Machiavelli Covenant Book

As I mentioned in my review of The Ruins, I bought this book in Jasper, Alberta to help me get through a long and boring train ride.

Now, in such a case I really wasn't looking for too much from the book; my expectations and requirements were super-low. All I needed was something to distract me and keep the hours moving during the train ride. While The Ruins succeeded, The Machiavelli Covenant failed miserably.

Once again, I'm punching myself for picking up one of these cookie-cutter "evil-world conspiracy" books. What a waste of time. By the time I got to about page 100, I could tell that I'd made a mistake. The writing was fairly crappy, especially its style...if I was an English major or something, I could probably tell you exactly what was wrong with it...but since I'm not, I can only say that it seemed jilted a little. Not smooth. No flow to the action or even in the descriptive passages. Add on to this the fact that the characters were flat and uninteresting and the whole plot line was pretty ridiculous (even for a genre of books that are known to have ridiculous plots)...well, you get the idea.

I wouldn't have bothered to finish it if I hadn't already invested so much time in it. So I made myself read through to the end, though I kept having to put it down every chapter or so and grab a different book for a while (Lord of the Rings, usually) 'cause it was just pissing me off so much. Thank you, Allan Folsom!