Review by: Slantedlight
Review
I really struggled to like this one - I wanted to like it, because there're some beautiful bits of writing in it, but for me the lads were just too pathetic - fainting and weeping and swooning over things in such a way that I could't see how they could ever have acted as effective CI5 agents if they'd been that breakable. And I like breakable Bodie and breakable Doyle - just... you can take it too far, and for me this did.
I also felt like I was continually being thrown by reality checks - how in the world could Doyle get a job as a supply teacher with no qualifications? How in the world was a school able to fund him, and have the other teachers cover for his classes, while he was back and forth for the many various reasons he gave, if he worked on a supply basis?
It suffered a little from please-let-it-end as well - I felt there were perhaps various shorter stories here that should either have been told separately, rather than jammed together in what felt rather like a soap-opera to me, or else described as having occured over a much longer period of time. The mystic-y supernatural bit felt tacked on too, and very much out of place.
The writing is beautiful in many places, there's atmosphere and feeling, which I adore in stories - but it read a little too much like an American soap opera to me, and ultimately I just didn't see either Bodie or Doyle, or the real world, in there.
Slantedlight, 2008