1 out of 4 stars
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The book Raging Falcon by Stephen C. Perkins opens in the year 2063, and much has changed about the world. The world is now unified and has been made so under the founding global unity document: Agenda 21. There is no paper money, people pay for things with a biometric scan, “money” is carbon credits, and everything in the world is decided by the rubric of “sustainable” or “unsustainable”, including whether you live or die. There are no longer jails; there are only “Enrichment Centers”.
Jim Keogh is an inmate under the rule of Warden Howard. He found himself jailed, 50 years earlier, on charges of brutally assaulting, and then killing, his math teacher. Ever since then he has been used as a political pawn to advance the career of others. He is the model prisoner and everyone knows that he is really innocent. Unfortunately for Jim, he has suddenly been deemed unsustainable and is now up for termination. While the battle for his life (and the political life of those who have hitched their wagon to him) heats up, Jim tells the story of magic, sex, manipulation, world domination, intrigue, and the betrayal that landed him in the Enrichment Center in the first place.
This book is a conspiracy theorists dream. The death of JFK? Staged. 9/11? Staged. Sandy Hook? Well, you don’t believe that really happened do you? If you believe it, you are just one of the billions on the planet who been mind-controlled, fooled by smoke and mirrors and really good actors. After all, what better way is there to control others than to have them shaking in their boots in fear? Although this book is classified as Sci-Fi/Fantasy, there is very little of Science Fiction or Fantasy in the book. It is mostly a political/world domination thriller. Any Sci-Fi or Fantasy themes are thrown in as an after thought and are not the focus of the book.
Perkins utilizes flashbacks to bring us back to the beginning of the events in 2011 that are now culminating in 2063. All politicians are under the control of a group called Blue Jasmine (whether they know it our not), and this group is somehow connected to the Vatican, although how is not quite made clear. Everything is done to promote fear and keep the masses controlled through that fear. There is not a single leader or politician that is morally upright, and so all world leaders are easily controlled through the use of blackmail.
This book is absolutely fraught with problems and is in desperate need of a good editor. The author inexplicably seems to have an intense dislike of definite articles (the), as well as pronouns. They are missing all over the place. In addition, there are misplaced commas, question marks where there should be periods, and so many confusing or incomplete sentences that I lost track of how many there were early on in the book.
To add to the confusion caused by grammatical issues, the author often would intersperse inner thoughts with regular conversation, but would not indicate inner thought by italics (or any other way), as is commonly done. It wasn’t always clear until reading the passage through multiple times what the problem was. Although the author was very good about noting when we were jumping back or forth in time, he was not as good about indicating the passage of time and the movement of characters from one town to another. For instance, in one paragraph you would be in the Middle East with an assassin and in the next paragraph you would be in Washington, D.C. with the same person and no idea how you got there, and you would be once again plunged into utter confusion.
Raging Falcon is almost entirely conversation driven. There are many authors who err on the side of too much description and no action or conversation. That is not a problem in this book. Indeed, it's lack of details make the world flat and uninteresting, for it is the fine details that make a world come alive for a reader. The reader is told that a room is richly appointed and that is the extent of the description, leaving the reader to invent the entire world on their own, with little to no help from the author. This makes for an exhausting read.
Although the author mentions magic, Dark Societies, and all sorts of other intrigues, it is in passing only. It is very difficult to get a sense of how this world works as none of the blanks are filled in for us. Many people love to read Fantasy and Sci-Fi books because they love to be drawn into the mystery, magic, and science of how those unusual worlds work. If that is the kind of book you are hoping for, this one will be a disappointment.
I rate this book 1 out of 4 stars. I was so disappointed when I started reading this book. From the description I really thought it was something I would enjoy. However, the book barely matched the description and the problems with the book were just too numerous. As it stands, I cannot recommend this book to anyone. However, if the author were to invest in a heavy edit then those who love political thrillers and conspiracy theories may enjoy this, as long as they don’t mind a lot of sex, violence, and coarse language.
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Raging Falcon
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