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Taylor Stevens

Auteur van The Informationist

10 Werken 1,898 Leden 221 Besprekingen Favoriet van 4 leden

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Fotografie: THE BIG THRILL

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Werken van Taylor Stevens

The Informationist (2011) 926 exemplaren
The Innocent (2011) 326 exemplaren
The Doll (2013) 191 exemplaren
The Catch (2014) 176 exemplaren
The Mask (1800) 140 exemplaren
Liars' Paradox (2018) 64 exemplaren
The Vessel (2014) 47 exemplaren
Liars' Legacy (2019) 19 exemplaren
Marvel's Black Widow: Bad Blood (2020) — Redacteur; Medewerker — 7 exemplaren

Tagged

Algemene kennis

Geboortedatum
unknown
Geslacht
female
Nationaliteit
USA
Land (voor op de kaart)
USA
Woonplaatsen
Texas, USA
Agent
Ann Hawkins

Leden

Besprekingen

Not a fan of this one at all.

I absolutely hated the main character and I keept thinking that the plot seemed really familiar. I could swear I've read this book before but it's too new for that to be true.

I found the ending completely unsatisfying and the romance angle to be completely out of left field, over dramatic, and annoying.


 
Gemarkeerd
hmonkeyreads | 86 andere besprekingen | Jan 25, 2024 |
Greatest disservice to this book would be to compare it to "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo".

True, both characters are female with special set of skills but that is where all similarities end. Lisbeth is not violent person in terms of uncontrollable rage - she behaves like an outcast but she is not self-destructive. As a matter of fact she is working very hard not to be in harms way and even if she gets herself in trouble she will try to find a workaround. She is pretty cold with exacting vengeance and she applies very simple math - me or them.

Vanessa on other hand is slightly more .... crazy. This woman has serious mental issues. The moment she starts tripping she only sees red - very much like berserkers of old. It does not matter what happens to her in that moment, she just moves in with whatever is at hand and wipes the floor with everyone (while collecting few "trophies" in process). And she is always playing with peoples minds to get them into fight because she enjoys that.

Both characters are damaged in terms of child traumas but unlike Lisbeth, Vanessa decided to leave her parents and roam the world where she did find the company of pretty messy people. And here we come to second point - Lisbeth is lone wolf, most of data collection (hacking etc) she does alone. She knows people but she needs to refund them for their services. Vanessa on the other hand relies on friends to assist her with issues at hand. And although Vanessa uses technology her main job is still hands-on espionage, break in and entry, standard detective work (interviews) and/or extraction of data by ... other means (again when she flips).

So in general, very similar but again completely different characters. And I love adventures of both. I enjoyed the first novel in Munroe series and will be reading more.

Highly recommended for all action and thriller aficionados.
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Gemarkeerd
Zare | 86 andere besprekingen | Jan 23, 2024 |
Liars' Paradox (A Jack and Jill Mystery #1) by Taylor Stevens is a good thriller read. I want to thank Netgalley and the author for my arc. I am sorry that my delay I loved the book I just had a hard time the last two months sitting down doing my reviews. Jack and Jill some cute names for twins. Although the relationship between them is anything but cute. We can picture the sweet darlings romping in the sunlight always with wide smiles on their faces.
Boy is that not the case in Liars' Paradox. These twins have been trained by their commando mother to endure pain, deprivation, fear, isolation, and loneliness. The book reads like 007 meets revenge and I loved every minute. I thought Claire their mother is an odd ball who I actually liked. It wraps up well and I look forward to seeing how the two continue in the second book.
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b00kdarling87 | 6 andere besprekingen | Jan 7, 2024 |
Deze bespreking is geschreven voor LibraryThing Vroege Recensenten.
Vanessa Michael Munroe arrives in Japan, to be picked up at the airport by Miles Bradford, a close friend. She is recovering from a brutal attack that almost killed her during a job that did not go well. She is living with Bradford, trying to regain her equilibrium, while he’s working as a security consultant at a high-tech firm trying to uncover who within the firm is sharing information with other companies.

Munroe is using her time to pick up Japanese and explore, which she does on her motorcycle while Bradford is at the office, but she is getting antsy and wants something to do. She asks him if she can work with him, but he keeps her away from the office as much as possible. The one time she goes there, he insists that she wear her most feminine clothes and introduces her around. Not long after her visit, there are two murders at the company.

The book is divided into two parts, the days leading up to and then after the murders. When Bradford is arrested and charged as the murderer, Munroe takes over his job as a way of finding the truth and getting him out of prison.

V. M. Munroe is meant to be another Lisbeth Salander from Stieg Larsson's Millenium series. They share high level technology skills and fighting skills that defy human physiology, and both learned their trade despite the physical and psychological damage they experienced while coming of age. Munroe and Salander have few relationships, and the ones they have are hopelessly complicated. And neither is afraid of breaking the law if that is what is needed to get the job done. Munroe, however, does her work out in the open, and she can get away with this by sometimes presenting as a woman (Vanessa) and sometimes as a man (Michael).

The Mask is the 5th book of the Vanessa Michael Munroe series by Taylor Stevens. I had not read any of the books leading up to this one, so I didn't know the backstory of Munroe or the other characters, but Stevens provides enough information to flush Munroe out as a character and to pique my interest in the series.

The biggest flaw of the book is the writing. Up until the second part of the book after the murders, it was difficult to relax into the reading, because it seems that every sentence, every paragraph is written with overly stylistic structure and vocabulary so different from the everyday that it kept me on edge, and not in a good way. "With perfect twenty-twenty hindsight, when it was too late to really matter, she'd pin the discomfort down to the muted screams of instinct, that sixth sense of animal knowledge trying to tell her that her other senses were lying, that this was more than what it seemed."
- Taylor Stevens, The Mask


There were also too many overt references to the dark future for the main characters, as if the reader weren’t smart enough to know that in this type of book things would go wonky and become dangerous. I found the future references at the end of each of the early chapters annoying as they disrupted the flow of the narrative and served to give the reader a chance to just put the book down rather than as a hook to keep the reader engaged.

In fact, these two issues, the convoluted sentences and clumsy foreshadowing, were not in the second part of the book, and this stylistic change made it seem that the first and second parts of the book had different authors.

I enjoyed reading how Munroe navigated the complexity of Japanese work culture, corporate espionage, and intermingling of the law and underworld, and how she made it out in one piece. There was a good balance of fast-paced action and violence with slower scenes of planning and watching, allowing the reader to take a breath occasionally. Despite the writing flaws, this book would appeal to anyone who wants their hero to be a woman who can fight and think but not wear a cape.


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Gemarkeerd
MurphyWaggoner | 32 andere besprekingen | Oct 10, 2023 |

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Statistieken

Werken
10
Leden
1,898
Populariteit
#13,569
Waardering
½ 3.6
Besprekingen
221
ISBNs
100
Talen
8
Favoriet
4

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