Oswaldo Mendoza

I felt I was reading what in gaming is called an AAR (After Action Report) written by an enthusiast fan after playing a geopolitical simulator. Let’s start with the good: ambitious scope, refreshing genre, simple storytelling (this would not be as great for some) and the appeal and thrill actually shoots up towards the end (last 40-50 pages) Now for the bad: I feel it tries too hard to land a Netflix contract for a miniseries, especially due to its length. Out of the three storylines, only one starts and remain strong (the North African one) throughout. The Chinese could secure the runner-up and the American one is dismayingly boring for a good 85% of the book, meaning forcing yourself to complete it and yelling in frustration every time the focus went back to it. Finally, despite what Follet’s diehard fans could tell you, the stories seem seriously disjointed and the research level doesn’t strike me as deeper than just googling images and reading shallowly about locations.