A bumpy ride that could be enjoyable…..   *

One of the joys of discovering a new author is finding a fresh voice that pulls you in and takes you for a ride.  This book does exactly that.  The author hooks you in the beginning and sets up a storyline that you want to follow and know more about.  The problem is, that like a kid sitting in the back seat on a long trip, I kept asking myself, “are we there yet?”.

Leonard is a good writer.  He creates images that make you feel the ocean, taste the sea air, hear the whack of a tennis racket hitting a ball and sense the emotion of his characters.  He sometimes gets a little carried away with metaphor, but so does Dean Koontz.

The problem is the fact that this is a serial in the complete sense of the word.  I am old enough to remember going to Saturday morning matinees and seeing the likes of Flash Gordon, Rocket Man, or Zorro.  All of which would end in a cliffhanger and I couldn’t wait until the next week to find out how the hero would survive.  This novel just stops.  No cliffhanger, although I do want to know what happens.  While I knew this was book one, there was no indication that none of the storylines would get wrapped up.

The novel has great potential.  It needs a good editor to trim it down and eliminate the parts that drag. It needs a good pass by a copy editor to fix the typos and missing words.  The story is a good one, just not sure why it is broken up into parts.

This, unfortunately, gets one star.  it should have been four.