The Warlord's Son |
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Dan Fesperman
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Pages: 319 (Hardcover)
ISBN: 0375414738
Pub: Alfred A. Knopf
Pub date: 2004-09-14
Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1077686
Editorial Review:
A phrase hardly used in Daniel Fesperman's The Warlord's Son is the traditional description of intrigue on the North-west Frontier—"The Great Game". This is not because many of the characters in this timely thriller about real-world politics don't see it as a game, so much as because only a moral idiot could share their perception. The stakes are too high, for one thing; this is a game in which you betray an adversary just for the finesse of the move, and yet betrayal is liable to turn deadly for both victim and traitor.
American journalist Kelly is sick at heart even before he finds himself on the Afghan border, and his interpreter Najeeb tried to walk out on being used years earlier. Both of them are the prisoners of their history. Kelly has his ideal of professionalism to stick to though and Najeeb has a version of loyalty entirely at odds with the honour he learned from his murderous, drug-dealing, back-stabbing father. Both men are dragged into a vicious universe where the romantic love between Najeeb and his upper-class modernising girlfriend Daliya is a genuinely subversive force--this is an exciting book not only because of its fast-paced action, but also because it takes place at the frontier of world-views and passionate caring. --Roz Kaveney
Reader Reviews:
Good writing but didn't go anywhere (2/5 people found this helpful)
This book had a very promising start, but I felt it failed to deliver on that promise. The characters were pretty two-dimensional, and I didn't really end up caring about any of them. There wasn't much of a plot, and the action didn't really reveal anything about the characters. However, the writing itself was fine, and I quite liked the writer's style, so much so that I have bought another of his novels! I suspect this is a topic he doesn't really care that much about, or perhaps hasn't really internalised, so that the characters are stock and the book reads more as copy he didn't submit to his newspaper than a novel.
Good writing but didn't go anywhere (1/1 people found this helpful)
I picked up this book with interest as one of what I suspect will be new wave of political thrillers in the wake of 9/11. The writing started out very nicely, setting the scene, but I found myself not really getting very involved with the characters or their problems. None of them was likeable, or evinced sympathy from me, so I found I didn't really care too much what happened to them. Also, the writer is journalist, and it was almost like reading copy he hadn't sent off to his newspaper. A bit dry, a bit superficial. The novel didn't really take me anywhere. The ending was unexpected, but the threads of the plot were unsatisfactory, and the tying up deliberate and mechanical. Towards the end I got the feeling he just wanted to end it. It became cliched, and the characters didn't behave according to type.
However, I did like his style, and wonder whether perhaps he didn't really feel for the region and its problems.
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Categories
Amazon.co.uk places this book into the following categories:
Books -> Subjects -> Fiction -> General
Books -> Refinements -> Language (feature_browse-bin) -> English
Books -> Refinements -> Age (feature_two_browse-bin)
Books -> Refinements -> Format (binding_browse-bin) -> Hardcover