Customer Reviews

Executive Actions

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This novel has a very intriguing plot: Can a deep cover "sleeper" spy become president of the US? Apparently so.

The story moves along at a quick pace with some interesting characters. What is amazing is that the numerous federal law enforcement agencies finally work together to stop a horrendous plot to overthrow the US government.

I thought the book was a very enjoyable read, but the editing is awful. I have never read a book from a major publisher with so many grammatical errors, omissions and incorrect punctuation.

Some of the sentences had so many errors they made no sense. It is a shame to see a good novel degraded by such sloppy editing.

Granted, the story _is_ somewhat interesting (although improbable in some places) but you really have to be patient to wade through the grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors. I can't believe it was actually published in this state!

My favorite error was the consistent use of "passed" instead of "past". There are a LOT of others, sometimes making sentences totally incoherent.

The best advice I would give is to wait for the used book sales for further titles by this author or publisher.

The plot is interesting, could be 4 or 5 stars. I did read it all the way through. But I will remember this book most for the several hundred obvious spelling and word selection errors, as an example of how low standards have sunk in some parts of the publishing profession.

While the story is generally pretty good - the lack of a good proof reading does distract from the story.

Some of the information in the story seems a bit out of whack as well. F/A-18 Hornet's are apparently flown by the Navy and the Air Force - though I'm not aware of any Air Force versions out there. Ramstein Air Force Base is depicted as some sort of top secret facility - but it's an Air Force Base in Germany - granted, a super-base - but it's still an Air Force Base - if you have a military ID, you can get on base - you don't have to have any special clearance or permission.

Same with Ramstein's webpage (www.ramstein.af.mil) you don't need a password to get past the homepage. However, you do need web access from a .mil server to get very far - but that's not the same as a password.

These sorts of things take away from the story - and make one wonder about the authenticity of other parts of the story.

Overall, the story was pretty good - though I found it fairly obvious who the first assisination target was supposed to be (trying not to give anything away!). It's kind of like one of those movies where you know what's going to happen to the person in the movie - but they don't.

Some of the aspects of the story didn't make sense. Why did Dolan check out of the room - when Dolan was really McAllister? That was never fully explained. Lodge and Newman were apparently Arabic - and had no alliegence to Russia - yet no mention is made of skin tone being that of a middle easterner.

Those sorts of things just poke holes in the story - and make it difficult to follow - because then you're stopping to think about, and question, things - rather than just reading the story.

Don't get me wrong - I'd probably reccomend the story - but I wouldn't call it a "must read" - I'd reccomend other books, that I feel are better written and researched, before I'd reccomend this one.

I thought this was a very interesting story. It had a plot twist that I didn't really expect.

But how could ibooks allow a novel with so many spelling, grammatical and punctuation errors ever reach the shelf? There were times when it was incoherent.

For example, from late in the book, an exchange between the Chief Justice and Katie Kessler. Chief Justice - "Now you dose to question me?" Kessler - "To obtain your legal knowledge, sir. Does recognize the Court have any constitutional authority that prevents the Chief Justice..."

What does that mean?

This is a five-star story. It is unfortunate that it had a one-star editor. The people at ibooks need to take a look at the people who are supposed to be proofreading new novels. Because in this case, they dropped the ball.

I purchased a hard-bound copy of this book, expecting a political thriller of Demille or Flynn quality. I haven't even gotten past Page 57 and I have been so distracted by spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors I feel like I'm in graduate school again proofreading an undergraduate's term paper! For someone with a resume of writing for NY Times and Boston Globe, teaching journalism, and co-owning a production company, this book is extremely sloppy indeed. I just hope that people don't put the entire journalism community in the same realm as this extremely poor journalistic endeavor.

A cold-war sleeper plot starts to hatch a generation later, in the era of terrorist threats and nuclear stare-downs. Grossman's first novel is fast-paced, gripping and well-researched, demonstrating in-depth knowledge of weaponry, military and police procedures, electoral politics, Islamic legends and architecture, even the streets and stores of such disparate cities as Washington, Tripoli, and Boston. In the end, while an immediate crisis is resolved, there are enough loose ends dangling that one is eager to move on to the next book in the series. I know I am going to do so as soon as I finish writing this enthusiastic review.

BTW, I downloaded the Kindle version and don't know what some other reviewers were talking about regarding poor proofreading. I found no errors in this version.

A really good and gripping book is one that can't be put down, makes one anti-social and annoys the reader when it has been finished!. This qualifies on all accounts. Grossman;s book, unlike many other thriller/suspense authors, is believable without branching out into the impossible and makes the book thoroughly readable. From the moment it is taken up, meals and sleeping become an annoyance that require you to put the book down when you would prefer to see what the next page holds. If there was a complaint about the author it would be that he has written so few stories and that he has created an appetite for the reader that cannot be satisfied.

There are a couple of approaches to writing action fiction. One of these is of course to introduce some characters and then get them moving with a problem to be solved. Another approach is to make characters that are very interesting and have them interacting with a lot of tension and conflict. Either of these can be successful. What does not work is to try to get a plot and story going and then constantly interrupt it with description and characterization and filling.

I do not care how good the idea is and in fact the better the idea the worse it is for the story to be constantly stalled with introductions and descriptions and backgrounds which is exactly what happens in this book. A few chapters into the book this author has created his story and we have the beginning of a thriller and immediately it leaves the tracks and goes not once, but about five times into background and fill and even leaves the scene to go around the country and across the world before it gets back to the whole point of the story, to find out who did this and why. Even basic writing texts point out this is a bad approach and in this book it is just the absolute an ultimate proof of why.

To have a book that is 746 pages long (paperback) keep my interest says it must be good. One of the best books of this type I have read. Have no idea why a number of readers had so many problems. I'm just sorry the writer has nothing further coming out after the sequel.