Elton Philpotts has achieved his dream of becoming a Financial Director and is not sure he likes it very much and Bob Slicker is finding that being the king whilst also being broke is not as much fun as he might have hoped. And just what are the ‘teddies’ up to?
This third instalment of Wood’s Sphere of Influence books runs along much the same lines as the previous two books. Much the same slightly snarky, nerdy humour is there, the characters are just as quirky and deliberately cliched as before and he has wrapped them up in another good plot. And yet it all fell a little flat for me. One problem is that the humour has always tended towards the embarrassing, cringe-worthy humour so typical of productions like the TV series The Office and here has drifted further in that direction; a brand of humour that I have never much enjoyed and the more cringe-worthy it becomes the less I like it, though I do appreciate how much others love this kind of humour. Another problem is possibly that I had only recently finished a Jasper Fforde book, and it was probably a mistake reading a second comedy filled book so soon after another, frankly, better one.
Seeing has how I am normally very dismissive of the attention to detail of self-published authors, I should mention that Wood appears to be self-published and is probably the only one I have tried in which I have found almost no proof reading errors. I wonder if that has something to do with the mindset of the accountant! He is one of only two self-published authors that I have repeatedly returned to.
For me Wood’s strength lies in his well developed if rather quirky and cliched characters and his plotting, but mostly his plotting. His plots are, again, somewhat quirky but they are an order of magnitude more interesting than I have generally found in this sort of light reading. I wonder if he shouldn’t drop the comedy and have a crack at some really serious SF. I would buy it.
3/5 stars
This third instalment of Wood’s Sphere of Influence books runs along much the same lines as the previous two books. Much the same slightly snarky, nerdy humour is there, the characters are just as quirky and deliberately cliched as before and he has wrapped them up in another good plot. And yet it all fell a little flat for me. One problem is that the humour has always tended towards the embarrassing, cringe-worthy humour so typical of productions like the TV series The Office and here has drifted further in that direction; a brand of humour that I have never much enjoyed and the more cringe-worthy it becomes the less I like it, though I do appreciate how much others love this kind of humour. Another problem is possibly that I had only recently finished a Jasper Fforde book, and it was probably a mistake reading a second comedy filled book so soon after another, frankly, better one.
Seeing has how I am normally very dismissive of the attention to detail of self-published authors, I should mention that Wood appears to be self-published and is probably the only one I have tried in which I have found almost no proof reading errors. I wonder if that has something to do with the mindset of the accountant! He is one of only two self-published authors that I have repeatedly returned to.
For me Wood’s strength lies in his well developed if rather quirky and cliched characters and his plotting, but mostly his plotting. His plots are, again, somewhat quirky but they are an order of magnitude more interesting than I have generally found in this sort of light reading. I wonder if he shouldn’t drop the comedy and have a crack at some really serious SF. I would buy it.
3/5 stars
