overall, I thought this book was really fun, I am a huge fan of the show Lost and this book is supposed to be the lost manuscript that Sawyer ends up reading, There are some really fun Lost Easter Eggs sprinkled throughout the text, which was really entertaining, I really love that they weren't forced either, The seamless inserts just worked and I really appreciated that, I also love that my home town was mentioned, which does not happen very often so that was a pleasant surprise! The story itself was very much your classic noir/mystery, but it did keep me guessing for some of it.
I lost a little bit of interest in the middle of the story and I felt that the character of Pru was added just a little bit too late in the story, but this was a fun and entertaining read.
If there wasn't the connection to Lost, I might not have picked it up, but if you have ever watched the show, I recommend it, bad rats This was the longestpage book I have ever read, I found I was doing everything I could to avoid sitting down and reading it, If it werent for the whole Lost Experience and Sawyers Book Group I wouldnt have bothered, Even then this book was nothing but a bunch of “Easter Eggs, " I felt insulted as a reader by being beaten over the head by certain themes throughout the story, The book itself is poorly written, The word trite comes to mind, Characters were overdrawn, the plot was weakand dont even get me started on the dialogue! I can see why even the author is fictional, because I wouldnt want to put my name to this one either.
I'm interested to know who wrote this garbage it certainly couldn't be the brilliant writers of Lost,
Addendum to the above:
It occurs to me that I might have taken this book too seriously, There is a novel frequently referenced in Bad Twin, titled "Trent's Last Case, " It sounded intriguing so I looked it up on Amazon, The product description presents it as a spoof on the genre and not to be taken as a serious detective novel, Perhaps this was a clue, Was Bad Twin intentionally written badly If so, it would have been nice to know that up front, Instead, I just ended up feeling like the victim of a bad marketing ploy, As long as you don't go into reading BAD TWIN thinking you're going to solve the mysteries of the hit television show Lost, then you should be okay, BAD TWIN, on its own, is an intriguing mystery featuring twin brothersone a bigwig in the family business, the other a ne'redowell who has gone missing,
Oh, sure, there are a few references in the actual storyline to make you go "hmmm"the philosopher John Locke, a trip to Australia aboard an Oceanic flight, the totally hyped numbers showing up as the twin's birthday, and the family name of Widmore.
But besides those few basic tidbits, this book won't tell you squat, It really has nothing to do with Lost,
On its own merits, though, it's an engaging mystery that I read in one day, and if Gary Troup was an actual person which he isn't, and had actually written anything else besides BAD TWIN which he hasn't, I wouldn't hesitate to read it.
LOST television series tie in, Detective series book written by one of the writers for TV series "Lost" "This twin stuff, this mirrorimage stuffits enough to make you crazy, If one twin's good, the other must be bad, It's like this primordial battle between good and evil, darkness and light, "
So so, a bit poor, no connections to Lost exempt a couple of names and places, A weak ending Alright, so it starts off interestingly enough, albeit kind of slowly, Gets better, mystery, mystery, travel, whoohoo, I was highly intrigued by the idea that Zander was the good twin and Cliff the bad one, I really thought that would play out more than it did, But then again, I thought lots of things would play out more than they did, for example, Sky, Oh well. Moving beyond that, you have the detective story, I think that was the biggest mistake the writer could make, You don't say, "oh, here's the best mystery book plotline EVER" and then use it yourself, That hurts you, it really does, Not only are you saying that your story has the best plotline, you're also being idiotically predictable, Lots of people die, it's messed up, Manny tosses around some great quotes loved him!, and we finally find Zander, Back home, Cliff's been killed, so everyone rushes back for the most rushed, convoluted, and random solution ever,
The plot then, pretty much was horrible, I have to give some credit to the writing though, which I thought in many places was fabulous, I just wish it had more tieins with the show and wasn't quite as horribly rushed, nice cameos by Mittlewerk and Alvar, though! Complete and utter crap, Only a vague connection with one of the most brilliant things on TV makes it worth even knowing about, and its revelations about the show, if they even mean anything, probably won't be revealed for anotheryears until theth season starts.
