3 out of 4 stars
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The Gatherers by Craig Markley is a thriller that puts a unique spin on a phenomenon we see every day - kidnapping. Children have been disappearing for years, and Nick’s sister was one of them. After this traumatic childhood event, Nick decides to become a cop. Looking for closure in his sister’s abduction, he continues investigating the cases of the children who have gone missing. When he is called in to investigate the abduction of two more children, he notices a pattern. After this discovery, he starts receiving threats from a mysterious source. Not willing to give up when he seems so close to cracking the case, he soon finds himself in a dangerous situation.
The plot in The Gatherers was great. The pace wasn’t too fast or too slow, and the story was very interesting. Thrillers like this one tend to be very confusing and hard to follow, but this one was not at all. It was easy to understand, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I also really liked the writing style in the book. The descriptions were phenomenal. It was easy to visualize everything that was happening, especially the parts that were more on the side of science-fiction. Usually when it comes to science-fiction, I have no idea what is going on. Even though certain elements in this book don’t actually exist, I was actually able to understand all of the concepts.
The editing, however, needs to be worked on. My biggest complaint is that the book was constantly switching back and forth between the past and present tenses. It seemed like some of it might have been intentional, but it was very distracting. One sentence would be in the present, and then suddenly the next would be back in the past tense. The book needs to be reformatted so that it is all in one tense.
There were other grammatical errors as well. Often quotation marks were missing, or they were placed where they shouldn’t be. Other times entire words were missing, or one letter would be missing from words. However, I think the most confusing mistake was the mix-up of names. A few times the name Jack was written where, I’m assuming, the name Nick should have been. This happened two or three times, and it did not make sense. The sentence would work if it had been Nick that the author was talking about, but Jack was written instead.
Overall, I give the book 3 out of 4 stars. The story was very unique, and well-thought out. The editing just needs work. It’s disappointing that the grammar was poor because the story was great. Unfortunately, the errors that were present were very distracting. This is one of those books that I would give a perfect rating to if the errors were gone. I would still recommend it despite the errors, especially if you are into thrillers. As written, however, I just couldn’t quite give it the full 4 stars.
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The Gatherers
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