72 Virgins by Avi Perry
72 Virgins is a novel about Jihad terrorism and the security agencies’ struggle to thwart its stratagem and trounce the perpetrators. Abu Musa is an Islamic Terrorist with an agenda, a ticking bomb inside the US. Arik Golan is an Israeli who tries to bring him down and pull the plug on his terror organization. Stanley Kramer is an FBI agent on a hunting mission, seeking to place both Abu Musa and Arik within his crosshairs. The FBI, the Israeli Foreign Intelligence Service—the Mossad, the US-based Iranian clandestine terror network, and the Islamic Jihad fraternity are engaged in a timeless conflict, playing out to a crescendo that comes to a head before the dramatic conclusion.
From 72 Virgins by Avi Perry
ISBN13 – 978-0-615-28051-6
ISBN 10 – 061528051X
385 pages
72 Virgins contains everything you look for in a novel: intertwining plots, love, adventure, murder, and mystery. Covering a topic that has been in the forefront of society since 9/11, Avi Perry gives a behind the scenes look into how a terrorist attack comes to be.
Though we meet many characters along the way, Arik Golan is the main character in this novel. We join him as he is kidnapped and then recruited to help bring down those planning terrorist attacks against the United States. He starts as an unwilling participant but gradually makes it his personal mission in order to exact revenge against the notorious terrorist Abu Musa.
Every intelligence agency of the world is represented in the hunt for Musa. Small terror cells to large conspiracy groups work together to beat the good guys from closing in on them. 72 Virgins is a whirlwind adventure that ends with a bang.
I liked the premise of this novel. The plot line is great and something not seen in many books these days. There was enough action to keep me turning the pages, excited to see how it all turned out. There is love and lust. There is loyalty and betrayal.
However, I have serious issues with the technical side. Granted I’m not a professional writer but I have read many books and have a basic understanding of novels.
Mr. Perry uses a lot of words. Meaning, his sentences are long run-ons that make it difficult to follow. I had to reread several paragraphs because there was just too much in it. Descriptive words that make you feel you are in the story are great but too many can bog down a novel. Until I got into the plot a bit more, I had a hard time making it through the first several chapters.
The writing is a bit stilted. I feel like a few times entire sentences or paragraphs had been left out. Characters, at times, just appeared with no explanation of how we came to know who they are. It wasn’t throughout the book, just here and there. Again, I had to reread a few spots because I became lost.
My last concern was the basic editing. A few times there were changes in tense. At the beginning of a sentence we’d be in the present tense and the author would end in the past, making me feel like I’d skipped ahead a bit. There were a few grammatical errors as well.
All in all, this could be a great book. As it is, it’s a good book with a great plot. I think if the things I’ve mentioned were fine tuned, it would be a great novel. A person who can overlook these things would have no problems falling right into Avi Perry’s story weaving.
No comments:
Post a Comment