forsakenfates's review against another edition
4.0
"The far enemy is the one you hate, the one you're sworn to fight against. The near enemy is the one you're close to, who you trust, but shouldn't."
Near Enemy is the sequel to Shovel Ready. You have Spademan, your garbageman turned contract killer living in post-dirty bomb NY. In this book, Spademan is attempting to figure out how to stop another potential plot against an already decimated NY. With all this going on, he still has to deal with protecting his “family” and keeping Persephone and Mark safe.
I really enjoy the writing style of these books. Sentences are very short, choppy, and to the point. It adds to the noir, hard-boil detective genre. It is action packed and fast-paced. Once I got into the book, I flew through it, plus these books are short at around 300 pages. Spademan is this dark brooding character that you cannot help but love, even though his choices are morally ambiguous.
In this installment, we find out a lot more about the dirty bomb and the initial terrorist plot. We also get a larger glimpse at how the city has moved on from the attack through the limn. The limn is this dreamlike state that allows someone to go to a different world to live their days. This book focuses on the idea of the terrorists attacking from inside, specifically from within the limn rather than overtly.
I definitely enjoyed this installment more than the first due to the faster plot. I think I connected more with stopping an imminent terrorist plot than the corrupt minister of Shovel Ready. The one thing I didn’t like was that from the beginning the villain was plotted as being Muslim. While this fits with current ideas on who terrorists are, I think it perpetuates the growing mistrust of all Muslims. I think it is unjustified that from the beginning, they are targeted as the bad guys. I’m currently in a class that focuses on US policy post 9/11, so I do have a certain lens that I’m reading this through. I just think it is unfair to have the initial terrorist attack in the limn be carried out by a woman in a Burqa.
Other than that, I really enjoyed this book and look forward to future books by Adam Sternbergh.
*I received a copy of this book through BloggingForBooks in exchange for an honest review*
Near Enemy is the sequel to Shovel Ready. You have Spademan, your garbageman turned contract killer living in post-dirty bomb NY. In this book, Spademan is attempting to figure out how to stop another potential plot against an already decimated NY. With all this going on, he still has to deal with protecting his “family” and keeping Persephone and Mark safe.
I really enjoy the writing style of these books. Sentences are very short, choppy, and to the point. It adds to the noir, hard-boil detective genre. It is action packed and fast-paced. Once I got into the book, I flew through it, plus these books are short at around 300 pages. Spademan is this dark brooding character that you cannot help but love, even though his choices are morally ambiguous.
In this installment, we find out a lot more about the dirty bomb and the initial terrorist plot. We also get a larger glimpse at how the city has moved on from the attack through the limn. The limn is this dreamlike state that allows someone to go to a different world to live their days. This book focuses on the idea of the terrorists attacking from inside, specifically from within the limn rather than overtly.
I definitely enjoyed this installment more than the first due to the faster plot. I think I connected more with stopping an imminent terrorist plot than the corrupt minister of Shovel Ready. The one thing I didn’t like was that from the beginning the villain was plotted as being Muslim. While this fits with current ideas on who terrorists are, I think it perpetuates the growing mistrust of all Muslims. I think it is unjustified that from the beginning, they are targeted as the bad guys. I’m currently in a class that focuses on US policy post 9/11, so I do have a certain lens that I’m reading this through. I just think it is unfair to have the initial terrorist attack in the limn be carried out by a woman in a Burqa.
Other than that, I really enjoyed this book and look forward to future books by Adam Sternbergh.
*I received a copy of this book through BloggingForBooks in exchange for an honest review*
cameron_butterfly's review against another edition
5.0
I did not read the first book, because I found this book randomly at a store, but the book is a great stand alone book. This book is easily one of my favorites. It was hard to put down. The ideas are intriguing but the form of the story is kinda hard to follow at times. Somethings are left unanswered but the overall book was amazing.
tommooney's review against another edition
2.0
Poor compared to his other books. Spademan didn't need another outing.
celise_winter's review against another edition
5.0
“It’s better to kill someone who wants to shake your hand than it is to shake someone’s hand who wants to kill you. Important lesson.”
Twisted, sarcastic, sassy, disturbed, and different, just like the first novel in the Spademan series. Link to my Shovel Ready Review.
