bad, pretentious writing
347167
As an American who coems to India every few months, I am a keen follower of the new burst of English writings here. However this book certainly left a bad taste. I think it was dragging, boring and plain pretentious. God  knows how the publishers managed the reviews. The entire story is  confusing. U need an Aspirn after page 6. And I can swear that all  comparisons with Carver are misplaced. There is no building up of a tale or  characterisations. Even the sex is unerotic, seedy and false. What remains  in your mind after you complete it is the feeling that you have been  conned. Maybe the author needs encouragement, being a new one. However, I  don't think this should be at the readers cost !
4974504
It is possibly unfair of me to review this book before finishing it, though I don't believe my chief complaint -- the atrocious writing -- would change, in any case. I'm also not sure I'll be able to finish it, because Gregory's prose is like nails on a blackboard: repetitious, unoriginal, shallow, and riddled with trite phrasing. So if you're looking for good literature, don't look here. On the other hand, if you're looking for a good story and can stomach the awful writing, the boring tendency to list things instead of actually describing them in some depth, and the repetition, give it a try. It needs some tightening and a good editorial hand, but alas . . . I don't generally care for historical fiction and perhaps this is just the way it's done (tho' one need only read EL Doctorow's "Ragtime" to get an idea of what a truly good writer can do with history and fiction), but I found myself cringing at the superficial, tedious writing style and rolling my eyes at the "Harlequin Romance"-style prose: "I laughed wrecklessly" . . . "He did not take his eyes off of me" (about 10 billion times) . . . "He cupped my chin in his hand" . . . (etc.). Gag.
3736728
I gave up on this book after the first 4 or 5 chapters when it became abundantly clear that the writing would not be improving for the duration of the story.  Honestly, it sounds like a high school kid wrote this book.  There is no description of much of anything, such as the surroundings of the characters or where they live, the weather, the environment, nothing.  Characters and dialogue are pretty much expected to carry the entire story, but the dialogue is unrealistic and pretty dumb in places.  Because there is such a lack of description in the story, the characters themselves are not well-developed.  We are supposed to know all about them based on the things they say to each other.  After realizing what a horrible purchase I had made, I logged back in to Amazon and realized that almost every review of this book is a 5-star rating.  Geez, this guy must have a lot of friends and relatives to load up so many stars for such a poor excuse for a novel. Seeing perfect scores for almost every rating made me realize that even well-known, best-selling authors don't get as many five stars as this guy got for his "book", so the jig is up -- I doubt the majority of these ratings are from real customers who even read the book.  The intent was just to lure as many people as possible to buy this poorly written, grammatically incorrect, vocabulary-challenged, punctuation-challenged piece of crap.  I suppose anyone who has a reading level of a 7th grader might like this book, but serious readers, STAY AWAY.  Thank goodness it only cost me 99 cents.  Not even worth that.
3985004
My personal opinion is that this book tries too hard, and just ends up sounding pretentious. A better writer might have captured the loneliness, anomie, dysfunction of the young and cynical better, and Danler just sounds like she is trying too hard to sound high-brow, adult and heartwrenching. The attempts to describe the protagonist's emotional or mental state are the worst, trying to make very mundane, self-indulgent, ordinary life-experiences seem profoundly moving with obfuscatory expressions and ineffective metaphors . But the choice of words and expressions, metaphorical or otherwise, just aren't spot on and hence, just sound affected. Made it to 20% in the kindle edition and no longer feel like continuing
3692216
As other reviewers have mentioned, Dan Brown is no literary genius. His writing style is as if he already knows this will be a blockbuster movie (and I know which character is designed for Morgan Freeman to play!). Can someone do a word count of how many ridiculous exclamations of shock (i.e. "What in the world?!") are used in this book? Too many silly bouts of disbelieving dialogue, too much repetition of the Ancient Mysteries (as if Brown realizes that no one is going to understand what the big deal is--and, despite all the needless repetition, I still don't see what the big deal is); an "imminent crisis" that would barely make the front page of the New York Times if it were to come to light; a protagonist who literally does nothing in the final third of the book; an evil genius whose secret identity is telegraphed almost immediately; and finally and most objectionably, a payoff that is anything but.

