Sometimes I wonder if I am being unfair toward the books I read as I expect of them to be as wonderful as some other of my favourites.
But if all of them were my favourites, how would I decide which ones were top?

I really believe all the books I read should fall under ratings of three to five stars. If it’s less than three, chances are I am never going to finish it. If I finish it, it must be at least good enough to merit three stars.
And even though I read this one without reading something in between, I think that’s because nothing at the moment catches my fancy much.

I wonder if anyone else thinks about books “clicking”. What I mean is that sometimes, everything fits together and the book just clicks as good.
This one didn’t. The thing is, for me, nothing clicked. I kept reading, expecting for everything to fall together, but it didn’t. Nothing did actually.
Characters felt unfinished, story felt unfinished, dialogues were sometimes unbelievable (in trying to convince the other side especially), and the whole premise of the story was unsatisfyingly described. Much was left to the imagination of the reader, which I don’t really mind if everything else functions, but in this case, it feels like the editor didn’t do a good job of editing the book.
That said, I obviously didn’t find it bad enough to stop reading. There is actually much working in its favour, from Ludlum-like spy world, to the fantastic premise of some of James Rollins’ books, everything is in there to make it into a thrilling book. It just doesn’t seem seamlessly connected into a whole. Which is something I found really frustrating.
Possibly it’s just my expectations, but after reading some of Rollins’ early books, I know it’s fixable (he had the same problem with making a book seem a seamless whole).

That’s why I’ll give other works by Mr. Ashbrook a try (this is his first full-length novel), I’m sure he can only get better. 🙂

Tagged: A Darker Gold, Book review, Chris Ashbrook