Review: A Decent Yarn
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 08 24, 2012
Midnight Sun is a decent thriller.  It offers non-stop action from start to finish.The start is actually a highpoint of the book.  The first chapter is extremely well-written, compelling, gut-wrenching, and offers some dynamite literally tension for the rest of the novel.The setting is interesting, too.  Not many books seem to be set in Anchorage, but the author does a good job of giving a feel of the city without resorting to a tour guide monologue.  The setting provided a nice backdrop to the story without getting in the way.One point I really liked is that the main antagonists were well-developed.  They may be baddies, but there was a logical and believable reason for their feelings and what they wanted to do.There were some nice turns of phrase, too.  I laughed out loud at the "Darth Visor," what the author called the huge visor/hats worn by some middle-aged Korean women.While there was a lot to like about the book, there were some other areas in which I thought it could be improved.  One of my biggest problems was in the huge number of coincidences which took place seemingly every time I clicked the page forward on my Kindle.  Some were essential to the plotline, and you have to give the author leeway on that. But others were essentially gratuitous and offered nothing to the plot.  One example of that was when one character was standing in a crowd next to another, and out of the blue, they start talking about soccer, and the one character played soccer in the UK with the brother of the other.  This was unnecessary, and when added to characters being on-hand at accident scenes where others were filmed, characters just happening by when something serious was occurring, and just the right people with certain needed skills spotting the baddies by happenstance, well, it all got to be a little much.  (If some of that was vague, that was to avoid spoilers.)The "minor" baddies were not so well developed as the major ones. All were cardboard cutouts.  One, called "Bones," was evil incarnate.  To make this point, he was characterized as being a child rapist and murderer, a man who although was kicked out of the Marines for taking "war trophies," somehow still had those trophies in the form of finger bones around his neck.Lonnie, the wife of Marcus, one of the primary protagonist, is an Alaskan State Trooper. In the course of the few days covered by the book, just about everything bad which could happen to someone, happens to her.  Luckily for her, though, there are men around who can rescue her in the nick of time, even if she is a competent police officer.  I found all of this to be just too much, as if it was an excuse to throw in more action.Editing was good for most of the book, but it went downhill over the last 15% or so.  There were some pretty major errors in sentence construction, word choice, and punctuation.There were a few questionable decisions (why name a Korean woman "Suki," for example? Sure, Suki Kim is a known author, but the name means "beloved" in Japanese, so wouldn't a Korean name be less jarring?)  But I had more problems with the references to the Marines, which is surprising as the author served in the Corps.  Things such as describing the sound of a 60 mm mortar were off, and the simple referencing of past service was inaccurate (e.g., Marines who served in Force Reconnaissance do not refer to it as "Force Recon" with each other, but rather as "Force," as in "I was with 1st Force.")  And there was a major mistake with another Marine who was wounded after 18 years of service.  He lost his retirement and was only given a 70% disability from the VA.  However, if he was given the VA disability, he would have received a medical retirement from the Corps at 70%, tax-free, not the 50% taxable retirement he would have received had he done 20 full years.  But what really bothered me was the constant pushing that many of the characters served with "Special Operations" in the Corps, snooping and pooping on clandestine missions around the world.  In reality, the Marines as a matter of policy decided not to participate in the special operations theater.  While a few individual Marines served a tour within the special operations community, Force and Battalion Recon were there to support Marine Corps missions, not to take part in special ops missions. It was only recently that the last Commandant decided that the Marines needed to be part of special ops. It would have been far more reasonable to have Army Special Forces and Navy SEALs (not "Seals," as in this book--the phrase is an acronym) be the branches for some of the characters.There is a lot to like about the book.  I did enjoy reading it.  And while some of the things that bothered me were perhaps essential to the storyline, much of what bothered me could have been easily fixed.  Regardless, I still recommend the book to anyone considering downloading it.