tacoshark 's review for:

American War by Omar El Akkad

3.0

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Probably 2.5 stars. I found this fairly disappointing, I expected a book about a future civil war to be more exciting and it wasn't really. The first third of the book is very dense, really in need of editing. Not much happens but it takes forever to not happen. It's mainly supposed to be character development, but nearly all of the characters remain thin and pretty poorly drawn. Sarat is the most developed character, but I didn't always buy the development. It picked up more in the middle, though it was still pretty slow and dreary, and then it really flew to the ending, which was very clearly going to be the ending from about the first quarter on. This is one of those books that had such a great, promising premise and just didn't deliver. I actually think it would have been a better book if it had zoomed out and not been so wholly, intensely focused on one character.