With A&D and DVC I was able to get past Brown's downright bad writing because the plot kept me turning the pages; the books were legitimately compelling, largely because they were controversial. But so little happens in his latest book, there are so few surprises, and the characters spout off their surprise so often (it's as if he wants to show how shocking these "revelations" are because the reader just won't care otherwise)--well, there's just not enough there to overcome his weaknesses with prose.

Predictable, painful at times to read due to the poor writing, little to no climax, no controversy, an even more ridiculous and improbable a villain than normal--this is, plain and simple, a bad book, no two ways about it. It should say something that while reading it I picked up and finished several other books because I just couldn't get through it without taking a break for some good writing. I will most definitely NOT be in line on day one for his next one.
179956
Let me start out by saying that, as a big fan of alternate history, I really wanted to like this book.  Giving it one star, however, is being overly generous.  Despite the blurb on the back cover professing that Mr, Blumetti has an "extensive knowledge of history" and that his stories "do not stretch the imagination", I find quite the opposite to be true.  The very idea that, after a failed D-Day invasion, Great Britain would simply throw in the towel and sign a separate armistice with Hitler is incredible enough.  To then describe the Wermacht as turning east again at that late stage of the war and marching on to Moscow and beyond, defeating the Soviet Union is unimaginable.  If this weren't bad enough, the writing is absolutely atrocious!  The sentences, when there are actually complete sentences, are short and choppy.  Spelling and grammatical errors are the rule rather than the exception.  Either this book was originally written in a language other than English and then translated by someone with a very poor command of the language, or it was written by a not particularly bright fourth grader.  I did manage to slog my way through the entire book, but it was a real chore to do so.  There are some interesting ideas in the book, but the poor writing style negates any plusses.  All in all, you'd be better off watching a Three Stooges episode.  At least you'd have fun doing it.
1547627
It is clear that Alaina either never passed an English class, or didn't bother to pay an editor.  At first, I thought her keyboard was missing an apostrophe key, but then discovered she randomly places them...but not where they're needed.  She doesn't know the difference between "who" and " whom" nor does she know how to correctly use a semi colon.  Even spellcheck failed her.  This is a sad commentary on how  careless some writers have become in their haste to make a buck.  Please don't waste your money here when there are books so much better written....with much less obvious plots.
873952
No way could I finish this book as the writing is quite dreadful, with shortcomings evident from the first page.  Sentence structure is clunky and simplistic, with frequent grammatical errors, and the writing style is extremely basic.

What's with the preponderance of 5 star reviews? Not even loved, well known authors can boast these type of stats. On checking the reviewers, I found that all but a handful have only reviewed this book. It seems pretty fishy.
1407422
I only made it through Chapter2, and I deleted the book. First, the writer is so pretentious with titlle- and name-dropping crap. So the main character works in a bookstore--no need to prove he is a reader. Second, the vulgarity referring to the other main character is unnecessary.  I read some of the reviews, and I guess that I am not giving the book a chance, but I can't imagine wasting any more time reading this. Sorry I wasted the money on this book.
2651184
The really poor writing made it impossible for me to get past the third chapter of the book. The writing style is pompous and convoluted. The author is in love with his own vocabulary and his metaphors. The actual content is secondary to his use of language. That could be forgiven if he used language well -- but it is painful to read.

Examples: "The emergence of the cartel had not boded well for the rough egalitarian simplicity that had characterized Arab life even in sprawling Mecca, Ta'if, Yathrib, and other good-sized towns, to say nothing of it's antithesis to the democracy of the desert."
and
"From the beginning, Berbers and Bedouin coexisted in a flammable symbiosis, and when the former rose up soon after their incorporation into the Dar al-Islam, their resistance was so well organized by the confederation chieftain Kusayla and the mysterious priestess (Kahina) and her sons that the Arabs lost control of the territory for more than a decade after 680."

