I was torn between a 3 and 4 star review for this one.

It started off really fast and strong for me. I've been in a reading slump and read the first 40% of this one so quickly I thought it was going to be THE novel to get me out of my slump. And who doesn't love a good revenge story.

I also like the author's style of writing. Simple to the point not trying to dress up everything behind poetic phrasing.

Unfortunately, it took me a couple of sittings to get through the remaining 60%. I ended up greatly disliking our main character which took a lot of the fun out of the revenge part of the story. The personalities of several characters seemed to yo-yo too much, and random tidbits (he runs track?) just didn't seem to fit or be needed.

Then one particular character was killed and I knew we had gone off the rails from good revenge to just another psycho brutalizing people for no real reason other than to describe the brutalization.

BUT.....I did manage to finish it which is more than I can say for any other novel I've started reading recently.

And I've picked up Cabrera's recent short story collection A Flock of Crows and Other Short Stories, so I'd definitely say he's worth a read.