When I write book reviews, I often mention the level of realism. Imagine a scale from 0 to 10. 0 is complete BS, things that can’t happen, heroes that can’t exist, and a path from start to finish that’s like a fairy tale. 10 is a boring autobiography by a boring person who doesn’t lie to put themselves in a good light. Realism is not required to have fun, a good story can be 0 or 10 on the scale.

Let’s rank some pop culture on the realism scale.

• 0: Avengers: End Game – a complete disconnect with reality, written entirely to be like that. The characters are only visually human
• 1: Star Wars Episodes 4-6 – a complete disconnect with reality but some of the characters make sense, like Jabba the Hutt. I’d put here most of the fantasy I read like Thraxas, Joe Abercrombie, Raymond Feist, the LOTR universe, Robin Hobb, Brandon Sanderson, Harry Potter
• 2: Matthew Reilly, often featured here, writes about cars flying at a speed of 700km/h and crashing with no harm. Not far off from F1, although the characters are inhuman. I feel like he deserves the number 2 spot for himself.
• 3: Stephen King plugs in plausible humans and outcomes in impossible fantasy settings. His work is incredible and diverse work but let’s average it to 3. 3 would be fantasy with a possible story or with possible characters but maybe not both
• 4: The Foundation, Andy Weir – the classic sci-fi where the people look real and the events could eventually happen
• 5: Song of Fire and Ice – lots of that happened in medieval times, or at least people imagined it did. Not the dragon eggs but the other stuff that fills 95% of the pages. Realistic fantasy, dystopia
• 6: Alexandre Dumas. The Three Musketeers has a solid foundation in reality and the characters are likely based on real humans, perhaps from later periods
• 7: Cinderella. That probably happened and was later decorated with some magic
• 8: OMG ❤️, Stephanie Plum, Harry Bosch’s universe, Harlan Coben, the true crime stories
• 9: Historical fiction, books like Wolf Hall that are as connected to the real events as they could be, autobiographies with some level of commerce
• 10: Boring autobiographies

On that scale, Jane Harper enters the territory of boring autobiographies. There’s “No way” and “Oh, that’s why, yeah, damn”. Reading it is like reading the continuation of Cinderella, the happily ever after where the prince turned into a king, and the king was drunk and cheated.

So, I won’t tell you what the Force of Nature is about, but it’s sad and depressing in a beautiful way. Do not touch if you want an orthodox crime story.

4.5/5