Finally I get to use the word Horrendous for a book. Normally my policy is that all books are good if we are able to connect with them. But this book by Mark Greaney is absolutely horrendous. And if I may, wildly inaccurate.
I am not a big fan of pantsers
First of all, Mark Greaney is a pantser, and I am not a big fan of pantsers. Pantsers just wash their face in the morning and start typing whatever is coming into their heads. The drawback of this approach, especially if the author is not very good at crafting a good story, is that the writing is not very consistent. Each chapter or section probably matches more with how the author felt during the writing session and not how a story should be. You can forget consistency, character building, and deeply connected and intricate plots. Although I enjoy books from pantsers like Stephen King, because they are fast paced, but Mark is not a very good pantser.
Okay, we get it, Court Gentry is the best spy / secret agent in the whole world. But eleven chapters (and counting) to tell us about it is just too much
The horrendipity (I made this word so don’t bother searching for its meaning) of this horrendous book starts with the author detailing how great is the protagonist Court Gentry. He seems to have a crush on Court Gentry, and that crush lasted the first eleven chapters and maybe more, because I just couldn’t take the torture anymore, so I didn’t read the book after the first eleven chapters. But in reality, there is nothing unique, new, or special about this character. In fact, the first eleven chapters that I read (and the only ones that I read), showed Court Gentry to be a cheap copy of Jason Bourne and Jack Reacher.
Telling and not showing!
Maybe I would have been able to digest this extraordinarily long explanation of the goodness of Court Gentry if the author had stuck to showing and not telling. Chapter after chapter kept on telling (and not showing) Court Gentry’s skills and specialities. My conversation with the author while reading the book was like.
Author: Court Gentry is this.
Me: WOW!
Author: He is that.
Me: WOW.
Author: He did that.
Me: Okay.
Author: And that.
Me: Umm, okay, I get it. He is the best thing that happened to the fictional world of spies after Jason Bourne. Can we please proceed with the plot?
Author: Yeah sure, but you know what else he did.
Me: I will die if I read another page!
Don’t use global events incorrectly – the reader will feel stupid
Whenever you embed global events in your story, make sure to keep the context and background as real as possible. Otherwise, don’t use the global event to create a fictitious event. If you do use the global event without the correct context, you would look very stupid.
For example. Iraq War. His opening chapters paint Iraqis as the bad guys as they dance on the dead bodies of Americans while Americans were just going about their business. But the real context of the Iraq War was totally different. Americans attacked Iraq on the pretext of ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’, which was a lie. Americans entered Mosques with boots, and pictures from Abu Gharaib prison showed Americans doing satanic voodoo dances with prisoners in chains. I mean, how dumb can some authors think that their readers are? If you read these chapters with the actual background, then Court Gentry does not look like a saint as the author wants to show him. This throws the whole believability of the book into the gutter.
A few chapters later, the Gray Man, probably called Gray because he operates between black and white, is shown to have fought a Pakistani Mafia in the UK! (I couldn’t complete this chapter, and this is where I left the book, because this is where the stupidity of the book was too much to take anymore.) I mean are we supposed to believe that MI6 is failing to defend the family of a MI6 operative against the Pakistani Mafia in the UK? I mean, get real, please!! The Pakistani Mafia is not that strong in Pakistan. They are repeatedly smashed around by Pakistani Intelligence operatives, and you want me to believe that the Pakistani Mafia in the UK is stronger than all of the UK’s security apparatus and only Court Gentry is able to fight them! Again, how dumb do you think that your readers are?
Maybe if the author would have shown another world or a future that we have not seen, then I would have believed the plot. As a person who knows a little about current global events, societies, and politics, I felt like the author thinks of me as a dumb person.
Is the protagonist actually ‘Gray’?
Mr. Court Gentry called the Gray man because he operates between Black and White, is continuously shown to be doing the right thing, or in other words, the White thing. So why call him Gray? He is a Robin Hood who only takes on projects against criminals. He protects his friends, he protects Americans, and even twin girls. Awww. So Sweet! But this is all white, isn’t it? Why the hell is he Gray then? Either don’t tell me he is gray, or mix the white and black things that he has done in his past to make it more believable. Maybe he sold drugs, or he rapes women, or maybe he killed innocent men, women and children before repenting. I mean that would make him Gray.
This, in my opinion, is the worst side of Pantsers. The author might have thought ‘Oh, Gray Man, sounds good. Let’s keep it, even though Court Gentry does all the right things for the right reasons. The readers would just have to go with it.
Conclusion
If you like shallow action (and storytelling), are willing to ignore global context, and want to read about a cheaper version of Jason Bourne and Jack Reacher, maybe you’ll enjoy this. I didn’t. I stopped torturing myself at the beginning of the eleventh chapter. Best of luck to the author, I know that he is doing great and getting movie contracts and teaming up with other pantsers. But I have better books to read and intelligent plots to uncover.
