maaalin's review
5.0
This is a good book, and I'm now gonna tell you why. First of all, the characters have depth and aren't either good or bad. Danny, the main character, moves around on a greyscale a lot throughout the book. Secondly, sacrifices are made. Without saying too much, Sakey isn't scared of wrenching the reader's heart, and boy does he wrench it. When a fictive story is making you feel things, it's either really good or really bad. The Blade Itself is the former, in my opinion. Lastly, the book is well written. Sakey plays a lot with his words, occasionally giving what could be lines from a poem, but without degrading the story itself. And then there are the descriptions and details, which both help contribute to a very vivid image of what's going on. Sakey has done his research well and I applaud him for that. Five stars it is.
rosseroo's review
2.0
Despite the hefty praise from established authors, this debut Chicago crime thriller felt entirely run-of-the-mill to me. It opens with a scene involving two friends from an Irish neighborhood who are interrupted in act of robbing a pawnbrokers. Someone is killed, and Danny gets away, while Evan goes to prison for twelve years. Flash-forward seven years, and Danny is living a straight life as a construction project managers, and Evan is just out of prison. It comes as no surprise that he's also of the opinion that Danny owes him, and that payback comes in the form of partnering up for a big score.
The characters are all pretty standard fare -- there's Danny's old friend from the neighborhood, there's Danny's wife who is awesome in every way but will walk out if he gets back into crime, there's a floozy with a heart and brain, etc... One of the book's big themes is about the nobility of work, and the differences between entitled jerks and those who came up with nothing. But it's all pretty rote and obvious. Indeed, almost every twist and turn of the plot is obvious, and while the book isn't bad per se, it's also not particularly original or interesting.
The characters are all pretty standard fare -- there's Danny's old friend from the neighborhood, there's Danny's wife who is awesome in every way but will walk out if he gets back into crime, there's a floozy with a heart and brain, etc... One of the book's big themes is about the nobility of work, and the differences between entitled jerks and those who came up with nothing. But it's all pretty rote and obvious. Indeed, almost every twist and turn of the plot is obvious, and while the book isn't bad per se, it's also not particularly original or interesting.
bookbitch's review
Danny and Evan grew up on the South Side of Chicago in a working class neighborhood. They became partners in crime, stealing cars and doing small time burglaries, until Evan escalated the stakes with a pawn shop robbery gone bad. Danny managed to get away but Evan does hard time; while Evan's in prison, Danny's been scared straight. He's a project manager for a small construction company, has a nice apartment and a great girlfriend - as long as he stays straight. So when Evan gets paroled seven years later and wants to renew their partnership, Danny isn't interested. But Evan feels like Danny owes him, and prison certainly hasn't softened him any. In fact, it's turned him into Danny's worst nightmare. The tension escalates as Evan starts putting the screws to Danny, and somehow Sakey keeps ratcheting it on up until the last page. This is an old story, but it is told so well that it feels new. This debut has garnered starred reviews and raves galore, drawing comparisons to Dennis Lehane's masterpiece, Mystic River, as well as the writing styles of George Pelecanos and Joseph Finder, leaving me wondering: how can any book live up to all that hype? Read it and find out - because it did.
allanderek's review
3.0
An interesting enough thriller, the characters are a little too caricatured for me, but if you like that then this is really pretty decent.
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