Tuesday, July 8, 2014

American Craftsmen by Tom Doyle

3 STARS

American Craft - Book 1

I had very high hopes for this book. The premise sounds so cool! From the blurb - "In Tom Doyle's thrilling debut, American Craftsmen, Seal Team Six meets ancient magic--with the fate of the United States hanging in the balance . .". I mean, uber cool, right?

Well, I haven't been this happy to finally finish a book in a long time. It was an okay read, but my Lord, it seemed never-ending! Dale Morton is the main protagonist - he can control weather, compel people and other witchy type stuff. I feel like through the book we get to know him, but only on the surface really. I felt the same about the other main characters as well, Endicott and Scherie. Maybe that's a function of this being the first book in a series, but it sure made it difficult for me to connect with them and create that 'need' in me to know what's going to happen to them next.

The world-building was pretty nifty although, there was some things that left me extremely confused. To be honest, the first half of the book left me scratching my head more often than not. It seemed that I was missing that one bit of information that would unlock the barrier in my head that would allow me to get what everyone was seemingly taking for granted. I wanted to, but the sparkly ball of OMG I GET IT! Never happened.

Also, by the blurb of the book, it sounded to me that Morton and Endicott were going to team up to conquer whatever was going to be thrown at them. Sort of like a Tom Clancy (early days) buddy book with magic and ghosts and otherwordly things (which sounded quite alright by me!). Wasn't what I got. I think that by the end of the book, Dale and Michael were beginning that journey and that is what will probably propel me to check out the next book whenever it comes out.

I think the end result is that I never reluctantly put the book down because I needed to go to sleep or cook supper or go grocery shopping or do any other number of chores.

No comments:

Post a Comment