I was stuck with this super boring book for so long, and finally managed to finish it this week. If you want to buy any thrillers or suspense or science fiction, watch out for this author: Michael Palmer!
I made a mistake of trusting the rating at Amazon. It never failed me, but this time it did.
This book, The First Patient, was written based on a story about nanotechnology. This is not new to me, coz I’ve read Michael Crichton’s Prey
. That one was awesome.
This one, cannot compare to Prey at all!!! Well, to be more accurate, it cannot compare with any books, even the most boring books, that I have ever read.
Boring
The main characters, Dr. Gabriel Singleton and the President, are the most boring persons in the world. The book is full of super boring conversations between the two of them. The author obviously thought he has written very clever and funny lines, but they bored me almost to death. Jokes are not funny, maybe because they are very American jokes, I don’t understand.
The book started with 3-4 chapters, describing the boring life of that doctor (and yet the author seems to think his life is very interesting). Then followed by a lengthy and boring conversation, of how the President of the United States trying to convince him to be his physician.
Then, there is a lot of boring flashback of his past, which became irrelevant to the story (I was hoping it better be relevant, but NOT).
The author likes to repeat what he has written in previous chapter, as if we do not have good memory about his story. So, it would go something like this (not exactly coz I don’t remember them):
Chapter 1-3: about A, B, C.
Chapter 4-5: Repeat A, add-on D, E, F
Chapter 6-7: Repeat A, D, E, add-on G, H, I.
goes on.
So, essentially towards the end, I read the same line again and again. You tell me, is this boring or not?
No Plots At All
Err… maybe to be more accurate, the plots are so transparent. You know them already, and you just read until it happens. The only plot that you don’t know, is – who is the villain, the mastermind, behind the whole conspiracy.
Exaggerating
Sorry, this is nothing against the Americans, I love my American friends, so don’t take this part personally…
The author is so ‘American-ego’. Exaggerating and boasting on American flags. The first chapter turned my appetite off. He kept emphasizing that Andrew Stoddard (President) is the most powerful man. And he even go to the extent of staying that he is the most powerful man in the solar system.
I really want to throw 4 letter words at this author (to be exact I wanna us the T word for Cantonese one, you guess, 3 letter). Come on lah, President of the United States is the most powerful man in the whole solar system? Where do you put God har? So arrogant and disrespectful of other nations.
Full of Political Shits
We have much more interesting political stories to read over here in Malaysia, so I am really not interested in reading that boring and lengthy political lectures in that book. If you want some bias views of Palmer’s, then you might want to consider this book. LOL!
Poor Writing Skill
Palmer is just a poor writer. He cannot characterize the people well. He spend lengthy pages to describe a person, trying to make us emotionally attach to that person, but FAILED. He ended up bored us with this.
The story is poorly written, cannot bring out the suspense at all. I was unable to concentrate on the words. I could spend the whole afternoon staring at the same page until I fell asleep.
I had to skip so many pages, maybe half the book, to complete it, finally, in maybe 2 or 3 weeks (lost count). He is just not able to capture my attention. NOT a page turner, but page-skipper. LOL!
Too Unbelievable
Unbelievable – not about the nanotechnology, I know nothing is impossible. Unbelievable – about the whole storyline. For example, the assassin tried to kill that old doctor and the new doctor, plus a blind man, many times. He failed. And yet he is called a professional killer. The author called him as the ‘most scary and coldest person’ (again so exaggerating), but yet he seem to be an amateur to me in killing.
Another example, Dr Singleton went into the hidden nanotechnology lab, so easily, and they have only 1 guard who keeps on going around, no stationed guard. He went in safely and came out easily.
The girl spy that the author trying to make her look so innocent, was caught by the bad guy, ended up escaped with unbelievable helps. Too beautiful to believe.
The author just want a happy ending, I think.
My rating: ZERO! (If I can put negative, I would give a negative 5)
Hmm… what else? Maybe Aiyu or Siumai can add on. They read the book before me, so I believe they have something to say as well!
is the latest Tess Gerritsen’s novel, also known as 
