I'm fairly certain the Internet masses aren't clamoring for my review of a couple of books published more than a decade ago. But I've read them and I'm on the train without another to read. Maybe I should write a bit.
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For those of you that stuck around after my enthralling open, let's get to it.
I'm two books into my "20 books by Thanksgiving" odyssey. Judging by my current pace, it'll be more like a 10 book odyssey. I should probably stop referencing it as an odyssey and switch to calling it a three hour cruise.
First I read The Killing Floor by Lee Child. It was great. Jack Reacher is a great tough guy and I look forward to reading about him in the following installments. Mr. Child does not need my help to sell books, look up his rave reviews on Amazon.
Next was Open Season by C.J. Box.
This one was unique for a couple of reasons.
1) It was out of the scope of my usual reading material. The novel is set in the Wyoming Rockies. The protagonist is Joe Picket, a Fish and Game Warden. This is about as far away from Spenser's Boston as one can get. I'm not a hunter. I enjoyed my trip through Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks, but I certainly didn't traipse through the countryside and become an outdoorsman. But Mr. Box did a good job painting a picture of the landscape.
2) The first half of the book honestly didn't engage me. I might even have put it down if I weren't reading to absorb the features of published work in order to shape up my own manuscript. The characters felt shallow and cookie-cutter. The plot felt soft and inconsequential. The writing itself didn't seem up to par. But halfway through the characters filled out and the plot picked up it's clip. I realized the issues with the first half of the book we easily explainable. The characters were new, they had to be introduced. And Mr. Box was writing a normal family. It's easily to grab attention with Jack Reacher, arrested in scene one. But Joe Pickett is a family man, and the author wanted to put that across. The plot felt slow because of a crazy thing called exposition.
I'm going to touch a bit more on the exposition. I know that my manuscript needs to have better pace for the first third or so. The exposition drags it down. But it's nice to see that Open Season spent almost half the book setting things up. It means I can add movement instead of stripping the exposition that needs to be there.
The most valuable lesson I learned so far? Cut the pronoun usage. It doesn't have to be "Sam raised his gun. He took aim. He fired in earnest," when " Sam raised his gun. Took aim. Fired in earnest," works just as well and reads better.
Don't forget, I'm taking suggestions. I'm even reading some books from Twitter followers Andy Straka and Mark Stevens.
