Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Money may make the world go ‘round, but drugs make it spin out of control. That's one of the many deadly lessons in best-seller Winslow's breathless prequel to 2010's Savages. Here readers learn the blistering backstories of twentysomething buds Ben and Chon as well as O, the rebellious babe they both love. Beginning his tale in the 1960s, Winslow paints an unsettling portrait of the underbelly of Southern California, from pot- and coke-dealing hippie parents to Mexican gang leaders who compose messages with human entrails. Surf bums, beatniks, and Botox-pumped beauties play pivotal roles in the three characters' lives. (Especially memorable here is O's bubble-headed mother, dubbed PAQU—Passive Aggressive Queen of the Universe.) Winslow serves up nonstop action, tempering the tension with his trademark razor-sharp wit. Military man Chon believes in "microwave karma . . . what goes around comes around, in a freaking hurry and usually with ill intent." Published to coincide with the release of Academy Award–winning filmmaker Oliver Stone's adaptation of Savages, this cool, clever entry is sure to be a royally popular summer read. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.
Kirkus Reviews
Winslow offers a prequel for his drug-war epic Savages (2010). The year 2005 finds Ben Leonard and his buddy Chon doing what they do best: helping Orange County get high on Ben's custom-bred hydroponic grass. So successful is their business, in fact, that Duane Crowe, of The Association, pays Ben a visit gently suggesting that they either submit a monthly charge to the established network of importers or take their business elsewhere. Chon is not the person to take this challenge lying down, and soon he's struck preemptively at a couple of Association minnows he unwisely leaves alive--a decision that acts like the starting gun at a marathon. Quick as a sentence fragment, Winslow is piling on the violence, the flashbacks to an earlier generation of Southern California surfers and hippies, and the one-word paragraphs, as he makes a strong bid for the James Ellroy Award for Self-Indulgent Prose. Since fans know that Ben and Chon and their childhood friend O-for-Ophelia will still be around to peddle primo product in Savages, The Association's threats don't carry the menace they would outside the wonderful world of prequels, and readers are free to enjoy the proceedings as deliriously overgalvanized, intermittently hilarious ritual. The walk-ons who pop up just long enough to get caught in the crossfire are too interchangeable for tears, and not even Chon's deployment to Afghanistan and his encounter with a bomb are cause for alarm. The only blemish in the blood bath is the pretense, late on in the proceedings, that Chon and O are learning something important about their fathers. Sorry, gang, but you're in the wrong pew. Copyright Kirkus 2012 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.
LJ Express Reviews
The sins of the fathers and mothers are wrought upon sons and daughters in this prequel to Winslow's acclaimed Savages. Cutting their teeth as runners for their drug-dealing parents in sunbathed Laguna Beach, CA, teenagers Ben, Chon, and O slither between the hippie cave dwellers of the canyons and the ocean-view mansions of the mega-rich. Chon breaks from the beach crowd and joins the military, but upon his return he easily returns to the chaotic marijuana trade of his father. It's hard to turn down the money, and it gives Chon time with his pals Ben and O, who give his life meaning and stability. Caught among crooked cops, a publicity-seeking DEA agent, and the violent Mexican drug cartels, the trio become modern-day versions of Bonnie and Clyde as they fight to escape the crossfire. Friends over family is the clear choice in this adrenaline-fused collision of generations. Verdict Published to coincide with the release of Oliver Stone's movie version of Savages, this is another Winslow roller-coaster thriller. Set against the lush backdrop of Laguna Beach, it graphically depicts the ferocious drug trade and shows the reader how the characters of Ben, Chon, and O came to be the darkly engrossing twentysomethings of Savages.-Susan Clifford Braun, Bainbridge Island, WA (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publishers Weekly Reviews
This prequel to Savages, Winslow's 2010 bestseller and now an Oliver Stone-directed big-budget film, features the author's trademark punchy dialogue, and will more than satisfy fans of drug-crime thrillers. Here, Winslow provides the background story of Savage's three main characters: Ben, Chon, and O. Ben and Chon sold marijuana in Laguna Beach, California, before running afoul of a vicious Mexican drug cartel, which abducted O, the dealers' mutual love interest, and ushered the pot-peddling trio into a sordid world of violence and corruption. But that all happened later—this story opens in 2005, with the carefree 20-something friends playing a game in which they predict "each other's sexual preferences," and soon shifts back to 2003 to offer a somewhat unconvincing explanation for how the drug-dealing began: "Actually it was the fact that O had no freaking idea what she was going to do with her life that led Ben and Chon into the marijuana business" as a way to claim a "vocation." Later, the story leapfrogs back even further in time to 1967 to reveal the origins of an earlier drug ring—one with foreboding familial ties to the focal trio. As with many prequels, this will work best for those already familiar with Savages, but on its own, Winslow's penchant for consistent entertainment makes it a great read in its own right. (June)
[Page ]. Copyright 2012 PWxyz LLCPW Annex Reviews
This prequel to Savages, Winslow's 2010 bestseller and now an Oliver Stone-directed big-budget film, features the author's trademark punchy dialogue, and will more than satisfy fans of drug-crime thrillers. Here, Winslow provides the background story of Savage's three main characters: Ben, Chon, and O. Ben and Chon sold marijuana in Laguna Beach, California, before running afoul of a vicious Mexican drug cartel, which abducted O, the dealers' mutual love interest, and ushered the pot-peddling trio into a sordid world of violence and corruption. But that all happened later—this story opens in 2005, with the carefree 20-something friends playing a game in which they predict "each other's sexual preferences," and soon shifts back to 2003 to offer a somewhat unconvincing explanation for how the drug-dealing began: "Actually it was the fact that O had no freaking idea what she was going to do with her life that led Ben and Chon into the marijuana business" as a way to claim a "vocation." Later, the story leapfrogs back even further in time to 1967 to reveal the origins of an earlier drug ring—one with foreboding familial ties to the focal trio. As with many prequels, this will work best for those already familiar with Savages, but on its own, Winslow's penchant for consistent entertainment makes it a great read in its own right. (June)
[Page ]. Copyright 2012 PWxyz LLC