2 Reviews: Pandora's Succession Here are two reviews that I received for my unpublished novel, Pandora's Succession.
ABNA Expert Reviewer
The excerpt from Pandora's Succession tells the story of Ridley Fox who is a secret agent operative. As the story begins, Fox has just been captured and is being detained near Groznyy, Chechnya. He gets some help from an insider,
Sveta Stechina, in making his escape. The group Ares, is developing a biological weapon called Pandora, and Fox is trying to put a stop to the threat. He succeeds in escaping and locking down the facility, but Sveta meets her deminse in the process. Afterward, the Ares people try to get their Pandora project back on track, but the excerpt ends. The story is very well told. It is a prototypical action/adventure spy story with the skillful lead operative Fox. The dialog moves the story along nicely while being supported by sufficient, but not overly done narration. The story is compelling, and I would like to see more of it.
ABNA Expert Reviewer
Pandora's Succession kept my interest, and has good pacing, but is unintentionally funny. It tries so hard to be dramatic, and is so derivative of story lines such as that in "Mission Impossible II" that it comes off more as a parody than a serious action-adventure thriller. The settings, which include an underground lair, aren't described visually. Characters are cartoonish, and never come off as real people. The main character, Ridley Fox, protects the babe and shoots the bad guys with so little depth he could be a clone of "Michael Scarn," the star of Michael Scott's self-penned screenplay in the television series, "The Office." The dialogue in general fits the characters, but every and now and then it uses slang, such as Geez" for "Jesus," that seems straight from the 1960s Batman TV show.