A Book by Don Winslow
Click image to visit Don Winslow’s website.
The Power of Dog
A book Review by Matt Orlando
The Power of the Dog spans years, sparked by the DEA’s first foray into a foreign country's drug policy.
Mr. Winslow took characters from across the US and all through Mexico and all the way down to Columbia… Furthermore, The Don fleshed out each character in very satisfying ways that served the story. That served the characters themselves. Of course they did that, you would think as you read. Of course.
Don Winslow brought you into the minds of cartel leaders before there were even cartels, and the minds of their families, and those of the people trying desperately to stop them.
It’s hard sometimes knowing who to root for when you get to know a character like that. You’ve been with them their whole life. And somehow, if you’re paying attention, you get it. You don’t like what they do. But you get it. There are moments in the book that are like the short pauses on a roller coaster when you realize that you're only being brought up to the top so that he can drop you down screaming.
I’m already on his second book in the trilogy, The Cartel. I wish he could write as fast as I can read.
I’m telling you, Don Winslow is a beast.
What I love about reading different authors is how unique their styles can be.
As long as they are good storytellers, it doesn’t really matter. You may notice it in the beginning, but then it just becomes part of the flow. Don Winslow, to me, has a way of saying a lot with not a lot of words. He’s… economical. Maybe he isn’t trying to be... Maybe that’s just how he thinks. Or maybe, it’s because he spent SIX YEARS researching and writing this book before it was published, according to his Wiki…
And what I noticed as I read The Power of the Dog, was how much story took place in just one paragraph.
You saw a mini story in that paragraph from beginning to end without that angst of unfinished business, and to top it off, you think that so much took place in that one paragraph that you must be nearing the end. That there can’t be much left, because that’s a hell of a lot.
And the serendipitous part was, I started reading it - I don’t think it is really reading to be honest - by audiobook on the suggestion of my good friend @chelslovestoread, who reads more books in a month than I can in a year, and who knows me, and what I like. She had recommended the book to me after I’d told her I would be taking a pretty long drive and needed a suggestion. And she was right. Her recommendations always are.
But the book was longer than the long drive, so when the drive was finished, the book was still not. And after I’d made it home, and life went along as usual, I could only listen to it in fifteen-minute spurts here and there, and it was driving me crazy. I kept forgetting why this person got killed, or why that person was friends with his enemy now, and so after another book-friend said he was already on the third book in the series, I knew I had to breakup with my awesome faithful narrator and buy the damn book. And to give credit where it’s due, the guy that narrated the audio book was a stud. He did different voices for everyone, even the women, and it didn’t throw me off (that’s impressive).
Once I began ingesting each and every word through my eyeballs though, man, I was even more hooked. Don can write and this book was especially more ambitious than I thought when I had just started listening to it, often thinking it was going to end shortly, and thinking, I could accept it if it did. It was that good.
Pick it up from Amazon.
The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow
Read my review of the second book in the series, The Cartel.