The Lives of Tao by Wes Chu
Started 2014-05-31 / Finished 2014-06-02
2014-06-01: Pretty good, but maybe I’m not as interested in action/adventure stuff as I used to be.
2014-06-02: I’m on chapter 21 which is about two million pages in, and I really wish authors today would learn to get to the damned point and stop taking so many side trips. Also, it was not at all obvious that the love interest would become involved in the crazy sekrit alien spy war at all.
2014-06-02: Wow. I haven’t read a book that fast in a long time. Too bad it wasn’t a better book. Overall, it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t all that good either. It did that sloppy thing that so many books do where it just meanders along aimlessly and then BANG! climax, book’s over. Now meandering can be fine if it’s done well, but it wasn’t done that well. And BANG! climax, and work too, IF, it fits the overall story but it rarely does. Too often it reads like late Stephen King, Tommyknockers is the one where I really noticed it, and it looks like the author got bored and decided to wrap it up. Maybe I should re-read some early King, maybe Cujo or Salem’s Lot, and see if they did that. I don’t think so but I was a lot younger then so maybe I was more forgiving (or oblivious). Back to Tao; the ending seemed to trite and obvious. I’d have had Roen wise up and shoot Sean when the gun was dropped. The good guys shouldn’t always be idiots.
In summary: Nothing too original; not badly written but kind of cliched and not very interesting.