The Fallen--reviews
The Fallen Mark Terry. Oceanview (Midpoint, dist.), $25.95 (288p) ISBN 978-1-933515-75-5
Fans of TV's Jack Bauer who place a premium on action may enjoy Terry's third novel featuring superhuman intelligence operative Derek Stillwater (after The Serpent's Kiss), but those who like plausibility in their thrillers had better look elsewhere. Stillwater is working undercover as a maintenance employee at Cheyenne Hills, a resort near Colorado Springs, Colo., which is hosting the G8 summit. The Fallen Angels, a terrorist group whose members are “all recruited from the highest levels of the world's intelligence agencies,” easily manage to take control of the resort. Stillwater and an attractive food service worker, plucky Maria Sanchez, who proves surprisingly lethal, are the world's best hope for preventing an international disaster. Less than logical prose (e.g., “for reasons we don't completely understand, [the terrorists] have proven to be very resistant to our interrogations”) doesn't help the Die Hard plot line. (Apr.)
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Ah well. What can I say...."Fans of TV's Jack Bauer who place a premium on action may enjoy ... The Fallen's... surprisingly lethal Die Hard plot line."
Really, after my last novel's critical silence, I'm fairly pleased just to be reviewed at all.
And as Ricky Nelson famously sang, "But it's all right now, I learned my lesson well. You see, ya can't please everyone, so ya got to please yourself."
Oh, I know!!!!!
posted by Mark Terry at 6:44 AM
9 Comments:
That's great, Mark! :-)
And that example they cited makes perfect, logical sense to me... huh?
I think I had better stop trusting Bloglines to monitor the blogs I read. This morning, after a week of nothing, there were five entries noted for This Writing Life. I almost missed your "baseball" entry where you talked about bestselling authors, like great pitchers, throwing mostly fastballs. And that seems right, but you didn't mention that guys with no fastball (relatively speaking) tend to rely on what's called "junk." So, I don't know. Throwing jun is one thing but writing it...?
Congratulations on the great reviews and on getting reviewed in Publisher's Weekly. I don't know what percentage of books PW actually reviews but it is far from all of them. I suspect the comparison to Jack Bauer trumps the rest anyway. Kind of stupid to pick out a fragment of a sentence to pick on in a tiny review like that. Glad things are going well.
Well, I don't think it's worth arguing with a review.
A few thoughts ...
A PW review is nice publicity. You must have arrived if you're getting smacked around by the big guys.
Lurker,
Since my last publisher for The Serpent's Kiss only sent out three review copies anyway, the only reviews for that book came about because I sent out some to online reviewers. So I'm delighted at any review attention, and PW is good, and I know I've got one coming out in BookList and rumor is it's very positive. Now, if Library Journal...
That's great ... I know I've heard you mention before that the lack of review copies/publicity was a bummer with the last publisher, so it's awesome that your current publisher is working the streets.
Personally, I think reviews would send me into hiding. I've gone around this question before, I've vowed to myself on multiple occasions that if I ever sell a book, I'll never ready any reviews. But then I admit that I know myself better than that and I would definitely read them. THEN I remind myself that every single book ever published attracted at least some negative commentary ... and THEN I just decide to drink heavily.
You see how it is.
Good luck with the BookList review.
Lurker,
Well, negative ones can get you if you let them. Kirkus gave me a negative review for The Devil's Pitchfork and it bugged me for a while, but I was a book reviewer for years and I really do believe it's just one person's opinion, and you know, some reviewers just have an ax to grind.
Well, his illogical reference confuses me! But, as you said, no sense in arguing with reviewers.
Congrats!!
Well, Sara, what can I say? Seemed like a straightforward sentence to me. We torture people, they don't tell us what we want to know, we don't understand why.
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