Review: Odd Aftertaste
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 22, 2013
On the plus side, The Silversmith has a nicely-paced plot, solid enough writing and an engaging hero. On the minus side, a lot of the male characters are blandly, generically named with little character development, making them easy to muddle and the story harder to follow. It was also notable that the books has very few women characters, and the ones there are seem formulaic (the flirty waitress, the welcoming farm mother, the beautiful but damaged blonde).Finally, (SPOILER ALERT) the book ends with the revelation that the beautiful but damaged blonde was damaged by guilt over having an abortion; guilt so extreme it drove her to hardcore drug abuse and destroyed her marriage. This was a bizarre narrative non-sequitor clumsily dropped into the end of the book, reading like some kind of agenda-driven object lesson about the evils of abortion. I don't mind when an author's characters take a position on divisive topics, even when the position is not my own; I do mind when they're not handled with any nuance or skill. The result in The Silversmith was was both awkward and unwelcome and will unfortunately make me wary of reading other books by this author in the future.