Plot or Premise

Subtitled a tale of two brothers, Royd and Mike Tolkien are the great-grandsons of J.R.R. Tolkien. That is the least interesting part of their story. The book combines an interspersed tale of Mike’s last few years of life with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis or ALS (also called Lou Gehrig’s Disease or Motor Neurone Disease / MND) and Royd’s first couple of years after his death, fulfilling a bucket list that Mike created for Royd to do when Mike was gone.

What I Liked

I have no idea what I was thinking when I first started to read this just over a year ago. I heard about it in a roundabout way in a blog, and it sounded cool and funny. So, about 16 months ago, at Christmas, I downloaded it and started to read. The first story is one of the best. As Royd walks up to the podium to give the eulogy for Mike, he falls flat on his face. A big faceplant with lots of noise and kerfuffle. Except it’s a prat fall. Nobody else knew it was the first item on Mike’s bucket list — that Royd would fall as he went to deliver the eulogy and give everyone a last big smile for Mike’s funeral. And when it happened, it wiped me out. Funny, sure. Moving, absolutely. And it set a precedent for a lot of the stories. I couldn’t keep going. For whatever reason, the raw grief was too much. I set the book aside, and promised myself I would go back to it.

And then something weird happened. My brother died. And while you would think that would STOP me from ever reading the rest, it gave me a window into the story. Wondering if I would have the nerve to do the things that Mike put on Royd’s list, even things where Royd was terrified. Would I have completed a list my brother made me? I doubt it.

The pratfall? Sure. Bungee jumping or skydiving? Not a chance. A lot of the travel? Absolutely. For the rest, it would be hit and miss. Busking, singing in a musical, etc. Mike’s goal was to break Royd out of a bubble, to overcome potential shyness or risk of embarrassment, to thrust him into a limelight. The story alternates between Mike’s decline and Royd’s desire to film all of it as a documentary, with the end for Mike obvious but unknown for Royd.

What I Didn’t Like

Many of the “stunts” are a little too well-choreographed or exuberant for me. For example, when Royd goes on a plane, he has to dress like Gandalf, the whole company is involved, etc. Simpler would have seemed more impactful to me, and less about the show. And I think that is my biggest complaint in places. There are some huge moments that pass by with very little comment on the psychology and impact on Royd; he survives them, he participates in them, but there seems little reflection. Others, by contrast are small with huge reflections. And the reflection is what matters. The end for Royd is really quite disappointing. He saves a big moment for the end, and at the last minute, it doesn’t really happen. More like a postponement to do a sequel of the last act. I felt a little cheated, to be honest, and the reason for a drop in rating from 5 to 4 stars. I liked the journey, but was let down by the destination.

The Bottom Line

Starts with a thud, finishes with a whisper

Plot or Premise

Colter Shaw has been poking around his father’s death from years ago and the poking has finally turned up some interesting leads as well as some nasty bad guys who would rather he either stop looking or find for them a missing secret cache of something his father hid. While playing cat and mouse, he uses a safe house that his father had set up long ago but finds someone else has been using it recently — Colter’s absent brother.

What I Liked

I had seen the TV episode where Colter reunites with his brother (the show had a different purpose / intent than the book), so I expected it to happen. And while a bit of a cliché for how it happens, it’s cool to see them together, slowly jockeying around to see how they now relate years later. His brother is a bad-ass merc, which comes in handy when the two need some backup against the big bad guys. There are two sub-plots going on simultaneously — one for a big giant plan if someone can find a missing document and one for a larger plan dealing with real-estate and forced ghettoization followed by gentrification. A little more intricate than you expect to see in your average mystery novel. The action that was a little too much in the previous novel is perfectly at home in this one.

What I Didn’t Like

The story bounces around a little too much, and some links to old cases as well as old partners seem a little contrived. Not enough to detract too far, just makes for a pacing problem when the story veers away from the main plot for too long a time occasionally.

The Bottom Line

Have you met my brother?

Plot or Premise

Colter Shaw describes himself as a rewardist — one who seeks rewards that are offered for finding people, things, etc. He only gets paid if he is successful, and he doesn’t go after criminals for law enforcement; he’s not a bounty hunter. He likes the puzzle-solving aspect, and in this book, he is looking for a missing girl in Silicon Valley.

What I Liked

I tumbled on to the series of books from a new TV series called Tracker, starring Justin Hartley (aka Oliver Queen from the Smallville series). Sometimes, he simply tracks people lost in the woods; others get into trouble and need someone to help extricate them from a situation.

I really liked the premise of Colter, aka a Western, riding into town, solving a problem, and riding off into the sunset, which is not dissimilar from the Reacher series by Lee Child. The background is that Colter grew up on a compound as the son of a former professor turned semi-paranoid survivalist. The two parents, plus two sons and a daughter, grew up relatively off-the-grid with lots of tests of how to survive on their own. As an adult, Colter drives around in an RV and helps people who offer rewards, although he’s often more interested in the puzzle than the money.

In this first official novel (there’s an earlier short story), Colter responds to a father living in Silicon Valley whose daughter has gone missing. The tale eventually grows with video game bigwigs, CEOs, thugs, many techno issues, and many odd IT specialists who might be involved. The book ramps up the action throughout, with more people going missing and a puzzle modelled after an escape-based RPG action game.

A cute twist added at the end reflects Colter’s financial situation (he is relatively wealthy and hence can afford to roam the country doing low-paying work).

What I Didn’t Like

A popular plot device is to start a novel in the middle of some large action scene and then rewind to the story’s beginning to show how the characters got there. The downside to this approach for the current book is that there are about four other scenes before that in the story where you know that they’re not really that significant because they don’t involve the same scenario from the big ending. For example, he goes to rescue a guy, and it COULD be the end of the story, except we already know that the final scene is about him rescuing a woman, so it isn’t that tense.

On a related note, the pacing was off. The mid-parts of the book lagged, partly because of the lack of tension and partly because there were just too many red herrings. One of the characters appears almost like some mystical IT Jedi, half Elon Musk, half cult leader. Very odd.

Lastly, there is a larger mystery that Colter is working on related to his father, who died 15 years before, and whether it was an accident or murder, and if he was murdered, was it by his brother or persons unknown? Unfortunately, Colter keeps jumping in and out of the longer story, and each time, the main story grinds to a halt.

The Bottom Line

Love the character, but uneven storyline and pacing