Obsidian's Reviews > Zero Days

I got nothing. Way too much tech speak. The motive was dumb. The murderer should have worn a big I did it sign. And the book dragged. Too bad Gabe never felt like a real person to me. And Jack was naive to the point I was flabbergasted at some of the stuff she did.

Full Review: Wow. I just don't even know you guys. This was Ware's first foray into a straight thriller that did not mimic an Agatha Christie or Henry James book. I don't think this was a successful effort. I think the tech speak throughout and common sense gaps in the lead character just killed me. And the countdown to zero days irked the life out of me.

"Zero Days" follows husband and wife team, Jack (wife) and Gabe (husband) who are hired by tech companies and others to break into their systems or buildings to point out security gaps. After a very trying test run though, Jack is picked up by the police who ignore her protestations. When she can't get in contact with Gabe though she worries something is up. And when she returns to their home and finds him murdered, she is left devastated and confused. What could Gabe have been involved in that would have someone breaking in to murder him? When the police decide Jack must have done it (it's stupid, just go with it) she goes on the run (yep even stupider) to figure out whose setting her up and why Gabe was murdered.

Lord. Look, you don't get to really experience Gabe as a character. And every time Jack thinks about him, his "ghost" or whatever it is tells her she has to eat.

Jack. Good grief, she doesn't listen and apparently can't figure out who is obviously setting her up even though I pinged it at the 50 percent point. This was not very hard to work out and it's the only character that made sense. For someone that seems to be an expert who can blend in anywhere and "read" people she was pretty bad at it. And she didn't listen to any advice her sister gave her and went on the run. I don't know about the police in the UK, but that tends to be a terrible idea in the U.S.

The other characters are not given much to work with. We have a lot of police characters and one that is an ex of Jack that just sticks out poorly throughout the book.

The writing was way too much. Look, I am savvy enough about IT and security because of...you know what, don't worry about it. But after a while it was too damn much information.

"..../hey babe, your PI light just came on"
"....coming out onto the 5th floor I dropped another USB."
"encoding a swipe reader wasn't hard if you had the equipment and knew the code, but we didn't know the code. And even if he managed to dig into the intranet files, I was here, and the encoder was back at home."

The flow was awful. There's a countdown from 8 days to zero days and I call BS on this all taking place in a freaking 8 day period.

The setting of the book takes place in the UK in a lot of places. I can't even recall all of the places Jack holed up to hide from the police, but there were a lot. Plus she was walking around with an energy that would have killed anyone else, so you got that going on too.

The ending was a mess. Just dragged on forever to zero days. My guess was confirmed. The book then jumps forward a whole year and I rolled my eyes a thousand times.

Back to the library stacks with this one.