A review by rosekk
Nest by Terry Goodkind

3.0

The book was gripping, but clumsy. A vast majority of the book was long conversations filled with exposition (almost all of the first hundred or so pages, then another fifty or so later on). The premise of the story - that some humans might have evolved to be able to detect murderers on sight - came off as far fetched and faintly ridiculous, but I forced myself to suspend disbelief for the sake of the story. The actual murderers in the story never really seemed scary - they were dispensed with too quickly, and there was very little build up around them. There was a strangely pro-Israel twist to the story. The nation of Israel comes out as the sole bastion against this innate murderous aspect to humanity, reaching out to individuals around the world to protect them. Israeli forces sweep into the final conflict in New York and save the day, while other police forces and crime fighting organisations are depicted as weak and prone to corruption. The deliberate tie to Israel is brought up quite a lot, though there is no particular plot reason why it has to be Israel. The suggestion is that both main characters are American, and for plot purposes could have been relying on any security division from any international government, or even a fictional independent organisation. That whole aspect of the book just seems very strange. Overall I found the book held my attention very well in-spite of the fact that the characters were quite bland, but I couldn't get properly buy into the pseudo-science needed to make the premise work, and the more jarring aspects of the writing stopped it being properly enjoyable.