Review: "Plaza" Review
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 09 12, 2012
Let me start with the good stuff: this was a fun book to read, good plot, interesting characters, a moderate incidence of textual errors, punctuation errors.  Shane Brown can tell a good story and you'll enjoy this one.Snark: It's nice to know that one character has the requisite green eyes. Can't write a novel these days without a green-eyed person, usually female, in the cast of characters. There are also some plot holes, but nothing that a reader can't choose to ignore.Criticism: By the time I had read the first few pages, it was obvious that I was going to need a list of characters, as one after another was introduced, sometimes to be killed off just a few paragraphs later. By page 30 I had been introduced to 17 characters, and each one's accompanying backstory, even for those who disappeared from view just a few pages later, tertiary characters, fillers. After all, if you have a team of six macho types, does each has to have an extensive history and motivation for joining the group, even if he is just cannon fodder?I had trouble keeping track of them all and I recommend if you read this book, start taking notes of characters and which team they belong to. You'll be glad you did, as their paths cross and double back over one another in confusing--but interesting--ways. It would have made reading easier if the "filler" characters had just been written in, written out, and the reader not required to invest mental energy and time in reading their life history.A fine balance is required, because main characters definitely need back story; secondary characters need enough to make them real; tertiary filler characters, no. I look back over the list of characters I made and see some who didn't even really need names, as all they did was get killed, pretty much, or leave the site on the regularly scheduled boat, never to be heard from again.There was a failed heist, reviewed three times, in great detail, much of it irrelevant and overlong. By the third iteration, I was done with it. Did you think I wasn't paying attention during the first two times? All that was needed was the extra added stuff that was being revealed (this is hard to write without making it a spoiler).One other comment: Early on in the book, a major character plays a practical joke on another major character. It falls flat, because it does not tell us anything profound or revealing about either character that will explain or illuminate their actions later on. Maybe it was intended to show how the main character related to the others, but it didn't do the trick.I really enjoyed the book--my comments are intended to help the author improve his writing. He is very good and I'm ready to read his other books. Very much recommended.