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memphisholli's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
libwinnie's review against another edition
3.0
Isolated and out of contact with the world, Anna Pigeon and a group of her friends are captured by a gang of dangerous men while camping. Brutal and at times disturbing, this book just gets rather old as the men keep thwarting the women's attempts to free themselves.
bristlecone's review against another edition
3.0
This was my least favorite of the Anna Pigeon mysteries thus far. I generally enjoy exploration of character's darker sides, but this seemed a little darker than Anna Pigeon is capable of.
smallafterall's review against another edition
4.0
A dark one, even for twisty and embattled Anna Pigeon. I was afraid for a time that Nevada Barr had tired of anna in much the way Laurie king seems to be tiring of Mary Russell and Holmes and we were destined to keep seeing her in more and more bizarre settings and plots. This one comforted me that she is returning largely to the formula without allowing anna to stagnate. Always amazed that Barr is able to build an entire book around a brief time span. Engrossing, but I tend to prefer the books in this series that give a glimpse at life in a particular national park. I'll keep coming back to this series, though, because the books are more believable than a lot of other 'cozy mysteries' but are more approachable than the similar cop/detective takes on this genre.
pr727's review
2.0
This was my first Anna Pigeon book; not at all what I expected. I assumed this would be a who-dunnit set in a park with lots of nature, outdoorsy activity, perhaps some history thrown in. There was very little mystery in the traditional sense of the genre. I found it too long, the writing was often trying too hard to be clever rather than to be readable and entertaining. I listened to the audio book, which was hyper-dramatic. The narrator, Barbara Rosenblat, especially during action scenes, modulated her voice from a high pitched raspy screech to a too-low-to-hear whisper with a bit of old time movie tough dame accent thrown in; at best distracting, at worst impossible to understand. Another Nevada Barr audiobook I requested at the same time has become available, I will rather reluctantly give it a try, hoping for a more traditional mystery with a different narrator and/or producer.
yabetsy's review against another edition
4.0
Nevada Barr puts Anna in another situation that would crush a normal person - admittedly, as even one of the other characters (a teenager) remarks that her mother regards Anna as pretty much superhuman. Good thing, as Anna, while on a camping trip with two friends and their teenage daughters goes for a solo canoe so that she can be completely alone, is the only hope for the rest of the group when four armed and pretty psychotic thugs take over the camp with no signs of remorse or hesitation about killing their dog or any of the campers.
Nevada Barr is a master in the thiller/mystery genre: readers looking for a locked-room mystery won't necessarily find a more puzzling one than Anna's having been caught in the middle of a fire, along with the firebug, and anyone squeamish about enclosed spaces might want to avoid Blind Descent. Here we have another page-turning choice as Anna is the only hope for her two friends and their (very normal, more-than-occasionally annoying teen) kids in the wild.
Nevada Barr is a master in the thiller/mystery genre: readers looking for a locked-room mystery won't necessarily find a more puzzling one than Anna's having been caught in the middle of a fire, along with the firebug, and anyone squeamish about enclosed spaces might want to avoid Blind Descent. Here we have another page-turning choice as Anna is the only hope for her two friends and their (very normal, more-than-occasionally annoying teen) kids in the wild.
constantreader471's review against another edition
4.0
My wife and I both have been reading Nevada Barr's mysteries for 20 years. I enjoyed this book and give it 4 stars out of 5. It is a thriller more than a mystery, because the bad guys are identified at the beginning when they kidnap 2 women and their 2 daughters for ransom. The 4 plus Anna Pigeon, are a raft trip in a US National Forest in Northern Minnesota. Unfortunately for the kidnappers, Anna is on a solitary canoe trip when the kidnapping takes place. The suspense builds as she works to stop them, even though she is unarmed and they have guns. But Anna is an experienced US Park ranger and they are city guys. This was an Amazon purchase.
futuregazer's review against another edition
No Thanks
I did not finish reading - got about 20% through. That is not something I tend to do, but if someone is not at all looking forward to opening a book, or turning on the audio, one cannot really be said to be enjoying it. It is unfortunate though, because by and large I have enjoyed the Anna Pigeon series, and this means there is one less of those books that I am interested in out there. If anyone out there is making the decision to carry on or not, here's why I stopped. Short version: No mystery, low focus on wilderness except as a setting, it's all just one large kidnapping/hostage scenario, Anna's cynical view of humanity takes center stage with less foils than usual and the lack of a balancing aspect makes it a slog through such a bitter view of people.
1) All thriller, no mystery. I read Anna Pigeon novels for the mystery aspect more than the thriller. Sure, there will turn out to be some mystery here (I've read the summary of the rest of the novel), but it is barebones and tiny. This book is just thriller, and only one long kidnapping scene from a Thriller dragged out.
2) Little exploring of the area and wildlife. I enjoy the way these novels often explore the park and landscape. The landscape is certainly mentioned in this book, but only as how it acts as an obstacle or help to the characters, or a brief musing by Anna.
