William Smethurst (1945–2016)

This is a review of the advanced copy “Sinai” by Theo Coster for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

The book is a timeslip thriller that tells a story starting in 1350 BC and ending in modern-day Sinai.

The story follows an academic named Richard Corrigan who discovers a missing German tourist in modern-day Sinai. The tourist is reciting a prayer to the Egyptian Sun God as he dies.

Corrigan is then taken by Elizabeth St. George to a city morgue in revolutionary Cairo where he sees a corpse that looks 3,500 years old. In London, Jihadist terrorists storm Corrigan’s flat.

The book explores how the past can affect the present and how the present can affect the past.

Book is difficult to read and hold your attention. This reviewer does not recommend this book and rates the book with 2 ½ out of 5 stars.… (meer)

In the first instance I listened to much of this book through the 'text to speech' feature of Amazon Kindle when another member of my household was reading the book for review, and I must be honest and say that I came to dread the thought that I too would need to read it to fulfill the obligation of the Early Reviewer's program

I tried to approach my reading of it with an open mind, and even so found the book hard to engage with, where characters were flat, very much the same and lacked personality. The dialogue was stilted and did little to move the story forward - a story that was jumbled and unclear at the best of times. In terms of grammar, punctuation and spelling, the book would have benefited from the eye of a good editor. Disappointing all round really.… (meer)

Are you a connoisseur of Egyptology? I can't really say that I am, though I do enjoy trivial bits of information about the area, the people that lived there, mythology, weapons, and artwork. My dad went on a tour of Egypt and came back with pictures and presents for everyone, and he piqued my curiosity. I also enjoy the occasional historical thriller. When the publisher invited me to read and review this book, I found the description intriguing. It sounded like it could be a sort of Egyptian "Da Vinci Code."

Not even close. This book falls into the "DNF" (Did Not Finish) category, and I will tell you why:

The publisher, December House, wrote "Sinai was originally released in 1996 but has been rewritten and updated for it's e-book release..." The book got off to a rough (slow and confusing) start, but sometimes first chapters are like that, and I forged onward. The very first page—I was reading this on my Kindle—is mostly one sentence, but with a couple of educational bits thrown in in parentheses. And just in case you missed the second sentence on the page, it is repeated in the beginning of the second paragraph. The author seems pretty fond of this tactic.

Mr. Smethurst is also an ardent devotee of passive voice, which means that the trifling amount of action included in what I read came watered down and at a distance from the reader. In Chapter 12 things got exciting when bullets started flying, but the thrill only lasted for one paragraph. One measly paragraph! Then, suddenly, "He was in Cairo."

I wanted to scream. "What? Wait! Where's the heart-stopping terror? The sound of gunfire? Shouting? Screaming? Anything? I'll take a quiet cold sweat, please." And let's not forget that pernicious "was" that completely killed any lingering hope of excitement.

An accomplice gave the appearance of getting chased through the city and up a pyramid, but it was only an appearance. Nothing really happened. At least not within the reader's view.

Along with the re-writing there should have been some re-editing. The book is decorated with punctuation errors, filter words (that passive voice thing!), several typos, out-of-place abbreviations, repetitious phrases, awkward passages (generally involving conversations), jerky transitions, and a heavy sprinkling of names that perhaps a student of the field would appreciate, but the author does not attach any emotional weight for the more casual reader's benefit. I wanted to like this book. I kept looking for something to like...

At 23%, I checked the progress bar to see how much further I had to go.

At 37% I started avoiding my Kindle and turned to washing dishes, doing laundry, paying bills, attempting to rescue information from my jiggered laptop...

Wait a minute, I like to read! How about if I just read something else instead?
… (meer)