What It Takes to Kill a Bull Moose, a Review by Susan

I had totally forgotten that I was supposed to read this book, though, I suspect that there was a big part of my subconscious that knew that this would touch on today’s political landscape and while I believe that is what attracted me to the book in the first place, it is what made it too hard for me to read in the heart of the election season. And now that the season is over, it may be coloring my perspective a bit. It is very hard not to see our soon-to-become President in this novel, and I am finding the news to be hard to watch. I will attempt to offer an unbiased review, based on the book’s literary merits.

The author’s background and experience in politics is clear and is well-incorporated in the book. I would categorize this as dystopian more than science fiction, even though it does occur in the future. Our country is still very recognizable in terms of its general structure. A narcissistic man wants to become the leader of our country and will stop at nothing to get what he wants. That is basically a summary in a nutshell. The other male characters were fairly fleshed out although the author clearly delineates between good and evil and with respect to some of the other characters, the book might have benefitted from the characters being more rounded. I also thought that the female characters were interesting but were not as well developed as they could have been.

The author clearly did research into American history, however, I thought that the historical information that was presented, while no doubt accurate, and relevant, was presented a bit dryly, especially in comparison to the pace of the rest of the novel.

The pace was good and the book was suspenseful. This was clearly meant to be the first in a series, and I had a pretty good idea about three quarters in how this part was going to end. Being able to guess at that point in the novel wasn’t particularly problematic for me, but it might be for some people.
I will definitely read the next part, though it will be a while since reading about politics that is so eerily like modern times is a bit challenging. I will need time to recover from current events…