Boca Knights by Steven M. Forman

I ended up disappointed by this one. To start with, if you take out the various history lessons you have about half a book. I'm actually fairly interested in history and have read an historical book or hundred on purpose -- but I'd rather they be written by an historian and not a fiction writer. I don't order chicken at the Oyster Shack and I don't read history by fiction writers.

With the half a book left, it had the occasional moment -- at one point I approached almost thinking about considering the possibility of laughing (well, chuckling) out loud -- but overall I tended to not be involved in the characters or story arc. Everything was pretty predictable, with indistinguishable characters. As a semi-aside, I always find it interesting when characters (or people) tend to rationalize violence when in support of their ideology, but find it abhorrent when in support of those in opposition. While that could be a topic for a later blog entry, the part of the aside that makes it semi is this book marked the first time I've had a character -- via first person writing -- explain why the two are clearly different. I think the convoluted rationalization it took to pull that concept off was the funniest part of this book, though not intended to be humorous.

Overall, not a lot of imagination in the stereotypical characters, and nothing story-wise to hold my interest, but I did read to the end so it had some merit.

I'll add a standard disclaimer: I like raw oysters, SWMBO hates 'em. In other words, different tastes yield different results; you might love it.