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A review by sreddous
The Green Panthers by Tom Vater
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
3.5
3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.
This is a complex thriller that tackles a lot of legitimately-realistic, threatening topics. The pacing is overall really easy to follow and well-balanced -- there's good action and tension here. I definitely “smelled danger at all times” which made things exciting.
Honestly, what I think needs some tweaking in this book to support the scary plot points and action scenes is the dialogue. There are a lot of lines of dialogue about complicated topics that are passed off as quirky banter and not actually explored. I got uncomfortable from the way that the characters seemed to comment on and tease each other and others about size/fatness, race, and gender. I think a lot of this was supposed to be humor but it didn’t work for me. If some of the “You don’t have any kids, Hunter.” “There’s always time, darling...” “You need your head examined. You’re beyond heterosexual. A threat to all women!” kinds of lines were cut and the team acted more professionally, it’d be more interesting.
I think ‘having banter’ often feels like a higher priority even than making sure that things make sense or are factual in the first place, which kept taking me out of the experience. Here’s a not-spoilery example near the middle of the book: there’s a scene where a guy is singing Britney Spears’s song, “I’m not a girl, not yet a woman” to a younger teammate. Another character comments, “She’s never heard that song…she’s not American. Not everyone is.” Which is…silly. That song was on tons of international top-40 lists, c'moooon.
But aside from that, this was an engaging read with nice descriptions of the diverse landscapes and a believable overall threat. Overall, this book tackles a lot of topics that definitely need to be tackled these days even in fiction, and the action and tension is well-built-up-to.
This is a complex thriller that tackles a lot of legitimately-realistic, threatening topics. The pacing is overall really easy to follow and well-balanced -- there's good action and tension here. I definitely “smelled danger at all times” which made things exciting.
Honestly, what I think needs some tweaking in this book to support the scary plot points and action scenes is the dialogue. There are a lot of lines of dialogue about complicated topics that are passed off as quirky banter and not actually explored. I got uncomfortable from the way that the characters seemed to comment on and tease each other and others about size/fatness, race, and gender. I think a lot of this was supposed to be humor but it didn’t work for me. If some of the “You don’t have any kids, Hunter.” “There’s always time, darling...” “You need your head examined. You’re beyond heterosexual. A threat to all women!” kinds of lines were cut and the team acted more professionally, it’d be more interesting.
I think ‘having banter’ often feels like a higher priority even than making sure that things make sense or are factual in the first place, which kept taking me out of the experience. Here’s a not-spoilery example near the middle of the book: there’s a scene where a guy is singing Britney Spears’s song, “I’m not a girl, not yet a woman” to a younger teammate. Another character comments, “She’s never heard that song…she’s not American. Not everyone is.” Which is…silly. That song was on tons of international top-40 lists, c'moooon.
But aside from that, this was an engaging read with nice descriptions of the diverse landscapes and a believable overall threat. Overall, this book tackles a lot of topics that definitely need to be tackled these days even in fiction, and the action and tension is well-built-up-to.