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Sentences. Short ones. Long ones. There are different kinds. Writers choose. Some go flowery. Some don't. Lee Child chose. He chose short. And choppy. Full stops. So many. Everywhere. Sentences. Cut short. Snipped apart. So choppy. So jarring. Uncomfortable. Hard to read.
Exaggeration? Barely...
I read Killing Floor recently and found it disappointing, but I thought it had a lot of potential and figured maybe some of my gripes with it were attributable to it being Child's debut. I therefore decided to skip to a recent release to see if I liked it better.
Reader, I did not.
The abrupt, choppy prose that grated on me so much in the first book remains in this one. This therefore means it's not a writer learning his craft, but a stylistic choice. I kind of get what he's going for - a fast, punchy, no-nonsense tone (presumably to complement the fast and punchy protagonist) - but I found the end result very irritating to read.
Let's talk about the protagonist...
Jack Reacher is a six-foot-something, tough, fit, clever, physically attractive, vigilante badass... and somehow utterly boring..?
Everything is just so easy for him. A baddie points a gun at him? No problem, he'll just knock out the gunman with a single punch. Baddie sets a clever trap for him? No problem, he knows it's a trap because... instinct! There's a riddle to solve? No problem, one string of unlikely deductions later and he's figured it all out.
At no point did I ever seriously feel like he was threatened or confused or might fail in his task. And, for me, without a genuine risk of harm, failure or other dire consequence all the tension just seeps out of the story. And a thriller without tension...?
I know Reacher is a very popular character and these books are insanely, mind-bogglingly successful. I suspect therefore that I'm in a minority here and it's probably a me thing. It didn't work for me, but it does for lots of other people - hopefully you're one of those it works for!
Exaggeration? Barely...
I read Killing Floor recently and found it disappointing, but I thought it had a lot of potential and figured maybe some of my gripes with it were attributable to it being Child's debut. I therefore decided to skip to a recent release to see if I liked it better.
Reader, I did not.
The abrupt, choppy prose that grated on me so much in the first book remains in this one. This therefore means it's not a writer learning his craft, but a stylistic choice. I kind of get what he's going for - a fast, punchy, no-nonsense tone (presumably to complement the fast and punchy protagonist) - but I found the end result very irritating to read.
Let's talk about the protagonist...
Jack Reacher is a six-foot-something, tough, fit, clever, physically attractive, vigilante badass... and somehow utterly boring..?
Everything is just so easy for him. A baddie points a gun at him? No problem, he'll just knock out the gunman with a single punch. Baddie sets a clever trap for him? No problem, he knows it's a trap because... instinct! There's a riddle to solve? No problem, one string of unlikely deductions later and he's figured it all out.
At no point did I ever seriously feel like he was threatened or confused or might fail in his task. And, for me, without a genuine risk of harm, failure or other dire consequence all the tension just seeps out of the story. And a thriller without tension...?
I know Reacher is a very popular character and these books are insanely, mind-bogglingly successful. I suspect therefore that I'm in a minority here and it's probably a me thing. It didn't work for me, but it does for lots of other people - hopefully you're one of those it works for!