Spademan used to be a garbage-man, but now he’s a hit man in a New York where people are tapped into virtual reality beds, ignoring the corrupt city around them. When Spademan sets out to take down a mark, what he discovers instead is that someone may have discovered how to hijack and kill people while they’re tapped into their twisted dreams. The limn may no longer be a safe place for people to live out their disturbing fantasies of rape and violence.
This author is my new favourite thing. Definitely one to watch out for if you like noir, sci-fi, dystopia, thrillers, mysteries or books that don’t neatly fit into one specific genre.
Twisted, sarcastic, sassy, disturbed, and different, just like the first novel in the Spademan series. Link to my Shovel Ready Review.
Spademan used to be a garbage-man, but now he’s a hit man in a New York where people are tapped into virtual reality beds, ignoring the corrupt city around them. When Spademan sets out to take down a mark, what he discovers instead is that someone may have discovered how to hijack and kill people while they’re tapped into their twisted dreams. The limn may no longer be a safe place for people to live out their disturbing fantasies of rape and violence.
This author is my new favourite thing. Definitely one to watch out for if you like noir, sci-fi, dystopia, thrillers, mysteries or books that don’t neatly fit into one specific genre.
richardrbecker's review against another edition
4.0
Spaceman used to be an anti-hero. But as his job as a hitman begins to take a much more noble tone, Spaceman feels more like a dark night than the sarcastically deadly loner we knew him to be in Shovel Ready. He is also much more likable as he begins to attract a team of eccentric characters — people whose loyalties range from unwavering to questionable — as they navigate the post-apocalyptic urban noir that Sternberg has aptly drafted here.
If you want something different, dive right in. But before you do, it might be best to start with the darker introduction Shovel Ready. The story is a but less cohesive but contains significantly more grit.
If you want something different, dive right in. But before you do, it might be best to start with the darker introduction Shovel Ready. The story is a but less cohesive but contains significantly more grit.
chukg's review against another edition
3.0
If you liked the first one, you will probably like this one. Short sentences, no quotation marks and has a very noir kind of feel, but it's set in a near-ish future dystopia where anyone who can afford it spends all their time in a full-sensory VR called the limn. Not all the action takes place there. Also one of the 'twists' was telegraphed so hard that it seemed like the characters were actively pretending they hadn't figured it out.
kalena_reads's review
4.0
4/5 stars
This book was cool! The writing style was very precise and clean, it was definitely not descriptive of everything but enough that I loved it. The main character, Spademan was funny and sadistic and sometimes you just need that you know? He was super interesting to read along with and I liked the plot points of this whole book. Some stuff I was able to figure out by myself but some stuff entirely threw me for a loop!
Some stuff in this book I had to jump on board with without knowing what fully happened in the previous book. But the book did a good job of explaining them so that you aren’t behind on anything. It was a pretty good book, definitely read if you like sci-fi and dystopian books
This book was cool! The writing style was very precise and clean, it was definitely not descriptive of everything but enough that I loved it. The main character, Spademan was funny and sadistic and sometimes you just need that you know? He was super interesting to read along with and I liked the plot points of this whole book. Some stuff I was able to figure out by myself but some stuff entirely threw me for a loop!
Some stuff in this book I had to jump on board with without knowing what fully happened in the previous book. But the book did a good job of explaining them so that you aren’t behind on anything. It was a pretty good book, definitely read if you like sci-fi and dystopian books
monty_reads's review against another edition
3.0
3.5 stars.
Minimalism is a tricky thing to pull off. Cormac McCarthy's later works have pretty much mastered it, and James Ellroy always manages to mine a particularly rhythmic, jazzy variation on the bare bones approach. More recently, Peter Heller's mournful, elegiac debut The Dog Stars proves the style can wring tears, while Nico Walker's Cherry proves the style can be both pointless and annoying as shit. Adam Sternbergh's Near Enemy, the sequel to 2014's Shovel Ready and, judging by the book's ending, at the very least the middle book in a trilogy, fortunately hews closer to Ellroy than Walker, adding in some of Elmore Leonard's tough guy gallows humor for good measure.
At the start of the book, New York City is still a wasteland. As we learned in Shovel Ready, terrorists detonated a dirty bomb in Times Square, rendering the city center largely uninhabitable. Most of the residents who remain spend their off-work hours "tapping in" to the limn, a quasi-virtual reality environment where they can be and do anything they want (think Ready Player One for a recent corollary) while remaining oblivious to the real world. The book's protagonist, who goes only by the name Spademan, is an assassin who picks up jobs from anyone as long as the price is right(ish).
