Review: Rogues!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 27, 2014
Who doesn't like a story with a good rogue? Or two... Those characters are always such fun to read and Xanadu has some great ones.I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It's an adventure/heist story set in modern Afghanistan, filled with colorful characters and vibrant writing. I've never been to Afghanistan. I've never played high-stakes Mahjongg, and I've certainly never attempted to smuggle ancient artifacts, but the story had just enough to it to make it both believable and entertaining.The consistency of the characters pulled me in. Even when a character did something unexpected, it was in line with that character's motivation and history.Even though this is technically the second book with the same characters, it's a self-contained adventure and so I never really felt I had missed something important. Instead, the relationships and banter between the characters felt honest.I had a couple of very minor nits: after a while the main character's asides to the reader did get a tiny bit old, and I tired very quickly of the Bibi character's hip-hop "dialect." But even then, these were incredibly minor asides that did not pull me out of the story much at all.Yes, read this book. You will be happy you did.I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.