Customer Reviews

Grue of Ice

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

 

 

I thought this book was OK, but it might really depend on the reader. Personally, I was anxious to read another book by Jenkins after reading A Twist Of Sand. Part of the attraction is the fact that these are action/thriller/mystery stories from decades ago, and it's interesting to check out what people were interested in reading, and what the perspective on heroic characters, politics, history, technology, etc. were. So, for me, this book served up a decent amount of entertainment, with all of that in mind. There's some nice action, and a decent story.

But I wouldn't describe it as a tour-de-force, or anything. It's hard to say why (without maybe spoiling some elements)--my criticisms would probably be scattershot and not too deep in any particular instance. I'm just pointing to characters, plot, some descriptions of action and places... Mostly, the book ranges from a little mediocre (on rare occasion) to often pretty good, with most of it falling in-between. But I found it pretty readable, and I'd carefully recommend it to anyone that liked Twist Of Sand (who knows, maybe they'd like this one just as much...).

Also, there is one regard in which I can safely point to, and be explicit about, in my "criticism". Like in a lot of Jenkins's books (I'm discovering), the book uses quite a bit of sailing terminology. If you are familiar with sailing and sailing terms, you might appreciate the book more than I did (there is a lot sailing action, some of which I probably barely grasped). I'm not just talking about port vs. starboard, here--there were quite a few terms I'd never seen before, and Jenkins just assumes that the reader understands them. I chose not to read this book with a dictionary near at hand, and so, for example, "bollards" would be mentioned, and I'd just keep reading past not knowing what they were.