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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. 2   jasonpettus | Nov 7, 2009 |  Clichéd and predictable beyond belief. The Twilight series seems mature and intricate compared to this contrived dud.This shows what marketing and a mysterious penname can do. Rumors are Dan Brown wrote this. Think of Da Vinci code without all that history and comic book characters. Well it isn't even that good. This is niche marketing at its worst. They created a false Internet buzz that turned out to be the publishers about the mystery of this book.You can hear the focus groups planning the story. "Hey let's make the bad brother a corporate wannabe and the good one should be cool and surf or ride a motorcycle or skydive on a motorcycle!"If you are over 14 avoid this. (  )1 yeremenko | Sep 19, 2009 | OK techno/thriller with no sympathetic or memorable characters. My high-point was the the introduction of a Travelor who stopped to help a stranded motorist and subsequently helped a number of families create an "off the grid" community. (  )1 Tasker | Aug 22, 2009 | Half the time I read this, I thought it was cheesy. The other half of the time I really liked it. (  ) sggottlieb | Aug 11, 2009 | Pretty interesting combination of spirituality and science fiction. (  ) bumpish | Jul 5, 2009 | 
 Of course, this is all completely nuts--but it's also the stuff that first-rate high-tech paranoid-schizophrenic thrillers are made of.
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 038551428X, Hardcover)A world that exists in the shadows of our own.A conflict we will never see. One woman stands between those determined to control history and those who will risk their lives for freedom. Maya is hiding in plain sight in London. The twenty-six-year-old has abandoned the dangerous obligations pressed upon her by her father, and chosen instead to live a normal life. But Maya comes from a long line of people who call themselves Harlequins—a fierce group of warriors willing to sacrifice their lives to protect a select few known as Travelers. Gabriel and Michael Corrigan are brothers living in Los Angeles. Since childhood, the young men have been shaped by stories that their late father was a Traveler, one of a small band of prophets who have vastly influenced the course of history. Travelers are able to attain pure enlightenment, and have for centuries ushered change into the world. Gabriel and Michael, who may have inherited their father’s gifts, have always protected themselves by living “off the Grid”—that is, invisible to the real-life surveillance networks that monitor people in our modern society. Summoned by her ailing father, Maya is told of the existence of the brothers. The Corrigans are in severe danger, stalked by powerful men known as the Tabula—ruthless mercenaries who have hunted Travelers for generations. This group is determined to inflict order on the world by controlling it, and they view Travelers as an intolerable threat. As Maya races to California to protect the brothers, she is reluctantly pulled back into the cold and solitary Harlequin existence. A colossal battle looms—one that will reveal not only the identities of Gabriel and Michael Corrigan but also a secret history of our time. Moving from the back alleys of Prague to the heart of Los Angeles, from the high deserts of Arizona to a guarded research facility in New York, The Traveler explores a parallel world that exists alongside our own. John Twelve Hawks’s stunningly suspenseful debut is an international publishing sensation that marks the arrival of a major new talent. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:10 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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Wikipedia in English (1)
Too Awful to Finish: An ongoing essay series
The Accused: The Traveler, by "John Twelve Hawks" (pseudonym)
How far I got: 24 pages. Yeah, I know.
Crimes:
1) Taking one of the few opportunities each year that occur for a science-fiction book to get a general-interest marketing budget, and wasting it on this hacky, sloppy, glorified fan-fiction dreck.
2) Clumsily ripping off major concepts from four sci-fi movies and six sci-fi novels within the first three chapters, in an astonishingly offhanded way that makes the author seem like he never thought anyone would figure it out.
3) Being particularly heinous with the Slow Death by Exposition, an already consistent problem within a lot of genre work but especially bad here. "Harlequins prefer old-looking cities." "Harlequins only live in places with three separate exits." "Harlequins only wear dark, expensive fabrics with custom tailoring." Yes yes yes, and Chuck Norris has a f---ing posse, I get it.
4) Affecting that cloying, obvious, Benetton-rainbow style of multiculturism so common in this Web 2.0 era; where there's a Japanese Harlequin and an Arab Harlequin and a British Harlequin and a whole globe of other superfriends, traipsing their way across the world to have the same exact bland conversations and bland action scenes no matter where they are. And by the way, "Twelve Hawks," just because you've looked up the names of a couple of metro stations does not mean that you've painted a convincing mental image of that city. Give us a sense that you actually know something about all these global locations your book is known for, besides the stuff you can look up at Wikipedia.
5) Not understanding that making a plucky, quirky, rebellious pale young girl the main hero was already tired and cliche 20 damn years ago. Also, for making her too much like Lara Croft. Also, not the marginally cool Lara Croft from the videogame but the infinitely annoying Angelina-Jolie Lara Croft of the movies.
6) Deliberately withholding the author's real name, in a desperate bid to drum up a little viral-marketing-style publicity over who it might be. Come on, Doubleday, we all know who the real author is; some pasty, acne-riddled 23-year-old nobody, who wears floor-length leather coats and sunglasses at night to the Saturday-night filk session of Dragonomicon 17. "Worst. Attempt. At. Building. False. Suspense. Ever!"
7) Convincing me to completely give up on a 500-page book before even hitting chapter 4. Seriously, that's impressive.
8) Making this the first book in a trilogy. A trilogy?! Cheese and Rice, Doubleday, are you freaking kidding me?!
Verdict: Innocent by reason of insanity.
Sentence: Indefinite incarceration in the St. Asimov Home for Wayward Science Fiction Fanboys Who Think They Too Can Write A Novel Because They've Seen The Matrix One Zillion Freakin' Times. (