A Life Without Fear by Leo King

A Life Without Fear by Leo King

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This book is the sequel to The Bourbon Street Ripper by the same author, Leo King.

If you’re interested in this book, you basically have to read the first book because this one starts right after it. You can read my review of the first book here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show…

That said, this review must be split into two parts. Basically, “A Life Without Fear” is more of the same in a good way. It definitely improves upon the first book and I definitely enjoyed reading most of it – it’s another page turner.

Unfortunately, the same criticisms apply here, too: Some scenes (more than in book 1) are overly gory. It’s not like that was necessary at all but Leo King obviously enjoys writing such scenes. I can live with that but I don’t exactly like that aspect.

Furthermore, quite a bit of suspension of disbelief has to be applied – superhuman abilities, strange alliances but I don’t really have a problem with that. Personally, I smiled and decided to let me get carried away by the story. 🙂

There are still the voodoo elements and some hints about strange forces that might be at work but those aren’t too bad.

The resolution of the mystery was a bit harder to grok, though. Suspension of disbelief is not enough anymore at that point – I really had to say to myself, “Ooookaaayyy… This doesn’t really feel right but, alas, it’s a resolution and it works even though it feels a bit forced.” Still, I thoroughly enjoyed the book up to this point.

After said resolution of the mystery the book should definitely have ended and all would have been well. Up to this point, I’d have given this book the same four star rating I awarded the first one…

And this is where the second part of this review starts: In the end, the book turns into a completely different genre and I absolutely hated that.

In fact, it was so bad, I’m not going to read the third book and will probably avoid the author altogether in the future. Sorry, Leo, but what you pulled off there was a total let-down.

If you still want to read the book, stop reading this review here because I’m about to reveal said genre now which might give you some more insight into what might happen than you want to know.

(view spoiler)[

In the end, the book turns into absolute supernatural nonsense. What happens in the end effectively ruined the book for me. It’s so totally outlandish and badly done, I felt cheated out of a good thriller.

I’m actually really, truly sad about it because Leo King seems to be a nice person and both his books had great promise for the future.

I’m not superstitious, I don’t believe in voodoo, I’m rather the matter-of-fact type of guy and Leo summons every kind of nonsense people have ever come up with. Where he went with his story, I can’t follow.

(hide spoiler)]



View all my reviews

I am and have been working on quite a few F/OSS projects: Exherbo (Nick: Philantrop), Bedrock Linux, Gentoo (Nick: Philantrop), Calibre plugin iOS reader applications, Calibre plugin Marvin XD, chroot-manager, stuff on github, lots of other projects. If you like my work, feel free to donate. 🙂