Official Review: No Safe Place by Taylor Wilmering
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Official Review: No Safe Place by Taylor Wilmering
[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "No Safe Place" by Taylor Wilmering.]
No Safe Place, by Taylor Wilmering, is a moderately-paced fiction about terrorism in America. It takes the idea of sleeper cells, supposed citizens that are actually working against the country in which they live and work, and combines them with an extremist Muslim group out to destabilize the United States through acts of terror. Following John Anderson and Erin Walker, two government agents in different counter-terrorism branches, the narrative explores the extremely difficult issue of how to root out such carefully hidden individuals before it's too late to act.
The first thing that strikes me about Wilmering's novel, looking back on the plot, is the incredible job she did of showing the helplessness that society at large feels when faced with such events. The entire novel, I found myself wondering how the protagonists could possibly hope to end the chain of destructive and terrifying attacks. In fact, even though the worst part of the conflict is over by the end of the book, the fight against even this one group of extremists wasn't quite finished when I reached the last page.
The version of the novel which I received had been created with a free trial version of a .epub creation software, which caused several letters per page of the book to be replaced with star symbols. I assume that this will be corrected for an actual publishing, as if I were deciding whether to buy such a book that sort of thing would be very off-putting. That said, No Safe Place was otherwise written extremely well. I didn't actually notice any grammatical or mechanical errors, usually the first thing I pick up on in any piece of literature I'm reading.
Wilmering may have written a piece about government agents on the job, but she didn't forget that at the end of the day people are not defined by their jobs. There are a handful of nice, emotional pieces within the story where the characters, allowed to have a brief reprieve from their duties, are shown just being ordinary folks. She even manages to shy away from common stereotypes in both protagonists and antagonists, fleshing out the agents and terrorists alike. To avoid spoilers I'll avoid going into detail, but the terrorists are not at all the bland, two-dimensional characters that one would expect.
It wasn't the sort of story that normally catches my eye. However, Taylor Wilmering managed to remind me of an important lesson with fiction – it doesn't really matter what the book's about, as long as it's done right. Because I found myself racing through this book, and genuinely enjoyed the hours I invested into the read, I give No Safe Place 4 out of 4 stars.
***
Buy "No Safe Place" on Amazon
No Safe Place, by Taylor Wilmering, is a moderately-paced fiction about terrorism in America. It takes the idea of sleeper cells, supposed citizens that are actually working against the country in which they live and work, and combines them with an extremist Muslim group out to destabilize the United States through acts of terror. Following John Anderson and Erin Walker, two government agents in different counter-terrorism branches, the narrative explores the extremely difficult issue of how to root out such carefully hidden individuals before it's too late to act.
The first thing that strikes me about Wilmering's novel, looking back on the plot, is the incredible job she did of showing the helplessness that society at large feels when faced with such events. The entire novel, I found myself wondering how the protagonists could possibly hope to end the chain of destructive and terrifying attacks. In fact, even though the worst part of the conflict is over by the end of the book, the fight against even this one group of extremists wasn't quite finished when I reached the last page.
The version of the novel which I received had been created with a free trial version of a .epub creation software, which caused several letters per page of the book to be replaced with star symbols. I assume that this will be corrected for an actual publishing, as if I were deciding whether to buy such a book that sort of thing would be very off-putting. That said, No Safe Place was otherwise written extremely well. I didn't actually notice any grammatical or mechanical errors, usually the first thing I pick up on in any piece of literature I'm reading.
Wilmering may have written a piece about government agents on the job, but she didn't forget that at the end of the day people are not defined by their jobs. There are a handful of nice, emotional pieces within the story where the characters, allowed to have a brief reprieve from their duties, are shown just being ordinary folks. She even manages to shy away from common stereotypes in both protagonists and antagonists, fleshing out the agents and terrorists alike. To avoid spoilers I'll avoid going into detail, but the terrorists are not at all the bland, two-dimensional characters that one would expect.
It wasn't the sort of story that normally catches my eye. However, Taylor Wilmering managed to remind me of an important lesson with fiction – it doesn't really matter what the book's about, as long as it's done right. Because I found myself racing through this book, and genuinely enjoyed the hours I invested into the read, I give No Safe Place 4 out of 4 stars.
***
Buy "No Safe Place" on Amazon
Latest Review: "The Icarus Prediction" by RD Gupta
