The Gargantua with the Golden Review
Apr. 24th, 2009 03:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHey,
So last night, before putting on the Darth Vader mask and going to bed, I finished up The Man with the Golden Torc by Simon R. Green. Mr. Green is the author of the Deathstalker and Fisher and Hawk series, both of which I enjoyed greatly and so I thought I'd give this book (first of his Secret Histories series) a try.
You might guess from the title (a play on The Man with the Golden Gun) that this is a modern-day fantasy novel with a secret agent twist. And it is...kinda. You've got Eddie Drood, field agent for the secretive, powerful and very large Drood family. The Drood family conducts operations to keep the lid on the supernatural and protect humanity from dark forces. Eddie is a bit of a black sheep who does well in the field so they keep him on a medium-length tether and send him on jobs around London.
Every Drood has a golden torc, bonded to them at birth which can expand to form golden armor of living metal. While armored up, they are basically super soldiers. So there's less sneaking around and more power-armor bashing going on. Which is fine, Mr. Green is good about writing action scenes, but that does mean there's less spy stuff going on.
So Eddie finishes up on a job and gets handed a new assignment which leads to him being declared a traitor and now he's on the run from the most powerful supernatural family on the planet in a world where a lot of unsavory types would like to get a piece of him.
There was nothing really wrong with this book. The writing was good and things moved along without dragging, but it didn't really grab me either. It just didn't feel super-spy enough. I think the armor was the problem. The armor meant that there wasn't a huge amount of direct threat to Eddie except when he had to square off against other Droods and then it's "how many ways can an irresistible object beat an immovable object?". That basically alternated with "how can we keep him from just using his armor and bashing his way out of this situation?". It just sucked the tension away.
So, I finished it, but I'm in no hurry to rush out after the next book in the series.
later
Tom
So last night, before putting on the Darth Vader mask and going to bed, I finished up The Man with the Golden Torc by Simon R. Green. Mr. Green is the author of the Deathstalker and Fisher and Hawk series, both of which I enjoyed greatly and so I thought I'd give this book (first of his Secret Histories series) a try.
You might guess from the title (a play on The Man with the Golden Gun) that this is a modern-day fantasy novel with a secret agent twist. And it is...kinda. You've got Eddie Drood, field agent for the secretive, powerful and very large Drood family. The Drood family conducts operations to keep the lid on the supernatural and protect humanity from dark forces. Eddie is a bit of a black sheep who does well in the field so they keep him on a medium-length tether and send him on jobs around London.
Every Drood has a golden torc, bonded to them at birth which can expand to form golden armor of living metal. While armored up, they are basically super soldiers. So there's less sneaking around and more power-armor bashing going on. Which is fine, Mr. Green is good about writing action scenes, but that does mean there's less spy stuff going on.
So Eddie finishes up on a job and gets handed a new assignment which leads to him being declared a traitor and now he's on the run from the most powerful supernatural family on the planet in a world where a lot of unsavory types would like to get a piece of him.
There was nothing really wrong with this book. The writing was good and things moved along without dragging, but it didn't really grab me either. It just didn't feel super-spy enough. I think the armor was the problem. The armor meant that there wasn't a huge amount of direct threat to Eddie except when he had to square off against other Droods and then it's "how many ways can an irresistible object beat an immovable object?". That basically alternated with "how can we keep him from just using his armor and bashing his way out of this situation?". It just sucked the tension away.
So, I finished it, but I'm in no hurry to rush out after the next book in the series.
later
Tom
