Scan barcode
A review by mrsbooknerd
Dead Tomorrow by Peter James
Did not finish book.
I really enjoyed the first couple of novels in the Roy Grace series. The main plots were suitably twisty and complex for the Crime/Thriller genre, but there were over-arching themes and plots which joined the series together as a whole and made the characters into familiar friends.
So what was so terrible about this installment that meant I couldn't even finish...?! *Rhetorical questions because I'm going to tell you...*
Firstly there was the 'main plot'. Obviously organ harvesting was the crime, I mean, there was no wondering or supposing. It was obvious, so lets move on. What else could it be when you have one character desperate for an organ, one in a horrific accident and bodies that have been sewn up and chucked out to sea like an unwanted jellyfish.
All of these aspects were between the covers of this book, and yet by the 200 page mark - when I had to give up - none of the characters had been linked, and there was absolutely no plot progression! For such an enormous novel, there was just absolutely no development or movement at all. Every new chapter felt like another torturous and unending series of descriptive paragraphs that only served to bulk up the word count - I was a university student, I know upping the word count when I read it!!
There was such a huge cast of characters - too many really, I couldn't keep track of all the Lynn's and Susan's and Mal's and Nat's and Luke's - and yet they weren't very well written, I just didn't care about any of them. Not even Roy Grace, which brings me on to my second complaint.
Our main cast, the stalwarts who have weathered the previous four novels, have not developed AT ALL Time isn't moving enough in between novels, so each book picks up where the other left off. Basically anyway.
If I have to spend another book listening to Glen whine about his bitch of a wife I think I will actually cry. And Grace is moving on! Whoo! Yay! Then why is Sandy still being mentioned every bloody chapter?! If James won't give us any progression in regard to Sandy then he needs to leave it alone because I have long moved out of the realms of bored of this particular aspect of the series and into angrily frustrated.
Time needs to move on significantly in the next novel, or at least we need to see development in this 'real time' because I think if the next installment in the series doesn't inspire me then I will be chucking Roy Grace back into the proverbial sea...
So what was so terrible about this installment that meant I couldn't even finish...?! *Rhetorical questions because I'm going to tell you...*
Firstly there was the 'main plot'. Obviously organ harvesting was the crime, I mean, there was no wondering or supposing. It was obvious, so lets move on. What else could it be when you have one character desperate for an organ, one in a horrific accident and bodies that have been sewn up and chucked out to sea like an unwanted jellyfish.
All of these aspects were between the covers of this book, and yet by the 200 page mark - when I had to give up - none of the characters had been linked, and there was absolutely no plot progression! For such an enormous novel, there was just absolutely no development or movement at all. Every new chapter felt like another torturous and unending series of descriptive paragraphs that only served to bulk up the word count - I was a university student, I know upping the word count when I read it!!
There was such a huge cast of characters - too many really, I couldn't keep track of all the Lynn's and Susan's and Mal's and Nat's and Luke's - and yet they weren't very well written, I just didn't care about any of them. Not even Roy Grace, which brings me on to my second complaint.
Our main cast, the stalwarts who have weathered the previous four novels, have not developed AT ALL Time isn't moving enough in between novels, so each book picks up where the other left off. Basically anyway.
If I have to spend another book listening to Glen whine about his bitch of a wife I think I will actually cry. And Grace is moving on! Whoo! Yay! Then why is Sandy still being mentioned every bloody chapter?! If James won't give us any progression in regard to Sandy then he needs to leave it alone because I have long moved out of the realms of bored of this particular aspect of the series and into angrily frustrated.
Time needs to move on significantly in the next novel, or at least we need to see development in this 'real time' because I think if the next installment in the series doesn't inspire me then I will be chucking Roy Grace back into the proverbial sea...