Review: Hard Digging, Not Enough Gold
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 05 31, 2012
I really want to like this book a lot and say only nice things about it. I can say some nice things about it, but I have to mention the problems, too.The good: I liked the time travel premise and the way the plot worked out.  I liked the main characters and thought the author did a good job of making them real. I liked the overall tone and settings. I liked the ending.But... the Not-So-Good:This book starts out slow and stays that way. Lots happens, but nothing happens quickly. Much of this has to do with the overabundance of description. I like enough description to give me a feel for the setting and people, but I don't need every single detail. I don't need a list of every picture and item and color in the restaurant. If you like that sort of thing, you'll love this book, but it definitely slows the story down.The author makes a nagging amateur mistake: he repeatedly refers to characters by a descriptive phrase instead of their name. On every page. This became a distraction when I had to stop and decide who he was referring to. Was he introducing a new character? If he's sitting at a table in a restaurant with his friends, and he looks at "the group of boisterous college students" does the author mean his friends or some other group? Why constantly refer to the familiar with a distancing and confusing phrase?  This tactic can be  successful if it's used sparingly, but the overuse in this book made me cringe again and again, and made me stop reading numerous times. Clarity should be a goal of the writer, and it was repeatedly lacking in this narrative.Another technical issue was the head-hopping, or change of point-of-view within a scene. This happens a fair bit as the book progresses, and is jarring for a reader. A good editor would never let this slip by.Finally, there were quite a few cases where I had no idea who was talking due to the way the dialogue was structured. Having to stop and go back to try again is a good reason to put the book down for a break.Ultimately, I kept digging, hoping for gold, and was rewarded with enough color to keep me from feeling I'd wasted my money and time. But I didn't strike it rich. I finished the book wishing it had lived up to its potential.