3) I tolerate kidnapping scenes, I don't enjoy them. If a kidnapping or hostage scene moves a story along, fine. There is character development during this book, and it is interesting, but I'm just not here for the characters I know being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and then having to escape from killers for a whole novel - plus the characters I don't know only showing development under duress.
4) Anna Pigeon's view of people is always a slog for me. Don't get me wrong, I find myself often agreeing with many of her cynical statements on the nature of humanity, but I also think there is a balancing hopeful side, and I'm not interested in reading too much of one and none of the other. Many of these books balance. This one does not. All wilderness and animals are lovely and peaceful (even though Anna herself admits this is probably a false impression), and all people are scum (except her friends). Not 'I've met a lot of scum' or 'these people kidnapping are scum', but 'these kidnappers are evil, but since all people are inherently scum from the get go that isn't surprising at all, full stop.' That always wears on me a bit in these books which is one reason I have to take breaks from them, but in this one it is too much. And at the same time utterly understandable, afterall the conceit of this character is that she is always running into bad people after she escapes from big social and life stressors into the wilderness. If someone ran into bad guys of this magnitude as often as she does even when not on the law enforcement job, I would basically expect them to have this attitude. But it isn't one I enjoy reading about without, again balance. Or at least reflection from the character on their biases and reasons for them, some admission that assuming all people are evil is probably a false assumption - we only read about these segments of Anna's life, so I guess we get a boatload of them in this sort of situation, but yeah, I'm not into it, and frankly I'm worried that anyone who is is nursing a fair few unhealthy assumptions about humanity, and probably only feeding that bias with this sort of input rather than actually reflecting properly on it.
I did not finish reading - got about 20% through. That is not something I tend to do, but if someone is not at all looking forward to opening a book, or turning on the audio, one cannot really be said to be enjoying it. It is unfortunate though, because by and large I have enjoyed the Anna Pigeon series, and this means there is one less of those books that I am interested in out there. If anyone out there is making the decision to carry on or not, here's why I stopped. Short version: No mystery, low focus on wilderness except as a setting, it's all just one large kidnapping/hostage scenario, Anna's cynical view of humanity takes center stage with less foils than usual and the lack of a balancing aspect makes it a slog through such a bitter view of people.
1) All thriller, no mystery. I read Anna Pigeon novels for the mystery aspect more than the thriller. Sure, there will turn out to be some mystery here (I've read the summary of the rest of the novel), but it is barebones and tiny. This book is just thriller, and only one long kidnapping scene from a Thriller dragged out.
2) Little exploring of the area and wildlife. I enjoy the way these novels often explore the park and landscape. The landscape is certainly mentioned in this book, but only as how it acts as an obstacle or help to the characters, or a brief musing by Anna.
3) I tolerate kidnapping scenes, I don't enjoy them. If a kidnapping or hostage scene moves a story along, fine. There is character development during this book, and it is interesting, but I'm just not here for the characters I know being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and then having to escape from killers for a whole novel - plus the characters I don't know only showing development under duress.
4) Anna Pigeon's view of people is always a slog for me. Don't get me wrong, I find myself often agreeing with many of her cynical statements on the nature of humanity, but I also think there is a balancing hopeful side, and I'm not interested in reading too much of one and none of the other. Many of these books balance. This one does not. All wilderness and animals are lovely and peaceful (even though Anna herself admits this is probably a false impression), and all people are scum (except her friends). Not 'I've met a lot of scum' or 'these people kidnapping are scum', but 'these kidnappers are evil, but since all people are inherently scum from the get go that isn't surprising at all, full stop.' That always wears on me a bit in these books which is one reason I have to take breaks from them, but in this one it is too much. And at the same time utterly understandable, afterall the conceit of this character is that she is always running into bad people after she escapes from big social and life stressors into the wilderness. If someone ran into bad guys of this magnitude as often as she does even when not on the law enforcement job, I would basically expect them to have this attitude. But it isn't one I enjoy reading about without, again balance. Or at least reflection from the character on their biases and reasons for them, some admission that assuming all people are evil is probably a false assumption - we only read about these segments of Anna's life, so I guess we get a boatload of them in this sort of situation, but yeah, I'm not into it, and frankly I'm worried that anyone who is is nursing a fair few unhealthy assumptions about humanity, and probably only feeding that bias with this sort of input rather than actually reflecting properly on it.
crankyisgood's review against another edition
3.0
Entertaining audiobook, although the Anna Pigeon series is far from my favorite. I like her as a character: tough, independent, and decidedly not "nice," and enjoy seeing her relationships build, in the limited way they do. This particular title had little actual mystery to it; mainly, it's a brutal, deadly, survivalist trek through the woods for three days and 12 hours of audiobook. Like every other title in this series that I've read, the primary focus is how people survive in nature and relate to it.