Gremriel reviewed Tropical Storm by Melissa Good
Review of 'Tropical Storm' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Is it worth reviewing a book that was first published about 15 years ago? I thought about it, and well, here's my $0,02 (that's about 0,007 euro's I guess)
The thing about writing about the IT sector is that the technology and terminolgy get outdated pretty fast. But in this case, the story holds up pretty well. In fact, it's a trip down memory lane for us geeks. It's almost funny to read how people get excited that they will be getting dual core pentium 2 with 128 megs of RAM. We laugh at that now. AS/400, OS/2, ISDN, 56k modems, Novell, it's almost a documentary on IT technology. Thing is, would you substitute all that with modern equivalents, it will not change a thing about the story. That's a big plus.
It is a sweet love story, a bit long though. We get introduced to a tough as nails …
Is it worth reviewing a book that was first published about 15 years ago? I thought about it, and well, here's my $0,02 (that's about 0,007 euro's I guess)
The thing about writing about the IT sector is that the technology and terminolgy get outdated pretty fast. But in this case, the story holds up pretty well. In fact, it's a trip down memory lane for us geeks. It's almost funny to read how people get excited that they will be getting dual core pentium 2 with 128 megs of RAM. We laugh at that now. AS/400, OS/2, ISDN, 56k modems, Novell, it's almost a documentary on IT technology. Thing is, would you substitute all that with modern equivalents, it will not change a thing about the story. That's a big plus.
It is a sweet love story, a bit long though. We get introduced to a tough as nails VP, who will do anything to get the results everyone is expecting from her. Then she meets the manager of a small company taken over by the big coorporation, and she finds herself in a situation where she has little clue how to deal with that. The funniest part was Dar having to have her doctor explain she was in love. Too funny.
A big plus is that the relationship between Dar and Kerry goes very slow. I really liked that. Sometimes I get tired with the insta-love stories. The way Kery manages to get under DAr's skin (in a good way) almost unknowingly is very nicely done. There's is very little drama, until the end, but there are some "action" scenes. All in all, it was a fun read.
I do have some issues though.
I read the 2010 "enhanced" ebook version, and I have to say, the formatting was horrible. The most glaring issue I had, was that I repeatedly found myself lost in the dialogue. Not becaus of the dialogue persé, but the way it was formatted. Sometimes I had to re-read something more that twice, because I really couldn't make up when who said what. Very confusing.
Another peeve I had, was the over-use of terms like "the blonde woman", the taller woman, the older woman and so on. I found it distracting.
And then the end. We know from early on, Kerry's family are assholes, especcially her father. I can understand how her father would go ballistic when she comes out, but having her admitted to a psychiatric ward? And then Dar flying to the rescue in an F14 Tomcat? With the night nurse conveniently leaving everything needed to get out around just for grabs? That was a bit over the top for me, and in my opinion, could have een handled much better.
