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A review by jimbowen0306
The Never Game by Jeffery Deaver
3.0
I’ve read a number of Jeffery Denver books, mostly his Lincoln Rhyme series, and this was, by far the worst book of his that I have read.
In this book, we discover there are a group of people who travel the country collecting the rewards that are paid out when rewards are offered on missing people, or convicts/suspects are discovered. Colter Shaw, Denver’s new protagonist, is one such rewardist, and we watch him arrive in Silicon Valley, after a student goes missing.
It’s not a bad book, just somewhat daft. I struggle to believe, for example, that there are sufficient rewards for people to do the job (especially enough for people like Shaw to be as successful as he seems to be in the book).
In addition, I think there’s something about characters that are deliberately written as series. It feels sometimes when they’re written, that the author’s thinking “I have no idea about what character traits will work, so I’ll throw all of them at you.” As a consequence, Shaw has the crazy father, the put upon mother, parents who read him adult books as kids, rather than kids books, the living in the wilderness/survivalist upbringing (I half expected them to be Neo-Nazis at one stage), the fact he has Native-American ancestry (and so had to go through some coming of age ritual), no phones, or televisions growing up, the strange brother who takes it all too far, the inability to really connect to people, or relate to 21st Century. The result is that I’m not even sure I like the guy. He feels like a cross between a Jack Reacher (who doesn’t fight), Dora the Explorer, and someone who is slightly autistic.
Finally, another criticism I would have is that there’s too much story. I can’t work out whether the author really though the main story isn’t sufficiently strong to carry a narrative, and so added a secondary story, or was looking for guidance from his readers, and wanted them to tell him who they wanted him to be. Rewardist, or a slightly autistic Dora the Explorer. The book could have been 10-20% shorter, had he not been in 2 minds as to what he wanted it to be.
So all in all, I’ll probably read the second book in the series, but if the character isn’t decided on by then, I won’t read further.
In this book, we discover there are a group of people who travel the country collecting the rewards that are paid out when rewards are offered on missing people, or convicts/suspects are discovered. Colter Shaw, Denver’s new protagonist, is one such rewardist, and we watch him arrive in Silicon Valley, after a student goes missing.
It’s not a bad book, just somewhat daft. I struggle to believe, for example, that there are sufficient rewards for people to do the job (especially enough for people like Shaw to be as successful as he seems to be in the book).
In addition, I think there’s something about characters that are deliberately written as series. It feels sometimes when they’re written, that the author’s thinking “I have no idea about what character traits will work, so I’ll throw all of them at you.” As a consequence, Shaw has the crazy father, the put upon mother, parents who read him adult books as kids, rather than kids books, the living in the wilderness/survivalist upbringing (I half expected them to be Neo-Nazis at one stage), the fact he has Native-American ancestry (and so had to go through some coming of age ritual), no phones, or televisions growing up, the strange brother who takes it all too far, the inability to really connect to people, or relate to 21st Century. The result is that I’m not even sure I like the guy. He feels like a cross between a Jack Reacher (who doesn’t fight), Dora the Explorer, and someone who is slightly autistic.
Finally, another criticism I would have is that there’s too much story. I can’t work out whether the author really though the main story isn’t sufficiently strong to carry a narrative, and so added a secondary story, or was looking for guidance from his readers, and wanted them to tell him who they wanted him to be. Rewardist, or a slightly autistic Dora the Explorer. The book could have been 10-20% shorter, had he not been in 2 minds as to what he wanted it to be.
So all in all, I’ll probably read the second book in the series, but if the character isn’t decided on by then, I won’t read further.