Provender Gleed
Jan. 5th, 2008 05:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplecatI somehow feel I should have liked Provender Gleed by James Lovegrove more than I did. It has all the ingredients that are on my "good read" shopping list: well-written (check), engaging characters (check), imaginative world-building (check), witty sense of humour (check), a bit of detecting (check), it all makes sense (check) but somehow I've come away from it thinking "thats a good solid book" rather than thinking "wow! that's a great book".
Provender Gleed is set in a world much like our own except one that is dominated by incredibly wealthy Families (as far as I can tell these are like the Royal Family and major Corporations all rolled into one). Provender Gleed, the only son of the major British Family has been kidnapped. The plot follows three strands, Provender's own efforts to escape incarceration; the reactions of his family bringing Europe to the brink of war; and the efforts of two Anagrammatic Detectives to find him with, all the time, the question of who is really responsible for his kidnapping hovering in the background. I think it is the Anagrammatic detectives that pulled the book down for me. They do enough basic legwork detecting to prevent their secret weapon being too simple a Magic Bullet but even so, said secret weapon is Anagrams and the basic premise is that Anagrams conceal the truth. So the fact that PROVENDER GLEED STOLEN is an Anagram of NEEDLE GROVE RENT LOP D.S. gives one detective both Provender's location and the initials of his kidnapper... yes... right... James Lovegrove understandably has lots of fun with the idea but somehow fails to convince that his world really works like this.
Four stars out of Five.
Provender Gleed is set in a world much like our own except one that is dominated by incredibly wealthy Families (as far as I can tell these are like the Royal Family and major Corporations all rolled into one). Provender Gleed, the only son of the major British Family has been kidnapped. The plot follows three strands, Provender's own efforts to escape incarceration; the reactions of his family bringing Europe to the brink of war; and the efforts of two Anagrammatic Detectives to find him with, all the time, the question of who is really responsible for his kidnapping hovering in the background. I think it is the Anagrammatic detectives that pulled the book down for me. They do enough basic legwork detecting to prevent their secret weapon being too simple a Magic Bullet but even so, said secret weapon is Anagrams and the basic premise is that Anagrams conceal the truth. So the fact that PROVENDER GLEED STOLEN is an Anagram of NEEDLE GROVE RENT LOP D.S. gives one detective both Provender's location and the initials of his kidnapper... yes... right... James Lovegrove understandably has lots of fun with the idea but somehow fails to convince that his world really works like this.
Four stars out of Five.