This is the first of what I hope will be a long-running series of book review posts 🙂
To get things started, I just finished reading Dan Wells’s brand new book in the John Wayne Cleaver series, Nothing Left to Lose.
The short version of my review is this: If you enjoyed the previous books, you won’t be disappointed. It’s definitely better than the first two books of the second trilogy.
Read on for my detailed review:
First, if you’re familiar with Dan Wells, and more specifically the John Wayne Cleaver series, then you should be familiar with Dan’s weaknesses as a writer (mainly high use of adverbs and a small amount of grammar which isn’t quite right). So all I will say on that front is this one is more or less on equal footing as other entries in the series.
That said, however, I love this series and this book in particular. Much of my disparity of the technical aspects of the writing are due (at least in large part), I’m sure, to the first person narrator. Dan Wells is a skilled enough writer that I have to believe most of it is intentional.
There were a handful of typos/missing words, but for a 336-page book, the number is relatively small.
As to the story, there is a bit of extraneous exposition, especially at the opening, but not so much that it drew me out of the story. And once we’re through that initial bit of exposition, it’s pretty much off to the races and into the thick of the story.
Some parts I found a bit predictable, such as the episode with Mr. Burns (no spoiler here as that name is not even mentioned until much, much later 🙂 ) and who “Rain” ends up being.
But all told, this is another wonderful addition to the John Cleaver story, and I find myself hoping that TOR decides to offer Dan a contract for a third trilogy 🙂
I would put this book head-and-shoulders above books 4 and 5, though I do feel it falls a bit short of the original trilogy. For me, book 3 was definitely the best, followed by 1, 2, 6, 5, and with 4 being the least of the series.
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