Slowburn

Rating:
Summary: A bit wordy, but not bad
Review: I enjoy suspense thrillers, and like to pick up new books from time to time. I really enjoyed the way this began, but after the first 2 chapters the story dragged in some places. Choppy in others. Mr. Lalos must be an English major, as he uses many adjectives, and describes just about everything. Alright at times, but other times I found myself skimming ahead to just find out what the heck is happening already.

Comparative to other suspense/thrillers, this was unique in its story. I wish there was a bit more gore, as I found myself craving for more! Not bad for a first attempt. I'll be curious to find out what his next book will cover.

Rating:
Summary: A bit wordy, but not bad
Review: I enjoy suspense thrillers, and like to pick up new books from time to time. I really enjoyed the way this began, but after the first 2 chapters the story dragged in some places. Choppy in others. Mr. Lalos must be an English major, as he uses many adjectives, and describes just about everything. Alright at times, but other times I found myself skimming ahead to just find out what the heck is happening already.

Comparative to other suspense/thrillers, this was unique in its story. I wish there was a bit more gore, as I found myself craving for more! Not bad for a first attempt. I'll be curious to find out what his next book will cover.

Rating:
Summary: Not Bad for a First Effort
Review: If you're the type who occasionally picks up a book from a small/self publisher on speculation that its author may someday gain wider appeal, SlowBurn is a fair investment. The book's overall story and setting are relatively unique compared with most mass market thrillers, demonstrating the author's ability to think, at least conceptually, outside the boundaries of popular media.

The plot, however, was sometimes hard to follow because of choppy pacing and contradictory details, and the book needs editing to distinguish the primary story from secondary themes. I also thought there were some fairly large gaps in the story, like why Grogan was at the camp to begin with, instead of on a remote island in the Pacific.

Character-wise, Hayley, Elliott, and Nitro were well-developed, and both Elliott and Nitro were likeable. One thing I didn't like--especially in Hayley's case--was the author's habit of always revealing what was in characters' minds. This was often used as a way to convey a moral message and, by the end of the book, I felt like I'd been beaten bloody with a "sermon stick." Other characters were stereotypical, as were the portrayals of blue-collar and small-town life. Having personally been part of each community, I thought the descriptions of them little more than upper-middle-class urban caricatures, especially with regard to Podunk.

On a scale of one to five (all literature considered), I give SlowBurn two stars. A good book comes from a good idea, which SlowBurn is, but the devil is in the details.

Rating:
Summary: SlowBurn? More Like SlowRead.
Review: Independent Publisher magazine's review of SlowBurn:

Make a note of the name Peter Lalos. SlowBurn is an outstanding first novel. With luck, Lalos will make the bestseller list in the near future. SlowBurn is a tale of suspense, adventure, and action. The setting is a mining camp in Oregon. The crew sent to close the mine are men with no hope in their future.

The characters are believable and well-developed. The main characters are not heroic, but find themselves in a situation where they must act or die. Grogan is evil personified. A natural born leader, his hold over the miners is realistic and explainable. If made into a movie, Grogan would be a plum role.

One flaw, the time line in the middle of the book was confusing. Hayley could not have been at the mine for more than a week or so, yet, he seemed to have been there much longer.

Readers of suspense will enjoy SlowBurn. While there is foreshadowing that Grogan is behind all the mayhem, there is a real zinger toward the end. Lalos neatly ties it together.

--Donna Franklin

Rating:
Summary: Slowburn Turns Up the Heat
Review: Slowburn is a novel that will grab a readers attention and will not let go until the final page has been read. The book is fast paced and traces the struggle between right and wrong in a place where normal societal rules do not really exist. As the villian falls further down an evil spiral, the hero unfortunately must follow and sacrifice some of his own humanity in order to survive and save the men under in his charge.

This is a book I would not recommend to younger readers, but mature readers will enjoy the fast paced action that comes at them from all angles.

Rating:
Summary: Slowburn
Review: Slowburn is a tough read in the beginning, but once you're in, there's no stopping. You want to know who (or what) is behind the strange ways in which the men are dying. I don't generally like to give away story lines to books or movies, but I will say I really liked the book. I love suspense and thrillers, and trying to figure out what's going on. Lalos is a bit wordy in places, but he spends time giving certain men an identity, as well as giving background to specific instances. I found myself liking 2 particular characters, Tony and Nitro. Nitro...the one still wet behind the ears, and Tony, the old Italian he looks up to.

