Customer Reviews

A Fistful of Rain

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...but that doesn't mean I don't know a good novel when I read one. And A FISTFUL OF RAIN is a damn good novel.

What impresses me most--and likely will impress anyone who has read Rucka's previous books (and who hasn't?)--is that as far as his prose work is concerned, this is new and exciting territory. In the Atticus Kodiak novels, you have Atticus Kodiak as your focus character--a bodyguard who is a pretty straight shooter and tells it like it is. He's a very reliable and meticulous person, and so using him as the authorial POV makes for a reliable story.

Mim in A FISTFUL OF RAIN is none of these things--and she's telling the story in first person. This makes for a wholly different kind of read, where the reader is never on stable ground. Thus ratcheting the suspense up even further than normal.

Now, Rucka has always been intrigued by flawed characters. No one in his other books is perfect, and they are all the more endearing for it. This is something he pushes to the limits in FISTFUL. Mim can be blindingly stupid and make you incredibly angry for some of the choices she makes--yet since Greg is an author who cares about this character, he knows how to make you care, as well. You don't love her in spite of her failings, but because of them.

Ultimately, though, what keeps a reader hooked to a Rucka novel is on ample display here--and that's excitement. I think there is always a point of no return in Greg's books, where you have been dropped into the middle of the action and you just can't put the novel down until you are done. If that's what you love in the Kodiak adventures, then you're all set in A FISTFUL OF RAIN.

First of all, a warning: Do not start this book unless you have the rest of the day to finish it. If you start it right before you go to bed, trust me - you won't sleep a wink. Once this book gets rolling, it's near impossible to put it down.

Greg Rucka once again creates a high-speed roller coaster of a novel - a novel that starts with a steep drop, followed by a brief moment to catch your breath, and then when you least expect it, you're sent down a wild loop-de-loop that doesn't slow down until the very last page.

As with Rucka's other books, the best thing the novel has going is the main character - but instead of the familiar Atticus Kodiak, this time Rucka introduces us to Mim. She's one of those love/hate characters. One moment you are sympathizing with her, but the next moment you just want to take her and slap her silly. She is one of the most unpredictable characters that you'll ever come across in fiction and the predicaments that she finds herself in are definitely some of the most unique.

This is pure mystery. You'll be guessing who's behind Mim's torment all the way up to the very last chapter - and everyone's a suspect. Is it the person you least expect, or the person you most expect? It's hard to tell, as Rucka is ruthless in his twists and turns throughout the novel. Just when you think you might have it all figured out, Rucka throws a curveball your way that makes you think twice, forcing you to keep reading out of anticipation and excitement.

Greg Rucka is a new author to me. This is the second book of his that I've read, and he is quickly becoming one of my favorites. "A Fistful of Rain", after the Warren Zevon song, is satisfying not only because of its pulse-pounding plot (which moves at breakneck speed), but because of the challenge of a male author writing from a first person, female point of view.

The story centers around Mim Bracca, a rock star who is temporarily ejected from her band because of her problems with alcohol. Upon her return home, she is kidnapped, forced to strip naked, and then returned home relatively unharmed. Things go from bad to worse, and soon Mim's brother Mikel finds that there are pornographic pictures of her on the Internet. The police try to get involved, but Mim is rather pigheaded, and they find their help unwanted at best. I won't go further into the plot, and for one major reason.

The mystery isn't all that mysterious. You'll have it solved before you're halfway through the book, and the only reason it's even remotely believable that Mim missed this rather glaringly obvious resolution is that she's drunk nearly the entire time.

One thing Rucka is famous for, however, is last minute twists, and boy, does this book pack one. He cleverly leads you on, making you believe that you have it all figured out, and reveals an accomplice (and I use the term loosely) in the penultimate chapter of the book. While the twist is surprising, it isn't very intelligent, as there is no possible way even the most hardcore mystery buff could guess at it. This may seem like a good idea, but it really isn't, because the accomplice isn't really given a decent motive even after he's unveiled, and so the whole thing comes off as rather stupid.

All in all, this is an action-packed book that reads incredibly quickly (start early in the day, because if you start in bed, you won't sleep until you're done), but with an ultimately unsatisfying conclusion. There isn't much to the book; if you want something that makes you think, try Neil Gaiman's "American Gods", which requires quite a bit of outside research. Despite my gripes, this is truly an exciting book, and with a little more work and experience, I can definitely see Rucka becoming a premier thriller writer, moreso than he already is.

