Book Review - BREACH OF PEACE by Daniel B. Greene

(Title: Breach of Peace / Author: Daniel B. Greene / Publisher: Self-Published / Publication Date: March 30, 2021 / Pages: 98)

Book Blurb

When an imperial family is found butchered, Officers of God are called to investigate.  Evidence points to a rebel group trying to stab fear into the very heart of the empire.  Inspector Khlid begins a harrowing hunt for those responsible, but when a larger conspiracy comes to light, she struggles to trust even the officers around her.

Review

This novella has been highly talked about across many fantasy circles.  Even some big name authors in the genre have been touting it on social media.  So I was really excited to see what all of the buzz was about and at 100 pages or so this seemed like a quick read that I could knock out in no time and hopefully enjoy as many others apparently have.  Unfortunately, BREACH OF PEACE didn't really work for me the way that I would have liked and ultimately I came away somewhat disappointed.

I won't give away too much of the plot other than to say that this is kind of a police-procedural fantasy tale where a group of investigators, led by Khlid the lead "detective" are trying to uncover the murder of an entire family.  The story opens with the deed already having been committed and Khlid trying to piece together what took place.  This is actually my first sticking point with the story as the assumed scenario is settled on pretty quickly just after a few pages.  

After that the story goes on with the hunt to apprehend the perpetrator(s) and decipher the true purpose of why this heinous crime was committed.  All in all it is pretty standard stuff and nothing that I haven't read a number of times before.  I think the fact that this first book is a novella kind of worked against the author in some ways in that there wasn't a lot of time for a lot of character development.  It is really challenging for a debut author's first book in a series to be a novella in my opinion.  If you don't hook the reader in that short time-frame, it is difficult to care about any of the characters enough to get invested in what is happening going forward.  And unfortunately, I didn't get hooked.

The writing was solid enough, albeit slightly clunky for me at times.  Case in point with regard to the dialogue were a few oft-used cliched expressions like describing a character as "tall, dark, and handsome" at one point.  Another aspect that was distracting and occurred kind of frequently was one of the investigators saying something and then another person finishing their sentence for them.  It's a technique used to create drama or make what is being said impactful.  But used too often it takes away from the story, and sadly it did that for me in key moments.

It wasn't all bad for me though.  I thought that there were a couple of tense action sequences when Daniel Greene did a nice job of conveying the tension and danger inherent.  He clearly has good instincts.  But getting back to being invested in the characters, those instances would have been much more effective had the characters been more fleshed out.  It's akin to reading a good outline of a story without the heart and emotional attachment required to breathe life into it.

In the end I came away slightly disappointed and felt like this one was pretty much a miss for me.  At the same time, Greene is a brand new author and should get better with each successive effort.  I look forward to reading his full length novels to see if him working with more space might suit his stories better for me as a reader.  It seems I am in the minority with my feelings about BREACH OF PEACE, but some books don't work for every reader as we all are aware.  By all means though, give it a shot yourself and see if it works for you!

Overall Rating: