The Tyranny of Shadows (Currey)

The Tyranny of Shadows, Timothy S. Currey (2017)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

If you can't say something nice, say something on your personal blog that no one will see.

This was a freebie on reddit in the freeEbooks directory, posted by the author asking for honest reviews. It came just as I was finishing Redshirts, so I thought I would give it a shot.

I lasted through 10% of the book, and only went that far because I wanted to give it a review, which I wasn't going to do after only 3%. Who knows? Maybe it got better after a bad start, but by 10%, I hadn't felt it started, and I was breezing through a lot of superfluous language while not really knowing what was going on, if anything actually was.

The main character is an assassin but he has problems approaching a nobody cook and getting him outside where he can kill him. He gets an assist from another (the woman on the cover). The two are supposed to be working together. Or something. At first, I wondered why it wasn't written first-person since the narrator is in the mind of the main character so much, but then the point of view switches to the second character. (Nothing wrong with this, but it was still too much in his head.)

For all their arguing, which doesn't really very much at all, except that they like to argue and that they both seem immature and amateurish, they use the orders from the cook they killed to gain access to the kitchen of their actual target. And then dispatch the "Prime Cook" (I'm not making that up) off-screen by oven-cooking a roast. This is pretty much mentioned in passing. Other times, it felt like I was being told about the story instead of being told the story.

I gave it to the start of the third chapter, and then I switched books on the kindle.

There might be a story in here, and a good editor might have helped to bring it out. It read like a second draft that needed a rewrite -- or at least a red pen through the excess words. I would hope that the author makes enough money to hire an editor, or a couple of English majors, to either help update this book, or help with his next one.

Howver, I see that this writer not only released a second book earlier this year, but he has a third book slated for release the day after this blog entry posts. The first two books have a total of 15 reviews. Mine is one of them.

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