I had high expectations with The Three after seeing some of the excellent reviews and why not this was a major release, but in the end was left feeling well, absolutely nothing. The story didn’t hold my attention in any way except the last 50 pages, by then I’d almost given up twice and was generally skipping through without any feeling of missing something vital.
On Black Thursday four commercial airlines crashed in four different continents, all at the same time, from out of the different wreckages came at first, three survivors, three young kids and the start of a worldwide media frenzy.
The book is written in the format of an author writing a book, it contains mainly excerpts of interviews with various people on the periphery of the ensuing investigation, family members of the three survivors and a religious group proclaiming of the coming of the four horsemen and the apocalypse. The overall feeling was more of a documentary or case study, which started off ok but very soon became boring, there’s no character narration as such so you never get invested in any hero, villain or any part of the story giving little empathy or compassion for anything.
I did feel like giving up several times during the middle of the book but persevered mainly because I’d just paid whatever it was for the hardcover copy, the last 50 pages rescued it a little for me but only enough to bump it up to 1.5 stars. The ending was ambiguous but actually fitted the story and in conclusion I was disappointed with the Three and wouldn’t recommend it.
Words: Paul Nelson
