I don't know what I was expecting but it certainly wasn't what I got.
Let's get straight to it. Instead of giving us page after page of gory violence in vivid detail, Reilly decides to show as little violence as possible and instead opts for sex. There was at least four separate occasions when sex is written about excessively, and it's very similar each time. Lots of panting, tensing, arching, climaxing, throwing back of heads, and thrusting. It got incredibly boring by the end and rose to be nothing but a 'don’t have sex ever!' moral. If I wanted sex, I would have read 50 shades.
Characters: They were pretty typical Reilly types, but I'll give him credit for giving some a tiny bit of depth, as opposed to none in some of his others. However, there were two characters at the beginning that disappear until the end and they served no purpose whatsoever. They should have been edited out completely in my opinion. The main character and narrator, Elizabeth I, has the memory of a God! Every little happening, every word, every slight movement that meant nothing at the time but would go on to mean something later, she remembers. And she's only thirteen! Incredible. She'd be a game show shark if she had lived during our times. A certifiable Jaws.
The plot. Compared to Reilly's other novels, this one is an absolute sloth. The whole thing is extremely drawn out as many historical figures are squeezed in. I'm not sure why Matthew Reilly chose a chess tournament as the event to build his plot around, apart from the gimmick of being able to allude to some characters as certain pieces on a chess board, but it just made the book seem even slower. Chess is a brilliant game, but almost impossible to write about excitingly, no matter how much the crowd cheers when someone moves a pawn.
The only way I feel I can truly summarise this novel is to say that this is simply not Matthew Reilly's genre, but he gets points for trying something different, which most authors would shy away from. I'm looking forward to next year when he will release a new techno thriller.
Matthew Reilly makes a departure from his usual fare and delves into brand new territory with questionable results. To me, this novel was something that I couldn't help but nit-pick at. I don't know what I was expecting but it certainly wasn't what I got.
Let's get straight to it. Instead of giving us page after page of gory violence in vivid detail, Reilly decides to show as little violence as possible and instead opts for sex. There was at least four separate occasions when sex is written about excessively, and it's very similar each time. Lots of panting, tensing, arching, climaxing, throwing back of heads, and thrusting. It got incredibly boring by the end and rose to be nothing but a 'don’t have sex ever!' moral. If I wanted sex, I would have read 50 shades.
Characters: They were pretty typical Reilly types, but I'll give him credit for giving some a tiny bit of depth, as opposed to none in some of his others. However, there were two characters at the beginning that disappear until the end and they served no purpose whatsoever. They should have been edited out completely in my opinion. The main character and narrator, Elizabeth I, has the memory of a God! Every little happening, every word, every slight movement that meant nothing at the time but would go on to mean something later, she remembers. And she's only thirteen! Incredible. She'd be a game show shark if she had lived during our times. A certifiable Jaws.
The plot. Compared to Reilly's other novels, this one is an absolute sloth. The whole thing is extremely drawn out as many historical figures are squeezed in. I'm not sure why Matthew Reilly chose a chess tournament as the event to build his plot around, apart from the gimmick of being able to allude to some characters as certain pieces on a chess board, but it just made the book seem even slower. Chess is a brilliant game, but almost impossible to write about excitingly, no matter how much the crowd cheers when someone moves a pawn.
The only way I feel I can truly summarise this novel is to say that this is simply not Matthew Reilly's genre, but he gets points for trying something different, which most authors would shy away from. I'm looking forward to next year when he will release a new techno thriller.