{"id":1656,"date":"2013-01-29T21:09:43","date_gmt":"2013-01-30T05:09:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=1656"},"modified":"2013-01-29T21:09:43","modified_gmt":"2013-01-30T05:09:43","slug":"review-alpha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=1656","title":{"rendered":"Review: Alpha"},"content":{"rendered":"

I picked up Greg Rucka’s Alpha <\/em>because Warren Ellis had nice things to say about it and because I’ve enjoyed his comics writing.\u00a0 In Alpha <\/em>I found a well executed thriller that didn’t have much ambition beyond that.\u00a0 Now, I<\/a> like<\/a> a<\/a> potboiler<\/a> more than the next guy, so a well-executed thriller is nothing to apologize for.\u00a0 It did throw Gun Machine<\/em><\/a> into sharp relief, though.<\/p>\n

Rucka’s action is tautly written and clear to follow.\u00a0 Even though we’re pretty sure how things will go in the long run, there is plenty of suspense in the individual engagements. It’s always clear who’s doing what to whom and what the stakes are.\u00a0 Tension builds and the action proceeds at a snappy clip.\u00a0 The tactics and strategy of heroes and villains are believable and original in an action movie kind of world. The pot boils nicely.<\/p>\n

I do wish that I cared about the characters some more.\u00a0 Everyone is a little too much a variation on a theme from central casting.\u00a0 I gave up trying to tell members of his anti-terrorist team apart, though they all do have cool code names.\u00a0 The most interesting variations are a well realized sleeper agent and the protagonist’s deaf teenage daughter. Probably the worst thing about the undercharacterization is that when the protagonist is feeling put upon by his alienated family it’s hard not to see their point.\u00a0 He is<\/strong> a duty-driven action hero who doesn’t do enough to help people he ostensibly cares about to see his side and that’s what they tell him.<\/p>\n

Back at the plot, things are moving quickly and cleanly toward an exciting conclusion.\u00a0 As long as you keep your eye on that, Alpha<\/em> is a lot of fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I picked up Greg Rucka’s Alpha because Warren Ellis had nice things to say about it and because I’ve enjoyed his comics writing.\u00a0 In Alpha I found a well executed thriller that didn’t have much ambition beyond that.\u00a0 Now, I like a potboiler more than the next guy, so a well-executed thriller is nothing to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1656"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1659,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1656\/revisions\/1659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}