The Year of the Locust: The ground-breaking second novel from the internationally bestselling author of I AM PILGRIM

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There is a lot of action in this book, a lot of suspended disbelief (well it is fiction) but some of it is too silly for me. Hey I can live with the time warp…..after all I loved Stephen Kings 11.22.63, but when the main character gets repeatedly hurt with life threatening injuries that are bleeding out but continues on running and fighting and taking on the enemy, well for me it just got tiresome. The advance technology was kinda interesting but I felt the book was 3 stories blended into one long novel that could have been edited better. Kane reist erheen om een man met cruciale informatie voor de veiligheid van het Westen te evacueren, maar in plaats daarvan ontmoet hij een vijand die de wereld tot aan de rand van de afgrond zal brengen. Een angstaanjagende, intelligente, wrede man met bloed aan zijn handen en wraak in zijn hart...

Firstly, like many others I loved I Am Pilgrim, I’ve recommended it to many of my friends and when I read it I didn’t even want to blink as it wasted reading time.

This portion of the book sees Kane getting displaced forward in time after a disastrous voyage in a prototype submarine that has cloaking technology and he finds himself 24 years in the future where New York is an apocalyptic landscape and The Locust has been hell bent on destroying the world - pretty out there, huh? The Year of the Locust is a story of bravery, hardship, sacrifice, endurance, evil and finally succeeding against all odds. As with hist first book, the detail of the plot, weaving various strands and sub plots together - Saigon and the Magus stand out - were excellent. In a desperate need for an editor, or perhaps a team of them, armed with red pens and a strong pot of coffee, "Year of the Locust" is a testament to the fact that sometimes less is indeed more. More editing, less... well, everything else. The book is a wild ride, but not in the way one hopes. It's like being on a bike with square wheels – sure, it's a unique experience, but you can't help but think a regular bike would have been a better choice. Deze reis wordt ontzettend gedetailleerd beschreven en het voelde alsof ik er zelf was. De spanning is erg goed voelbaar en ik werd erg enthousiast. De gebeurtenissen die zich afspelen in dit gebied zijn nogal barbaars.

Wanneer je, net als Kane, werkzaam bent als spion voor de CIA in Denied Access Area’s, dan hebben grenzen geen betekenis. Jouw taak is om je toegang te verschaffen, te doen wat nodig is en weer te ontsnappen… op welke manier dan ook. Je weet wanneer je moet rennen, wanneer je je moet verstoppen en wanneer je moet schieten. Move over Jason Bourne. CIA operative Kane redefines the smart but vulnerable bad ass super spy in this dazzling cat-and-mouse thriller where the entire globe is a chessboard, and everyone’s playing for keeps' Lisa Gardner Three quarters of the book is spy thriller and then he switches in a 180 degree turn and it becomes Science Fiction - a very ballsy move, folks and dangerous. When I finished the book, I read about readers' reaction to this and yep, a few people DNF'd it, put it down and didn't continue.

Hayes’s ability to imagine ways in which Kane can harness the latest technology to aid his mission outsoars that of his rivals, as does his ingenuity in devising low-tech ways for Kane to get out of a fix when separated from his Q Branch-style gadgets. And it hardly seems adequate to say that Kane is a character you can’t help rooting for: Hayes has the magical ability to make you believe that this is the one man who can save the world, with the result that The Year of the Locust has some of the resonance of a myth. Hayes seems to have thrown every implausible plot device into a blender, hoping for a smoothie but ending up with chunky, narrative soup. The first two-thirds of the book teeter on the edge of believability, like a cat on a windowsill in a hurricane. But it's the final third where Hayes really cranks up the 'implausibility-o-meter' to a level that would make even sci-fi aficionados raise an eyebrow. Kane travels there to exfiltrate a man with vital information for the safety of the West - but instead he meets an adversary who will take the world to the brink of extinction. A frightening, clever, vicious man with blood on his hands and vengeance in his heart... Dan lees je over Kane en zijn uiteindelijke ontmoeting met de grootste vijand en ook hier was de spanning goed aanwezig. Uiteindelijk krijgt het verhaal in de laatste twee delen ook een sci-fi tintje, dus dit moet wel je smaak zijn, anders weet ik niet zeker of het je gaat bevallen.