June 10th, 2013: Book: ‘Home Invasion’ by William W. Johnstone (et al)
by Rob Smith, Jr. on Jun.10, 2013, under Books
Home Invasion by William W. Johnstone
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Wow! I liked this book a lot! I like how the characters are written, the plot, the pull of the story, the story, the writing, the plot twists, the ending, etc. I short the book a star due to a few items that bother me.
The book is about a small city in Texas taken over by a very large entity and more that will have to be discovered while reading. The great thing is that none of the takeover takes place right away. The story has number of threads and it takes a bit to tie it together. The reader knows it’s going to tie together and that is one of the things keeping you on the edge of your seat trying to figure how that will happen. This book starts on one level and ends up in a very different place. I love when i can’t figure an ending out and that was pretty impossible here. Another great things is that every character is expendable, which is typical of the Johnstone westerns I’ve read. Love how that worked out here. Made it all so much more realistic.
These days, in our current political atmosphere, the plot seems possibly not far off from possible. Staunch liberals will hate this book. People opened minded will greatly enjoy it. I sure like that conservatives are put in a good light here. I read so much contemporary mess where the conservatives, Republicans, patriotic people are evil. Though this book flips the favoring, it is still less strident than sooooo many authors I’ve read.
My concerns are mostly technical. I’m not a lawyer, but I believe there are some pretty big holes in how the court case early in the book is handled. Though I like the ending, I don’t quite believe everything would go so quick back to normal considering the premise of a fixated populace.
Besides a great story, I’m also amazed at the level this book is considering it’s coming out of the Johnstone mill. The amount of books pumped out a year by Johnstone and company would lead one to believe the books are just rot machine gunned out by ghost writers. This is the second book recently produced by the mill and am staggered at it’s quality. I really expected a loosey-goosey mess of a non-stop battle involving what I figured might be the “Invasion” before reading the book. As I read I discovered how very wrong I was. Have to almost wonder if some of the ghost writers are long-time professionals filling in some economic gaps by producing these.
I highly recommend this book.