Non stop action all the way through! But dang, if this isn't a super close retelling of No Country for Old Men! And the author even thanks Cormac in the acknowledgments! He should do more than thank, he should send him some of his royalties! ( )

This book was not really to my liking--too violent.
A small-time drug runner and ex-con, Hunt, gets interrupted in a run in the mountains by a small-time sheriff, Drake,who had a father who had been caught doing exactly the same kind of drug running.
Because the drugs don't go where they are supposed to go, a nasty piece of work who likes to play with people and knives is sent out to look for the drugs and incidentally, gut and play with a few poor souls. A triad, which is at the back of all this, also goes on the trail and nastiness ensues.
The sheriff has quite a few father issues. Despite being a drug runner, Hunt is a more or less decent person who tries to get out of the mess he's gotten himself and his wife into. ( )

I followed the addendum to the Nancy Pearl rule of fifty with this book ... When you are 51 years of age or older, subtract your age from 100, and the resulting number (which, of course, gets smaller every year) is the number of pages you should read before you can guiltlessly give up on a book.

I won't tell you how many pages that meant I read before closing the book because that would be giving away a secret. As the saying goes, "Age has its privileges."

It may well be a perfectly good read - as the blurbs would indicate - but it isn't for me at this time. ( )

The Terror of Living is a fine first novel, and without a doubt, a page-turning thriller that will keep you reading late into the night. The comparisons to Cormac McCarthy, and especially No Country For Old Men are appropriate. In fact, sometimes the prose is imitative in an obvious way, but Waite is a first time novelist, and The Terror of Living does not contain the depth beneath the prose that a McCarthy novel does. I think the novel works better as a thriller than literature, but that's not a bad thing. I aslo enjoyed the Pacific Northwest setting (being a resident myself), and the shifting morality of the characters.

My rating is really wavering between three and four, but overall I certainly enjoyed The Terror of Living, and look forward to more of Waite's work in the future. ( )

Liked it! ( )