booyah
Believe it or not, there's a (slightly mixed but mostly positive) review of IA in the mighty Economist this week. They dissed (and if you ask me, kind of missed the point of) the second half, but I am still exceedingly pleased:
Danielle Leaf, Mr Evans's protagonist, is not a professional spy, but an everywoman. An anti-globalisation activist, she is suddenly thrown into a violent and dangerous world where she must draw on every reserve of skill and courage to stay alive.
Mr Evans is a vivid guide to the shrill, self-righteous universe of the anti-globalisation movement. He is strong on street-fighting tactics, how to deploy the violent anarchist avant-garde against the police, and on the intricacies of computer hacking. Yet curiously, a promising plot about a cynical mining corporation falters about halfway through the book, giving it a sense of peaking too early. The second part, in which Danielle and her hacker friend Keiran are tortured and held prisoner on a boat controlled by computers, is a fairly standard escape adventure. Nonetheless, “Invisible Armies” is an intriguing, pacy read and Mr Evans shows great potential.
Mr Fesperman, Ms Lynds and Mr Evans are good on the ambiguity of their characters' lives. Every choice has a moral cost in a world of shades of grey. [...] While politicians stumble, it is left to novelists to make sense of the world. These books show how.
(Here's the full article if you wanna sit through their day-pass ad.)
Danielle Leaf, Mr Evans's protagonist, is not a professional spy, but an everywoman. An anti-globalisation activist, she is suddenly thrown into a violent and dangerous world where she must draw on every reserve of skill and courage to stay alive.
Mr Evans is a vivid guide to the shrill, self-righteous universe of the anti-globalisation movement. He is strong on street-fighting tactics, how to deploy the violent anarchist avant-garde against the police, and on the intricacies of computer hacking. Yet curiously, a promising plot about a cynical mining corporation falters about halfway through the book, giving it a sense of peaking too early. The second part, in which Danielle and her hacker friend Keiran are tortured and held prisoner on a boat controlled by computers, is a fairly standard escape adventure. Nonetheless, “Invisible Armies” is an intriguing, pacy read and Mr Evans shows great potential.
Mr Fesperman, Ms Lynds and Mr Evans are good on the ambiguity of their characters' lives. Every choice has a moral cost in a world of shades of grey. [...] While politicians stumble, it is left to novelists to make sense of the world. These books show how.
(Here's the full article if you wanna sit through their day-pass ad.)
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