Empire State
2.9
17
5
1
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780857661937 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Watkins Media |
| Publication date: | 12/27/2011 |
| Pages: | 448 |
| Sales rank: | 353,238 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.54(w) x 8.56(h) x 1.16(d) |
About the Author
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Empire State
2.9 out of 5
based on
0 ratings.
17 reviews.
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This thing is all over the place. It starts off very slowly. It takes its time in dropping hints about what's going on. Hints that aren't really needed if you've read any blurb about the book. At about the half way point, the pace picks up just a little as characters explain some of what's going on for anyone that hasn't caught on yet after 150 plus pages. But then it speeds up further to become utterly confusing. This finaly speed burst isn't so much about the plot as events on screen. The last couple of chapters are the literary equivalent of those shakey camera moments in a hollywood action film. You're fairly certain something just happened, but you aren't going to know what that something was until the story stops for a moment. Like you'll find yourself wondering where a character has gone, and a couple of chapters later the author will explain that the missing character left at the same time as some other characters being removed from a scene. Add in double (and sometimes triple) doses of characters that the reader doesn't have any reason to care for, and you end up wondering why you bothered to finish the book.
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The book is trying to be a madcap romp combining detective noir, steampunk, and superheroes, but never gets in gear. Characters act without any recognizably human sense or motivation and random plot contrivances are thrown all over the place. I read through the entire thing with grim determination, but fortunately you don't have to!
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It was a difficult book to get through. I really, REALLY wanted it to be good. Love the concept but hated the execution. The characters were uninteresting and unlikable.
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This is an interesting book that ultimately didn't work for me. There is potential for a good book here, but this one gets bogged down in a hodgepodge of styles and ideas.
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had expected more of this book. the overall setting really appeals to me but i never quite got into the rythem of the book. tool me ages to finish, wich is rather worrisome if you consider that this is supposed to be a detective novel.
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Loved it. Can't wait until he writes another book. I do have a weakness for the anti-hero.
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To be honest, I wasn¿t sure what to expect from this first novel by Adam Christopher - but it had come highly recommended by a number of my writer friends, so I figured it was worth a look.Centered around a world with two New Yorks, one shrouded in fog and forever battling an unseen Enemy with the austerity of `Wartime¿ and another set in our world in 1950, with all the light, noise and people that inhabited the city in that time.The Empire State, with its heart in one of the many correlations between the two, the Empire State Building, has retained the prohibition of alcohol and is only nineteen years old. Which is weird, because the people in it remember lives and events that predate those nineteen years.Without giving too much away, the activities of two superheroes or supervillans (depending on who you talk to), known as the Skyguard and the Science Pirate, have had an impact in both versions of the Big Apple. Rad Bradley, private detective and frequenter of his local speakeasy, is caught up in various schemes and machinations and quickly finds himself out of his depth.For a first novel, this has a polished feel and tells a great story. The interactions between the characters as well as the two New Yorks has been crafted with great care and it shows. In terms of storytelling, this is some of the best I¿ve read for a long time and it¿s got a great deal to recommend it. There¿s the PI in the style of Sam Spade, superheroes, bootleggers, battle robots, airships and strange thugs in gas masks, set against the backdrop of the bleak Empire State and the vibrant New York of our world.I enjoyed Christopher¿s tale immensely and am looking forward to his next effort. You won¿t be wasting your money by buying this one.
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I love the new flood of genre mash-ups and this is a gem. It opens with a bang too as a gripping car chase rival gangsters is overtaken by a literally explosive fight between two superheroes. For this is prohibition era New York and things are about to get worse (and weird) for PI Rad Bradley, who is about to make a discovery that¿s going to change everybody¿s lives forever.Sublimely meshing noir tropes with superhero conventions and twisting your typical mystery plot into a mind bending tale of parallel universes, odd cults, robots, airships, doomsday devices and really hard alcohol. It's a fun, fast paced, mind bending mystery. It has a fantastic sense of place with its rain slicked streets, eerily empty warships, gargantuan mansions and seedy speakeasies and they are all populated with some great characters, luckily my favourite being PY Bradley who really shines here. It¿s real easy to slip into this world and bring it alive, Christopher manages to walk a tightrope of tricky character reasoning and motivation with a such a fluid setting.I guess being a 1st novel there are some cracks, some of those great characters get lost and some just don't seem to fit. I felt the plot could have done with being a wee tighter or rather pruned/focused as there any dead wood in the thick plot. Personal taste also dictated a desire for a less snake like plot, which gave a me a headache but now I am just nitpicking. I meant it has a robot butler what more do you want?All in all recommend to lovers of a rollicking story with a mind bending plot, sci-fi fans and lovers of noir. Christopher is an author to watch.
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This is a debut novel for this Author, and despite what the cover may lead the reader to believe this book is about, once they start reading they will discover it is something more. Unfortunately, despite this book having a lot going for it, it didn’t quite reach the spot with me.
The reason for its shortcomings for me, all lie with the characters; right from the beginning they seem to be lacking something. The initial character we are introduced to is gone before the reader really has a chance to get to know him, he is replaced by the main protagonist, who is marginally more interesting, but not enough to make the reader connect with him or grab their attention fully. Many of the characters that appear in the book are never written with any real depth and, even though this is explained about halfway through the book, the reader spends much of their time surrounded by shallow characters. The characters have very little substance, not enough to carry a whole book, which is a shame in this particular novel.
Fortunately the setting of the book and the mystery contained in its pages were engrossing enough to keep me reading to the end. The setting is a parallel universe and brings a very steampunk feel to the pseudo-New York 1930’s written there with robots, prohibition, super heroes, unseen enemies and robots. This fictional universe is well written and the Author leaves it wide open to the reader’s imagination to explore and populate as they will. The overall feeling that the reader will gain from the atmosphere created in the book may well remind them of a Philip K. Dick novel, but which one will depend on how they interpret this novel.
I would recommend this book to readers of the time travel and fantasy genres.
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after reading this novel in one sitting all i can say is: "WOW!", i loved, loved, loved this book. Please, do yourself a favour and buy this book...now.
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This is a well put together story with a lot of fun; almost seems to be a graphic novel w/o pictures. Not really my thing but if you like graphic novels, you'll like it.
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Fun read
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For some reason there is no sample available. Reader beware a Nook book that doesn't have a free sample to read.
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