Joshua Tree

Not the best of the Fargo books. Seems like several of their actions were un-Fargo like. Starting with going to Cuba, noticing a tail and thinking "we must have been sold out by a one of our staff" utterly discounting the bureaucratic trail the left just entering Cuba, not to mention the communist gov't just being suspicious of Americans, let alone treasure hunters that are American. Then, following that up with breaking into a gov't military museum, thinking all they need to do if caught is get into international water and they are worry free. Kinda short sighted since I'm sure there is at least one country that the Fargos would want to someday visit would be willing to extradite them back to Cuba--Russia and Venezuela come to mind

The overall story was entertaining, but their judgement lapse kept briefly taking me out of it.

I enjoyed the story quite a bit, but when describing what characters were thinking or feeling, it just be came too wordy, and often redundant or containing unnecessary recapping of the story. It caused the story to drag a bit at times, and for me to actually think at a few points, “alright, I get it...” Also, the recapping of what happened a couple chapters earlier is as unneeded as it is is on modern TV shows when they do it after every commercial break.

I really enjoyed all three of the books in the Night Angel Trilogy. Even though it was an “epic” story saving the entire world from catastrophe, the characters are not run-of-the-mill, but deep, and interesting, and so too is the story itself.

The only real negatives for me were the superficial similarities to Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. None of it was the same, but some of the points were similar enough to pull me out of it every time I came across them, it pulled me out of the story because I recognized them.

The first of these are the Lae???knaught???an army without a country that dislikes magic; similar to the White Cloaks from The Wheel of Time. The second is the Chantry and the maja are, on the surface, similar to the White Tower and the Aes Sedai. In both cases, the differences are more important to the story and define it as something different, but unfortunately the similarities were enough to bring me out of the story, if just for a moment. This may be because of my mixed feelings about The Wheel of Time books.

All in all, I???m glad I finally got around to reading them. I???ve had the series in paperback in my collection for a few years???I was drawn in by the covers, but never had the time to read them, even if it meant spending my Audible credits on them.

I look forward to reading more by Brent Weeks.