I loved the previous book in this series “the fort” which was a dirty look at the underbelly of humanity. When trying to create a utopia there are always those who have little to contribute but want all the spoils of others. The dialogue in book 23 was excellent, every sentence had poise and purpose, every conversation had some form of meaning behind it which built up the tension and told a gripping and enjoyable story from start to finish.
The Bad - This book felt a little disjointed, almost like it was finished and then another 2,000 words needed to be added to “pad it out” so we ended up with some of the most infuriating dialogue and scenes rom this entire series. Anyone who has read this knows which scenes I am talking about but one example off the top of my head. This soup is well nice, said cookie, Well nice said Paula, well nice said blowers…etc. etc. etc. it was monotonous repetitive dross and when you have a group of characters all giving one or two word contributions to a conversation it only serves to remind the reader who is in the room at the time or part of the group and there are many other ways of doing this without having this style of writing which was massively over used especially in the first third of the book.
The orchard/Orgy etc. so almost a month after the outbreak and this? Seriously it was a bad idea and should not have been committed to page in my view. The idea of a bunch of eccentrics living in denial with strap on’s and fruit is just a bit batshit crazy even for the loyal followers of this series and then the stupid part with a massive drone flying through there window etc... To go from the previous couple of books which were excellent to this just felt like someone had said “Gay and Dick jokes are getting boring but we need to add more comedy” which was just bizarre and should really have been removed. I get the point of this storyline was to add carmen to the group and let her integrate and become one of the team but perhaps it could have been done in a different way which wasn’t so absurd.
The good – Despite those criticisms there was a lot of really good points to take away from this book, around 40/50% into the book the dialogue ramped up the pace and the tension mounted up as well, the scenes in the meeting room at the fort were excellent and played out well and the frustrations they were all feeling were passed onto the reader very well, the character development of Danny was very good and tappy’s backstory and relationship with Nick was warm and fun.
Character arc’s overall were handled well. The Paula/Roy situation was done brilliantly I thought, and the double drill by Blowers was also a great part of this book in my view. The Clarence story with the boat was very well written and probably the part of this book that I will remember the longest.
The Gregory/Boy/Cassey story took a very interesting turn which I wasn’t expecting and I’m intrigued by how that turns out.
I am a big fan of this series and I will continue to buy the next one and then the one after that and I hope there are at least another 10 books as well but perhaps RR needs a longer break between these books to recharge the creative juices because the first third of this book felt like it had been written in a hurry or a little half hearted.