Review: So disappointing - I wanted to love this.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 25, 2012
As a Christian, it's really so refreshing to read Christian fiction that ISN'T romance, but still speaks to my worldview. I also have a keen interest in Eastern Europe (I studied Russian at university), and on a totally shallow level, three books for three quid was a pretty good offer.So I had high hopes for The Russian.I've seen a number of reviews going "yuck, Christian fiction!" but as one might imagine, that's not my problem with this book. My problem was that it just wasn't well written, and I got to the stage where I just couldn't make myself keep reading.It started off pretty well, with a rather mysterious chap getting offed in a Paris cafe. Not a cheery start, admittedly, but at least intriguing. Unfortunately, things gradually went downhill from there. There is way, way too info-dumping going on; one entire chapter is the main character (Alex) sitting reading a file of information about Ukraine. Such an info dump is occasionally necessary, and it's not even that the information itself is dull; this info dump is just handled really badly. The whole "Alex is reading this file and these are the bits you need to know" conceit simply doesn't work.It wouldn't be so bad, but this is not even the first such dump - only a few chapters previously Alex had splurged her life history, ostensibly to prove her language skills (she is supposed to be speaking in Russian at that point), but mainly as a really lazy way to give us vast swathes of her background in one huge (and, to be honest, really boring) chunk.There are a lot of stereotypical characters: for example, a couple who are executed (we only meet them for about five minutes before their deaths) are 'foot soldiers' with a cause whose validity is 'open to argument', and they are portrayed, in their short vignette, as basically party people who do a lot of drinking, clubbing, wife swapping and threesomes. The reader is so clearly supposed to seem them as "baddies" that it's a little cringe-worthy.I also found the extraneous information got overwhelming and annoying. A couple of characters early on whose only point seems to be to place a bug in a character's flat had all sorts of information that I didn't know and didn't actually care about thrown in (and on top of that they came across as a bit stupid, to be honest... seriously, would someone who worked in this capacity really not be able to tell Gorbachev and Yeltsin apart??).Another character is introduced in this timeless(!) piece of prose:"He had a mop of gray hair and a reddish face. He wore a crimson tie and a cream-colored shirt. He was flanked by a half-finished container of Starbucks, the tall one with the full day's caffeine punch."For starters, the only bit of remotely interesting or relevant information in these three sentences is that he's a coffee drinker - which is hardly surprising (he's in the US State Department). Why the author felt the need to tell me random and dull pieces of information about his attire I'm not sure, but even the style in which it's told is ugly. "He had brown hair and blue eyes. He wore a blue suit..." - this is the kind of description I expect from a child, not a published author! How some of this prose ever got through editing without someone saying, "Hang on a tick, this could use some serious tightening up" I really can't imagine.In the same vein, a long description of the Nigerian 419 scam seems to be to be something which either you know about (and therefore really don't need the detailed run down of how it works) or you don't know about (and therefore don't actually care and wonder why anyone would be stupid enough to send their bank details to a random Nigerian). The detailed explanation of how the scam worked just added nothing to the story, and was yet another piece (and only a few chapters in) of extra padding.Similarly, we're treated to a detailed run down of Alex's activities at the gymn, only one of which (her baseball game) appeared to be adding anything to the story. I really didn't need to know, nor care about, her grabbing her stuff, heading back to the lockers, and having a quick shower. There is way, way too much of this kind of detail bogging down the writing.All of the above could, though, be forgiven as far as I am concerned - it's not great writing, but I'd live with it, and the plot (despite being slowed down to almost a full stop by the neverending padding) looked like it might be quite interesting. The deal-breaker for me is how annoying the main character was. She is too perfect - too much of a Mary Sue. She's beautiful, speaks five languages, she excels in everything she does, she's engaged to a well-muscled but also super-intelligent and honourable guy... and still she manages to come across as rather whiny, self-righteous and judgemental. She also seemed rather naive for a woman who's supposed to be a fed who's served on active duty in a country like Nigeria... "Horrible things like that only happened to other people." (I also couldn't help wondering if that was a piece of foreshadowing that even Stephenie "let me spell out my plot for you just in case you're a bit dim" Meyer would think was heavy handed...)I'm a Christian - and I really struggled to like her. I couldn't empathise with her, and she didn't feel real, feel human, at all. Thinking of what it would be like reading this from a non-believer's point of view, and imagining that many readers would take this as "what Christians are like", made me cringe.Basically, I really, really wanted to like this,and I kept going as long as I could because it looked like it might have a decent, interesting plot, and I imagined it would at least be a cut above some of the Christian drivelly romances that seem to dominate the Christian-fiction market. For being a little different, I'm grudgingly giving one star. But poor writing and a main character who I just didn't want to spend time with added up to a book I felt I was wasting my time reading. Overall: really disappointing, and I'm just glad I grabbed it on offer not at full price.