This is not an Atticus Kodiak novel. But don't let that deter you. It's still filled with Rucka's smooth prose and lightning-fast pacing. It's a real page-turner. I read through it in two sittings. Considering my usual easy-to-distract manner, that's high praise.

The biggest difference that I see from this book as opposed to the Kodiak novels is that this protagonist isn't in control of everything and doesn't have the same strengths as Kodiak. Atticus is cool and knows what he's doing. Mim is on a downhill drinking binge, has been kicked out of her band, and is facing a couple of horrifying issues back at home. There is a lot going on around here, but she's in no shape -- either mentally or physically -- to handle them. Yet she has a Never-Say-Die attitude that propels her through the events of the book towards its climax. She's not a victim. She's a survivor. In the end, this book is more a character study of a troubled woman than the more plot-driven thrillers of the Kodiak books.

If you can't wait the year or two it'll take for the next Kodiak book to come out, give this one a try. You'll recognize the straightforward prose, but delight in something new outside the usual sphere of personal protection and natonal politics.

It is a rare thing when you get a male author who can write from the first person perspective of a female character, and make it believable. Mim, the main character is a musician who is messing up her career due to heavy drinking. During a hiatus from the road tour, she heads home to figure herself, and her problems out. This is a complicated young woman, with a very depressing and unsettled childhood. You see her point of view, and yet you find yourself wanting to shake her and wake her up to what she is doing. The writing is insightful, without making the mistakes that other authors have made of the typecast misfit female with hormones. Rucka has written 5 other novels, all of which I reccomend. His style is graphic, but real. No gloss over. He does not, however, add any details for the sole purpose of shock value. You see the very room you are in and all of it's detail in your head, making it so very real, that this is a book that is hard to put down.

After enjoying a lot of success with his Atticus Kodiak series, a series that has made me a true fan, Greg Rucka has followed it up with this stand-alone story. While it definitely has its moments in terms of providing a tense thriller, I found that the story didn't quite ring true to me. I'll explain why a little later.

The story is told from the first person point of view of Mim Bracca. From the outside it would appear that Mim has it all. She's a member of a Tailhook, a rock band that is riding a wild wave of success that seems like it will never end. But Mim is haunted by her past and the early tragedies that shaped her life.

After her father was sent to prison for the murder of her mother, Mim and her brother were sent to a series of foster homes with varying levels of success. Mim became what could delicately be termed a "problem child" and her experiences could be directly related to her alcoholism now.

It's her problem with alcohol that eventually leads her to be confronted by the lead singer of the band while on tour with the news that Mim is being temporarily rested from the band because they consider her drinking to have gotten out of control. After spending the previous two days alternately blacked out or vomiting, Mim doesn't have much of an argument and is soon aboard a plane bound for her home in Portland, Oregon.

When she arrives home, nursing a hangover from the flight, she is confronted by a man on her doorstep and then abducted at gunpoint. It's an unusual abduction because she is thrown into the back of a van, forced to strip naked and then is driven around for a while before being dumped back at her own home. Confused and scared, she rings the police but when she tells them her story they are very sceptical and take little action.

Mim's response to her ordeal, as it is with most situations, is to get completely and utterly rat-faced drunk. From this point her life begins to nosedive as she experiences personal tragedy (response: get drunk), is publicly humiliated (response: get drunk), is blackmailed (response: get drunk), her father is kidnapped (response: well...you get the idea).

After what seems like an eternity Mim finally takes some sort of control of the situation and comes up with an idea about who is blackmailing her and how she can fight her way out of the problem. What annoyed me the most about Mim's helplessness was her utter refusal to let anyone else, such as the police, help her in any way. I don't yell at books very often, but I sure did this time, pleading with her to get some bloody help before we ran out of pages.

I found the way that Mim's alcoholism was dealt with to be extremely frustrating and unrealistic. Here was a rich and famous young woman who was sent home by her fellow band members to "dry out", yet she was given absolutely no support at all. In fact, she was just shoved on a plane by herself, expected to go home where she lived alone and then, all be herself, she had to "dry out".

Just a little bit of help from someone would have served the duel purpose of giving the story some added interest, and it would have helped move things along a little more quickly.

Finally, things begin to fall into place after numerous disagreements with the police which I simply found annoying and distracting. Once Mim pulls herself together the action picks up and we are treated to an ending with one or two unexpected twists. But on the whole I found the book rather disappointing with the resolution leaving me with a feeling that it was too little, too late.

