My King The President Paperback – June 1, 2009

I’m a huge fan of political thrillers with strong characters, both male and female, and believable plotlines and dialogue. Unfortunately this book isn’t one of those. Oh, don’t get me wrong, there are some neat twists and turns and some good action sections to the story, but honestly, I couldn’t get past just how sexist the author and therefore the main character, our hero came across. It was clear that the author has no clue how to write dialogue for female characters. The women in this story are there only as props and accessories for the main character. There is not one female in this story (except for a nun) who wasn’t put there to show that women are only on this earth to fulfill sexual and other needs for men. Every woman was either stripping their clothes off, or serving our male hero coffee or cooking him food…no matter what her profession, doctor, president of the United States, they were there to serve him and tantalize and then meet his sexual needs. He had a female president serve him coffee and then boast that she had even made it herself. (What a gal!!)Using women as the butt of his jokes or as an analogy seem to be a natural part of his storytelling, from writing about someone who could change a subject “faster than a woman can pull up her pants,” (I was appalled by that sentence!), to writing that the White House has had, “more face-lifts than the Gabor sisters.” And even when he gives a woman a powerful job, like president of the U.S. he dilutes the power of her position by having that character make the claim that a mass transit strike in NYC would “ruin a girl’s day.” Or by having that same character say, “This better be important. I’m up to my earrings here.”Can you imagine a female author writing a political thriller and having one of the female characters say something like, “…..more times than a man will jack off in his lifetime?” or have a male character who is the president of the U.S. say something like, “having a longshoreman strike in Seattle “would ruin a boy’s day?”By the end of this book when the main character again compares a woman to a boat (a human being to an object) I was so angry that I really couldn’t enjoy the actual story. I won’t be reading anything else this author writes, but I truly hope that a woman whom he cares about will point out these obviously sexist parts of his writing, and that if he is going to write stories like this again, he should put a disclaimer at the front of the book that says, “This story was written by a sexist author and has sexist main characters. Warning, women may be offended.”

A Secret Service agent shoots the President of the USA dead, then kills himself. There are rumours of a grand conspiration. A former investigative reporter is called by the new President to perform an independent and unofficial inquest. And then the novel takes off like a rocket and never stops until the very end. The plot is well assembled, the action is never boring.On the other hand, the plot has a fair number of holes, some big, some small. The prose might have benefitted from the services of a good editor. (Including the mechanics: the book features text in italics and underlined, numbered lists, and ship names written in all caps.) Fortunately, the spelling is consistenly good.There are the usual technical howlers when it comes to computers and aircraft, and, as in many other thrillers, a lack of understanding of how governments work. The President of the USA has way too much free time and freedom of movement, for example. Some characters cross the line between cardboard and utterly unbelievable.But overall the Kindle edition provides good entertainment and excellent value for money. (At $18 the paperback edition is much too expensive and would have got two stars only.)(Scale: * - unreadable, couldn't finish. ** - bad or very bad, but readable. *** - honest solid work, value for money. **** - very good in its genre. ***** - timeless masterpiece.)

One way I can tell a book is good is when I immediately want to buy it after finishing the Kindle sample. In this case, I didn't even pause before paying my dollar to read the rest.Another way I can tell a book is good is when I find myself choosing to read it before either books due back soon at the local library or books awaiting a Vine review.This is such a book. I ended up renewing my library loan of another book, and putting off two Vine book reviews, so I could finish this book first.Lots of action and suspense. Lots of interesting detail. Lots of interesting human interaction. There's some violence, an occasional bad word, and a bit of sex, but not enough to be unsuitable for teen readers. Held my attention all the way to the end, and only twice did I want to shout at an idiot character for a foolish choice.Definitely recommended.

I enjoyed this a lot. Plenty of twists and turns. The characterd were enjoyable. Two glaring errors aggravated me. First is a pet peeve of mine and one that is all too frequent. It is called a MAGAZINE, not a clip. A clip is used to insert rounds into a magazine. A magazine inserts the rounds into a weapon. It is a stupid error that far too many authors make. If you make your living using words, use the right ones. The other error was incorrectly identifying the FAA as the Federal Aeronautics Administration. It's the Federal Aviation Administration. If you want people to take the time to read your book, take the time to look your terms up.

The underlying premise of this book had great promise, and it partially delivered. The plot was good, and there were some twists and turns to keep you reading. However, Mr. Lewis needs a good editor. First, there are several points where there are either words missing, duplicate words, wrong word, or wrong form of the word. There is also a problem with sentence structure hat requires the reader to reread sections searching for clarity. The writing style is also a little simplistic and could use more polish and complexity. The final recommendation is to make the main character, Jed, more likable. I want to find something redeeming and intensely likable about a main character and this one was too flat and one-dimensional for me to relate to.As this was a free book I am not out any $$$ but it was a so-so read and nothing to write home about.Cherri White