I was very excited to begin reading this book, as the plot synopsis promised me an adventurous thrill ride combining the grandeur of Russia's royal past with intense present-day political espionage. I started reading this book that day that I downloaded it, which is a first for me, as I always have several books on deck to start, and usually my new downloads go to the end of the line. As you can see, I had high expectations, and overall, I think the bones of the story rose to those expectations. The overall execution was just so, so disappointing, and I was not enchanted with the characters much either. I even resorted to highlighting and making notes on my Kindle in order to write this review (also a first for me).
To expand on the execution problems - a thorough editing may have taken care of most of the technical problems. There were misplaced commas running rampant through the book, forcing you to pause where you didn't need to and rush through clauses that you should have paused for. Some of these extraneous commas contributed to the very stilted and wooden dialogue that I found throughout.
In addition to the commas, there were some capitalization problems. I found words like "national security," "top secret" and "intel" were all randomly capitalized in the middle of sentences. At first, I thought it was an editing error, but it was done consistently enough that I wonder if it was a style choice. Either way, it was annoying.
There were some great homonym mix-ups in the Gold Train. My favorites were the main character walking down the "isle" of the store (looking for a tropical drink?) and when she "sowed" money into a secret lining of her jacket. (And when she took the money out, she "sowed" her jacket shut again with a needle and thread.)
The final technical bone I have to pick is the interweaving of past and present tense in the same paragraph and sometimes within the same sentence. Like the commas, this tripped me up a couple of times.
Beyond all the grammar issues, I was not a fan of the writing style. Yes, the book is easy to read, but almost too easy. I alluded to the stilted, wooden dialogue before, but really, the whole thing was stilted and wooden. The writing style really reminded me of the way that I wrote spy stories when I was 10. Back then, when I didn't know how to describe the technology behind something, I'd write about a "special piece of spy equipment." Needless to say, I cracked a nostalgic smile while reading about Jade purchasing a "special kind of tape" in the Gold Train.
Like I said above, ILOVE the bare bones idea of this plot; in the execution, however, the plot doesn't seem to develop organically. There are an awful lot of convenient occurrences that are inserted to move the plot jerkily along.
But I've saved my biggest beef for last, and that's our friend Jade Snow, the protagonist. I can't like this lady. If I thought her dialogue was wooden, her emotions are even more so. Her attachment to her husband and child are glossed over, so much so that I think those characters are just convenient plot props. Jade becomes more attached to her first source in Russia than she is to her husband. She also seems to trust people willy-nilly within in few moments of meeting them, and don't even get me started on her so-called "relationship" with Alexi. Unfortunately, it's hard to get into a book when you find the main character so unsympathetic.
Now, I may be way off base, as there seem to be a lot more 5-star reviews than 2-star reviews for this book, but I've never been compelled to write such a long review of a book, either. Most of the time, if I'm not into a book, I'll just cast it aside and not think about it again. With the Gold Train, I found myself compelled to plow forward to see just how many eyerolls I could get out of it. And it's definitely stuck with me (although not in the best way), so I guess it's a success from that standpoint.
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![Gold Train (Accidental Spy Russia Adventure Book 2) by [Lada Ray]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51r7RptIRwL._SY346_.jpg)
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