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A review by meiko
Полетът на щъркелите by Jean-Christophe Grangé
2.0
I actually read this ages ago in Chinese, interesting to read it again in English.
It was after I saw the movie Crimson Rivers, which was a French movie adapted from another of the author's works. The book was translated into Chinese and published and I read and loved it, thus ending up collecting and reading most of the Chinese version of his books.
I was also young and impressionable at the time.
Re-reading it was a lot more interesting, knowing what I know now.
I chalk that up to personal growth, but a bad taste lingered in my mouth after finishing it this time. The protagonist was very clearly supposed to be a French version of James Bond or something, where he easily gets into women's pants no matter where he went. As an academic, he also easily adapted the use of guns and was clearly athletic enough to get rid of professional hit-men. And beat Interpol to revealing a multi-national diamond smuggling ring.
Maybe it was the 90s, maybe it's just the French, either way it was... harder to believe this time round.
All his female characters were also very... simple, one dimensional... in fact, all of the characters were.
I'm not saying it's a bad book, I'm just saying the only good thing about this entire thing is the plot twist. It'd have been a great thriller I'd loose myself in for a couple hours on tv.
It was after I saw the movie Crimson Rivers, which was a French movie adapted from another of the author's works. The book was translated into Chinese and published and I read and loved it, thus ending up collecting and reading most of the Chinese version of his books.
I was also young and impressionable at the time.
Re-reading it was a lot more interesting, knowing what I know now.
I chalk that up to personal growth, but a bad taste lingered in my mouth after finishing it this time. The protagonist was very clearly supposed to be a French version of James Bond or something, where he easily gets into women's pants no matter where he went. As an academic, he also easily adapted the use of guns and was clearly athletic enough to get rid of professional hit-men. And beat Interpol to revealing a multi-national diamond smuggling ring.
Maybe it was the 90s, maybe it's just the French, either way it was... harder to believe this time round.
All his female characters were also very... simple, one dimensional... in fact, all of the characters were.
I'm not saying it's a bad book, I'm just saying the only good thing about this entire thing is the plot twist. It'd have been a great thriller I'd loose myself in for a couple hours on tv.