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Not one of Rick Riordan’s better efforts
Book Review
By Derryll White
Riordan, Rick (2007). Rebel Island.
Rick Riordan starts out taking the reader on a journey of discovery. Unless you have been to the Gulf Coast, Texas doesn’t bring up images of sea and sand. Rebel island is off the Texas coast, reached by ferry.
This novel lacks some of the South Texas flavour that I have come to know and appreciate from Rick Riordan. ‘Rebel Island’ is focused more on plot and less on flavour. Maybe it is due to the fact that Ralph Arguello got murdered in a previous novel. Ralph always brought in the insane larger world of urban Texas with his gang antics.
This is a quick novel. It does not take in anything bigger than the simple story. Consequently, unlike some of Riordan’s other work, it does not demand a lot of thought. I guess you have gathered that I do not consider ‘Rebel Island’ as one Rick Riordan’s better efforts.
****
RELATIONSHIPS – But the more he tried to dissuade her, the more curious and determined she’d become. With Tres, she always felt as if she were fighting to keep hold, always competing with his roots here in Texas, a place she had never understood. She was determined to weave herself into his territory, to be part of his landscape.
MARRIAGE – “I used to think there was a perfect match out there for everybody, you know? Alex told me that. Older I get, I realize there’s just mathc4es you make work, and matches you give up on. Ain’t nothing perfect about it.”
DRUGS – I had no trouble believing that Chris Stowall had been making money by helping drug runners. In South Texas, that was a well-established part of the economy, right up there with ranching, drilling for oil and making acrylic-rattlesnake toilet seats for tourists.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
