Book post!
Jun. 2nd, 2005 03:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperAs promised earlier, here's a post about my latest Elizabeth Lowell read. Now, granted, I read Lowell for pure fluffy entertainment value, so that automatically sets a lower bar of expectations than when I dive into an SF novel.
That said, I didn't like this one nearly as much as the others I've read by her. And here's why...
I think the overall issue I have with this book is that unlike just about all of the previous Lowells I've read, the heroine doesn't actually do much. We're given a good starting point for her--i.e., her brother has disappeared under suspicious circumstances, she's been wrangling with the FBI to get them off their asses to actually do something about it, and she's at her wit's end because she's afraid he's been murdered and she's willing to start doing desperate things to prove it.
However, we get very, very little of her actually doing these things on camera. We don't see her arguing with the FBI--we learn about it after the fact. We only get to see her pulling a bait-and-switch to prove that a crooked gem dealer actually has one of the gems her brother has lost as an excuse to meet the hero. And this would be fine if she then proceeded to go out and confront the bad guys and continue her investigations with the hero recruited into her cause. Except that she doesn't.
In fact, she spends most of the book at her apartment, behind her complicated security system, alternating between being neck deep in research with the hero and having (admittedly sexy, but not enough to really keep my interest) sex with him.
She is thrown into harm's way exactly one time, and that's when the hired gun sent to kill her by the villain breaks into her place--where he is promptly dispatched by the hero. And when just about every single other book I've read by Elizabeth Lowell involves strong women being out there doing things regardless of what danger may be lurking in the pages to come, this was a huge disappointment. I like to read about the hero and heroine sharing equally in the danger. In this book, it just didn't happen.
Moreover, the cover blurb leads the reader to believe that the FBI is mistakenly thinking that SHE was the mastermind behind her brother's disappearance... but if that was a plot thread in this story, I completely missed it. It would have been a lot more entertaining if that plot thread had in fact been there--if, perhaps, she had had to become a fugitive with a single agent risking his ass and his career to protect her from both the bad guys and his OWN PEOPLE. That would have been a fun story. It was not, however, the one we got.
Too bad. I suppose every author's entitled to an off-book, and this certainly wasn't off to the extent that recent LKH's have been--I have nothing against any of the editing, for example, nor with the writing style in general. It's just that the events were way less entertaining than in previous Lowell works.
Here's hoping she gets it right again next time.
That said, I didn't like this one nearly as much as the others I've read by her. And here's why...
I think the overall issue I have with this book is that unlike just about all of the previous Lowells I've read, the heroine doesn't actually do much. We're given a good starting point for her--i.e., her brother has disappeared under suspicious circumstances, she's been wrangling with the FBI to get them off their asses to actually do something about it, and she's at her wit's end because she's afraid he's been murdered and she's willing to start doing desperate things to prove it.
However, we get very, very little of her actually doing these things on camera. We don't see her arguing with the FBI--we learn about it after the fact. We only get to see her pulling a bait-and-switch to prove that a crooked gem dealer actually has one of the gems her brother has lost as an excuse to meet the hero. And this would be fine if she then proceeded to go out and confront the bad guys and continue her investigations with the hero recruited into her cause. Except that she doesn't.
In fact, she spends most of the book at her apartment, behind her complicated security system, alternating between being neck deep in research with the hero and having (admittedly sexy, but not enough to really keep my interest) sex with him.
She is thrown into harm's way exactly one time, and that's when the hired gun sent to kill her by the villain breaks into her place--where he is promptly dispatched by the hero. And when just about every single other book I've read by Elizabeth Lowell involves strong women being out there doing things regardless of what danger may be lurking in the pages to come, this was a huge disappointment. I like to read about the hero and heroine sharing equally in the danger. In this book, it just didn't happen.
Moreover, the cover blurb leads the reader to believe that the FBI is mistakenly thinking that SHE was the mastermind behind her brother's disappearance... but if that was a plot thread in this story, I completely missed it. It would have been a lot more entertaining if that plot thread had in fact been there--if, perhaps, she had had to become a fugitive with a single agent risking his ass and his career to protect her from both the bad guys and his OWN PEOPLE. That would have been a fun story. It was not, however, the one we got.
Too bad. I suppose every author's entitled to an off-book, and this certainly wasn't off to the extent that recent LKH's have been--I have nothing against any of the editing, for example, nor with the writing style in general. It's just that the events were way less entertaining than in previous Lowell works.
Here's hoping she gets it right again next time.