Review: A Harvest of Thorns by Corban Addison

It's hard to know how to rate this book. I selected it from NetGalley for review because it was a new-to-me author (and a male!), in a genre I enjoy (legal thriller), and from Thomas Nelson (an imprint of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, which is important to me when I'm choosing books to review. Hey, my blog is called Iola's Christian Reads. The clue is in the title. I want to read and review Christian fiction).

As far as I can tell, this is Corban Addison's first book with Thomas Nelson. 

His previous highly acclaimed books were from a general market publisher. As this should have been, because A Harvest of Thorns is a general market legal thriller, not Christian fiction.

It has swearing and a rape scene and while a couple of characters go to church a couple of times, it's clearly because that's what people 'do'. The only people of faith were Muslim--and I have no objection to reading fiction about Muslims if that's what I'm looking to read. But in this case, it wasn't (see point above about the name of my blog!).

Okay, that's enough ranting about the genre. What about the book?

Some of the writing was outstanding, like the opening line:

The sparks danced like fireflies in the semi-dark of the storeroom. 

Some of the writing was below average, like the awkward dialogue tags. Some was overly intellectual. I have a pretty large vocabulary, but found myself stopping to look words up at least half a dozen times while reading (hurray for the Kindle dictionary!). I also found the structure awkward, as it flip-flopped back and forward in time, and was written in several Parts, each of which started at Chapter One.

Now to the actual plot and theme of the novel. 

Cameron Alexander is head legal counsel for Presto, a multi-billion-dollar retail chain, and the centre of a scandal involving a factory fire in Bangladesh. Cameron is responsible for putting out the resulting PR fire, and for improving internal compliance so Presto’s reputation isn’t compromised again. Almost two years later, Joshua Griswold is the journalist challenged with finding the truth behind the fire and Presto’s real involvement, and bringing it to the world’s attention through a legal case.

There were a lot of excellent things about A Harvest of Thorns. 

The author obviously has an extensive understanding of the law, business, global supply chains, and how easily things can go wrong (which makes me wonder how many other companies have such irregularities in their supply chains). It also reinforces that people do what you pay them to do, even if you tell them otherwise.

The underlying theme of A Harvest of Thorns is social justice: can we in the First World truly justify our never-ending consumption of cheap imported goods, made by sweatshop workers and slaves? And if we do have a problem (and as Christians, we should), what do we do? From this point of view, it’s certainly a novel that Christians should be reading.

Overall, I think this is a 4-star book. 

The writing ranged from average to outstanding. The plot, characters and overall theme were solid to excellent. But it wasn’t Christian fiction … which is what I expect from Thomas Nelson, an imprint of HarperCollins Christian Publishing.

Thanks to Thomas Nelson and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.

Review: Critical Reaction by Todd M Johnson

Solid Legal Thriller

Attorney Emily Hart is surprised to receive a telephone call from an old college friend requesting her help on a case against his employer—he believes he has been exposed to radioactive materials, a claim his employer denies. It’s more than she can manage, so she asks her father to assist. Ryan Hart is an experienced courtroom attorney who has lost his will to fight since the death of his wife while Emily was in college.

Kieran Mullaney is an employee at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, a site that manufactured plutonium in the days of the cold war. It is now closed, with the only employees involved in monitoring the site and the buildings to ensure they are safe before the entire complex is demolished. But there have been a series of ‘accidents’ at the plant, and it seems there is something more going on…

Critical Reaction is a combination of Karen Silkwood and Erin Brockovich written in the style of John Grisham, with a slight Christian flavour. It’s well-plotted with a (mostly) good cast of characters, and reinforces why I’m glad to live in a country where our natural geography means we don’t need nuclear power plants.

And that was the bug for me in Critical Reaction. There’s a secret project going on at Hanford, and the author took great pains to point out that the person within the plant managing the secret project was a New Zealander. This didn’t ring true on several levels (and I’m not just saying that because I’m a Kiwi), and because I didn't believe it, it took away from the suspense. What didn't I believe?

I don’t understand why a Kiwi would go to America for university when a US college education is so much more expensive than here. I don’t understand how he was allowed to study in America, let alone get a job—it’s hard enough to get an American study visa, let alone a work permit. I don’t understand how someone who was brought up in a nuclear-free country would get a job in the nuclear industry. Between David Lange’s famous speech and watching The Simpsons, we’re grateful for our hydroelectric power schemes.

And no matter how estranged he was from his family, I don’t understand why he’s not in contact with his family when it’s made clear they lived in one of the areas of Christchurch most affected by the 2011 earthquakes (at the time of writing, Manchester Street, where he supposedly grew up, has only just been reopened). It made it difficult for me to take the character seriously.

