Review: Undigested
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 07 27, 2011
"Never Saw it Coming" sold itself as a gritty action book, with a lot of creative plot ideas, twists and turns, and religious/philosophic undertones. It met some of its promises, but failed in others, and for that deserves a mixed review.What I really liked about this book was the author's sense of humor. The humor was both the book's shining star, and occasionally it's biggest failing. The author's voice was also great. It was unique and really held my attention. He has a gift for writing.However, the plot and the characters in the book were not well handled. Tim Finnegan is an immature, smart-mouthed, belligerent, and wholly unsympathetic protagonist, whose first reaction in most situations is to punch someone in the face. My big quibble with Tim was that his monologue and actions didn't seem to be his own. Tim is portrayed as a loser alcoholic with a dead end job. Tim's monologue and actions were the voice and decisions of the author, forcing Tim to be a plucky action hero, always ready with a witty chapter ending one-liner. Because of this, Tim didn't seem real. The author's humor made reading his POV enjoyable, but it never came across as believable.When Tim's running monologue was funny, the story was fun to read. When it wasn't, the story wasn't. The majority of the dialogue was action move cliché (A lot of: "Freeze!" "No!" "Get on the ground!" "Let's go.") The POV switches were unnecessary and seemed like a crutch or a diversion. This book should have been told entirely from Tim's perspective. That would have made it much smoother and easier to read.Despite all off this, M. Jordan is a good author. His voice is great, his tone is fun, and his pacing is even. I like his general writing style. This book just wasn't given enough time to ripen and coalesce in his head before it was published. If he published a new book; I'd check it out.