Wednesday, November 8

Book Review: The Lion's Game by Nelson DeMille

Author: Nelson DeMille
Title: The Lion's Game (John Corey #2)
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, & Fiction
Pages: 720
Published: Jan 2000
I Got It: My shelf (Inherited from my grandpa's collection)

Detective John Corey, last seen in Plum Island, now faces his toughest assignment yet: the pursuit and capture of the world's most dangerous terrorist -- a young Arab known as "The Lion" who has baffled a federal task force and shows no sign of stopping in his quest for revenge against the American pilots who bombed Libya and killed his family. Filled with unrelenting suspense and surprising plot twists at every terrifying turn, THE LION'S GAME is a heartstopping race against time and one of Nelson DeMille's most riveting thrillers.



Blast! I started with book 2. Sighs. Oh well. Luckily it was one you could pick up and not really miss anything. A good stand alone. A couple of references I was unsure of but it wasn’t necessary to the story. 

The story follows a couple of POVs. Detective John Corey and his sidekick who has a new assignment to locate a dangerous terrorist who has everyone scratching their heads. The other POV is “The Lion’s” who is killing those who he blames for killing his family. You don’t get to see much of him, but I did enjoy seeing those glimpses here and there. Honestly? I enjoyed that POV a little more than John’s. John wasn’t bad…but I found it interesting to see from the killer’s eyes. 

There was a lot of suspense going on. Sure, you know WHO the killer is. But how do you stop this dangerous terrorist? Where is he? Where is he going to strike next? The ending was no surprise, but the real question was HOW it was going to get there. 

This is a BIG book and I really feel it was not necessary to be this long. There were so many parts that could have been trimmed and snipped. Yes, I didn’t mind the romance between John and his sidekick, but c’mon…I can only handle so much. This is supposed to be a suspense! I really feel that these overextended parts dogged down the story and made it move super slowly. I do admit I skimmed a lot of these filler parts. Yes, filler is a good word for the extra parts that didn’t help the story along. 

I honestly have to give the author credit on the character building. They were not 2D at all. John was complex and so was The Lion. It made it feel more real which added to the suspense. Also, the author made The Lion scary, buuuuut a small part of you feel bad for the guy. He did lose his whole family and now he is out for blood. Is it right of him? Eeee no…but it is tragic and it is hard not to feel a hair bad for him. I enjoyed having these conflicting thoughts about the terrorist. I also went back and forth how I liked John. Not a bad guy at all..he is law enforcement! However, he was kind of a jerk sometimes. Even the side characters were well done. Kuddos to the author *tips hat*

In the end, this was simply just okay. I didn’t hate the book, but I didn’t love it. It was SO long and it exhausted me in a lot of places that I had to skim to keep going. I enjoyed the two POVs. There was a lot of suspense even with the fillers. Not a bad read if you are craving some modern suspense that deals with terrorism. This shall be stamped with…mmmm…3 stars. 




2 comments:

Blodeuedd said...

Hmm, how come I missed this one...weird

Carole Rae said...

It is an older one.