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A review by yorugua1891
Capital Punishment by Robert Wilson
2.0
Could have been great, ended up being a mess.
If someone would have told me that I would rate this book 2 stars when I was halfway through it, I would have said they were crazy. At that point, things were looking pretty good. We had a fast-moving plot, with enough intrigue to keep the reader's interest going, and an author that knows how to write and entertain us with the most banal dialogues and events. The main character, Charles Boxer, has a certain depth and his personal life provided the key elements needed for a character in a series.
So what went wrong you ask? Well, the main story, involving the kidnapping of the daughter of an influential billionaire had enough uncertainty and violence to keep us guessing and engaged. But then the author decided to start adding layer after layer to the story. Many characters started appearing, the reasons for actions by these characters started to become contrived and it became impossible to follow the story. There is not way to remember who the characters are and what they role is without grabbing a pad and paper and getting to work. Even if you do this, the plot goes round and round and you will get lost in the labyrinth. We end up with characters that behave erratically, and the motivations behind these actions are unclear and to tell you the truth also unimportant.
The author was able to get me to the point in which I did not care at all about why things happened the way they did, and he did this by trying to include more and more twists and turns and bringing new protagonists out of left field. When the book ended I felt like I had just wasted a whole bunch of time. It is a shame, because Wilson has the ability to write well, he just got carried away with the plot and I do not believe even he knew where he was going with it. As you can imagine, I have no intention of reading the next book in this series. Proof of this is that the author decided to include a cliff-hanger at the end to get people to buy the next book, and it did not affect me, did not even make me mad, I just did not care.
If someone would have told me that I would rate this book 2 stars when I was halfway through it, I would have said they were crazy. At that point, things were looking pretty good. We had a fast-moving plot, with enough intrigue to keep the reader's interest going, and an author that knows how to write and entertain us with the most banal dialogues and events. The main character, Charles Boxer, has a certain depth and his personal life provided the key elements needed for a character in a series.
So what went wrong you ask? Well, the main story, involving the kidnapping of the daughter of an influential billionaire had enough uncertainty and violence to keep us guessing and engaged. But then the author decided to start adding layer after layer to the story. Many characters started appearing, the reasons for actions by these characters started to become contrived and it became impossible to follow the story. There is not way to remember who the characters are and what they role is without grabbing a pad and paper and getting to work. Even if you do this, the plot goes round and round and you will get lost in the labyrinth. We end up with characters that behave erratically, and the motivations behind these actions are unclear and to tell you the truth also unimportant.
The author was able to get me to the point in which I did not care at all about why things happened the way they did, and he did this by trying to include more and more twists and turns and bringing new protagonists out of left field. When the book ended I felt like I had just wasted a whole bunch of time. It is a shame, because Wilson has the ability to write well, he just got carried away with the plot and I do not believe even he knew where he was going with it. As you can imagine, I have no intention of reading the next book in this series. Proof of this is that the author decided to include a cliff-hanger at the end to get people to buy the next book, and it did not affect me, did not even make me mad, I just did not care.