Review of The Date Farm
Posted: 15 Jan 2022, 13:29
[Following is a volunteer review of "The Date Farm" by Jack Winnick.]
The Date Farm is a historical fiction novel written by Jack Winnick. The story focuses on a married couple, Lara and Uri, working with the U.S. government to thwart the actions of an Iranian terrorist group. After an attack on New York by a jihadist group led by Sheikh Abidin, during which a precious metal resource was stolen, Lara and Uri are assigned to a clandestine mission to locate the metal and communications headquarters of the terrorists. In order to accomplish this, Lara and Uri disguise themselves as Afghani immigrants searching for work on the date farm that is believed to be the location of Abidin’s men. This story is not based on true events, however, the author does note that there are strong ties to real historical events.
I am rating this book a 3 out of 4. It is well-written and lacks any glaring grammatical errors. The plot was easy to follow and I did not encounter any difficulties when reading the novel. I believe that this book deserves a rating higher than 2 because of the proper editing and conciseness, but I do not believe that the book should have a perfect score of a 4 as there was one formatting mistake throughout the book for proper italicizing.
I would recommend this book to those who enjoy reading historical fiction novels or books with a central theme of crime-fighting espionage. There is a decent amount of action in the book, without going into too much gory detail, but the book is not overall action-packed with characters that never stop fighting. The author uses language familiar to those in intelligence and military fields; however, as a reader, I did not find it difficult to understand what was happening.
The parts of the book that I liked the most were the times when Lara and Uri showed their capabilities as agents in this mission. Without getting into any spoilers, these instances occurred when the heroes were escaping the terrorists on their own when they were out of reach of their officers from the U.S. I enjoyed these scenes because they tended to be the parts of the book with more action, and it made me feel as a reader that these characters were worthy of the “hero” title. In these scenes, the author did an excellent job of writing out the action in a realistic, yet still exciting, manner.
The main aspect of the book that stood out to me as something I did not like was the time continuity. Overall, the book takes place over a larger span of time, but as I was reading it felt as though it were merely a few days. The passage of time that occurs is not very clear, so I was not always sure of the timeline of events as they were happening. In the whole book, though, this was the only aspect that I had any issue with.
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The Date Farm
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
The Date Farm is a historical fiction novel written by Jack Winnick. The story focuses on a married couple, Lara and Uri, working with the U.S. government to thwart the actions of an Iranian terrorist group. After an attack on New York by a jihadist group led by Sheikh Abidin, during which a precious metal resource was stolen, Lara and Uri are assigned to a clandestine mission to locate the metal and communications headquarters of the terrorists. In order to accomplish this, Lara and Uri disguise themselves as Afghani immigrants searching for work on the date farm that is believed to be the location of Abidin’s men. This story is not based on true events, however, the author does note that there are strong ties to real historical events.
I am rating this book a 3 out of 4. It is well-written and lacks any glaring grammatical errors. The plot was easy to follow and I did not encounter any difficulties when reading the novel. I believe that this book deserves a rating higher than 2 because of the proper editing and conciseness, but I do not believe that the book should have a perfect score of a 4 as there was one formatting mistake throughout the book for proper italicizing.
I would recommend this book to those who enjoy reading historical fiction novels or books with a central theme of crime-fighting espionage. There is a decent amount of action in the book, without going into too much gory detail, but the book is not overall action-packed with characters that never stop fighting. The author uses language familiar to those in intelligence and military fields; however, as a reader, I did not find it difficult to understand what was happening.
The parts of the book that I liked the most were the times when Lara and Uri showed their capabilities as agents in this mission. Without getting into any spoilers, these instances occurred when the heroes were escaping the terrorists on their own when they were out of reach of their officers from the U.S. I enjoyed these scenes because they tended to be the parts of the book with more action, and it made me feel as a reader that these characters were worthy of the “hero” title. In these scenes, the author did an excellent job of writing out the action in a realistic, yet still exciting, manner.
The main aspect of the book that stood out to me as something I did not like was the time continuity. Overall, the book takes place over a larger span of time, but as I was reading it felt as though it were merely a few days. The passage of time that occurs is not very clear, so I was not always sure of the timeline of events as they were happening. In the whole book, though, this was the only aspect that I had any issue with.
******
The Date Farm
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon