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nerdinthelibrary 's review for:
Child 44
by Tom Rob Smith
3.5
content warnings: violence, death, murder of children, body horror, gore, animal abuse, torture, violent homophobia, rape, gaslighting
“They’d murdered together, deceived together, plotted and planned and lied together. They were criminals, the two of them, them against the world.”
I'm going to be real with you all: I bought this book because it was $8 and I had seen the movie. The movie was very meh for me (I only watched it for Tom Hardy) but the plot seemed okay so I figured, why the hell not. I'm pleased to report that this was actually quite enjoyable.
This is set in Stalin's Russia and follows Leo Demidov, an MGB agent who has always unquestionably followed orders. That is, until he is ordered to investigate his wife who has been accused of being a traitor to the nation. Believing Raisa to be innocent, Leo goes against his superiors and both are exiled. In exile, Leo begins an investigation into a killer who the state refuse to believe even exists.
The highest praise I can give this book is that it is effortlessly readable. It's entertaining and an easy page-turner, even at nearly 500 pages. A lot of the twists aren't overly original but it's so easy to get swept into the story and setting that you probably won't care.
Leo was a surprisingly good protagonist. He's the Worst at the start, murdering and torturing innocent people because he's told to. But, even before his character development, there's a somewhat admirable quality to him that Raisa remarks upon: “...he never [does] anything without believing in it. There was nothing cynical or calculating about him.”
His and Raisa's relationship is one that is kind of a guilty pleasure for me. They're both pretty awful and spend most of the book manipulating each other. But at the end of the day, there's a kind of love between them. And I'm always down for a couple being Awful Together.
The reason why this is a 3.5 instead of a 4 is because of the writing. It's not bad for the most part, just confusing. Not in an 'I don't understand the story' way, but in a 'I don't understand why you made this artistic choice' way. Certain sentences would be phrased very strangely, and sometimes for seemingly no reason words would be left out of sentences. Instead of a sentence reading "he walked to the door", it would be "he walked to door". It ultimately didn't take away from my overall enjoyment but I would be pulled out of the story every time I noticed it.
I love picking up books I'm unsure about and then enjoying them. I have read very few crime thrillers throughout my life so I have no idea how this stacks up against the rest of the genre and I'm aware that this book is riddled with historical inaccuracies, but I still really enjoyed it for what it was.
content warnings: violence, death, murder of children, body horror, gore, animal abuse, torture, violent homophobia, rape, gaslighting
“They’d murdered together, deceived together, plotted and planned and lied together. They were criminals, the two of them, them against the world.”
I'm going to be real with you all: I bought this book because it was $8 and I had seen the movie. The movie was very meh for me (I only watched it for Tom Hardy) but the plot seemed okay so I figured, why the hell not. I'm pleased to report that this was actually quite enjoyable.
This is set in Stalin's Russia and follows Leo Demidov, an MGB agent who has always unquestionably followed orders. That is, until he is ordered to investigate his wife who has been accused of being a traitor to the nation. Believing Raisa to be innocent, Leo goes against his superiors and both are exiled. In exile, Leo begins an investigation into a killer who the state refuse to believe even exists.
The highest praise I can give this book is that it is effortlessly readable. It's entertaining and an easy page-turner, even at nearly 500 pages. A lot of the twists aren't overly original but it's so easy to get swept into the story and setting that you probably won't care.
Leo was a surprisingly good protagonist. He's the Worst at the start, murdering and torturing innocent people because he's told to. But, even before his character development, there's a somewhat admirable quality to him that Raisa remarks upon: “...he never [does] anything without believing in it. There was nothing cynical or calculating about him.”
His and Raisa's relationship is one that is kind of a guilty pleasure for me. They're both pretty awful and spend most of the book manipulating each other. But at the end of the day, there's a kind of love between them. And I'm always down for a couple being Awful Together.
The reason why this is a 3.5 instead of a 4 is because of the writing. It's not bad for the most part, just confusing. Not in an 'I don't understand the story' way, but in a 'I don't understand why you made this artistic choice' way. Certain sentences would be phrased very strangely, and sometimes for seemingly no reason words would be left out of sentences. Instead of a sentence reading "he walked to the door", it would be "he walked to door". It ultimately didn't take away from my overall enjoyment but I would be pulled out of the story every time I noticed it.
I love picking up books I'm unsure about and then enjoying them. I have read very few crime thrillers throughout my life so I have no idea how this stacks up against the rest of the genre and I'm aware that this book is riddled with historical inaccuracies, but I still really enjoyed it for what it was.