The Rook by Daniel O'Malley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I don't know how sophisticated Goodreads' add generation is, but they certainly work on me. I would never have even heard of it if it hadn't shown up here, and I was intrigued enough by the blurb to pick it up.
I'm glad I did, too, although I can't say I loved it. The premise is very compelling--a young woman with no memory wakes up in a park surrounded by dead bodies and discovers in her pocket a note from her past, obliterated, self explaining what's going on.*
The counterpoint between the old self and the new self was delightful. Apart from that the book is just so so. It has the usual modern urban fantasy hijinks: A secret governmental organization that protect us from supernatural threats**, a hodgepodge of barely believable superpowers, and lots of quirky asides about the bureaucracy and mundanity of both these things.
These are the same old tricks as you will find in the Dresden Files, or the Laundry, and these are no better or worse than the ones you'd find there, which is frankly this books downfall. Apart from the conceit mentioned above the book really does nothing to distinguish itself.
* Spoiler alert she's the member of a secret government organization that protects us from supernatural threats.
** I hate this device, by the way. See *.
View all my reviews
