Rating: 
Summary: A Slow Burning is a Fast Paced read!
Review: A white man witnesses some black men killing his father as a child. A black man witnesses white members of the Klan lynch his father as a child. From these roots, the novel traces the motivations of both these protagonists, how it has shaped their nature and viewpoints about the other race - on a grander scale and philosophy.
On a personal, individual level, both these protagonists are in love with the same woman, which brings in the element of sexual rivalry and competition, more so since the two are thrown together in the course of their work. The white male is a police detective and the black man is a pioneering scientist/doctor.
The novel is gripping and frightening when it details the brain wasting experiments that are done in the name of science and how they impact the life of the heroine. The novel is sensitive when it deal with racial stereotyping which every person does inadvertently no matter what level of political correctedness they have been exposed to.
A gripping storyline which involves medical science, love tangles, the hood, suspense, rivetting suspense, and ultimately the question...how far can one push the boundaries of human exploration and the buttons of love is what the novel is all about.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating...mind stirring...a new wave of technology
Review: First of all, I have NO time in my busy schedule to read a fortune cookie, let alone a 478 page fiction novel...However, this was one book I could NOT put down! Mr. Pottinger does what I love best - he introduces you to each major character in a very special, intimate way, and sets the stage for how this plot eventually ties itself together. And in the end, you nod your head, and finally "get it". It's a combination of detective work, medical advances and a passionate love triangle that will surprise you in the end. It's a very well researched, well written book, and one i will most DEFINITELY keep on my bookshelf for years to come.
Rating: 
Summary: A Slow Burn
Review: I agree with Stephanie Lewis: this is an awful book. I like convoluted plots but this was totally lacking in credibility, and in parts was just plain unpleasant. I just skipped through most of the second half, which seemed to be getting weirder and weirder.
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: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Overwhelming Unabridgement...Yawn
Review: Overall, the plots and storylines were actually pretty good. The only problem was that we had to withstand so many pages of boring material to get to the interesting plot. This book could have been done with almost half the pages it has. By the time I was done with the book, I was too numb to actually appreciate the ending, as good as it was. I'm not a big fan of the abridged version of books, but this one could still have been shortened and called unabridged. This is my first experince with a Pottinger book, and will be the last.
Rating:
Summary: Cringe-inducing
Review: There is absolutely nothing to like about this book. The characters are so poorly sketched and so lacking in depth that it seems the only effort the author made in creating them was coming up with their names. Their personas are completely unpredictable; at no point is there even the slightest sense that they are independent agents with wills of their own. They simply feel like rag-dolls the author has hired to speak the lines and flesh out the plot.
The plot, although actually quite creatively conceived, is badly realised from beginning to torturously drawn-out end. Although a book of speculative fiction does have the right to expect some suspension of disbelief, the 'science' explored in A Slow Burning is downright nonsense. The attempted exploration of racial prejudice seems superficial and a balance between theme and action never seems to be struck. Not only did the themes add nothing to the novel, they actually detracted from its potential as an entertaining thriller. (In its defense, I must grant that, as a non-US reader, the motifs of racism do not have the same social connotations for me as they might do for the target audience.)
Many other books have attained literary credibility despite drawbacks such as these. However, the one thing that really kills A Slow Burning and converts it from a mildly enjoyable paperback thriller into an absolute catastrophe is the simply appalling writing style. The author's turn of phrase is self-conscious and pretentious, and quite frankly off-putting. It is a shame to see what could have been a decent thriller, or even a reasonable piece of speculative fiction, fall so far short of the mark.
|
