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booking_along 's review for:
American War
by Omar El Akkad
Some parts of this book are beautiful -the writing, the characters, it all fits so perfectly together thats its nothing but beautiful.
But other parts of this book feel very unfinished, raw and ruff around the edges, leaving me confused and unsure about what happened, why or how the book got to this point.
I really liked the idea of this book -basically speculative futuristic fiction about how America could end up in the near future.
But i do think that the author could have done a better job in actually explaining what happened to get to this future he writes about as if the reader just knows what happened and how it all came to be.
How the "new" world worked, how it came to be, why things are happening as they are done... it all is left unexplained (at least to me it is not explained enough, since its basically just explained as: war happened, this is the consequence of it!) and for me that is not enough.
Now i don't need five chapters detailing me exactly how change happened or how it all came to be -i don't need a history lesson. BUT i do need to understand why people react as they do, especially if it influences a lot of why the characters are as they are.
But the idea is still good, and if the author would have put a little bit more work into developing the actual futuristic world, given a little bit more thought into understanding that the reader is NOT inside his head and did not follow along with his development and ideas before he wrote the actual book, i am sure it would have been a fantastic book.
Sadly since that did not happen, so this book is "only" a good book.
If you love different world views, enjoy getting one perspective of where our future might be heading and generally enjoy a good book idea -even if the actual book itself could have been done better- and different characters and easy to read writing, defiantly give this book a try.
If you are someone that needs actual good plot, that makes sense from start to finish, need character development that you can follow along, see happening and understand, want consistency in the writing and how the story is told... i don't think that this book will give you what you are looking for.
*Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for providing me with a free e-copy of this book in exchange for a free and honest review!*