Customer Reviews

The Gray Legacy

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

From Candide's mastery to Brown's codes, angels, and demons of late, the implausible, the improbable and the verisimilitude-challenged plots have it. A friend recently reminded me that the stinginess-of- facts, and the rewards-of- instant- leisure make nowadays fiction the winner, hands down. The truth is that Voltaire's imagination, DaVinciCode's thrills or Ballin's `The Gray Legacy' maintain you -for sure at distant planes- on the edge : one has a hard time shaking loose from this swashbuckler.
TGL is well sewn up, gripping and imaginative with dynamic action and forceful and well appointed dialogue if connected by lesser narrative. Ballin manages to preserve a credible sense of local; a few slips - more stale than inaccurate: chained tires in NewYork, or herding bedouins in Lebanon- are no detriment to the spellbinding plot. The characters are on the genuine fenceside if a bit trite; you know: a tiny stretch of roles-for-dummies
If you are looking for effortless, unbookish, action-packed série-noire, it is tough to put down TGL: I'll leave name and address for anyone to vent their ires, otherwise. I'm looking forward Ballin's next: more serene and aspiring; tend to think that his potential would be better contested as dramaturge: Ballin has an earnestly forceful dialogue. Be sure: after all the caveats you'll enjoy this first serving, a roman-à-clef (?) that being weirdly unplausible, may one day surprise us revealing itself as a chaste biographical tract.

I read THE GRAY LEGACY in one sitting. Taking us from Washington DC to Afghanistan and Lebanon to the ranches of Wyoming, the author skillfully weaves a fascinating plot while writing authoritatively about each setting and the politicians, mafia bosses and terrorists which inhabit them. All this in the midst of a family saga and its own politics. A realpage turner!

The story is a good ride through the social threats, politics and international challenges of the day, while engaging the reader in the intrigues of personal politics of family and lovers.

In "The Gray Legacy," two families wage a blood war against each other on an international scale. Of the many things at stake is the fate of an innocent boy who has a foot in both camps. The good guys win, but at a terrible cost. A fun read with vivid, almost photographic locales that draw you into the story.