Stefan+B's+Book+Review



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Although the book, __Roll Call__, by Malcolm Rose, had an interesting plot and a gripping, powerful prologue, this book turned out to be a little less of what I had expected. It seems to be one giant prank, getting the reader intrigued by mystery, deception, and a unique setting, but about a quarter of the way through, the book turns into a "point & click" sort of thing, where the main character simply finds one clue, it leads him to London, he finds another clue, and he visits New York. A few clues later, and hes accomplished little to nothing regarding the main plot, just getting caught up in miscellaneous deeds from complete strangers. I was honestly dissapointed that these creative ideas were wasted away in this wanna-be murder mystery. The book starts off exciting, ingaging the reader into the life of the investigator, then starts to lose its pace as you flip through the pages. The story seemed to just stop in it's tracks and go in reverse. All the excitement was crammed into the beginning and end, with tasteless fluff clogging up the middle. I prefer books with the excitement and energy increasing every page. But with this book, it felt like a chore to read it, not a privelage.

In this book, I found the writing style interesting at first, but as the book carried on towards the end, I saw the good writng start to vanish. Fortunately, this only began near the end of the book. Since the book takes place slightly in the future, with robots as guides, and automated taxi cabs, the more descriptive scenes really grabbed my attention, with details about hundreds of thoasands of remote-controlled cars driving through cities, and the robot conpanion of the main character performing what seems like science fiction to us at the blink of an eye.

I saw a well balance of different types of personas expressed throughout the book, including opera singing super stars, to a young teenage girl with a 1 in a 1 million chance disease. The main character also remained intrigueing throughout the novel, as I notice in some books, turn out to be another cheesy super human or something, and thankfully I didn't see that in __Roll Call__. The book also keeps things fresh by either reintroducing characters previously forgotten in the past, or bringing new people in all together. With this, I really thought the characters of the book were well developed and kept the story interesting.

Although the characters were good, the overall book wasn't quite as good as I hoped. I was intrigued by the writing style but the story got boring throughout the middle. The characters were captivating, and the plot was quite unique. I didn't enjoy reading every part of this book, but it's hard to find books where you never stop reading because of a part you didn't like, so I think this book wasn't a total loss. It defineatly gave me a new perspective of the world we live in today and how things don't always end the way they should end. I would reccommened __Roll Call__ to those interested in fiction tales, for this defineately fits that category.