Friday 14 October 2011

Ghost of a Smile - Book Review

Ghost Of A Smile (Ghostfinders #2)
by Simon R. Green


What is it about:
The Ghost Finders answer a distress call from the private research center of one of the biggest drug companies in the world, where a team of police enforcement agents have vanished. They have no idea what they're facing-except a deadline that threatens to remove the entire building from existence if they fail to get to the bottom of the mystery.

What did I think of it:
The first book in this series was a nice read, but lacked feeling. As this sometimes can happen with first books in a series I decided to give book 2, Ghost of a Smile, a chance.

First thing that I ran across: It felt very formulaic.

It started with a first chapter in which our heroes through wit manage to stop a haunting, just like in book 1. In chapter two they are send on their 'real' investigation, just like in book 1. I will confess that alone almost made me put down the book, but I tried to ignore this and soldiered on.

Sadly enough the book did have the same flaws as book 1: the problems the characters run into are too huge for me to be believable, screaming 'DOOM' and 'The end of the world is nigh'. Maybe other people like this, but I like a bit of subtlety. I disliked it especially as the story is intriguing and could so easily have done without the added 'end of the world' threat. And I got really annoyed by the characters who kept snarking at each other. Even when cornered and while they should pay attention to what was coming at them, they had time for snarky conversations. Lucky for them the monsters were kind enough to wait till they stopped griping at each other.

All in all I was disappointed by this book and I will not pick up the next book in this series.

Why should you read it:
If you like snarky ghosthunters and end of the world scenarios you might like this book.


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4 comments:

Michelle Greathouse said...

I agree with your review.

I did not read the first book - so I thought that may have contributed to my feelings for this one. But seeing that you felt the same after reading both books...hmm.

Have a great weekend.

M

Jeffe Kennedy said...

That's a pet peeve - the time-out for snarking. Right up there with time for passionate kissing/sex while the danger draws closer.

Sullivan McPig said...

@Michelle: Have a great weekend as well!
@Jeffe: It's one of my pet peeves as well.

M.A.D. said...

Seriously, I thought I was the only one who gets *uber-annoyed* when danger is everywhere yet the movie/book characters manage to squeeze [no pun intended] in a bout of steamy sex. To me, it comes across as highly improbable, stupid and just a wee bit contrived :P