Book review: The street lawyer by John Grisham

Genre: Fiction. Drama with some elements of a thriller.

This book tells the tale of a lawyer Michael, whose climb up his law firms corporate ladder is interrupted when a homeless man takes him and his co-workers hostage. This incident forces him to reevaluate his life. Along the way he also starts to dig into why his firm was targeted by the homeless man and uncovers a mystery.

Michael's philosophical crisis and his journey through it is not that interesting. The crisis might have been triggered by a dramatic incident, but it is basically a upper middle class lawyer having a mid-life crisis. The mystery in the book never quite develops and there are no intelligent twists and turns. There is nothing interesting or exciting about this book but it is not badly written. The end result is a solidly average book.

Rating: 2.5 / 5. Average.

Book review: Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

Genre: Fiction, Steam-punk with zombies

Ravenous undead, air pirates, criminal overlords and heavily armed pirates in late 1800's Seattle with a steam-punk vibe. That sounds like a premise of a pretty entertaining book. Unfortunately Boneshaker fails to deliver on this.

The book tells the story of a mother - Brair and her teenage son Ezekiel. Boneshaker is the name of the a machine that destroyed much of Seattle and let loose a gas that created the undead. Boneshaker was created and piloted by Brair's husband.

The first 6 chapters of the book is a attempt to define Brair and Ezekiel's character. It however does not do a good job with this and it is hard to care about what happens to them. These chapters end up being really slow and boring.

The books picks up a bit when Ezekiel goes into the undead infested city and his mother follows him in. But the plot soon starts to meander around and does not really develop into anything substantial.

The ending of the book is pretty decent and if this were a short story it would have been a good one. Personally I was just relieved that I had managed to finish the book.

Rating: 1 / 5, Terrible, skip it.