Customer Reviews

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: The Man of Bronze (Tomb Raider Lara Croft)

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

 

 

This book could have been great, but the author chose not to make it so. First I want to deal with the technical side, which is generally very good. The format is a bit like a computer game: each chapter title is a specific location. The descriptions are vivid and exact. They are not quite graphic. However, Lara's commentary when she is fighting can sometimes be a bit disturbingly blunt and callous. With that said, most of her commentary adds to the story and is in character. The general dialogue is good. The action scenes are excellent, and sometimes very creative.

The area where the book is flawed is the treatment of the story. The first quarter of the book is an excellent beginning: despite prodigious efforts, her friend is killed, and Lara is offered the chance to both help a (hopefully) good secret society reclaim its artefacts and get revenge. The last quarter of the book is the endgame of a battle spanning millennia, and is a pretty good conclusion to the story. The half the book in between is typical get the artefact, elude the bad guys tomb raiding. We know it's typical because the author says so right in the text. Whenever a scene is a standard type in the adventure genre, such as Lara gets the artefact and the bad guys take hostages, she points out in irritation that this is what always happens to her. She complains about clichéd dialogue too, even when she says it. Also, there are extinct monsters included pretty much because it's a standard feature of the games, with the barest justification for them in the story. Finally, Lara's attitude is that the tomb raiding is a boring slog she is forced to endure while she would rather be doing something else. Her negative attitude sucks the life out of the adventure.

This could have been an excellent book. The author intentionally made it otherwise. That leaves me feeling quite frustrated, much more than the enjoyment I got from the decent last quarter of the book. I cannot recommend this.

Out of the other Tomb Raider novels I have read, this one was the best. The storyline was better, and it seemed to capture the feel of the games more than the others. But at some parts it was confusing. The cover shows Ekhardt (Angel of Darkness), but he isn't even mentioned. Also, reading "New Strategy" a gazillion times gets a bit boring.

I found The Man of Bronze to be an OK read. It was light and entertaining. It was also much longer than most light and entertaining books, which was a nice difference.

I will agree that the author's descriptions of events were strained, but his descriptions of items were quite good.

I found the dialogue to be terrible though. Lara said 'New Strategy.' about 7 times during the book... three times in the same fight.

Characterization was also strained. Lara and her typical friends that were highly expert commandos, but kept getting taken hostage.

I would also like to point out that Mr. Gardner missed a couple of technical details that were jarring to one in the know. For example, the Mi-24 Havoc Attack Helicopter has wheels instead of skids and is heavily armored.

All in all, a good, if quite light read. I will say that it kept me turning pages until the end.

I bought the physical book and the digital version, i don't like to read much so only was reading 5-6 pages a week.. After I got the kindle version, i got through the book easily with the text to speech feature.. loved the book.

While the first Tomb Raider novel was better, Man of Bronze was still pretty good. It's odd, because the movies are pretty weak and the games are only so-so, but the Tomb Raider novels are generally a lot of fun. And you don't exactly equate Lara Croft with reading, or at least I don't. But a good fun yarn perfect for a few days' distraction.