digerbop's review
2.0
Review originally posted at: http://digerbop.ca/2014/04/a-shadow-in-the-flames/
Mature-Content Rating: PG (Coarse language and violence)
What would you do if in a single moment, the whole world you knew went up in flames? No, I am not talking about the proverbial flames of societal/relational loss, but actual flames. You know, the orange-tipped red tongues that lick at the night sky, dwarfing the stars with their wonder, fire exploding in arson's wake, and there is only one obvious answer: find the bastard that destroyed your life. Enter the world of "A Shadow in the Flames," a futuristic thriller with moon exploration, vampires, explosions, airships, and cybernetics. Sounds too good to be true? Well... it is.
The Good:
This is a real struggle for me. Normally I try to find what the author does well before getting into the bad, but I find myself scratching my head a lot while trying to come up with something to say under this heading. Why rate it 2 stars instead of 1? Short answer: I managed to finish the book. Long answer: there is a bit of humour in the dialogue... Okay, so that answer wasn't much longer. Looking at the book with a broad perspective, it is not that the book fails to hit every mark, and indeed it tries for many of them, but it is just rather bland.
The Bad:
The biggest issue that "A Shadow in the Flames" had was consistency. Have you ever eaten a piece of meat that is full of tiny bones and you have to chew carefully, then inevitably stop eating to pull them from your mouth? Reading this book felt a bit like that. The POV jumped all over the place adding much confusion to things. Not only than, there is a completely separate POV/plot line where almost nothing happens and it remains 90% unrelated until the very end. A poorly written Epilogue tries to tie the two together, but mostly it just prolongs the ending. I wish that the moon exploration plot pieces were completely taken out of the book. I understand, based on the ending, that such plot lines will be the focus of the sequel, but if so, all of that plot should have been kept under wraps until that book was ready to be released.
Not only does the plot jump around, and the POV changes cause confusion, but one character has three different names throughout the book. This can work, if certain people call them by one name, and others call them by something else, but the names seem to be virtually interchangeable. There is some kind of mystery woven in about the character's "true" identity being a secret to some people, but then everyone ends up using that "true" name at one point or another, so that left me confused. It especially becomes strange when that character is the POV focus for a scene. They call themselves by all three names throughout the scene, which made me wonder if the character was actually multiple people at times, but then I remembered that they just had three names for no reason.
Also, there are far too many elements involved. No, not in the plot, but in the general world that the story takes place. This wouldn't necessarily have been a problem if the book was longer and the author spent more time addressing each cultural/world nuance, rounding things out. Instead, they are poorly explained, or just thrown in because someone thought it was cool. The book reads mostly as a police procedural without the procedure, even though it is marketed as a science fiction novel. Yes, it has flying machines, people with enhanced vision or hearing, and vampires (for some random reason), but they add nothing to the story and often get in the way of the plot.
The writing style feels a bit juvenile. There is an over-use of passive voice throughout (he, thought, he imagined, he wondered, he believed, he was scared, it was black, the job was simple, etc). Every POV change is littered with long drawn-out paragraphs filled with passivity in an effort to explain how someone is feeling, differentiating them from the other characters, but instead of rounding things out, it just make the writing quite bland.
Unfortunately, because this is exclusively how the author chose to develop the characters, once these paragraphs are over, all of the characters sound and act pretty much the same. There are slight nuances at particular points (one character being overly humorous) but for the most part, if the dialogue tags were taken out, the reader would not know who was talking when... and it wouldn't really effect the progression anyway. This makes the characters feel flat.
Conclusion:
I wish there was more good things to say about this book, but too much poor writing gets in the way of the potential and it was hard for me to identify. "A Shadow in the Flames" is a light thriller with specks of uninteresting mystery and pockets of humour. It suffers from POV issues, pacing problems, and lack of characterization as well as a poorly stitched together plot. It will not leave a sour taste in your mouth, just not much taste to begin with. I suppose its ability to remain bland is at least consistent.
Mature-Content Rating: PG (Coarse language and violence)
What would you do if in a single moment, the whole world you knew went up in flames? No, I am not talking about the proverbial flames of societal/relational loss, but actual flames. You know, the orange-tipped red tongues that lick at the night sky, dwarfing the stars with their wonder, fire exploding in arson's wake, and there is only one obvious answer: find the bastard that destroyed your life. Enter the world of "A Shadow in the Flames," a futuristic thriller with moon exploration, vampires, explosions, airships, and cybernetics. Sounds too good to be true? Well... it is.
The Good:
This is a real struggle for me. Normally I try to find what the author does well before getting into the bad, but I find myself scratching my head a lot while trying to come up with something to say under this heading. Why rate it 2 stars instead of 1? Short answer: I managed to finish the book. Long answer: there is a bit of humour in the dialogue... Okay, so that answer wasn't much longer. Looking at the book with a broad perspective, it is not that the book fails to hit every mark, and indeed it tries for many of them, but it is just rather bland.
The Bad:
The biggest issue that "A Shadow in the Flames" had was consistency. Have you ever eaten a piece of meat that is full of tiny bones and you have to chew carefully, then inevitably stop eating to pull them from your mouth? Reading this book felt a bit like that. The POV jumped all over the place adding much confusion to things. Not only than, there is a completely separate POV/plot line where almost nothing happens and it remains 90% unrelated until the very end. A poorly written Epilogue tries to tie the two together, but mostly it just prolongs the ending. I wish that the moon exploration plot pieces were completely taken out of the book. I understand, based on the ending, that such plot lines will be the focus of the sequel, but if so, all of that plot should have been kept under wraps until that book was ready to be released.
