Rating: 
Summary: Starts out fast, then gets complicated and slows down
Review: I couldn't put this book down until I got 2/3rds through it. It became very complex. I found some discrepancies in the storyline as well as implausibilities. I did like the ending even though I thought it was finished about 5 times before it actually was.
Rating: 
Summary: A Slow Reading
Review: I don't mind a big book. I DO mind a medium-sized book posing as a big book--when I see a paperback this thick, I'm immediately thinking Robert Jordan or James Clavel, that is, 800-1,000 pages. This book's not much over 500 pages. So why did the publisher bulk it out so much? I don't know, but that little detail seems to be at the heart of what's wrong with this book: pretension.This may be the most pretentious book I've ever read. From the arrogant words on the flyleaf--"Many of these things have already happened; all of them could"--or something like that, everything seems designed to convince the reader that this is an Important Book. But it's not. It's actually a very shallow book wrapped in some dicey pseudo-science, some white liberal guilt about race, some truly horrific and gratuitous violence, and with a nasty anti-religious bias at its heart. The pseudo-science has to do with memory/personality transfer. This, I suppose, is one of those things that has already happened or could happen. I don't buy it. It presupposes an Enlightement/naturalistic worldview that is increasingly coming under fire in these Post-Modern times, as well as a materialist take on the mind/brain issue. The race element, despite an elaborate and overheated set-up, receives the typical white-liberal guilt treatment--blackness is something good per se, whiteness is something problematic per se. Yes, there is a black villain, but he's a psychopath. The gratuitous violence mainly comes at the beginning of the book, but it's scattered throughout. The anti-religious bias comes out loud and clear about two-thirds of the way through the book where the author, in the mind of the female lead, has her think this thought: "She wouldn't marry him the same way she wouldn't marry someone who would pray for her soul every night, as if she were lost and needed to be saved"--not an exact quote, but very close. This anti-religious bias--though not very explicit--forms the subtext of this book. What's really going on here is the same tired old secular humanist idea that immortality can be achieved through science by means of memory/personality transfer. What we really need is a new C. S. Lewis to deconstruct this nonsense just as he did the regnant athiestic naturalism of his day in his Space Trilogy. Finally, there are a lot of really annoying plot twists throughout the book, and especially toward the end. This guy is the master of the gratuitous plot twist, that is, a change of direction with no preparation. Moreover, the "revelations" about the female protagonist's ancestry, besides being inherently boring, stretch credulity way beyond belief. The only reason I gave it two stars instead of one is because it represents a labor of love of huge proportions. That is, although I dislike this book intensely, it nevertheless presents perhaps one of the better cases for its fallacious and pernicious worldview.
Rating:
Summary: ok and just enough
Review: I enjoyed this book. this was the first I had read by Pottinger. He did a good job of holding my interest even though I did not really believe in the subject of the plot. This book did not drag, rather the story line shifted fast enough not to lose the reader but fast enough to keep my interest.
Rating: 
Summary: Only book to ever keep my attention for more than a few days
Review: I have read a number of books in my life but none have ever grabbed hold and kept my attention like "a slow burning". everytime you think it can't get anymore complicated, there is a new twist. it is an incredible book and everyone should give it a chance. you just may be surprised.
Rating:
Summary: Only book to ever keep my attention for more than a few days
Review: I have read a number of books in my life but none have ever grabbed hold and kept my attention like "a slow burning". everytime you think it can't get anymore complicated, there is a new twist. it is an incredible book and everyone should give it a chance. you just may be surprised.
Rating:
Summary: Only book to ever keep my attention for more than a few days
Review: I have read a number of books in my life but none have ever grabbed hold and kept my attention like "a slow burning". everytime you think it can't get anymore complicated, there is a new twist. it is an incredible book and everyone should give it a chance. you just may be surprised.
Rating:
Summary: Drops the ball in the middle
Review: I liked the book, but it loses steam in the middle. I almost threw the book in the garbage when he decides to go after JJ. (I'm not giving anything away for those of you still reading.) How implausible! But the end is (almost?)worth the negatives and the science is fascinating.
Rating: 
Summary: Put it down and couldn't pick it up
Review: I stopped around page 69. I'm sure some people can stomach this kind of drivel, but this has to be one of the worst books I have seen in a couple of years. I didn't care for the characters. I am bored to tears when everything seems to have a racial overtone (aren't we suppose to be a color blind society?). This one is heading for the garage sale pile,
Rating: 
Summary: A mixed bag -- intriguing but strange
Review: I struggle with how to rate this book. On the one hand, the two main characters, NY City Detective Nat Hennessey and brilliant doctor Cush Walker are well developed. Each lost his father as a young boy, one in a racially motivated killing and the other probably so, at least tangentially. Each struggles in adulthood with his loss, with the deaths in large part driving who they have become. Tying them together is the brutality of their past and their love interest of the present. In actuality, all of this creates the potential for a great story line and a suspenseful novel. Where I struggle is with the depth of the experimental brain surgery throughout the book. Admittedly, given that this comes from the "medical thriller" genre, I should have been prepared for this. Not having read anything from Pottinger, I did not know what to expect and I found the medical experimentation threads to be a bit too weird for my liking. I kept turning the pages to see how things ended up, but I was left to wish that the underlying issues that I found to be intriguing -- race, bias, revenge, ego, and romance -- could have been pulled together in a different context.
Rating:
Summary: An Great Medical Thriller
Review: I'm not the most patient person and therefore find it difficult, and at times irritating, to be strung along when it comes to revealing plot lines which was the main problem I had with "A Slow Burning". Pottinger would introduce this mysterious storyline, only to make me wait until the last 10 pages to figure out what it all means. Now don't get me wrong...this can be a very effective way to keep a reader's attention. However, I found Pottinger's style of the "string-along" a bit unnecessary because there would have been no harm done had the plot unfolded without the waiting game. In other words, with some mysteries this technique works well, but with this book it didn't because the mystery lost it's intrigue by the time it was revealed. "A Slow Burning" is a great story. At times it was a bit "Hollywood" and unbelievable, but overall it held my interest from beginning to end. The possibility of the medical technology introduced in the book was fascinating. To be able to repair damaged brain cells and cure all kinds of neurological diseases was a remarkable and well thought out concept. It's obvious Pottinger did a lot of medical research while writing this book. I'm not going to get into a blow-by-blow of the plot in this review because everyone can read it in the above summary. I found the characters to be a bit shallow and their dialogue somewhat unreal and stilted, but aside from that it was an excellent book that I didn't want to put down. A great "lazy-weekend" or vacation read.
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