He needs to cut out 50-80% of the words in his sentences. I'll admit I did not read the full book. Those first three chapters that I did read did not seem very well researched. It was more about the author's narrative and dramatic telling of that narrative than historical accuracy.
1217201
This is poorly written and essentially worthless.
375849
Some interesting ideas, but oh man was the writing horrible.
4716210
Usually when I review a book or product, if I can't find anything nice to say, I don't bother writing a critical message. But this book is SO bad, I feel I should warn people.  First, the cutesy writing style gets nauseating after less than a chapter.  The writer appears to be a woman, unless James is writing about how horrible it is when a restaurant has no parking, so you have to walk blocks in your heels.  There are other references to being female, which is confusing, as James is supposed to be the author of the book. Let's hope he's not -- let's hope he's a much better writer than this.  Whoever actually churned out this purple prose should be ashamed.  He/she goes on and on and on, taking four paragraphs to make a simple point that should have taken a sentence. Is he/she trying to be funny?  If so, it's an unqualified failure.  I could have put up with the bad writing if the suggestions had been innovative.  But who takes a chapter to tell you that you should put hand towels and extra toilet paper in the guest bathroom?  Or that you should sweep your porch, put out a nice mat, and clean your front door?
I understand James is a great designer. I hope he will someday write a great design book.  With a different ghost writer.
The positive reviews must be from personal friends of the co-authors.  Save your money.
1489048
A big disappointment from a writer who is much better at social commentary in non-fiction forms.  The prose is stilted (and, for some reason, all in present tense), the plot is creaky, unweildy, and implausible, and somebody at his publisher should have gotten him a good editor.  This book doesn't read as if it is by an author who has read or enjoyed thrillers.  The "cliff-hanging" chapter endings are silly. It got a long review in the New York Times by someone who didn't know that a black bourgeoisie class existed.  Maybe the book will be entertaining for this small and naive audience.
2745769
So  many  sentences  literally  rewritten  from  old  books. Pretentious  statements  used  excessively.
3652219
Where to start. The concept of these books have a solid idea, however, the actual writing is deplorable. Now, I can see why American youth cannot form sentences because they read things that are not grammatically correct, riddled with typos, punctuation errors etc... I would have gladly skimmed over a few typo's, but this was much more that that. I got to the point where I was tired of making editing notes for the sake of sanity. The author makes abrupt breaks in the writing and forgets where she left off as the logistics of the story confound the reader. (ie. He wants to take her flying and leaps off with her and two pages later she's apologetic because she wanted to fly and didn't know where she wanted to go.) I won't even begin to get into the verb confusion that is the writers apparent style.

  It continues to get worse with the second book, where the author confuses character names with each other (cal and ivan), Sometimes you have to decipher who is talking because of poor punctuation, and even then some of the dialog is from a foreign origin and doesn't fit in.  The author claims to have a journalism degree, either they're selling those willy nilly, or somehow she didn't have to take English 101 or 102. I simply cannot allow my young reader to read these stories because of the sad writing (yes, I proofread every book my child wants to read for the sake of avoiding these horrible English mistakes, because once you start seeing them your mind thinks they are correct, when they are not.)

  Again, the plots need to move along and there is little to no climax in the first book. The second book just abruptly cuts off and into some weird interview of characters that makes little to no sense. In book 1, you learn the protagonist' mother is dying, she's still alive at the end of book 2.. the story is very stagnant and is a battle to get through. I usually can read a good YA in about 2 hours, not so with these books because I originally started editing them for my mini-me, and then because it was so tiresome and repetitive, it became grueling work.  The only positive thing I can say is that the author threw in some quarter words and spelled them correctly.

 To the author , I would say read, revise, edit, and then do it 3 times more and hire a very good editor to complete the last revision. This is not up to publication standards.
4948143
1) The writing is excruciatingly pedantic.
2) The writer is manipulative, an even worse crime than the writing style.  Yes, he wants you to think of Roger Ailes, Bill O'Reilly, George W. Bush and the UK News International phone hack scandal when reading his book.  And I'd rather not.
3) I correctly predicted the ending before completing the first third of the book.  So I spent the last two thirds of the book grumbling to myself "this had better not be it."