I hadn't read any of Greg Rucka's earlier books, but when I stumbled across a review of A Fistful of Rain, I decided to give it a read. Now I know what I've been missing!

Rucka combines terse prose and sudden plot twists with an amazing ability to make you identify with the characters. But the real draw in Fistful is excitement -- I started reading it on my morning train-ride, and almost missed my stop. I considered spending the first few hours of the workday in a corner finishing it, but compromised by staying up late that night. Yes, it's that good.

I've read several of Greg Rucka's other books and found them enjoyable, so I was amazed at how terribly bad A Fistful of Rain was.

Let's start with the obvious; I have no problem with books about flawed characters, the ones who start out nasty then end up like Ebenzer Scrooge, all happy and nice at the end of the book. That's not the case in A Fistful of Rain. Mim Bracca, the guitarist for a rock band, has to be one of the most unlikable main characters in the history of popular novels. She's an alcoholic with a bad attitude, someone who spends the entire book drunk, stumbling around, vomiting and embarrasing herself. It's not until literally the very last page of the novel that she shows any desire at all to change her ways. As a result, I didn't care one bit about anything that was happening to her during the book. When her obnoxious drug dealing brother was killed early in the book, my feeling was exactly the same. So what? Who cares? It's hard to enjoy a book when every character seems to be a low-life.

Second, Rucka's description of the rock star lifestyle is so absurb and unrealistic that it's almost laughable. Our hero plays guitar for a heavy rock band of the pierced-and-tattooed variety, somebody most 14-year-olds would love but their parents would have never heard of. Amazingly enough, though, this woman walks around in public and every single person she sees, from middle-aged businessmen to senior citizens, recognizes her instantly and starts ranting about how much they love her songs. Attention, Greg Rucka! Wake up! You're dreaming! If the guitarist from a popular band such as Blink-182 or Green Day walked into a mall or a restaurant, everybody would think he was the kid who delivers pizzas at the restaurant next door. This aspect of the book had me chuckling fiercly when I wasn't shaking my head at Rucka's poor writing.

Lastly, the plot of the book was just like its main character; stumbling around drunk and aimless until it finally collapsed on the floor in a heap. The story was a weird mix of blackmail, kidnapping and stalking but nothing meshed together and each individual element was poorly explained. When we reached the big "who-dunnit" moment at the end of the book, I had no idea who this person was. I had to skim back through the book until I found the one or two pages where this person was briefly mentioned, and even then the plot still made no sense.

As a former bookstore manager who has read hundreds of mystery and suspense books, I would say "Avoid this book like the plague." As the former singer of a college rock band who knows a little bit about the music business and how it works, I would say "Get a clue, Mr. Rucka."

Famous and rich rock star Mim Bracca is notorious for getting drunk and blacking out and it becomes bad enough that her band sends her back home to Portland to dry out. Before she enters her new home, someone kidnaps her. They drive around for a few hours before he drops her back at her home. The police dont believe her because she is famous for her lies.

Her day gets much worse when her brother Mikel drops by to tell her their father, after serving fifteen years for killing their mother, is out and living with him. Just when she thinks life cant get any lower, pornographic pictures of her, which she didnt pose for appears on the net. While trying to solve that problem she walks in to her brothers place and finds him dead, a bullet in his head. When someone kidnaps her father for a $1,000,000 ransom, Mim stops getting defensive and works up the courage to track down the kidnapper before he can kill her and her father.

The protagonist is an alcoholic but she is able to stay away from the bottle long enough to come up with a plan to try to get her and her father out of trouble. Shes gutsy, feisty, and vulnerable, a combination that endears her to the audience who will root for her in the hope that she can get her act together. A FISTFUL OF RAIN is a suspense thriller that is a dark and gritty as Greg Rucka pulls no punches with this one sitting novel.

Harriet Klausner

Mim Bracca, lead guitarist for the band Tailhook, was kicked off the tour because of her drinking problem. She goes home to Portland and finds someone has been posting nude photos of her on the net, then someone abducts her, drives her around for awhile, then dumps her back at her door and the cops don't seem to believe her. To add more woes to her famous life, her brother is murdered and the cops think that maybe she did it. And if that's not enough woes, someone kidnaps her father and wants a million dollar ransom.

This fast-paced, suspense story will take you on a ride you'll never forget as you tour a world of groupies and fans, face the problems of addiction and fame and wonder just who is making Mim's life so miserable. I couldn't put the book down.