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The Blade Itself (2007)

The Blade Itself (2007)

Book Info

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Genre
Rating
3.59 of 5 Votes: 5
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ISBN
0312360312 (ISBN13: 9780312360313)
Language
English
Publisher
minotaur books

About book The Blade Itself (2007)

Good but not great. I read Marcus Sakey's book Brilliance which I thought was excellent and it made me want to read more from this author. This book just didn't do it for me though. The pacing was just too slow and it was just far too easy to put this book down and walk away from it; and there wasn't a lot to pull me back in other than it's what I had to read. That said, the writing is really great in a lot of ways. Sakey turns a phrase with skill throughout the book and in places it carries the novel, but unfortunately, when you're turning brilliant phrase after brilliant phrase about boring, predictable characters in a plot that isn't really all that unique, the magical prose only does so much.The story is about a crook, from the South Side of Chicago who does a job that goes bad. His hothead partner goes down for it and he walks away--scared straight. Seven years later, he's got a great life, a great job, and an amazing girl. He's a civilian now. Then his old partner gets paroled and figures he owes him for not naming him and doing the time on his own. When our anti-hero refuses, his old partner threatens his new, happy way of life and everything in it if...(say it with me, class) he doesn't do one last job to get his partner back on his feet again.I'm sure the movie version will be good--it sets up to be a better movie than a book. There are inconsistencies in the book that will probably be easier to gloss over when it's all compacted down into 2 hours. The most disturbing of these is how in 7 years, the protagonist loses all sense of street smarts that he once possessed in spades. Time and again, we watch him make stupid mistakes and as he makes him, the reader can't help but think, "Well this will come back to bite him in the ass." And, inevitably, it does. We think a street saavy guy, who fears for his girlfriend will put her someplace safe when everything gets rolling toward a conclusion. He doesn't. The bad guy gets her. Duh. It would have been fine if he'd tried to stash her someplace safe and his old partner figured it out. But to not even sense the danger she might be in and do something about it proactively is just too thin. The fact that every bad thing that happens to him is the result of his old parter (the brawn) outthinking him (the brain) is just too much. It happens again and again. For a guy who made his living by seeing all the angles, apparently seven years of clean living takes that away from this guy entirely. He's a victim from the start of this book right up until almost the very end. It makes for a very boring protagonist. This book is good but not great because it doesn't have any juice. I think that it's supposed to be about the characters, more than the plot and that would be fine if the main character wasn't such a complete victim. Sakey writes about characters who come from a place where you're a shark or you're food. This is the story about a shark who decides that life as food is more appealing to him and when forced back into the life of a shark--has no freaking clue how to be one, as if he was never a shark in the first place. If this book had been about him slowly shedding the layers he'd placed around himself until he became a shark again, it may have been interesting. That wasn't the case though. Sakey's protagonist is a pussy and that was boring.

The Blade Itself by Marcus SakeyFlint native Marcus Sakey has pounced unto the literary scene with his first novel The Blade Itself. This visceral thriller goes beyond the standard thriller genre and quickly becomes a story of love, redemption, and the broken bonds of brotherhood. Sakey, who now calls Chicago home, has written a novel that brings the cold blasts and gritty streets of the windy city to pulse-pounding life. Sakey’s hero, Danny Carter, is a reformed thief just trying to put his past behind him. He’s got a good job, a woman that loves him, and all he wants is to live his life in peace when an old partner re-enters his life with a different plan for Danny’s future. As Danny struggles to maintain his grip on his hard won legitimate life, he is haunted by people and mistakes from his once buried past. Fans of the thriller genre will find plenty of grizzled meat on this bone. Sakey’s characters come to life with dialogue that feels authentic without being overdone. Every chapter advances the story without excess baggage or needless subplots, and readers are often rewarded with those insights and tricks of the professional thief that serve to both entertain and educate those of us stuck in the mundane world. The Blade Itself is a riveting first novel well deserving of your attention. Those new to the genre will find much in The Blade Itself that confounds expectations. Sakey’s female characters are complex and intelligent. They participate in the story, not just serving as maidens in distress. The story itself evolves quickly from a simple crime caper to a rich and moving tale of two boyhood friends, brothers in all but blood, whose lives have forever diverged, yet whose destinies are nevertheless intertwined.

