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A review by macymcbeth
The Cellist by Daniel Silva
3.0
This is not Daniel Silva's best work. And, you know me, I am all-in on the Gabriel Allon fandom. But this book felt so discombobulated. The premise for the espionage (the murder of Victor Orlov) wasn't very interesting to me and it was a little tricky to track why he was killed in the first place. It almost blew out of proportion to where we ended up in Switzerland, when justice was (kind of) served.
Then, Parts 4 and 5 take a strange shift to the USA right before a 2021 presidential inauguration. It was abrupt, and I understand how Silva tried to tie the two together, but it didn't really convince me. It felt like reading a completely separate Gabriel Allon book.
This book also had a lot of political undertones and they were not subtle. It is absolutely Silva's right to write about his opinions (and those opinions are naturally going to show up in his expositions), but I didn't much care for being reminded about how bleak the COVID pandemic felt and how terrifying the January 6th Capitol Insurrection was. And, honestly, the COVID details didn't really feel that relevant to the story itself.
Because of how it ends, I don't think this book can be outright skipped in the series. And it wasn't bad, per se, it just wasn't very good. It doesn't live up to the Gold Standard that I expect from Silva or Gabriel. In the 20+ backlog of books in this series, it falls to the bottom, if not dead last.
Then, Parts 4 and 5 take a strange shift to the USA right before a 2021 presidential inauguration. It was abrupt, and I understand how Silva tried to tie the two together, but it didn't really convince me. It felt like reading a completely separate Gabriel Allon book.
This book also had a lot of political undertones and they were not subtle. It is absolutely Silva's right to write about his opinions (and those opinions are naturally going to show up in his expositions), but I didn't much care for being reminded about how bleak the COVID pandemic felt and how terrifying the January 6th Capitol Insurrection was. And, honestly, the COVID details didn't really feel that relevant to the story itself.
Because of how it ends, I don't think this book can be outright skipped in the series. And it wasn't bad, per se, it just wasn't very good. It doesn't live up to the Gold Standard that I expect from Silva or Gabriel. In the 20+ backlog of books in this series, it falls to the bottom, if not dead last.