2 out of 4 stars
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Chrome Mountain by Ben Schneider is an action-packed thriller. The plot follows Sonya as she escapes her abusive ex-boyfriend and his biker gang. Sonya eventually meets up with the second protagonist, Trey. He is on the run from a terrorist group who want Trey to work for them due to his genius invention. Trey had earlier destroyed his invention which was a cloaking device that allowed users to turn anything invisible. He doesn’t want the knowledge to end up in the wrong hands so he does everything he can to escape the terrorist group.
The book is very well written with only minor grammatical errors. The characters have well-developed back stories and realistic motivations. The book has a religious theme which is a very original concept for this type of genre. I thought the pace was good and there was never really a dull moment in this book.
Personally, I did not enjoy this book for reasons I am about to list. The protagonist’s sudden turn to religion didn’t seem believable to me, it was so sudden that it seemed false. There should be a build-up and a conflict of emotions for it to be a true portrayal of someone changing their whole faith ideology. Some of the conversations seemed too explanatory for it to be an accurate representation of realistic dialogue. There were some contradictions in the characters themselves. For example, Trey doesn’t care about what happens to his co-workers when they’re stuck in a hostage situation but he suddenly cares about strangers later on in the book. At one point there was a dream sequence that you can tell is a dream sequence straight away. I found it quite pointless as it did nothing to further the plot. There is already enough action in the book so I wondered why it was needed. The book is meant to be humorous but it was not my type of humour. A lot of the time, I found the protagonists quite unlikeable as their humour was based on making fun of others.
The protagonists are very derogatory towards ‘obese’ people throughout the book. I could understand if the derogative language was used by a villain or even if it was used for character development. For example, I thought Sonya felt guilty about being rude to her friend when they were younger. She had laughed behind her back about her being fat and didn’t want others to know they were friends. I thought Sonya had then changed her outlook on this as she matured and was, therefore, showing us character development. However, she was still laughing at fat people all the way up until the end of the book. The derogative descriptions were unnecessary and aided in my dislike for the protagonists. I understand a well-written character has flaws but usually protagonists eventually learn from them.
I would recommend this book to action lovers as the action is non-stop in this story. I would recommend this to anyone who loves America as it has a very patriotic tone. I would not recommend this to young children as there is a bit of violence throughout and has some derogative language towards women.
Overall, I rate this book 2 out of 4 stars. I cannot give this book more than two stars as this book is just not for me. However, I feel it is worth more than one star as it was a very well-written book. I believe that there are readers who would enjoy this as the overall plot isn’t a bad one, it just wasn’t to my personal taste.
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Chrome Mountain
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