Alan Glynn is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. I first encountered his writing in Bloodland, still one of my favorite books of all time.
After some research I learned that Bloodland was actually a sort of sequel to another book, Winterland, which was also pretty amazing.
(Alan Glynn also wrote the book which was the basis for the movie Limitless, by the way.)
I had incredibly high expectations for Graveland, which I'm assuming will be the final book in the -land series.
(Minor Winterland and Bloodland spoilers follow)
Winterland and Bloodland follow the same basic story structure. There is a murder in the opening pages. Then you are quickly introduced to the rest of the characters, all loosely connected in some way. It becomes apparent very quickly who is behind the murder, but not why. The fun of both books is watching the "good guys" slowly find out who is behind the murder and why, while also seeing what the bad guys due next.
It's a great structure, but like Dan Brown did with his third Langdon book, Glynn changed things up a bit for the third book.
(Minor Graveland spoilers follow)
This time there is more than one murder, and the reader is in the dark about both the murderer and the motive. Plus the characters are much less connected, at least at first.
The first half of the book is incredible. The tension is high and there are several oh crap moments. Glynn's writing style in the first half is on par with Bloodland and Winterland. That is, incredible. His style is probably the best I've ever read, though that may just be because it's so similar to my style.
Halfway through, the story reaches its climax. The separate characters come crashing together and it's amazing, exciting, and wonderful. Then the second half kind of drags out and becomes amazingly, stupidly predictable (except for a nice, final twist at the end).
Throughout all three -land books, there has been a constant "bad guy" vaguely behind everything. This is supposed to be the book where he finally gets whats coming for him. But, if you had never read Bloodland or Winterland, you wouldn't even understand that he is a bad guy. He does absolutely nothing remotely evil in this book. He's just an old guy about to retire.
The second half also made me realize that the new characters introduced in this book (basically all of them) are much flatter than the characters in his previous novels, which were dynamic, round, and plenty of other adjectives as well. Even the big bad guy from the previous two books is made into more of a monochrome character with only one real goal.
The second half of the story, while pretty predictable, is still somewhat compelling and interesting, especially towards the very end, but it's dragged out way too long. At the absolute most it should have been a quarter of the book, but preferably much less than that.
I had incredibly high expectations for Graveland, which I'm assuming will be the final book in the -land series.
(Minor Winterland and Bloodland spoilers follow)
Winterland and Bloodland follow the same basic story structure. There is a murder in the opening pages. Then you are quickly introduced to the rest of the characters, all loosely connected in some way. It becomes apparent very quickly who is behind the murder, but not why. The fun of both books is watching the "good guys" slowly find out who is behind the murder and why, while also seeing what the bad guys due next.
It's a great structure, but like Dan Brown did with his third Langdon book, Glynn changed things up a bit for the third book.
(Minor Graveland spoilers follow)
This time there is more than one murder, and the reader is in the dark about both the murderer and the motive. Plus the characters are much less connected, at least at first.
The first half of the book is incredible. The tension is high and there are several oh crap moments. Glynn's writing style in the first half is on par with Bloodland and Winterland. That is, incredible. His style is probably the best I've ever read, though that may just be because it's so similar to my style.
Halfway through, the story reaches its climax. The separate characters come crashing together and it's amazing, exciting, and wonderful. Then the second half kind of drags out and becomes amazingly, stupidly predictable (except for a nice, final twist at the end).
Throughout all three -land books, there has been a constant "bad guy" vaguely behind everything. This is supposed to be the book where he finally gets whats coming for him. But, if you had never read Bloodland or Winterland, you wouldn't even understand that he is a bad guy. He does absolutely nothing remotely evil in this book. He's just an old guy about to retire.
The second half also made me realize that the new characters introduced in this book (basically all of them) are much flatter than the characters in his previous novels, which were dynamic, round, and plenty of other adjectives as well. Even the big bad guy from the previous two books is made into more of a monochrome character with only one real goal.
The second half of the story, while pretty predictable, is still somewhat compelling and interesting, especially towards the very end, but it's dragged out way too long. At the absolute most it should have been a quarter of the book, but preferably much less than that.
Overall, Graveland is still an excellent book. The first half of the book easily gets 4.5 stars (out of 5, obviously), but the second half really drags it down. If you've read Winterland and Bloodland (and even Limitless, aka The Dark Fields, which gets a nice, sort of awkward, reference towards the end) then you absolutely need to read this novel.
If you haven't read the previous two, you'd likely be confused about who the bad guy is, since he's just a sort of rude old man in this book. I highly suggest you go back and read Winter and Blood first.
3.7/5
If you haven't read the previous two, you'd likely be confused about who the bad guy is, since he's just a sort of rude old man in this book. I highly suggest you go back and read Winter and Blood first.
3.7/5
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