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A review by bookph1le
The River by Peter Heller
2.0
I'm not entirely sure what to make of this book. On the one hand, I found the central thriller elements compelling and page-turning. On the other, the technical details of fishing and canoeing were just too much for me. There were sentences where the author was describing things in such technical terms that I had no idea what was happening. I imagine those passages would appeal to those who know a lot more about canoeing than I do, but if you're a layman like me, I think you'd feel as bored and lost as I did.
I also wasn't entirely into the author's writing style. He uses a lot of sentence fragments, and I found the disjointedness jarring. In other places, there are long, run-on sentences that made me lose track of what was happening. I'm not sure if I'd call the style entirely stream of consciousness, but it was somewhere on the scale, and that's a style that generally doesn't work for me.
Lastly, I was not a fan of the ending. Just as things were really picking up and getting tense, we ended up with a summary where the author told instead of showed. I also wasn't happy about one of the major plot choices.
This wasn't a bad book, per se, but on the whole it just didn't work all that well for me, which is a shame. I really, really enjoy a good man vs. nature tale, especially when there's an element of man vs. man worked in there, so this book should really have been right up my alley.
I also wasn't entirely into the author's writing style. He uses a lot of sentence fragments, and I found the disjointedness jarring. In other places, there are long, run-on sentences that made me lose track of what was happening. I'm not sure if I'd call the style entirely stream of consciousness, but it was somewhere on the scale, and that's a style that generally doesn't work for me.
Lastly, I was not a fan of the ending. Just as things were really picking up and getting tense, we ended up with a summary where the author told instead of showed. I also wasn't happy about one of the major plot choices.
This wasn't a bad book, per se, but on the whole it just didn't work all that well for me, which is a shame. I really, really enjoy a good man vs. nature tale, especially when there's an element of man vs. man worked in there, so this book should really have been right up my alley.