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A review by jsdrown
Shadow Prey by John Sandford
1.0
I'm dropping this one. I enjoyed the first book as just straight entertainment and could forgive the weaknesses in the writing. This one fails to even be entertaining. On a surface level this is about solving some murders? I guess? But the half of the book I could be bothered to read is about how our protagonist really badly wants to cheat on his baby mama with his new co-worker. Oh... and the only thing making him question if he should cheat with his co-worker is that said "has a few extra pounds."
I get this stuff being in decent literature. There are gray areas for that kind of fiction. But when you shoehorn it into your annual crime fiction series it just feels really gross and sexist. There is a part where our "hero", Lucas Davenport, is sitting next to his potential affair/tryst at booth and feels her leg warmth. He has to reassure himself that it's not a huge deal that she's chubby. No joke.
There are other things that compound on top of this. I don't think John Sanford gets how game development works. Lucas is a detective and game developer but the descriptions of him creating games doesn't make a ton of sense. It's written in a way that makes it sound like Davenport is writing a novel, not creating a game. I guess this is why they say authors should write what they know, because it comes off as completely phony and disingenuous.
I get this stuff being in decent literature. There are gray areas for that kind of fiction. But when you shoehorn it into your annual crime fiction series it just feels really gross and sexist. There is a part where our "hero", Lucas Davenport, is sitting next to his potential affair/tryst at booth and feels her leg warmth. He has to reassure himself that it's not a huge deal that she's chubby. No joke.
There are other things that compound on top of this. I don't think John Sanford gets how game development works. Lucas is a detective and game developer but the descriptions of him creating games doesn't make a ton of sense. It's written in a way that makes it sound like Davenport is writing a novel, not creating a game. I guess this is why they say authors should write what they know, because it comes off as completely phony and disingenuous.