Search - Emissaries from the Dead (Andrea Cort, Bk 1)

I wanted so bad for this to be a good book. Ok, it wasn't bad, but it certainly didn't live up to the potential of its premise. What this book boils down to is a basic whodunnit murder mystery, with a sci-fi theme. The sci-fi aspect made it somewhat more interesting to read, but it really didn't add anything to the plot or the characters.

Yeah... the characters. They were mostly two-dimensional, and the main character was so annoyingly self-pitying (not intentionally, but it came across that way) that I was hoping she'd get lobotomized or something -- which wasn't likely since the story is told from her perspective.

The mystery aspect of the book came across like the vast majority of standard mystery books: the reader is led by the nose through the story line and the entire thing is explained in detail at the very end. The problem is (and this is a complaint of mine with many mystery books), the author doesn't provide enough information or detail throughout the book to let the readers come up with their own ideas and conclusions.

The end of the book was the worst part of it by far. For the majority of the book, we are given the impression that the main character, Andrea, is a closed-off, hard-bitten bitch. Then, quite suddenly, at the end of the book she undergoes a radical change of personality and becomes weepy, caring, and empathetic. Or maybe just "pathetic".

It's hard to get through this book, but you could certainly do worse.