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Showing posts with label Adam Sternbergh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adam Sternbergh. Show all posts
This plot follows close on the heels of the first book. A year has passed, but not much has happened and little explanation is needed to catch the reader up to the present. Spademan once again is the storyteller, relaying the plot in his minimalist narrative style.
The setting is still post-dirty-bomb New York City which is falling into ever deeper corruption and chaos. Wealthy residents lie shuttered away in high-rises and spend their days plugged in to an artificial reality called the Limnosphere while other try to earn enough to buy a few hours here and there to escape the harsh reality.
During a job where Spademan is hired to kill a lowlife "bed-hopper" named Lesser (who also happens to be a genius programmer), Spademan learns that Lesser might have discovered a valuable, and deadly, secret about the Limn. He decides not to kill him until he learns more, but soon Lesser disappears. Spademan is coerced into tracking him down by a member of the police who seems to have his own agenda and doesn't balk at using threats and force to get his way.
The story follows Spademan's search for Lesser and the gradual revelations that follow about the limn, the city's leadership, and even the group behind the bombing of the city.
Sternbergh has done a fabulous job crafting Spademan's character--his dry humor and pseudo-poetic observations of the crumbling world around him lend a definite depth to his anti-hero character.
The world, though again, not perfectly fleshed out (does anyone really believe the NYC would be given up for dead by the rest of the world?), was still very vivid and easy to visualize. I imagine the world looking very much like the one in the Fallout PC games (which I wish someone would make into a movie)--drab, run down, with occasional patches of normality the further you get from the cities.
Near Enemy was more expertly written than Shovel Ready in subtle but noticeable ways. The pacing of the plot was very well done--particularly the transitions between action scenes. The symbolism, though not subtle (to match the book's unsubtle narrator), was still clever.I do wish there was a more satisfying ending to this book. While some parts of the plot are resolved in the end, much more is hinted at. Of course, it's part of a series, but in my opinion Sternbergh did a better job in Shovel Ready of bringing the book's main plot to an end while still leaving it clear that there is more to come.
All in all I really enjoyed reading this book and look forward to the next.
For more info and to buy the book, visit the Random House website.
I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.
New York City has not been the same since terrorists
attacked Times Square with a dirty bomb. Since the attack, the city has been in
a downward spiral of violence and crime where only the rich are safe - behind
heavily guarded doors. Both rich and poor have become addicted to a new type of
drug – virtual reality simulations where they “tap in” to a whole other world,
sometimes for days at a time.
This is the setting of Adam Sternbergh's novel, Shovel Ready, which immediately gripped me. The book is written
in first person from the perspective of Spademan, a garbage man turned hired
killer. Although the voice in which the novel is written annoyed me at first, I eventually found Spademan’s matter-of-fact descriptions and deliberately emotionless
narration served to bring the bleak and hopeless world to more vivid life. I was compelled to read on as the world sprang to life in my imagination. I’m
not sure if the setting was easier for me because I work in New York
City, and thus personally connected with the references to the various locations, or if it was
simply because any city turned to chaos by fear and apathy never seems too far fetched.
Spademan is a quintessential antihero; morally depraved, emotionally
absent, not even driven by a desire for revenge for a past wrong (though it is
hinted that he may develop that desire in the next book). He is not very likable... in fact, none of the
characters in the book are likable, and they all do horrible things, yet still they are compelling. I was reminded of American Hustle in that none of the characters were good guys, but I still wanted the worse ones to lose.
For all of Sternbergh's vivid world-building and engaging plot, the book had its flaws. I found the main issue to be
the lack of character depth. A few of the main characters have back stories, the
rest just exist in the story alone, but there is little to inform motives for
anyone’s actions. Even Spademan can’t explain why he decides to get involved in
the life of one of his targets (the decision that drives the plot). This would
be fine if it was revisited and examined as his relationship with her was built,
but it was never satisfactorily developed. And while history has proved that a
character doesn't need motive to be a fantastically evil villain (look at
Shakespeare’s Iago), the shallow motives for the antagonists’ actions really
left me feeling like a lot was missing. Overall the last quarter of the book
seemed rushed, and this was the section that had the most potential for really
digging deeper (see what I did there?).
This book is not one I would normally have picked up to read.
While I enjoy dystopias and post-apocalyptic settings, I tend to steer away from crime novels, so I am glad that it
was on the Blogging for Books list and I decided to branch out. Despite the novel's drawbacks the plot was compelling and I am looking forward to Sternbergh’s next Spademan novel.
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