Review: Good first outing indicates great promise....
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 13, 2013
The idea of "A Plague of Dissent" is an interesting one. Seemingly based off of the phone hacking scandal in the UK of several years ago, the media is monitoring communications in order to garner headlines. Leading the race with a lot on his plate is a man named Jonathan who has been contracted to get certain blackmail worthy material on public officials. The story opens with a young woman he has set up to sleep with a politician to gain pictures that would be embarrassing should they get out running from the press. At the start, I was really excited about where this novel would go.As the story progressed the excitement waned. This is a deeply complex story at the start of conspiracy and corruption. The story transitions to Adam Young. He's a bit of a romantic (he falls for Isobel, another man's wife, pretty quick) and super hot. When his appendix ruptures, the unprofessional thoughts of the nurse undressing him are read to the audience. That is as good as any example where a story that really could have and should have been excellent goes a little off of the rails for this reader. Extraneous information leads the story to drag. To further the slowing of the story line there's a whole lot of telling and not so much showing. There are readers who prefer the style but I find that telling disconnects us from the action.The above may give a reader the idea that this was a terrible novel. It wasn't. Once we got beyond the top-heavy exposition to the point where the story line was direct, the action was involved and interesting. As I said at the start of the review, this plot line was a very good idea. Taylor employs quite a lot of misdirection so that "A Plague of Dissent" is a rather difficult novel to describe to fellow readers without conveying spoilers. "A Plague of Dissent" appears to be Taylor's first novel that would make it somewhat of an outstanding outing. There are editing errors but they are few and generally speaking the character development and story line while weighty are well constructed. Taylor includes an excerpt of his next novel, "Gaia's Warriors," and the taste is compelling and interesting and also a novel that I will pick up simply to see what he does with the characters as they progress.