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The Blade Itself tells the story of Danny, a former thief who has built a life for himself after leaving “the life” seven years earlier. His ex-partner, however, has other plans. Fresh out of prison and looking to settle the score, Evan brings trouble into Danny’s life.I had a lot of trouble reading this book, because its premise bothered me so much (from the emotional perspective–the story made me nervous, not skeptical). One of the scariest ideas is that someone would decide to start messing with you, and couldn’t be deterred. The impotence of the criminal justice system in preventing, rather than avenging, crime becomes evident in this sort of story.Once I got past the initial 60 pages or so, the book zipped by with the lightning speed of a flat-out foot race. Sakey does a good job of escalating the stakes for the main character without pushing it outside the realm of believability. And he crafts a villain whose just sane enough that it rings true and at the same time walks the madman’s path so easily.The title comes from Homer: “The blade itself incites to violence.” Obviously connected to the nature of guns and gun crime, one woman in my book club suggested that the title refers to the villain, who enters the story like a force of nature, and around whom violence eddies.Book available via BookMooch (as of 2008 11 16)
—Brendan

A long time ago, I got a short story published in a horror magazine. But since I don’t live in the United States, I missed out on my free copy. I tried to make arrangements to have it sent to a friend, who would then forward it to me, but the magazine went out of business before that happened. Then some time later I found the index of the issue I was featured in, with a list of all the other writers' names. So I looked them up and sent messages to those whose e-mail I found. Marcus Sakey was one of them and he was perfectly willing to send me his copy.Turns out Sakey has published four thrillers meanwhile, and he's even been translated in several languages (including Dutch). So my library has a copy of his book, and since I was done with reviewing the Koontz books, it was the obvious choice of next to read.“The Blade Itself” is his debut crime novel. The Dutch title is “Breaking Point”, for obvious reasons.The story is about Danny Carter, ex-thief who has bettered his life after a job gone wrong. He got away while his partner in crime Evan got caught and was convicted to twelve years in jail. After seven years, however, Evan is released, and immediately the guy goes looking for his former partner and forces him to join in one final heist.The novel begins with Danny and Evan still both in their thieving days as they go about robbing a pawn shop. The opening chapter immediately sets the pace of the novel: a thriller with the necessary action. As the story progresses, we move ahead seven years, and then we follow Danny for several weeks as Evan terrorizes him.The book is both slow ánd fast; I like the story and a lot happens to the characters, though I’m wondering when the real action starts, since everything still takes several weeks to reach the finale. When you’ve come from reading books where the stories usually take place over a matter of a few days or sometimes even only hours, this change of pace takes some getting used to. You want things to hurry up, you want the action to flow more swiftly, have Danny drop from one setback into another without a chance to breathe. However, the longer timeframe of “The Blade Itself” is actually a good choice: it stresses the psychological terror of the villain, slowly chipping away Danny’s defences, literally pushing him to his “breaking point”.It's also been a long time since I've actually read a book in Dutch and it really takes some getting used to as well. The writing isn't as crisp, as imaginitive, as colorful. The characters are good, dialogue as well, but I keep translating certain phrases back to English. For instance, the seven word sentence "hij vindt het leuk om te kijken" obviously comes from the original four word sentence "he likes to watch"; which sounds a lot more direct and succinct. They could've just as easily used a more appropriate and also only four word sentence "hij kijkt graag toe"; and you could even omit the last word, as well. But this is translating issues, and doesn’t reflect the original story.I went in without any expectations, without any prejudice, only with the idea to give a new author a chance; Sakey has passed with flying colors, and I’ll definitely take a look at his other books when I have the chance.
—Johnny

This is Marcus Sakey's debut novel, and it's even more impressive for that fact.The protagonist Danny has built a nice life for himself, but all of this is threatened when his old buddy shows up. Evan had gone to prison after a botched pawn shop robbery, during which he savagely beat and shot two people. Danny had run away and Evan took the rap, keeping his mouth shut. Now he figures Danny owes him.Evan forces Danny to help pull off one last big job, kidnapping the son of Danny's boss for ransom. Things go wrong for a lot of reasons, one of which is that Evan is a psychopath. Evan doesn't merely want the ransom; he also wants to punish Danny, and the kidnapping is a means to destroy his comfortable life. Danny decides he has to make things right, even though he knows the danger Evan poses and that he will probably try to kill Danny's girlfriend if he suspects any opposition on Danny's part. Sakey utilizes a lot of the conventions of crime thrillers. In less skilled hands, it might have come off as cliched, but Sakey makes it compelling. I don't think it's too much of a risk to compare him to Elmore Leonard.
—Jim

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