Rating: 
Summary: Standing Tall on fire
Review: Although I now feel buffeted by the diatribe diarhea below me I found some of the negative criticism to be quite a positive point in the Cold Road. I didn't feel the lambast paid sufficient attention to detail and the bonafide merits of creativity. Were I a hall monitor in 5th grade seeking approval perhaps I would call attention to the unique sense of style the likes of groundbreaking unconventional authors and pass judgment on the effects of EVEN. To me, the cold road represented the semi-tranced state of Winter we all ascend through when on the path of recovery from personal loss say perhaps the loss of a parent or child or someone of that emotional magnitude. To me the waves of icy hot imagery were morphologically and structurally similar to the chaos of emotional injury followed by scarring---coupled with pleasant memories that recourse through one's psyche (of the good time) as they make the best of tragedy and the eventual recovery much like the enriched psychic equity which formed after 9/11 and the human bonding like after Pearl Harbor. The Cold Road systematically provided a blueprint for inching one's way thoroughly to a place of safety and evolved perception from metered loss while not underestimating the calculation involved with concepts such as self preservation, much in the way someone walks through three feet of snow over several miles to a waiting HEARTH where the numbness in their toes fade as fast as their fears of frostbite.____ I say read the Cold Road for its unique perspective and disregard any narrowminded brittle reviews beneath me.
Rating:
Summary: Cold Road Is Hot Read
Review: Cold Road Is Hot Read
An absolutely amazing read. Living in a warm country for most of my life (The Bahamas) and spending a great deal of time with my husband in the Cold North (Canada), I related right from the first paragraphs of the prologue. Wilber writes so vividly and well that I think of the characters as intimate friends. He has done an incredible amount of research for this book and it shows in all of the tiny details. Hats off to Wilber! Can't wait for your second novel!
Rating:
Summary: good page turner
Review: Good blend of suspense, shock, and mystery, all with a flavoring of island mysticism underlying the story. The character development is strong, and I found myself caring about what was going to happen to the people in the story - the way a good book will pull you in. I liked the sharp constrast between the frozen winter settings in Minnesota and the tropical islands. You could tell the author has spent time in both locals. All in all a good read and a fun time.
Rating:
Summary: good page turner
Review: Good blend of suspense, shock, and mystery, all with a flavoring of island mysticism underlying the story. The character development is strong, and I found myself caring about what was going to happen to the people in the story - the way a good book will pull you in. I liked the sharp constrast between the frozen winter settings in Minnesota and the tropical islands. You could tell the author has spent time in both locals. All in all a good read and a fun time.
Rating:
Summary: shivering from the Cold Road read
Review: How does Rick Wilber know what is going on inside a teenage girl's head? I'm not sure, but as a highly skilled writer, he nails it. The Cold Road invaded my sleep and waking thoughts; what's going to happen to Melissa? Where is her mother? Why did Danny have to die? I kept guessing and the pages kept turning and slowly the mystery unfolded and the loose ends Wilber left along the reading trail came together in the end to unify a heavily constructed (and researched) plot that makes me wish I could write like that. I've never seen snow or played in it, but I sure felt that Minnesota cold right down to the bone. The dualities of hot and cold, obeah and Christianity lay silent in the plot until the reader opens his/her eyes to see the layers of symbolism behind the characters and plot. I haven't enjoyed a fiction novel like this in a long time.
Rating:
Summary: Pleasant read
Review: I became familiar with the author's writing in his science fiction/fantasy short stories. The literary style carries over in the thriller realm in the Cold Road.
The strengths here are in three characters: a well-crafted protagonist, a somewhat twisted murder suspect and the doggedness of a Minnesota cop.
It's a pleasant read and a good first novel.
Rating:
Summary: The Cold Road
Review: I can see why the critics have liked The Cold Road, since it's packed with excitement and kept me turning the pages from start to finish. The contrast between things hot and cold, from the characters and the setting throughout the novel to the emotional impact, really worked for me. It's a great read.
Can't wait for the next one from Wilber...
Rating:
Summary: The Road Home
Review: In "The Cold Road," Rick Wilber has produced a satisfying mystery, thriller, detective, romance with dashes of sci-fi and horror. Readers of Dean Koontz - another guy who'll mix and match genres in a New York second - will likely find this one simpatico. Wilber paints his story on a large canvas - involving us in a series of grisly murders in the frozen Minnesota (pardon the redundancy) woods, as well as murder and corruption on sunny St. Kitts in the Caribbean. The novel makes a brief stop in the Tampa Bay Area for the protagonist to play basketball for and graduate from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg. Not satisfied just to take chances with form and geography, Wilber, a grown man, chooses to make his protagonist an adolescent girl becoming a young woman, showing us how she struggles to understand how she fits into the world from age 14 to her mid-twenties.
