Book Review: “The Cure” 0/5*

September 23, 2010 at 4:50 PM (Book Review)

I do not know why I wasted my time reading this dumb book by Robin Cook. I guess giving it a 0/5 stars is a bit overdone but I am surprised this was even published. I give myself 0/5 for persevering and finishing it. The plot was formulaic, the characters were cliché and the end of the book was clearly an afterthought to wrap up the story in a hurry.

I have enjoyed some early titles by Robin Cook like “Coma” and “Contagion” but this one is really dumb. The story starts by confusing the reader with insane Japanese names that I had to write down to keep straight. You probably think I am bad with names, and that is sort of true. Here are some examples of the names thrown at the reader in the first few chapters:
Azukotetsukai
Hisayuki Ishii
Susumu Nomura
Yoshiaki Eto
Hideki Shimoda
Carlo Paparo
Brennan Monagham
Louie Barbera
Yamaguchi gummi
Saburu Fukuda
Hiroshi Fukazawa
Tokutaro Kudo
Satoshi Machita
Naoki
Mitsuhiro Narumi
Hisayuki Ishii
Kenichi Fujiwara
Inagawa

There are more; you get the idea. Note to authors: if you have a lot of characters, make them simple names, starting with different letters of the alphabet so your readers can tell them apart. For example, do not have John, James, Jim, and Jerry as your character names. There are other letters out there. And cool it with the foreign names, too. Those names are probably common names in Japan, but I AM NOT JAPANESE. Sheesh.

To sum up my review of this book, it should only be read on a beach, wearing sunglasses, while drunk. Then you will enjoy it. In Japan.