Aside from a Feb.start date for theth season, reading this was the greatest blister onbesides war, the economy, politics, pop music, etc,
NC This was my second time reading through this one and I think it's a perfectly fun, serviceable mystery, I'm not sure why so many reviewers seem to find so much fault with it,
Of course, part of that might be that they misunderstood the purpose of the book, It was never meant to reveal secret knowledge about anything going on in Lost, It was merely meant to be the manuscript that Sawyer finds amongst the wreckage the author, Gary Troup, having been sucked into the plane's engine in the first episode and reads until Jack tosses the whole thing in the fire.
Of course, I also understand that it is supposed to have some connection to the Lost ARG, but I didn't really follow that, I just thought it was a cool idea to release the final manuscript by Oceanicpassenger Gary Troup as part of the Lost experience,
This is a fun read, and it's peppered with names from Lost and the Lost ARG, but it's clear that names like Widmore were just used by Troup as a popular rich, business family name like a writer in our world might use Vanderbilt, because the Widmores in the world of Lost are of UK origin, not US.
Perhaps Troup based his Widmores on some American branch of the same family, perhaps not, but that's going beyond the purpose of the story,
Also, if you look at the events of the novel in a more allegorical sense, there's actually quite a bit revealed for what came after this book was originally released.
Especially on the nature of good and evil, It's possible, and this is just my theory of course, that Jacob had a small, but significant guiding hand in Troup's writing of Bad Twin, I mean, he was brought to the island, even if he didn't last that long, This is a weird LOST tiein book, It doesn't have any characters that appeared on LOST that we know of other than the author "Gary Troup" exploding engine guy and Cindy, the flight attendant, to whom "Gary's" book is dedicated.
It's a mostly unrelated whodunnit, As such, it's perfectly fine, It's a thousand times better than Murder on Capitol Hill, at least,
There are some other LOST references we glimpse the Hanso foundation, and Alvar and Mittelwerk are briefly mentioned, I think the biggest relation to LOST is in the references to works of literature, which in the book relate to the unfolding mystery, but really I think have more to do with the LOSt story arch.
For instance, the book references Trent's Last Case, a whodunnit where the mystery seems to be completely solved/way through but then it all falls apart and you have to start from scratch.
Isn't that just where the end of Seasonseems to be leaving us It looks like it's all over but, . . hey, there's two seasons left to go!
Anyway, if you're suffering from LOSTdeprivation, this is a good read, If not, you can find a more worthwhile mystery, A short, easy to read book that ties in with the LOST Experience,
What more can I say To review or give my thoughts on the book alone kinda misses the point, But Goodreads is a site for books, not LOST junkies. grin And I feel compelled to offer my two cents on the book alone, . . sort of .
My overall rating sums up fairly accurately how I feel about Bad Twin, . . it was, well okay. I guess.
Its not a strongly written book that draws you in from the first word and doesnt let you go until you are literally falling asleep atAM or until youve finished it.
Unless, of course, you are a LOST fanatic who reads every word looking for hidden meanings or clues that the author has cleverly concealed from the casual reader,
Not a book full of incredibly alive characters that jump off the pages of the book and live in your head for weeks after finishing it, Although
I must admit I kinda dug Manny and enjoyed the memory of his character shuffling around in my brain for a while, We all need someone in our life like Manny dont we
Not a book that uses literary devices, word choices and writing techniques in new and surprising wayskeeping the reader engaged on a more stylistic level.
Its pretty straightforward. Thought I was amused by the way the author tossed in “Trents Last Case” as the “best detective novel” written and seemed on some level to mimic aspects of it.
Overall I felt it was a simply written book, with a fairly basic detectivetype plot line and characters that existed for the most part only on the surface.
Did I hate it Do I consider reading it a waste of my time Heck no! To me, it has two redeeming features, One, it ties in with LOST, Enough said. Two, it introduced me to a new book, I had never heard of “Trents Last Case” and Im always on the lookout for a cleverly written detective story, So Ill hope that “Trents Last Case” is good enough to stand up to my expectations, That alone will make it worth reading “Bad Twin, ”
So fingers crossed, and stay tuned!
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