This book initially reminded me of fan-fiction or erotica in its screenplay-like narrative simplicity, and how every scene pushes toward a specific payoff: the protagonist experiencing success. Business success, sexual success, chance successes, validation of his success by rivals, and his hunches always being right on the money and paying off. 


The writing is entirely superficial. No beautiful prose, no thoughtful descriptions, no world that lives on in your mind long after you’ve put away the pages. It’s almost a storyboard for a television miniseries, complete with notes on lighting. Very little of your imagination will be engaged here, except for how much SUCCESS the protagonist is likely to have next.


The male gaze weighs heavily, categorizing every female on the sexiness continuum, and providing a bevy of barely legal girls who “aren’t looking for anything serious” and think middle-age men are extremely attractive. Big subplot conflict: how will protagonist SUCCEED at resolving his pregnancy of conservative client’s unmarried daughter and maintain SUCCESS of business monopoly? The worldview of the author is that people descended from “European stock” are demonstrably superior to all others, demons are real and are responsible for destroying powerful civilizations, and thus Christianity has the ultimate answer to SUCCESS.


The science fiction isn’t great either. It’s not space opera, because there’s no sense of vastness or improving technology. Everything is categorized in simple taxonomies, and cycles of development have all been seen before; there really isn’t anything unknown to the inhabitants of this universe. Hamilton presents no novel technology or concepts.


Would have added this to my DNF shelf except I wanted to see how Hamilton resolved the obvious contradiction of his heavy-handed “God’s Not Dead” and graphic sexual themes. Answer: the protagonist is just a lovable scoundrel.