Review: Vengeance Wears Black--A book that reminds me of the action movies I loved.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 2, 2012
Vengeance Wears Black, by Seumas Gallacher, reminds me of many of the action movies I recall with fond memories. It wasn't a perfect book, but it was enjoyable. Here's my take:It took me a while to get involved with the characters, and they weren't as deep as I might have liked, but they were solid and did their job.I felt that Seumas relied on dialogue too much; he tried providing information through dialogue that should have been conveyed through exposition. Sometimes that can work, and work well; in this case I thought the exchanges ran a little too long.Dialogue provided another slight distraction for me. I felt that several of the characters sounded too much the same, and the dialogue tags were not always appropriate. This might not bother some people. It probably won't, but it tended to pull me out of the story, even if for a moment.With that said, you might think I didn't like this book, but I did. A lot! Seumas has a gift for storytelling and action. This book starts with action, is filled with action, and finishes with action. Action is the strength of this book.It reminds me of some of the Stallone or Schwarzenegger movies from the 80s that were non-stop action from opening scene to the end. Some people might take that as a negative. I don't. I loved those movies. They weren't huge on character development, or dialogue, or many other things, but they told a good story and they kept my interest.As a writer, I probably picked this apart more than I should have, but as a reader, I enjoyed it.Also, the book was formatted and laid out nicely, and it wasn't riddled with typos and mistakes. A plus for what I see in a lot of books.To summarize:I felt the book was of good quality.The action and descriptions were good.The characterization and dialogue could have been improved.I would have given this a 3.5 rating, which I rounded up to 4.