Nine Lives by Peter Swanson
My rating: 3/5 cats
i’m not gonna talk about the plot, i’m just gonna talk about my reaction to the motive, and i’m going to be as courteous as possible, so i don’t spill too many beans.
okay, so WHAT? why are we killing here? because the ████████?
that dog don’t hunt.
seriously, we’re going with ████████? first of all, the math on that doesn’t wash: how does murdering nine innocent people ████████████? is this inflation?
i have numbered my grievances:
1) not all of the nine ████████ were equally ████ in ████, but all ████ the same ████.
2) ████████████████
3) how does taking the lives of nine (mostly) nice people ████ to a ████ if the ████████ jerks. how does killing a gentle grieving gay health care worker ████ “enthusiastically fascistic” ████ who’d already ████ which, yes, is addressed, but when the answer to a question is “because,” it doesn’t take you very far down that road to understanding.
4) it is ALWAYS creepy to ████ under ████████████████ whether or not you murder them afterwards.
5) ████. seriously.
it’s pretty clichéd to punish ████████████ by ████, but it’s even worse because most of the victims were ████████████ so who’s being ████ here?. ditto for a ████ with ████. and maybe for the ████, if the ████ genetic legacy more than emotional weight. but that one doesn’t matter, right because I HAVE ANOTHER NOTE:
if you’re going to catch the reader off-guard by ████████████ – the only one taken out by a contract killer – earlier in the book than would typically be the case, don’t ruin that win by ████████
and you’re really gonna hide your confession in a ████ in a ████ in the ████? that’s the culmination of your painstaking planning and execution? (no pun intended)
but i suppose we can write off all the flawed logic as ████, right? what a tepid end to a pretty hooky book.
ugh.
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i’m giving this three stars because it was a fun, fast read. swanson is good at devising an interesting premise and setting up a puzzle, i love how often he namedrops other books and authors, and the head-spinning number of POV characters keeps the reader turning those pages, scene-change after scene-change, but that motive? that master plan? the WHY behind the book’s existence?
i’ll dig into this one more as soon as i can, but it’s disappointing when a book starts out fun and then poops its pants at the end.
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