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Greta
Greta De Bellefon is a world famous scientist and a highly strung, egotistical, power-hungry madam. Together with her lab partner, Patrice, she invents the most potent medicine known to the Elixir of Life. One thousand years later, jet set Spanish TV reporter, Flor Santiago, is lured into the Peruvian rainforest where the secrets of the two scientists, now bitterly estranged, are revealed. Flor’s eyes are opened to the world around her and she begins a personal quest to explore the Elixir’s legacy. In an adventure which sends her across continents and into hiding, Flor must battle her own demons and tangle with the dark side of the phrase ‘knowledge is power’ before finally emerging to challenge Greta on the havoc she has wreaked. As their worlds collide, passionate feelings are stirred leading to explosive and unintended consequences for them both.
576 pages, Paperback
First published October 5, 2011
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 19, 2012
From the blurb, I had high hopes for this, but I was badly disappointed and gave up about a third of the way through.
The opening section is a perfect example of why authors are taught "show, don't tell". Jenman sets up her world, a thousand years in the future, and then has chapter after chapter of an old man relating the entire history of the world for the last millenium, explaining how they got there.
After several thousand words of explanation, I just couldn't believe in the world she had created. A thousand years from now, will people really still have DVDs? Will the same countries even exist? Bear in mind that a thousand years is further away from us than the Middle Ages - a time where printing didn't exist, and France, Germany, Italy, America and Russia didn't exist as nations. The whole thing seems to be told from a 21st century perspective, not from the point of view of someone living in the 30th century.
What finally made me give up, though, were the big social messages that were dealt with in so little depth. It felt like I was being preached to, but on a child-like level: everything was reduced to very simple concepts that could be presented almost as bullet points.
It's a great premise, and there's a lot that could be done with this story and these characters, but it needs much more skilled story-telling and writing to pull it off.
The opening section is a perfect example of why authors are taught "show, don't tell". Jenman sets up her world, a thousand years in the future, and then has chapter after chapter of an old man relating the entire history of the world for the last millenium, explaining how they got there.
After several thousand words of explanation, I just couldn't believe in the world she had created. A thousand years from now, will people really still have DVDs? Will the same countries even exist? Bear in mind that a thousand years is further away from us than the Middle Ages - a time where printing didn't exist, and France, Germany, Italy, America and Russia didn't exist as nations. The whole thing seems to be told from a 21st century perspective, not from the point of view of someone living in the 30th century.
What finally made me give up, though, were the big social messages that were dealt with in so little depth. It felt like I was being preached to, but on a child-like level: everything was reduced to very simple concepts that could be presented almost as bullet points.
It's a great premise, and there's a lot that could be done with this story and these characters, but it needs much more skilled story-telling and writing to pull it off.
Displaying 1 of 1 review