Review of "Rogue Officer (Fancy Jack' Crossman)" on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Not overly impressed. Partly due to the narrative style that at times lectures us on what is happening completely out of the context of the actual tale, partly because of the 'let's push anything and everything' into a novel to catch the maximum readers... So we have computer stuff and all manner of other material that is really just contrived name dropping. My main issue though is that at some point most writers in this genre decided that the only way to write about the British Army was to have a maverick, detached hero who can swan around using the history as a wallpaper. So we have Sharpe, so we have this one who spends all his time with a rag tag bunch at one point mapping out Tibet and taking on local Chinese and at another point on a Burmese river......
Lacks credibility I am afraid - I mean …
Not overly impressed. Partly due to the narrative style that at times lectures us on what is happening completely out of the context of the actual tale, partly because of the 'let's push anything and everything' into a novel to catch the maximum readers... So we have computer stuff and all manner of other material that is really just contrived name dropping. My main issue though is that at some point most writers in this genre decided that the only way to write about the British Army was to have a maverick, detached hero who can swan around using the history as a wallpaper. So we have Sharpe, so we have this one who spends all his time with a rag tag bunch at one point mapping out Tibet and taking on local Chinese and at another point on a Burmese river......
Lacks credibility I am afraid - I mean how many times in a western film do the wagon train get surrounded, the one person ride off to get help, and then bed down for the night with a friendly local because it will all wait till the morning.... Yes I know this is not a western, but that's the cliche that is misused at one point in this book.
Sorry but I won't be reading any more of these, even though there we some moments that were quite amusing.