There were a couple of things that I didn't feel I knew what ended up happening, or there was no "closure", but I took that as Lalos allowing the reader to use their own imagination to fill in the gap the way the reader wants to.

My hat goes off to this young man and his first novel.

Rating:
Summary: SlowBurn Self-Destructs
Review: SlowBurn is an astonishingly bad book.

The story itself has a bit of merit. However, the few threads of plot that make sense are lost among endless pages of illogical occurrences (the miners allegedly drive 75 m.p.h. on a rutted mountain road--itself an impossibility--to a town 10 miles away, yet it takes an hour to get there) and moralistic ranting. The narrative point of view seems to be coming from an omnipotent universal consciousness, but it often jumps confusingly from one character's thoughts to another's, sometimes within the span of one sentence. The reader supposedly is privy to every character's innermost feelings, yet author Lalos unnecessarily hides key details of the story for the sake of drama. The main villain steals something from the infirmary, but what? A miner sympathetic to the camp director's plight eavesdrops on a conversation between two other characters, but what does he hear? This selective fact sharing left me asking more questions than the narrative answered and, by the book's end, had frustrated me to the point of anger.

Moralistically, the reader is presented with several overlapping and confusing themes: Man has abused and destroyed nature, and now nature is fighting back. Hate is the most powerful emotion. Hate is not the most powerful emotion. A simple, uncomplicated life is the best way to live. A simple, uncomplicated life is a recipe for despair.

I don't know what I was supposed to take away from this story. The book includes misconceptions about various walks of life and fails to describe, beyond the physical environment, the circumstances and qualities that motivate its characters. Whether it's female characters, of which there are few, or blue-collar workers, of which there are many, the only developed personae seem to be college-educated men with some career ambition and a fierce opposition to moral indignities. Women, for example, speak but one or two lines in the entire novel and fill only the roles of prostitutes, hysterical mothers, or young wives trapped in doomed marriages and restrictive small towns. They seem to cry out, "Save me!" I say, "Spare me." The blue-collar workers are stereotypically presented as prideless drones, out of money (except when it comes to buying beer or cocaine or bidding $100 to buy a dead comrade's Chicago White Sox jersey), and lacking both the interest and will to better their lives. Apparently, if you're a female or a laborer, the life you're born into is the best you can hope for.

The editing? This books needs it, and bad. The writing is wordy, redundant, overly dramatic, and often inaccurate. Among the most obvious mistakes: The Atlanta Braves play at Turner Field (and formerly at Fulton County Stadium), not the Georgia Dome; a birth scene is described as a "conception" (a big difference to those who've been part of either process); there has never been an animal named the Do-Do bird, although there has been one called a dodo; and even though the story takes place in the years 2004-05, an inexplicable comment describes the day man and computer will walk hand in hand "into the next millennium." Which millennium? The one in another 996 years?

I finished SlowBurn with a huge sigh of relief. Not because of anything that happened in the story, but because it was such hard work to fight through the mistakes (another question: Can a construction Bobcat actually move fast enough to become airborne?), preaching, and almost double the number of words necessary to tell the story.

Rating:
Summary: Debut suspense thriller by a master storyteller.
Review: Something (or someone) is killing the workers at the isolated Corpus Crossing mining camp. The men under the watch of settlement director Hayley Strickland are at the end of the line, living the distorted, ugly antithesis of the American dream. But a growing force in the valley is twisting the miner's discontent into something decidedly more sinister and insanely violent. Cut off from the rest of the world in a snowbound valley, Strickland finds himself in a race against time to stop the escalating cycle of bloodshed and self-destruction before the storm of death buries the camp. Slow Burn is an intense, suspense novel that grips and fascinates the reader. It is one of those suspense thrillers that are so easy to pick up and so hard to put down. Slow Burn is author Peter Lalos' debut novel and marks him as an author to look for in the future.

Rating:
Summary: Who or What is Killer?
Review: Today's Books/Public News Service review listing of SlowBurn, October 19, 1999:

Rating: Good!

Peter Lalos, Washington D.C., writes horror-suspense of isolated miners facing evil, deadly force. Who or what is the killer?

Rating:
Summary: Who or What is Killer?
Review: Today's Books/Public News Service review listing of SlowBurn, October 19, 1999:

Rating: Good!

Peter Lalos, Washington D.C., writes horror-suspense of isolated miners facing evil, deadly force. Who or what is the killer?