London Large - Blood on the Streets

Overall, this was a fun, quick read. I hope the authors keep writing and keep getting better. Their future work is poised to be very good and sufficiently deep.

The Good: The writing was incredibly fast-paced. I loved the speed because it made me feel claustrophobic at key moments. The chapters flew by in gulps of breath as much of the “fluff” you get in other stories was simply cut out. That was awesome...for the most part.

I love plot-based stories. We get action scene after action scene with some rather artful violence. The violence itself was handled nicely. It was enough to be called hardboiled but not enough to be campy.

The Bad: One of the quickest ways to irritate me is the appearance of deus ex machina while the protagonist is smack in the middle of a shit sandwich. This book featured a limp justification for what I would qualify as a savior from the ether who saves the day. I chose to forgive but I did so reluctantly.

I didn't love many of the characters. In fact, a supporting character (Big Ronnie) was easily my favorite and the most dynamic of all. I should have ached for Amisha's pain but I merely grommaced at her situation.

It's book one of a series, I get that, but what happened to half of the cast? They all disappeared and even in denouement, we were given absolutely nothing about Stone, Jupiter, Marchant, Olivia, Amisha...and that's not a good enough reason to read book 2. This book could have stood on its own but falls just short of the mark.

The Miscellaneous: The book was not re-edited and formatted for a U.S. audience. Quotation marks were identified by a single inverted comma (‘), rather than two (“). Also, the use of the em dash was substituted for a single hyphen mark, rather than the full grammatical em dash. I don't know if that is a function of UK English grammar, or if the authors penned the novel on a smartphone lacking that partuclar special character. I love indie authors and I love reading indie author works but some of these things exaggerated the point.