Bodhipaksa reviewed City of Ports by Jeff Deck
Interesting, but flawed
3 stars
I've actually met the author in Portsmouth, the city in which the book is set, and bought the book for that reason. I was disappointed. They say "show, don't tell," but there's an awful lot of telling goes on — long passages where the heroine informs us of things she's done, but we don't live them with her.
The narrative starts with a female police officer (female, of Indian extraction, lesbian, anger issues) finding her fiancee murdered. I would have expected, over the course of the book, to have learned a lot about the murdered fiancee, and to have relived moments the couple had had together. But none of that happens. This lack of psychological reality was a major hindrance to my enjoyment.
Nevertheless, there's a lot of creativity here. The plot (involving interdimensional ports and conspiracies) has a great deal of promise. I enjoyed the settings in Portsmouth, which …
I've actually met the author in Portsmouth, the city in which the book is set, and bought the book for that reason. I was disappointed. They say "show, don't tell," but there's an awful lot of telling goes on — long passages where the heroine informs us of things she's done, but we don't live them with her.
The narrative starts with a female police officer (female, of Indian extraction, lesbian, anger issues) finding her fiancee murdered. I would have expected, over the course of the book, to have learned a lot about the murdered fiancee, and to have relived moments the couple had had together. But none of that happens. This lack of psychological reality was a major hindrance to my enjoyment.
Nevertheless, there's a lot of creativity here. The plot (involving interdimensional ports and conspiracies) has a great deal of promise. I enjoyed the settings in Portsmouth, which is a town I know well. I'm not interested enough to continue with the other books in the series, though.