Review: Not as exciting as I'd hoped
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 21, 2012
~~From Red Adept Reviews~~I received Cloud Crash: A Technothriller, by Phil Edwards, as a review copy submitted to "Red Adept Reviews" by the author.Overall: 3 StarsPlot/Storyline: 4 StarsThis book took me weeks to read, when I usually grind through a novel in hours. But it wasn't due to a bad plot; I very much enjoyed its final few twists.The subplot involving Area 51 wasn't what I expected and could have been cut entirely, and the bomber's subplot could have been a quarter as detailed and still remained relevant. The blogger's subplot was my favorite; it wasn't overdone, and the character was easy to relate to.At one point, a newly-broken code is described as consistent, but it wasn't; the author used two kinds of ciphers. Another time, guards had been forewarned of the bomber's attacks, but weren't given weapons or any other means to defend their building--a plot device that saved the final confrontation for our heroes.The various settings were entertaining; I particularly enjoyed the final section of the book; all the plotlines dovetailed nicely and the tension was intense.I particularly enjoyed one scene between Ben and Khalid which brought up both sides of what is currently the argument surrounding the SOPA bill. There's nothing like relevant fiction to give us another look at ourselves.Character Development: 3 3/4 StarsCal Stevens starts off with a quality pedigree: journalist, investigator, party boy, sexy guy. But when the story begins, his intelligence doesn't hold up to the hype. He asks questions about internet topics so basic that I wondered where he'd been in the last decade. He felt Gary Stuish from the start, though his snappy wit was always entertaining.Schloss, the bomber, starts his day with a perfect plan, we're told. But as time goes by, he's revealed to have made mistake after mistake during his planning phase, as well as goofing up during the plan's execution. He ends up seeming to suffer from delusions of competence, and, as with Cal, I wondered how he got hired.Brianna, PR agent/actual agent, was awesome. Her PR side was strongly shown, and her kick-ass side did just that. Mysterious, possibly untrustworthy, having her own agenda and not apologizing for it, she owned this book. She definitely owned Cal.Ben the blogger was an interesting addition to the book, in a good way. The pacing of his sections were different, but no less intriguing or tense. His fears and paranoia were a nice foil to the confidence of the other characters.There were several minor characters as well, and while they were all developed to some degree, I didn't feel they all needed inclusion and/or POV scenes.Writing Style: 2 StarsThe author has a habit of putting a character's dialogue in its own paragraph, without a dialogue tag. Occasionally, this made it confusing as to who was speaking.Technical details felt overexplained, particularly through Brianna's, Kevin's, and Arthur's dialogue. The "use in sentence--question--explain further" dialogue sequence happened regularly in the first half of the book, slowing down the pace and making Cal--who did most of the questioning--look so technically inept that it strained my belief to accept that Kevin would have  hired him in the first place. It was hard to stay interested when I kept feeling like I knew more than the characters (including things like the purpose of speed-limit cameras).Numerous instances of vague writing made it harder to stay focused on the action; some scenes wrapped up with a vague pronouncement that killed the building tension.Editing: 2 1/2 StarsRun-on sentences were rampant. Comma usage was minimal and inconsistent. I also found a large number of simple grammatical errors and a handful of capitalization errors.