Reviews for The Winner Stands Alone

The average rating for The Winner Stands Alone based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-03-26 00:00:00 Catherine Verma I am not going to write any spoilers about the plot so i don't ruin it for people, but I will spoil it for people who have been looking forward to another Coelho book by giving my harshest review. Now, i get to be harsh because I am one of Paulo's biggest fans, and I take his work very seriously, and trust me, I had been looking forward to this book for the past 6 months. Needless to say, I was highly disappointed. I would have given the book two and a half stars just because there was some valuable information in it and it was a quick read. This book is different than the rest of his works, even though Veronika Decides to Die was different when it was published too, but it too included a self-search, etc. The Winner Stands Alone is seriously not your typical enjoyable Coelho read. To elaborate on that, I am making a list of the things i did NOT like: 1- Too many charachters that did not add any postitive impact to the plot. 2- Scattered thought about very random things and issues. 3- I felt as though Coelho went to Cannes Fils Festival, hated it, and wanted to complain about it. 4- I also felt he really rushed to write all the ideas and publish a book without really formulating the full scope on the characters, the story, and the plot. 5- Knowing Coelho's background, I believe that he felt as though there were so many wrong things in the world that he would like to fix but cannot, and therefore decided to include them in a book so that people's interest in these issues is triggered, (e.g. blood diamonds, going "green", teenage violence, apathy and indifference, economic inequality, superfecialness, plastic surgeries, etc). 6- The book was generally just very negative, which is really unlike Coelho. He made it seem that everyone is unhappy, and there is no way that anyone at any positision or situation or lifestyle can ever achieve real true happiness. Everyone was miserable in the book, the businessman, the writer, the actors, the directors, the distributors, the journalists, and models, the assistants, the police officers, and the general public. 7- I think that this book could have been devided into 6 books if Paulo took his time and really went into each character and developed its own story. Would have had a much better outcome. Ok, so now that I am done ranting about what i did not like, let me tell you what I liked. Igor is the most intruiging character: the vigilante, the lover, the man who believes he is doing the work of God. He almost reminded me of the Stranger in the Devil and Miss Prym. What I really liked about this charachter is that, similar to other Coelho charachters, he believed he talked to his angel/guardian/God, but the best part is that this entity is not a benevolent good spirit, it's spiteful and orders him to kill. It kind of freaked me out, because I started thinking "how do we know that the guarian we trust is an angel or a demon, or a mere figment of of our good/bad imagination?" So i thought this part was very interesting. I wish he's made the whole book exclusively about Igor's journey through life. My last sentiment is that the ending was very predictable, and the book did not add anything new to my knowledge or intellect. I will continue to love Coelho, and I will expect much better in his next books to come.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-12-25 00:00:00 Mark Hobdell I have read some of the most rubbish books out there but i just couldn't get through this one. I tried really hard though.This was the first Paulo Coelho book i've ever read and i have to say, i'm really disappointed. The front cover with 'international bestseller' across the top really got my hopes up. The writing was overly descriptive. There were so many details that i just didn't care about. You don't usually expect such purplish writing from an old man. When i first started reading i paid attention to these details because in crime books, some times the small seemingly needless details turn out to be clever subtle hints. Hearing about the expensive wine/clothes/jewellery/watches etc. was interesting maybe the first time, but the author talks about these superficial things OVER AND OVER again. Most of it doesn't end up having a decent purpose. I mean, no one really cares about the brand of a man's expensive sunglasses, especially when we can guess that he's about to die within the next three pages. And that's another thing: the plot is very predictable. There were some very big ideas and criticisms in this book for such a boring and loose plot. The characters were also bland. There were some qualities that SHOULD have made some of them interesting but for some reason i just didn't care. A lot of the things that happen are also hugely unrealistic. A rich man gets pricked by an anonymous syringe and goes, 'Oh. It's probably just a childish prank. Chill guys.' SERIOUSLY? Even if it wasn't some toxic substance (which it would very likely be, considering he's so rich and that most people hate the rich) i would AT LEAST be concerned about some blood-born disease. A mysterious prick - AIDS ANYONE??? Another thing: some of the random ideas he sprouts like they're facts also irritated me. At the beginning there's a bit about how airplanes only make people turn off their mobile phones so that they'll use the plane ones which are heaps expensive. He said that turning it on won't crash the plane so it's no big deal. This wouldn't bug me if the author didn't say it like it was a cold, hard fact. But the reason phones have to be turned off is because they interfere with the plane's gps system. Just because the plane won't crash it doesn't mean you can be an idiot and do it. In the end he says that he consulted a lot of people in order to get accurate facts for this book, leading the reader to believe that they're mostly true. i wonder who he asked about the plane. Not only was this annoying, it was also irresponsible. People absorb a LOT from books. I didn't get to finish this book. I did waste a few hours trying though and i wouldn't suggest anyone else follow my example. Time is precious, and yours is better spent elsewhere. Minus the research and the obvious Cannes experience that the author has, any intelligent, bored, frustrated fourteen year old could have written this.