And it's a tougher fit than most for Melissa O'Mally, whose mother disappeared when Melissa was five and who is raising herself with little help from a father who is distant and more than a little odd.
As a teenager, Melissa finds solace in fantasy fiction and playing basketball. Wilber does a good job of evoking the anxieties of adolescence, including the overwhelming importance of making an athletic team and the fear of not making it. Ex-jock Wilber also paints convincing scenes of Melissa competing on the court. As Melissa gets older the questions get harder - what to study, what to do about sex and men - maybe about sex and women - what kind of work to do, where to live? As if these questions, along with her family background, weren't enough to challenge any two young women, Melissa also has these damn visions - visions where she sees clearly what people and animals have experienced moments before their death.
Melissa must also deal with Minnesota's artic winters - where forty-below is not an exaggeration but the forecast. Daunting for anyone, but perhaps even more so for Melissa who has inherited the thin blood of her mother, who was from Jamaica, a descendent of the Irish who escaped the miseries of the auld sod in the 1840s by coming to Barbados as indentured servants.
Finally, Melissa must cope with the unexpected death in combat of her fiancé, Danny, who she has known and loved since she was three. The connection with Danny outlives him because Danny's father, Dan Finnegan, a police detective investigating a series of murders of young girls and their mothers in Blue Earth County, maintains a connection and treats Melissa like the daughter in law she would have become had Danny lived. Finnegan eventually realizes that Melissa's visions may hold the answer to the horrific but seemingly unmotivated murders that have tormented him and defied all his efforts to solve. Melissa's choice of men isn't always good. Danny was a keeper, but her second pick, Bo, is a charming snake. But at least he gets her to St. Kitts, there to be PR director for Bo's family's resort, which turns out not to be all it seems to be. It's in St. Kitts that Melissa makes the acquaintance of potential guy #3, finds where she truly want to live, and unwittingly gets involved in a case of murder and business corruption with some real threatening bad guys who start out holding most of the cards. She also meets an old woman obeah - a form of witchcraft practiced in the West Indies - who recognizes similar powers in Melissa.
In the final chapters of "Cold Road," Melissa learns to trust and use her powers to face the evil both in Minnesota and in St. Kitts. And to learn a great deal about herself and about what happened to her mother. The last part of "Cold Road" - though not for the faint of heart - will keep readers turning pages. And will make them hope Wilber keeps turning out thrillers.
.
Rating: 
Summary: Amateur's Dream
Review: Many would-be writers justify their ambition by telling themselves that there are many, many bad books published each year, thereby giving them hope. This book should be their shining beacon. Nothing about this book is good other than its form factor. It is technically inaccurate, the events are unbelievable, the dialogue is terrible (for instance, people don't use the names of the people they're speaking to in every sentence), and the plot didn't make itself known until too near the end. While the very end ties up the disparate threads, it isn't until that point that the story, such as it is, comes together. There is nothing to pull you through the book. This is truly the worst book I have ever finished (I couldn't normally read this, bad writing on top of bad structure multiplied by technical inaccuracies topped off with illogical and unbelieveable plot points); I will hold this against my book group forever. Getting his "stylistic" devices out of my head will take awhile, i.e. using the word "even" to imply depth or authenticity ("She even did this...," "he even took him to lunch..."). Other reviewers appear to like this book and I can't help but wonder if they are either simply a vocal minority or the only other five people who could get through this thing. They should keep the five stars for themselves. If the author received a two book deal, look for the next one. I imagine it will be his last. "Rules" in writing should aways be presented in asterisks because there should be no formula and blueprint to simply follow. But they should at least be heard and understood by a writer at least as a guide to what kinds of thing need to be done well. If a writer wants to ignore or break the "rules," more power to them; they'll never be any good otherwise. But you can't simply ignore them and replace them with, well, nothing. This books reads (painfully) like a wordy high schooler's pet project. And it hurts.
Rating:
Summary: Great from beginning to end
Review: My only complaint about the book was that it held kept me glued trying to find out what would happen next. Just when I thought I was finished, I would find myself reading a couple more chapters to find some type of stopping point. The vivid descriptions and development of the main characters let me escape into another world where all that mattered was solving the mystery and knowing how everyone would finally turn out. It's a great murder mystery that will keep you guessing until the end. Highly recommended.
| 
