Reviewed by: BigAl
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Approximate word count: 70-75,000 words
Availability
Click
on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or
Smashwords store
Author:
Born in
Malaysia, Jeremy Chin graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia
journalism school and subsequently built a career in IT, first in Southern
California and later in London, and back home in Malaysia.
Description:
“Timothy
Malcolm Smith, a young Creative Director at a cozy ad agency in East Central
London, has warmed the hearts of an entire nation with his creativity and
charisma, and is being hailed as one of London’s best creative minds ever.
Having arrived at the pinnacle of fame in England, Timmy has shifted his sights
beyond his home shores, to New York City. Since he began his career in
advertising, it had been Timmy’s ambition to one day set foot in the Big Apple
unannounced, and astound the city within days of his arrival, not with his
mind, but with his feet.
Training in
secret from the time he was a young boy, Timmy diligently perfected his running
time till he was within reach of some of the world’s best. He had never before
run in competition, and for many years held but one aspiration close to his
heart, to win his maiden race, the New York Marathon.
With every
Brit in the country tuned in to watch him, Timmy flew like the wind through the
streets of New York, and built an insurmountable lead. On the cusp of victory,
with an entire nation holding its breath, Timmy did what all his countrymen had
come to expect from him. The unexpected.”
Appraisal:
My thoughts
on Fuel are varied, inconsistent, and
probably contradictory.
With few
exceptions, when I start a new book, issues with writing style are apparent
early, within a couple chapters, if not a couple paragraphs. It is rare to
encounter significant improvements as the book continues.
At a higher
level, the structure of most novels is like a three act play. The characters
and story might pull you in during Act I, but then many sag in the middle,
making it a struggle to stay interested through Act II. If I were to graph many
different aspects of how I relate to a story – interest, entertainment, or my emotional
attachment to the characters and story, for example – the normal graph would
quickly hit some level in Act I, sag a bit in Act II, and then climb to a level
somewhat higher than Act I during Act III.
My reaction
to Fuel was much different from the
norm. I got off to a shaky start. The first thing to give me pause was describing
a company this way:
Common Grounds Coffee had been
around for ages. They’d been around longer than penicillin. Longer than tea
bags. Before sliced bread.
Do we need
more than the first sentence? If so, do we need all three comparisons and do
they even work? I have doubts about the first two. While I like the last, some
may find it a touch too clever. On a positive note, what this example does have
is an attempt to say something without relying on the same old clichés (unless
“been around for ages” qualifies). That is more than I can say about several
other instances of clichés I encountered in the first portion of the book, this
example being one of the more egregious:
But the partners were also gravely
aware that their ship had entered uncharted depths, and that their vessel was
now more a sunken treasure than a ship. They needed to pull a Lazarus to fish
Common Grounds out of the deep.
We’ve got
rabbits being pulled from hats, room made for the new guard, and dragons being
figuratively slain, all within the first twenty-five to thirty percent of the
book. It doesn’t get much more clichéd than this.
In my mind,
Fuel was headed for a review of three
stars, at best. And then something happened. I found that I started to care
about the characters and rather than being a slog, Act II is when I started enjoying
the read and caring how the story was going to turn out. If the clichés were
there, I didn’t see them. I didn’t notice the author telling me the same thing
three or four times. Act II read like a four star book.
Then I hit
the last part, Act III, and things changed again. Here the tone of the book
went from that of an interesting story to inspirational, almost spiritual. Some
of the events that happened here would have had me yelling “I call BS” if
they’d happened earlier, yet given the different tone or feel I accepted them
without question. The emotion drenched finish left me feeling that I’d just
read a five star book, until I started thinking back to the struggle at the
beginning and reviewed my notes. As I said at the beginning, my thoughts on Fuel are varied, inconsistent, and
probably contradictory.
FYI:
Uses UK
spelling conventions. A small amount of adult language and situations.
Format/Typo Issues:
No
significant issues.
Rating: **** Four stars
No comments:
Post a Comment