Severed

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View books by Simon Kernick.

awful - Rated
i gave up after 100 pages, i couldn't take the style of writing, i won't be visiting anymore of kenrick's books!

okay thrillride but could have been so much better - Rated
Simon Kernick manages to dream up excellent starting points for his thrillers. Unfortunately, finishing them in a satisfactory way is much more difficult.
My main problem with the book, apart from the willing suspension of disbelief-issues, is that Dan Tyler seems to have something wrong with him. He's a soldier who has seen action in some of the worst parts of the world, but his emotional reactions are so detached (he tells us his misses his new lover Leah, but we never believe him, his emotional connection to his best friend seems to be no more intense than what he would feel for an old acquaintance), that I was waiting for the other shoe to drop and there to be some shocking revelation about Tyler's true identity or past. But no. There is an emotional component to his predicament, which is okay, but I kept feeling he should have been more of an unreliable narrator (like the main character in Kenrick's second novel).
The second major criticism concerns the character of Allanah, and especially the wrap-up. Once again we're led to expect deep and disturbing revelations, but they do not appear. And the final scene is a bit embarrassing, really - her behaviour in that is completely without any foundation in reality. She's far too much of a fantasy figure to be acceptable.
This isn't the worst book ever by a long shot (I've tried to read and given up on far, far worse) but it's not Kenrick's best and you feel him trying to struggle to make sense of it all. That's the problem with killer beginnings - they can leave a writer stranded with nowhere to go. To his credit, Simon Kenrick does come up with a somewhat acceptable resolution, but nevertheless you can't help but feel that this material could have led to a stronger, darker tale.

Total Bollox - Rated
The most asinine novel I have ever read. Puerile plot, completely unbelievable, utter nonsense. A waste of 6.99.

Great summer read - Rated
This is the first of Simon Kernick's books that I have read, buying it on the spur of the moment. But I am now going to go out and buy the rest! This is a great read, compelling and unputdownable.

Gory - Rated
I am not really a "thriller" reader. I read Simon Kernick's "Relentless" and could not put it down. I immediately bought "Severed" on the strength of this. I read the first chapter and found it so gory and horribly graphic that I could not read any more. Recently a friend of mine read it and raved about it. She persuaded me to pick the book up saying that the first chapter was the most horrific. She was wrong.... there was lots more horror to come! By then I was hooked. The book is not as good as "Relentless", and is extremely far fetched to say the least. It is however very easy to read.