Accident reconstructor Darwin Minor gets into an accident himself. It turns out people are gunning for him. But why? With the help of beautiful FBI agent, Sydney Olson, he's going to find out...Dan Simmons is one of the more versatile writers active today. He can write in any genre, from science fiction with Hyperion, to horror with Carrion Comfort, to crime with Hardcase, to this, a thriller.The Good:Darwin Minor reconstructs car accidents, trying to prevent insurance fraud. It's a pretty good occupation for the main character in a thriller to have. He's smart without being annoyingly so and his Vietnam past as a sniper gives him added depth.Cracking a far-reaching insurance fraud ring is a plot I've never read before and Simmons gets some good mileage out of it. The bizarre accidents Dar reconstructs are almost worth the price of admission on their own, from the guy who managed to shoot himself in the testicle to the guy who ended up at the bottom of the cliff with a tree branch up his ass and a pickup truck on top of him.The action in Darwin's Blade is fast and furious when it happens. The car chase near the beginning was one of my favorites of all time, in books anyway. The shootout at the end was also quite spectacular.The Bad:Here we go. I realize that all thrillers have the obligatory hookup between male and female characters but this one felt really forced. Like Simmons thought "I have a thriller so I'd better introduce an attractive female for my main character to fall in love with." Like I said, it felt forced.The other gripe that I have is that Darwin's Blade, to me at least, seems really wordy for what it is. It's about 100 pages longer than it should be. I don't need six pages about how Darwin's sailplane works, nor do I need three or four pages that are mostly equations. The philosophical bits, while interesting, didn't add all that much to the story except for giving Darwin something to talk about.Elmore Leonard has his eleven rules of writing. For my money, a crime book or thriller should follow most of them.1. Never open a book with weather. 2. Avoid prologues.3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” . . .5. Keep your exclamation points under control.6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.11. If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.I'd say Darwin's Blade breaks about half of them.I'm sounding too negative. Overall, I liked Darwin's Blade enough to give it a three but not enough to not convert it to store credit at my earliest convenience. It's good and Simmons fans will want to read it but if you're only going to read one Dan Simmons book, it shouldn't be this one.
Не думала, что смогу прийти в такой восторг и такое тупое разочарование от прочтения одного и того же автора. Бритва Дарвина - это упор на углубленные знания Деном Симмонсом оружейной грамоты во всех ее обличьях, начиная с характеристики оружия, заканчивая высчитыванием траектории пули, умножая скорость ветра на угол наклона дула и на расстояние прицела, деля это на 15, что дает снайперу полное понимание происходящей картины. Невероятно нудное описание любой машины, вертолета, ножа, без лаконичной снисходительности, нет, автор посчитал нужным запороть весь интерес в сточную канаву своего нахохленного и бессюжетного повествования. Ох уж, эти "заумные", черт бы их драл, диалоги главных героев, философия стоиков, цитирование Аврелия, Птолемея, Канта. Они знают все, они знают столько всего, что дочитав до середины, меня стало тошнить от нарочитости всей этой ахинеи заумных раздумий и бесед, которые не приводят читателя ни к одному приличному заключению. Настолько бесполезное чтиво, что меня передернуло от облегчения, когда я "пробежалась" глазами по последним строчкам. Ден - вы умны, красноречивы, несомненно. Но этот роман - показатель того, что нельзя так много времени растрачивать на консультации экспертов по катастрофам и оружию. Поскольку, весь смысл произведения полетел в тартарары и осталось лишь высокомерие и неравенство по отношению к читателю с бессмысленной концовкой.
What do You think about Darwin's Blade (2001)?
Uno dei pi�� brutti libri che abbia mai letto, terminarne la lettura �� stato uno sforzo notevole. Siamo sicuri che sia stato scritto da Simmons, lo stesso Simmons di Hyperion? Prosa scadente. Personaggi senza spessore, banali. Lui ricco bello intelligente, tiratore espertissimo ex marine, in Vietnam ha fatto fuori quintillioni di Vietnamiti. Chiss�� come mai hanno perso la guerra, se erano tutti come lui. Lei ... no comment. Razzismo strisciante, ogni non americano �� descritto secondo i pi�� beceri stereotipi (russi, italiani, cinesi, arabi, francesi ... ) La trama �� inesistente, in compenso sembra di assistere ad un infinito spot pubblicitario: per ogni oggetti se ne descrivono marca e caratteristiche, in certi casi abbiamo anche pubblicit�� comparative ... In definitiva uno schifo di libro!
—Emiliano Barbaini
There are writers who are good story tellers--Ivan Doig and John Grisham come to mind; writers whose simple, direct prose move clearly and crisply through the narrative.And then...There are, judging from his novel, Darwin's Blade, writers like Dan Simmons who try to impress readers by burying them under mountains of irrelative statistics and unnecessary digressions.Darwin's Blade has an interesting protagonist and a basically good plot. Simmons should have been satisfied with that instead of trying to show everyone how clever he is and tarting the tale up like an over-tinseled Christmas Tree.Two stars. Grudgingly.
—Michael Matson
Dan Simmons has won numerous awards in several genres. This book is perhaps a bit unusual: the detective as accident investigator. Dr. Darwin Minor, Ph.D. in physics and ex- Marine sniper in Vietnam, reconstructs accidents, and it seems the Los Angeles area has been hit by numerous insurance frauds. Destitute Mexican immigrants are hired to become involved in an accident. They then receive the services of lawyers and doctors to beat the insurance companies out of millions. Darwin (Dar to his friends), who has a horror of grammatical errors and notes them constantly in conversations with others, links up with Sydney (Syd to her friends), an accident investigator, and several other law enforcement agents to bring down a humongous conspiracy to defraud insurance agents. It all gets a bit over the top by the end with Russian snipers attacking Dar' cabin, but of course, the good guys win with that last incredible shot. What saved the book for me were the often humorous, strange and often grotesque descriptions of accidents. Simmons notes in his acknowledgments that all of the accidents detailed in the book really happened or were compilations of accidents, and the book is peppered with seemingly bizarre events that purportedly really happened. I particularly enjoyed some quotes from accident files. " had been driving my car for forty years when I fell asleep at the wheel and had an accident." Or " guy was all over the road. I had to swerve several times before I hit him." Or, " invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my vehicle, and vanished." Another favorite was the Saturn ad that was being filmed. The dealer wanted to show the incredible strength of the Saturn windshield, which was intended to withstand much more substantial impacts than regular safety glass. To impress the audience, the dealer had borrowed an FAA device called a chicken cannon. This device was used to fire chickens into airplane engines -- a dead chicken representing a large to midsize bird in flight -- to test the effect on the engine; presumably, the effect on the chicken, already dead, would be slight. Anyway, the engineers had assured the dealer that the Saturn windshield could easily withstand the impact of the dead chicken fired from the cannon at two hundred miles per hour. When Darwin arrives on the scene, everyone is in a panic — the actress dressed as a nun who was to sit in the driver' seat, in a dead faint — because the chicken had gone right through the windshield, through the driver' seat and out the back of the car. " Saturn lied to us," the dealer asks Darwin. Darwin explains that no, the windshield could easily have withstood a chicken at two hundred miles per hour. " what . . . how did we. . . why. . .how in God' name. . ." said the dealer. Dar decided to be succinct. " time," he said, " the chicken."
—Eric_W
