Douglas Coupland and Lincoln Child
Coupland and Child are two of my favorite authors but I was rather disappointed by both of their newest books. Jpod seems slightly stale, though the base story is pretty interesting. For some inexplicable reason, Coupland felt the need to inject himself as a character in the newest book. What seemed like a silly self-referential joke in the beginning soon becomes irritating and confusing. The addition of pages and pages of numbers and words to illustrate puzzles the Jpod geeks play with each other merely bulks the book up making it look far larger than it is. Coupland IS a very good author – check out anything earlier than this book to see what I mean. The same applies to Child’s new book. Within the first chapter I had predicted the big woo-woo secret in the book and within a few more pages had nailed the finale. Again, read some of his older stuff.