Book Review: The Admiral of Bolivia

From the moment I started reading the narrator voice in my head sounded like one of the Goodfeathers, from the popular 90s cartoon Animaniacs. Honestly, I had a rough time getting through this book; it was desperately crying out for an editor. I had bad feeling when I read the Introduction and there was an author’s note basically giving you permission to skip half of the first chapter. First rule of sales, never give anyone an excuse not to buy! 

 

I also felt like the author had a hard time separating the character, who was an almost caricaturist Bronx firefighter, complete with racial slurs, disdain for anything non-NY especially Midwesterners (which by the way, does not go over well EVER with this Midwesterner, caricature or not,) and unintelligible wiseguy speech, from the rest of the story as a whole. The description and plot were written in similar style with abrupt transitions and lots of awkward similes. In addition, the grammar, spelling and punctuation as a whole was awful, so detracting from the story that even if I had liked the plot I would not have been able to recommend the book. Even the Kindle format was difficult at the end with the glossary of terms, making it hard to look things up - and with all the firefighter terminology and general confusion with the Bronx dialect I really needed to look things up! I think with a good editor and perhaps some formatting help Mandeville would have an ok book, but so many aspects conspired against him that I just couldn’t get into it.