secret of the seventh son

Secret of the Seventh Son, the first novel by Glenn Cooper, was an interesting, fast paced and fun book to read. Cooper's writing is easy to read, mostly. Some of the vocabulary words that sprinkle and dot this book seemed unnecessary. In a fast paced thriller, I shouldn't have to stop to look something up a dozen times. Granted, there are segments of the book where whole tranches [see!] of the vocabulary are outside the everyday language of most readers, but that actually wasn't so bad, as most of those words had enough contextual clues to define them. Others just put the action on hold. Aliquot? Aliquot wasn't even in my dictionary. I mean sure, I know what it means now, and I'll keep it in mind for the next time I'm playing Scrabble--that's a bingo with a 'Q' in it, for crying out loud--but I don't expect to read it in a paperback novel unless its written by Umberto Eco.

So, lots of fuss about the language, but it wasn't bad, really. The characters were nicely drawn, even if we've met them before. And at the end of the book, there's a blurb about a follow up novel due out next summer. If it shows up, I'd read it. And the story arc was different, so that was fun.