Near Enemy hits the ground running. In the opening pages, Spademan is hired by an anonymous caller to kill Lesser. An avid "hopper," Lesser doesn't actually live his own exaggerated virtual existence in the limnosphere; instead he taps into the limn and "hops" into other people's feeds where he can observe their exploits without detection. Before Spademan can make the hit, Lesser launches himself from the limn, claiming that he saw someone killed – for real – in this virtual existence.
This isn't supposed to happen. The limn is imaginary and consequence-free. But the man in whose feed Lesser had hopped was indeed assassinated by a mysterious female figure.
As Spademan learns more about Lesser, he becomes a reluctant sleuth and resolves to unravel the truth behind what's happening in the limn. This brings him in contact with a powerful mayoral candidate, an off-the book cop, a Muslim teenager with an ax to grind, a detective named – wait for it – James Dandy, and a religious sect named the Wakers who want to see the limn brought down at any cost.
Look. There's nothing fancy about Near Enemy. It's pulp fiction in the purest sense of the word, and I mean that as a high compliment. Stripped down and built for speed, it won't change your life. But it will make your life more enjoyable while you read it.
Minimalism is a tricky thing to pull off. Cormac McCarthy's later works have pretty much mastered it, and James Ellroy always manages to mine a particularly rhythmic, jazzy variation on the bare bones approach. More recently, Peter Heller's mournful, elegiac debut The Dog Stars proves the style can wring tears, while Nico Walker's Cherry proves the style can be both pointless and annoying as shit. Adam Sternbergh's Near Enemy, the sequel to 2014's Shovel Ready and, judging by the book's ending, at the very least the middle book in a trilogy, fortunately hews closer to Ellroy than Walker, adding in some of Elmore Leonard's tough guy gallows humor for good measure.
At the start of the book, New York City is still a wasteland. As we learned in Shovel Ready, terrorists detonated a dirty bomb in Times Square, rendering the city center largely uninhabitable. Most of the residents who remain spend their off-work hours "tapping in" to the limn, a quasi-virtual reality environment where they can be and do anything they want (think Ready Player One for a recent corollary) while remaining oblivious to the real world. The book's protagonist, who goes only by the name Spademan, is an assassin who picks up jobs from anyone as long as the price is right(ish).
Near Enemy hits the ground running. In the opening pages, Spademan is hired by an anonymous caller to kill Lesser. An avid "hopper," Lesser doesn't actually live his own exaggerated virtual existence in the limnosphere; instead he taps into the limn and "hops" into other people's feeds where he can observe their exploits without detection. Before Spademan can make the hit, Lesser launches himself from the limn, claiming that he saw someone killed – for real – in this virtual existence.
This isn't supposed to happen. The limn is imaginary and consequence-free. But the man in whose feed Lesser had hopped was indeed assassinated by a mysterious female figure.
As Spademan learns more about Lesser, he becomes a reluctant sleuth and resolves to unravel the truth behind what's happening in the limn. This brings him in contact with a powerful mayoral candidate, an off-the book cop, a Muslim teenager with an ax to grind, a detective named – wait for it – James Dandy, and a religious sect named the Wakers who want to see the limn brought down at any cost.
Look. There's nothing fancy about Near Enemy. It's pulp fiction in the purest sense of the word, and I mean that as a high compliment. Stripped down and built for speed, it won't change your life. But it will make your life more enjoyable while you read it.
malvina4321's review against another edition
3.0
Near Enemy is a past-paced novel written in noir style that is fun to read if you don't think about logic too much. The plot is hard to describe without spoiling the first book in the series but it is easy and quick to read. I think I prefer Near Enemy to Shovel Ready, maybe because there's little Persephone in this one and I find her character annoying.
In this novel, Spademan returns and is out to kill a limn hopper when things go haywire. This one had a slew of interesting characters to follow and a pretty scary villain.
I'm looking forward to book #3.
I received this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review.
In this novel, Spademan returns and is out to kill a limn hopper when things go haywire. This one had a slew of interesting characters to follow and a pretty scary villain.
I'm looking forward to book #3.
I received this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review.
nkrajnovich's review against another edition
4.0
Another awesome Spademan book! I appreciated that Sternbergh gave a few pages to remind us of what happened in the first book since this is a continuation. I really like the Spafeman character too, while a killer for hire, you know he has a soft side & wants to do what's right. So not my typical read, but so loved it