Not only does the plot jump around, and the POV changes cause confusion, but one character has three different names throughout the book. This can work, if certain people call them by one name, and others call them by something else, but the names seem to be virtually interchangeable. There is some kind of mystery woven in about the character's "true" identity being a secret to some people, but then everyone ends up using that "true" name at one point or another, so that left me confused. It especially becomes strange when that character is the POV focus for a scene. They call themselves by all three names throughout the scene, which made me wonder if the character was actually multiple people at times, but then I remembered that they just had three names for no reason.
Also, there are far too many elements involved. No, not in the plot, but in the general world that the story takes place. This wouldn't necessarily have been a problem if the book was longer and the author spent more time addressing each cultural/world nuance, rounding things out. Instead, they are poorly explained, or just thrown in because someone thought it was cool. The book reads mostly as a police procedural without the procedure, even though it is marketed as a science fiction novel. Yes, it has flying machines, people with enhanced vision or hearing, and vampires (for some random reason), but they add nothing to the story and often get in the way of the plot.
The writing style feels a bit juvenile. There is an over-use of passive voice throughout (he, thought, he imagined, he wondered, he believed, he was scared, it was black, the job was simple, etc). Every POV change is littered with long drawn-out paragraphs filled with passivity in an effort to explain how someone is feeling, differentiating them from the other characters, but instead of rounding things out, it just make the writing quite bland.
Unfortunately, because this is exclusively how the author chose to develop the characters, once these paragraphs are over, all of the characters sound and act pretty much the same. There are slight nuances at particular points (one character being overly humorous) but for the most part, if the dialogue tags were taken out, the reader would not know who was talking when... and it wouldn't really effect the progression anyway. This makes the characters feel flat.
Conclusion:
I wish there was more good things to say about this book, but too much poor writing gets in the way of the potential and it was hard for me to identify. "A Shadow in the Flames" is a light thriller with specks of uninteresting mystery and pockets of humour. It suffers from POV issues, pacing problems, and lack of characterization as well as a poorly stitched together plot. It will not leave a sour taste in your mouth, just not much taste to begin with. I suppose its ability to remain bland is at least consistent.
secre's review against another edition
adventurous
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
A Shadow In The Flames is an interesting cyberpunk science fiction novel, but it fell a little flat for me. It's very slow going and has too virtually unlinked narratives throughout it which kind of come together at the end but its a very tenuous link. The main plot on Earth was interesting, although I found most of the characters fairly flat. But the secondary plot on the moon was tedious. Almost nothing happens, very little is explained and then there's a really tenuous attempt to link it back to the main narrative in the final chapter.
Some aspects of this are well done; the main plot was intriguing and I liked the various cyberpunk aspects of the world building with the body modifications and augmentations. The problem is that they didn't really add much other than to the setting; some characters are exceptionally fast or strong, others have visual enhancements etc, but they just seemed to be background details rather than essential to the plot. I did like the hints that augmentation could make people suffer mental breakdowns and would have appreciated that being more central to the main story; whilst it certainly does come into play, again it's more as a background element rather than a psychological necessity to the tale.
The mystery elements to the novel were largely well done. The pacing is slow, but that allowed the author to tease elements out, drip feeding you new hints and clues. A handful of the characters had decent development; I particularly liked the eccentric Felix. But the insistence on using multiple names for another character quickly became grating, plus his naivety wore on the nerves as well and Diomedes character felt lacking; he's a deuchebag for the sake of being a deuchebag most of the time. Other background characters are fairly forgettable.
All in all, somewhere between two and three stars. It is an ok book, fairly forgettable and could have done with more dynamic characters and cutting the whole moon section out in its entirety. It really didn't add anything substantial and just padded out the pages.
Some aspects of this are well done; the main plot was intriguing and I liked the various cyberpunk aspects of the world building with the body modifications and augmentations. The problem is that they didn't really add much other than to the setting; some characters are exceptionally fast or strong, others have visual enhancements etc, but they just seemed to be background details rather than essential to the plot. I did like the hints that augmentation could make people suffer mental breakdowns and would have appreciated that being more central to the main story; whilst it certainly does come into play, again it's more as a background element rather than a psychological necessity to the tale.
The mystery elements to the novel were largely well done. The pacing is slow, but that allowed the author to tease elements out, drip feeding you new hints and clues. A handful of the characters had decent development; I particularly liked the eccentric Felix. But the insistence on using multiple names for another character quickly became grating, plus his naivety wore on the nerves as well and Diomedes character felt lacking; he's a deuchebag for the sake of being a deuchebag most of the time. Other background characters are fairly forgettable.
All in all, somewhere between two and three stars. It is an ok book, fairly forgettable and could have done with more dynamic characters and cutting the whole moon section out in its entirety. It really didn't add anything substantial and just padded out the pages.
sciphi's review
3.0
Interesting plot and characters limited by awkward prose
If you can get past the awkward prose and clunky dialogue of the meandering early chapters the plot begins to tighten up as the characters sprout interesting depths and conflicted agendas. The most compelling subplot is frustratingly kept on a low simmer until very late, in favor of a character arc which plays out against a mundane techno heist thriller adventure with comic book elements.
I may be a sucker, but I'll give the second book in the series a shot on the strength of that subplot's potential...
If you can get past the awkward prose and clunky dialogue of the meandering early chapters the plot begins to tighten up as the characters sprout interesting depths and conflicted agendas. The most compelling subplot is frustratingly kept on a low simmer until very late, in favor of a character arc which plays out against a mundane techno heist thriller adventure with comic book elements.
I may be a sucker, but I'll give the second book in the series a shot on the strength of that subplot's potential...
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