Review: The novel that words ate.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 1, 2014
Browning has taken his character's central flaw all too much to heart.  Win is a Scrabble King and as such had lost the meaning of words to their names and letters.  The foreshadowing and the devices on hidden meanings soon swallow the characters until they become their own counterparts in the game of "sensitive environmental" material.  Even the rush to review involves more discussions of the word fracking in the title than comments on the actual content of the book, which most of them to date report not reading.This was a free book in the Amazon First Program, and my first real disappointment.  The lack of subtlety made this brief. Over drag by.  Win is a scholarship student from the Dark Company, a fracking concern that doesn't even bother to put a more optimistic name to their business.  Murky glasses of water lurk around.  Brownies are made with beans, and dorms put off so much petroleum based heat that air conditioning is needed.  The governor of the state has known links to the oil well, and these are items from the first 20% of the book.  There are some witty beats on scrabble and poetry and boarding school life is updated to our century's challenges.  This and some timely literary tropes endow this book with some interesting passages.  Overall, it is just ok.