2 out of 4 stars
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I had a lot of hope for Guardian of Deceit by William H. Coles when I first opened up the pdf file on my ereader. The brief summary that was listed about the text immediately sparked my interest: I believed I was about to read a book about the interweaving stories of different characters that variously affected and intertwined with the life of the main character, Darwin. Darwin is an orphan who had to move in with a rich relative due to unfortunate circumstances and meets a handful of new people during his journey. After finishing the book, I can begrudgingly admit that, yes, I did read a book like that… sort of.
Within the first chapter of reading, I already liked the book and thought I was in for an enjoyable read. I found the characters to be believable and heavy with personality; and the language and style of writing was easy to read and follow while there was still quality vocabulary words in the mix. However, as the story progressed I quickly found myself unsatisfied with the structure of the novel for a multitude of reasons.
I think that my biggest qualm with the book is the number of inconsistencies I’ve found within the text. For one thing, I thought that Darwin was the main character. The book began as a third person narrative with a focus on Darwin, but as the chapters went on I found myself frustrated that the focus seemed to quite literally drift and I was reading what felt like mini vignettes of other characters. I felt that there should have been a more clear indication of who was the focus for each chapter since by the end of the book I didn’t feel that any one character was truly focused on the most and easily identifiable as the main character. As I mentioned before, I was expecting the interweaving of characters’ stories, not random neglect of certain characters while others that I never thought about much received the spotlight with hardly a string tied back to Darwin and what’s going on with him.
On another note, I felt that there was simply way too much that happened in this book. I’ve read my fair share of thrillers and fast-paced books that jam a lot of action and events between the covers, but Coles’ book just felt rushed to me. So many independent plots took place in this book that I felt could have been isolated and expanded upon in their own separate books. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but there were some really big, heavy scenes that happened in the matter of paragraphs that made me do a double-take at the page I was reading. I would read intense scenes and be taken aback because they felt almost glossed over or just dropped in! Part of this feeling is also due to the fact that Coles seemed to describe the scenes more than show the reader the scenes. I would have liked to experience a little more textual build up to these larger scenes. Similarly, important plot and character details are dropped into the story without any leading up to it- this just doesn’t feel realistic or believable to the reader. These crazy detail changes come across as blindsiding and confusing rather than like an exciting twist.
Hence I would like to see some more development in almost all parts of the book, but especially with the characters. It felt like characters went through serious personal changes/transitions and/or decisions without any insight into how that came to be. As a reader, this is frustrating! Part of the joys of reading is being able to get inside characters’ heads and see and know more than the average bystander. When reading this book sometimes I felt even more clueless than an observing bystander might feel. As character development went on, ironically I felt the believable-ness of many of the main characters decrease. By the end I found that Sweeney was the most believable character and thoroughly enjoyed reading all the scenes with her in it. She was relatable, interesting, and brought some drama to the text.
There were several small logical inconsistencies in the text that proved to be vexing while reading. For example, a character did not have another’s number but somehow managed to call him; a breakfast scene was taking place and yet a character started to make lunch in the middle of it; the limo was said to be off the road because of an accident and yet characters were riding in it; a character is said to be rarely home and yet a little later is said to be around many weekends… The list goes on.
At the end of the day, I believe that this story has a lot of potential, and if it is restructured and intensely edited, it could be a great read! This is a story that I know I would like if written well, it reminds me of the style of John Irving. As a budding writer myself, reading a text like this is a great learning experience. I would rate the book 2 out of 4 stars: 2 stars because the ideas behind the story are all quality and worth pursuing, but only 2 stars because the execution is just not up to par.
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Guardian of Deceit
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