Review: Wild, non-stop and a little bit out of control
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 6, 2013
THE GAMBLERS is an ambitious novel. Not many stories offer such a deep, complex scope and a break-neck pace that never, ever lets up and it's a pretty long novel. I enjoyed it. It's a well-written, ultra-violent, high-octane U.K gangster story in the vein of Guy Ritchie, but here's the thing. The great sope and the crazy pace are both good and bad as Stanley focused so much on these, they ended up choking a bit of life out of the story.It lacked a bit of characterization and atmosphere for my own taste, because the characters are more than busy with the story Stanley has planned out for them. But hey, THE GAMBLERS owns that it's trying to do and mounts one of the most spectacularly complex crime stories I've ever read about. Stanley owns the choices he made. It could have been broken down into several novels, really. If you're looking to a crime/ation novel with little fear and lots of scope, well, THE GAMBLERS will indulge the hell out of it.