ARA Review by drewhead118 of Smith

[drewhead118]

[Following is an OnlineBookClub.org ARA Review of the book, Smith.]

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4 out of 5 stars

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Deep in an archaeological dig site, regular 18-year-old Jake Goddard makes a life-changing discovery: a small leather bag that houses an innocuous-seeming ring. But once Jake puts on the ring, he discovers that it’s anything but ordinary… it’s Solomon’s 3000-year-old Ring of Power, and it’s inhabited by an inhuman interface named Smith. The ring itself is a conduit for Jake to use incredible powers, and while he wears it, no harm may befall him. This, of course, places a gigantic target on his back—everyone who knows about the ring covets its awesome power.

Swept into wide battles that Jake only barely understands, he’s left fighting for his own as factions vie for the Ring of Power. All the while, Jake has to hold the reigns tight as Smith seeks to burn the world down in pursuit of making Jake the king of all humanity. When the betrayals begin, who can Jake truly trust?

Overall, Smith is a fun ride, but not a particularly complicated or sophisticated one. It lurches from plot point to plot point without taking any time at all to let them breathe. Fans of tightly paced stories might enjoy this; other readers might almost get a sense of whiplash. There is a lot of violence—most of it described in graphic detail—making the book almost a parade of violent setpiece after violent setpiece. In that way, it might be thought of a little like a John Wick film. Miller takes the reader from confrontation to confrontation, but the rest of the world seems secondary to the action. A John Wick film can still be an enjoyable thing.

There’s never a dull moment, but sometimes books really thrive in the quiet scenes between larger moments. Characters, beyond Smith itself, aren’t very developed, but again, there really isn’t any space for much development in a book of this size. And lastly, the plot can get a little repetitive: characters try to do something, someone tries to kidnap them, they fight them off, but then they pretend to be kidnapped anyways, they meet the kidnappers’ boss, and then more graphic violence. Rinse and repeat about 5 or 6 times. The only part of the plot that surprised or outwardly impressed me was the very last scene, ending the book with an unexpected amount of maturity. I couldn’t imagine a better way for it to end.

Despite those mentioned faults or underdeveloped areas, I still would give this book four out of five stars. You need to evaluate Smith for what it is, and what it is is this: a fun, action-packed romp through Israel and New York City that crosses the tropes of action-adventure franchises with gory violence. It’s not trying to be high literature any more than Die Hard is trying to be arthouse cinema. Smith sets very modest goals for what it’s trying to be, but then it largely meets them. The idea of an interface like Smith itself is interesting, and a certain cave scene by the end leaves open the possibility of a sequel where some of the ring’s more interesting properties could be more fully explored.

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