Quote:
Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks
I tried one of his books, but I don't think it was a series. Opened with someone getting shot by a poisoned dart (more complex than that statement, but yanno). I don't know why, but it didn't grab me. Maybe I wasn't in the mood for the jungle setting or poisoned darts?
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Could be. I'd previously started the 1st in another one of Elkins' series, the Chris Norgren, Intrepid Globe-Trotting Medieval Art Curator amateur sleuth books, and it was kind of slow-going and not particularly compelling. I expect I'll eventually get back to it later, because I paid a good $1.60 for that, too and might as well get my money's worth.
Even though he's supposed to be an award-winner, I can see how his writing style might have that hit-or-miss quality depending on the reader. I stuck with
Fellowship of Fear despite a not-particularly-grabby first few chapters because I like forensic anthropologist stuff and I'd heard that the series became quite good in later books and it paid off for me.
But if the particular elements I liked were different ones that didn't hit my appeal-marks, then I'm guessing that instead of being fun, they would have just seemed annoyingly pedantic and socially maladjusted.
And some of Oliver's personality quirks and the setting did grate on me. Ah, messed-up 80s retro sexual and political and racial dynamics… I'm so glad I never had to live through you.