Review: Great premise, but lacking execution
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 05 22, 2013
I want to start off by saying that I appreciate the theme of this story. I always enjoy when there is a reason behind the writing beyond merely putting a character in a situation and following them through it. However, with Refuse, I find it suffers from many of the issues I have with Howey's work: too much exposition. I love the world Howey has created and have tried to read past book 2 many times, but just can't get into the writing. Immediate scenes are few and far between and the meat of the story is just backstory and the thoughts of characters. While this type of writing is good to educate the reader, it doesn't do much in terms of immersing them. In Refuse, the dialogue at times feels forced and lacking that conversational tone, and didn't create a believable exchange between characters.So I'm giving this 3 stars because I like the premise, just not the execution.  Among all of the five star reviews I'm clearly the outlier, but I feel I needed to write this review in case other readers were on the fence. That said, I'm sure may people will enjoy this story, I just wanted to put forth my criticism in case this style of writing is less ideal for other readers. I'm glad others are enjoying it though, and excited about the opportunities authors have to create stories in Howey's world.