One of the joys of discovering a new author is finding a fresh voice that pulls you in and takes you for a ride. This book does exactly that. The author hooks you in the beginning and sets up a storyline that you want to follow and know more about. The problem is, that like a kid sitting in the back seat on a long trip, I kept asking myself, "are we there yet?".
Leonard is a good writer. He creates images that make you feel the ocean, taste the sea air, hear the whack of a tennis racket hitting a ball and sense the emotion of his characters. He sometimes gets a little carried away with metaphor, but so does Dean Koontz.
The problem is the fact that this is a serial in the complete sense of the word. I am old enough to remember going to Saturday morning matinees and seeing the likes of Flash Gordon, Rocket Man, or Zorro. All of which would end in a cliffhanger and I couldn't wait until the next week to find out how the hero would survive. This novel just stops. No cliffhanger, although I do want to know what happens. While I knew this was book one, there was no indication that none of the storylines would get wrapped up.
The novel has great potential. It needs a good editor to trim it down and eliminate the parts that drag. It needs a good pass by a copy editor to fix the typos and missing words. The story is a good one, just not sure why it is broken up into parts.
This, unfortunately, gets one star. it should have been four.