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A review by tiggum
Jet by Russell Blake
2.0
Jet (claims the author) "strives to be ... an action thriller that breaks the mold and tramples convention." As far as I can tell, what this means is that the generic protagonist is a woman instead of a man. That said, there's nothing wrong with that and the bits that are focused on the action are actually pretty good, with a similar feel to an action video game or a Jason Bourne film. It's not great writing, but it's fun.
Unfortunately the non-action bits where it tries to be serious are terrible. First there's basically everything about the protagonist. If she were a man then I guess we wouldn't need any explanation for her wanting to be a super-spy, but as a woman she's got to have an excuse, which means that her parents are dead and she was abused as a child.
And then what would make a woman give up her career and the only life she's ever known? Pregnancy obviously. Can't have a child and be a cool assassin, and if you're a woman then obviously you're going to choose the child. Obviously.
And if it weren't for those major flaws I could have overlooked the many, many minor flaws, such as the protagonist only surviving because the bad guys seem to never use the most efficient or reliable means of taking her out, or the fact that guns, money and vehicles seem to just materialise whenever she needs them.
It's really unfortunate, because it wouldn't take a lot of changes to fix the book; Most of it is fine if you're OK with how video-gamey it is, but the author obviously wanted it to be taken more seriously than that (despite his claim that "it's deliberately and joyously over-the-top [and] unapologetically overblown").
Unfortunately the non-action bits where it tries to be serious are terrible. First there's basically everything about the protagonist. If she were a man then I guess we wouldn't need any explanation for her wanting to be a super-spy, but as a woman she's got to have an excuse, which means that her parents are dead and she was abused as a child.
And then what would make a woman give up her career and the only life she's ever known? Pregnancy obviously. Can't have a child and be a cool assassin, and if you're a woman then obviously you're going to choose the child. Obviously.
And if it weren't for those major flaws I could have overlooked the many, many minor flaws, such as the protagonist only surviving because the bad guys seem to never use the most efficient or reliable means of taking her out, or the fact that guns, money and vehicles seem to just materialise whenever she needs them.
It's really unfortunate, because it wouldn't take a lot of changes to fix the book; Most of it is fine if you're OK with how video-gamey it is, but the author obviously wanted it to be taken more seriously than that (despite his claim that "it's deliberately and joyously over-the-top [and] unapologetically overblown").