“This book is pretty far outside my normal reading, so please keep that in mind as you check out this review.
That said, Good god, this book is long. The book centers on a murder trial, but it also uses flashbacks to give background on the story and the various characters. Itâs a lot like the first season of Lost, actually, with flashbacks comprising the bulk of the story. The problem, also like Lost, is that youâre really most interested in whatâs happening now as opposed to whatâs happened already.
A good example is near the ending. I wonât spoil anything here, but all you need to know is that it is on the eve of the verdict, the event the whole book is hinging on. Youâve read 400 pages leading up to this point, and the author makes one final digression to talk about another character in such exhaustive detail as to list the books on his bookshelf. Seriously. Weâve already heard quite a bit about this character, and I understand the utility of objects as clues to personality, but I do not need a list of every book the dude read. Itâs kind of lazy in a weird way because itâs lazy while at the same time being a whole lot of work.
To continue the comparison to Lost, it also felt like a whole lot happened at the beginning and the end, but not so much in the middle.
Anyway, thatâs just one example of what happens in the book pretty often. You have a good plot and interesting characters, but they get a little bogged down in the details. The author was trying to paint a very vivid picture using lots and lots of small details, but in cataloguing the details you really miss out on appreciating the painting as a whole. The story was very decompressed, but it was the least important details which were decompressed.
Finally, there is some good writing in here, but if you donât know shit about sailing or the environment of the Pacific Northwest, you are SOL. The names of plants come up a lot more than their description, and if the smell of cedar isnât the sort of detail you can call up, donât expect a lot of help.
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