book review last green tree jim

Book Review: The Last Green Tree - Jim Grimsley

I didn't hate this book. It was interesting enough to keep me going to

the end. There were enough questions I wanted answered that I kept

going. I didn't hate this book. Unfortunately, after finishing the

book, I'm mostly left with a laundry list of the things that irritated

me about it:

1. I realize that authors have pretty much no say in the cover art

that goes on the book, but could we at least get someone that's read

the book get the final say? I liked the cover to this book. It has a

women climbing on tree limbs in the midst of what looks like a large

city sized computer. Now, there are large trees, and large cities in

this book. However, they do not met in fashion remotely similar to the

cover. So, my attraction to the book was a lie.

2. Same thing with the jacket description. The last journey of the

book, into the heart of the forest, had an entirely different flavor

than what I'd been lead to believe from the jacket description. It's

not wrong. The tone was just off.

3. I hate it when I find out after the fact that large chunks of the

back story of a novel were taken care of in another novel, or short

stories. I only found out in the acknowledgements at the end of this

book that several back story features had been covered in some of the

author's prior short stories. These elements certainly were not

integral to the actual novel as it progressed, but several were

strange enough that I wasn't overly happy to not actually get a more

detailed description by the end of the book.

So, would I recommend this book to others, or read more by this

author. I'll reserve judgment until I see his next jacket cover.