Book Review: Street Freaks

Street Freaks by Terry Brooks

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a Terry Brooks being, more or less, himself. Street Freaks starts like a teen book but ends somewhat more mature; but I wouldn't hesitate to give it someone 15 or older depending on maturity. I've been a moderate Terry Brooks since I was a child. As a kid of the 80's and a teen of the 90's there was significantly fewer fantasy and sci-fi books that weren't classics and had real action in them. So Terry Brooks, at the time, felt like he was a pretty good writer. Today I'd say he's mediocre. Unfortunately that is exactly what Street Freaks delivered was a typical okay book. I had hoped that in the sci-fi genre (a first for Brooks) that he would be able to up his game.

Fast and the Furious, in the Future
So basically Street Freaks is the movie Fast and the Furious (any of them, they are all basically the same premise) in a future with new shiny technology. It does have an added mystery element to it regarding our lead boy's father; but that is actually not really what the story is 'about'. It's actually just about these kids driving cars, evading police and rebelling against the status quo. Sound familiar? I bet you've seen this movie.

Cool Ideas
While Brooks had some cool technology ideas in Street Freaks; a good technological thought is not enough to keep me interested. There's some biological, genetic type upgrades that some of our characters have and the idea of a 'red zone' is certainly likely to be in our (near?) future. Humans have been building walls and acting elitist for thousands of years so that all seems like a same bet to predict. And while I like the set-up of how you can learn things, communicate with one another and (of course) drive super fast cars; I can honestly read something similar in any number of sci-fi books or short stories. There's just not enough here to engage me.

Friendship
There was one really well done element of Street Freaks. That is it's focus on friendships and how tricky it can be to gain access into a 'group' of tight knit people. And what it can cost to have trust first and suspicion later. While friendship inherently requires trust there is a threshold moment in which you are risking something. Our lead teen learns this the hard way, as it always is with fiction, and Brooks accurately describes the feelings and emotions that hit many of us (teens or adults) when we are let down by others.

Overall
While the characters and their interactions are quite well done there's just something missing here. Some element or twist that would have surprised me; or maybe just more complexity. While there is a lot going on the reality is that it seems like there's a mystery that is, honestly, easily unraveled. I knew who was going to be the traitor (if you will) near the end and why. Maybe I just read too many books (lol) but I just wanted more from Brooks. As I said above this is not unusual of me to want more from Terry Brooks. Maybe my expectations are just too high for him and I need to come back to reality and realize he is a tolerable author. Not usually books I would DNF; but certainly not ones I will remember in the future or tell everyone about. In fact as I'm writing this review I feel like in five minutes I'll have already forgotten about this book and my life moved on.

Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.

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