Review: Fantasy in Death by J.D. Robb

Fanta­sy in Death by J.D. Robb

My rat­ing: 4 of 5 stars
Fan­ta­sy in Death is an inter­est­ing take on the death-by-gam­ing plot that has pre­vi­ous­ly been done by a cou­ple of fan­ta­sy and sci­ence fic­tion authors, most notably in Niv­en and Barnes’ Dream Park series. I doubt that most of Rob­b’s read­ers will be famil­iar with the oth­er books, as they’re prob­a­bly com­ing from the romance world (cross­ing over from her Nora Roberts titles) instead of the sci­ence fic­tion genre. 

What hit me the most, though, was nos­tal­gia for the dot com boom. The por­tray­al of the hot start-up com­pa­ny with its open, cheer­ful offices full of tech toys and ener­gy, well-paid employ­ees on fire with ideas and enthu­si­asm hap­pi­ly burn­ing the mid­night oil to work on excit­ing projects—I remem­ber those days! Okay, the tech­nol­o­gy was­n’t as advanced as the stuff in the book, but I can relate.

I always enjoy the por­tray­al of Dal­las and Roarke’s rela­tion­ship as a mature part­ner­ship. It is a bit clichéd at this point that every case has some aspect that jus­ti­fies bring­ing in Roarke as a civil­ian con­sul­tant, but it’s part of the for­mu­la. The sex is some­what paint-by-num­bers by now, too, but as pro­lif­ic as Robb/Roberts is, I’m won­der­ing if she has tem­plates for dif­fer­ent series and she has her own Strate­mey­er Syn­di­cate-type oper­a­tion going on some­where. (I’ve nev­er read any­thing by her but the Eve Dal­las books, so please take that as the joke it’s meant to be!)

I was a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed in the reveal, as I felt that the bad guy was too obvi­ous. I won’t say more, as I don’t want to give any­thing away. I’ll prob­a­bly con­tin­ue read­ing the series, but I’m past feel­ing an urgent need to grab them as soon as they come out, and this def­i­nite­ly isn’t one of the few series that I could re-read and enjoy.

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