But if I ignored that, Critical Reaction is a solid legal thriller set in the nuclear industry, underpinned by some good suspense in the form of a secret project the company wants to ensure stays a secret. No matter what.

Thanks to Bethany House and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Todd M Johnson at his website.

Review: An Accidental Life by Pamela Binnings Ewen

Rebecca Downer Jacobs is about to be one of the first women admitted into partnership of her prominent New Orleans law firm. She’s happily married with an exciting career, when something happens that’s going to change everything. Meanwhile, Peter, her husband and senior district attorney, is in charge of a complex case with far-reaching legal consequences and moral implications for his Christian faith.

An Accidental Life is billed as the story of a legal case regarding the right to life of a baby accidentally born alive after a late-term abortion (the author calls this America’s best-kept secret). It’s set in 1982, just nine years after the landmark case of Roe vs. Wade legalised abortion, and the tension surrounding the case and the time setting are strengths of the novel.

The weakness is that it takes too long to get going. The prologue and first chapter are, I’m sorry to say, boring. They are little more than five years of backstory, explaining what has happened to Amalise and Rebecca since the conclusion of Chasing the Wind (which was a rare five-star read for me). This backstory is unnecessary, as An Accidental Life works well as a stand-alone story.

An Accidental Life might have been stronger if it focused more on the case and less on the challenges Rebecca and Amalise faced as female lawyers in the early 1980’s. It isn’t that I’m unsympathetic to their challenges—I’m fascinated by them, as it’s women like this in real life that paved the way for women like me to combine work and family. I suspect An Accidental Life was trying to do too much. And it’s possible this is more the fault of the publisher than the author—B&H announced earlier this year that they are withdrawing from the fiction market. It could well be that the author didn’t get the editorial support the novel required.

Despite these problems, An Accidental Life is a solid read. The characters are faced with difficult yet realistic choices, the plot is certainly original, and the Christian element, while present, wasn’t overbearing. And although the last third of the novel—the legal case— was outstanding, the excellent premise didn’t quite deliver as a whole novel.

Thanks to B&H Books and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Pamela Binnings Ewen at her website.

Review: Chasing the Wind by Pamela Binnings Ewen

Amalise Catoir is a second-year associate with the firm of Mangen & Morris in New Orleans in 1977, and has just returned to work after several months recovering from an accident that left her a widow. Amalise finds she has been assigned to Project Black Diamond, working for property magnate Bingham Murdoch to develop a new hotel in the city. She has also realised she is in love with Jude, her best friend since childhood, but thinks he might be falling for her Rebecca, her co-worker.

But there is a vague feeling that all is not as it seems, particularly regarding Bingham, the man behind the deal to build a hotel and casino on a piece of prime New Orleans real estate. Interspersed with the main plot were a series of flashbacks to 1975 Cambodia, chilling scenes with a woman named Samantha Barlow rescuing a small boy and trying to escape Phnom Penh before the Khymer Rouge arrive.

The story is told from several different points of view, with a style that seems rather remote at times, but it works. Chasing the Wind is very well-written, with characters that drew me in, and a tightly-woven suspenseful plot with some very interesting twists (one I saw coming, one I did not). This is one of those books that I think would be worth re-reading, as that way you could catch the nuances and clues to the ending.

My one complaint would be that between the lawyers, bankers and property tycoons, there were too many male characters with middle class names (not to mention he names of the banks and law firms), and I found it difficult to keep them all straight in my head. Fortunately, the major characters have suitably memorable names, so it didn’t matter that the others all blurred into one at the beginning.

Chasing the Wind is also an interesting insight into women in the professions (and working in general) in the 1970’s – smoking in the conference room, long lawyer lunches, asking the woman (Amalise) to fetch coffee and donuts, a reference to a single mainframe computer, research in libraries and on microfiche readers. Other scenes have the secretary clacking away on her typewriter and sending documents down to the typing pool, reminding us how much working life has changed in a very short time with the introduction of computers and the internet. Recommended.

Thanks to B&H Publishing Group and NetGalley for providing a free book for review.

Edited: I have just been browsing on Amazon, and have found that Chasing the Wind is the sequel to Dancing on Glass, which appears to be the story of Amalises's marriage. It appears that the stories are quite different: while this is definitely a romance within a legal thriller, the first book appears to be more a story of a disintegrating relationship. Knowing there is an earlier book makes some of the oblique references to the past more understandable, but Chasing the Wind can easily be read as a stand-alone story.