Bite This

good read, fun, but nothing spectacular eitherThis was an okay next installment in the series. The author could have possibly shortened some of the scenes in the various books and merged them together for a better novel though.Some ideas and concepts brought in are well handled and come across as believable. The handling of an emerging potential AI was well designed and thought out. I was even impressed by the level of techno geek speak the author used, he must have a bit of an IT background to explain it as well as he did.The negative to the series is that the TCQ group never fails, or if they have any setbacks they just magically work out to be for the best. This is supposed to be fiction, not a magical fairy tale that everything works out perfectly.A few examples of this are they are discussing possibly using a dog as a Forsaken/Nosferatu tracker, and the amazing coincidence, when fighting them in Costa Rica, a German Shepherd suddenly appears and is attacking the same bad guys as Bethany Anne and her entourage. Another is when the General and Frank mention they would like to purchase an old military base, but there haven’t been any like that in the US for quite some time. Then suddenly a base is being decommissioned, and surprise above all, it happens to be the one the General used to be in charge of, and even has the ‘Michael cage’ that started the whole series off in book one. Even the introduction of the AI was too easy. It was mentioned in a previous book, that they’d be interested in creating an AI in the future, and would need to look into the technology. Then unbelievably, a company who just happens to be part of Michael’s portfolio has one they ‘accidentally’ created within the last seconds of another project, but hasn’t escaped from their confines yetIt’s all just too convenient. It makes for a poor story and doesn’t draw you into the whole as much as a story where the characters have to address their shortcomings and even fix things when they fail. Story plots are about conflict resolutions. If everything is written so that every scene just easily goes from step A to B to C, the reader doesn’t get pulled into the story like they could have been. I initially enjoyed the series, but it’s getting entirely too predictable and trite. Even the recurring joke regarding the groups use of creative cussing is starting to fall flat.I’m all for making lemonade when you get handed lemons, but the characters don’t get lemons, they get perfectly sanitized plots and even when something goes slightly wrong, it turns out to be a hidden benefit.I think I am beginning to understand how the author is so prolific. If he doesn’t put in any character conflicts and then use conflict resolution to fix them, it’s a lot easier to write a bunch of words that look like a story. Sadly it’s just not a great story if so much of the good parts aren’t supplied. At least it’s a fast read, if not a great story.