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A review by jiayuanc
The American Mission by Matthew Palmer
Did not finish book. Stopped at 10%.
I should have known from the Acknowledgements page that this was not going to be for me.
Palmer thanks his fellow colleagues in the Foreign Services Office for all their hard work to advance the interests of the United States. I should have just stopped reading there but I gave it a chance.
The prologue begins with Alex Baines over promising to Sudanese refugees that his peace keeping mission in Darfur would be able to protect the tribe against the Janjaweed militia. Alex doesn't have the authority to promise this sort of thing, then gets upset when the one who does have this authority refuses, citing that this would go against their mission, as stated by the UN résolutions that brought them to Darfur in the first place. Alex is upset and blames the Chinese for negotiating a tough resolution on the UN security Council. Hypocrisy abounds.
The one piece of nice symbolism was the part of the Janjaweed leader's white horse riding into the camp. I had just begun to think about what a nice symbol this was (the pale horse bringing Death) when Palmer literally has his character Alex quote the exact lines from Revelation.... Please I am begging authors everywhere to just trust your readers will understand the reference. And even if they don't, that's OK!!! The imagery of the white horse against all the darkness and chaos is a cool one regardless!!!!!
The rest of the book once the only female character is introduced seemed very predictable. After reading the first two chapters I predicted to my husband how the story would end and from skimming the remainder of the book i can happily say that I was right.
DNF and should have done so after hearing that Palmer got Madeleine Albright to blurb his book.
Palmer thanks his fellow colleagues in the Foreign Services Office for all their hard work to advance the interests of the United States. I should have just stopped reading there but I gave it a chance.
The prologue begins with Alex Baines over promising to Sudanese refugees that his peace keeping mission in Darfur would be able to protect the tribe against the Janjaweed militia. Alex doesn't have the authority to promise this sort of thing, then gets upset when the one who does have this authority refuses, citing that this would go against their mission, as stated by the UN résolutions that brought them to Darfur in the first place. Alex is upset and blames the Chinese for negotiating a tough resolution on the UN security Council. Hypocrisy abounds.
The one piece of nice symbolism was the part of the Janjaweed leader's white horse riding into the camp. I had just begun to think about what a nice symbol this was (the pale horse bringing Death) when Palmer literally has his character Alex quote the exact lines from Revelation.... Please I am begging authors everywhere to just trust your readers will understand the reference. And even if they don't, that's OK!!! The imagery of the white horse against all the darkness and chaos is a cool one regardless!!!!!
The rest of the book once the only female character is introduced seemed very predictable. After reading the first two chapters I predicted to my husband how the story would end and from skimming the remainder of the book i can happily say that I was right.
DNF and should have done so after hearing that Palmer got Madeleine Albright to blurb his book.