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Grey Warden
— feeling excited
Got some good stuff at this year's BEA. My summer is fully booked.
A AS
Got some good stuff at this year's BEA. My summer is fully booked.
2 1/2 rounded up. A quick read; however the story felt a little flat to me. I liked the characters well enough. I just felt the story lacked depth and would have been better with more fleshing out of the darknet. The darknet is a fascinating subject, so there was great potential for a really good thriller. Instead the darknet was portrayed in very generic terms and the story ending wrapped up a bit too quickly and too neatly to generate much of a reaction out of me.
I picked up "Darknet" because I work in AI and automation and I wanted to see what someone who sees the darker possibilities of the technologies would imagine as our future.
Matthew Mather does a good job with the technology. The things he imagines are a "five minutes from now" version of the current technology used for bots, machine learning, pattern recognition, drones and cryptocurrency.
He's also come up with a dark and plausible global conspiracy, powered by an AI technology that happily uses humans to do the wetwork.
The action is set across the world: China, the US, Canada, the UK. There's a surprisingly high body count and the action is relentless.
I'm sure the novel has a clever resolution for dealing with the monstrous entity Matthew Mather's imagination has spawned but I'm never going to find out what it is.
I gave up just before the half-way point because I realised that I really didn't care what happened to any of the people. It was like watching someone else play a video game: great graphics and sound effects but zero emotional engagement.
If you're in it for a fast-paced, action-packed thriller with a plausible extrapolation of current technology then "Darknet" may do it for you. Personally, I'll wait to download the video when the movie is inevitably made.
Nomad by Matthew Mather is Book I of The New Earth Series.
This is one of those books that left me with tons of questions and what ifs.
Amazon US / Amazon UK / Amazon CA / Goodreads
MY REVIEW
Action packed, thought-provoking, could this really happen novel that held my attention as the clocked ticked down.
“At most, we have a year, perhaps only months, until the anomaly reaches us.”
It’s the end of the world and I can’t imagine the fear and panic. All kinds of questions came to mind. Would I want to know, seeing as how there is nothing I could do? Would I want to be one of the last ones standing? How would I spend the last moments of my life? Who would I spend them with?
I quickly became involved with the characters, especially Jess. I love a strong, independent, kickass female, and she surely fits the bill. She is into extreme sports, served in Afghanistan, and left a leg there because of an IED. She may be a bit more than self-confident, maybe a bit reckless, but she does not have a death wish.There is nothing that will stop her from doing the right thing.
My first thought would be to let bygones be bygones, but would others think that? What about other countries? Would they want to take the last shot before the Earth ceases to exist?
A free for all, no holds barred human slaughter.
Matthew Mather did his research for Nomad. I don’t understand all the technical jargon, but he broke it down into easy to understand language. Well enough for me to me to be totally engrossed in the story, instead of thinking of it as a school subject.
The end of the world is coming and I felt it on every page, especially after watching the Solar Eclipse on 8.21.17. The danger and suspense just kept increasing, and it wasn’t just because of Nomad.
There is no ending. There are four books in the series, and I WANT THEM!
4 Stars
Nomad by Matthew Mather is a story about Nomad, a mysterious object with more mass than the sun that's headed straight to earth, and Dr. Ben Rollins has to figure out when it's going to hit. I was so intrigued by the concept of this story. It had excitement and mystery going for it. However, I was thrown off track by the introduction of a family feud surrounding the doctor's daughter. I felt that this hindered the possibility of an exceptional story. The daughter's character was not believable in her actions, thus a tremendous disappointment. The feud between two other characters was truly unnecessary. With that being said, the story was well written and grammatically correct. I won Nomad in a giveaway on a book blog and all opinions are my own.
