“Brilliantly eccentric and packed with a colorful and unforgettable cast of characters, readers will instantly lap up Finegan's effervescent and mindboggingly enjoyable journey.” - BookLife Fiction Prize critique
Founded in 1872, Publishers Weekly is the world’s leading trade weekly for publishers, agents, booksellers and librarians. It hosts the prestigious BookLife Prizes for Fiction and Nonfiction. Winners of the fiction prize are announced in mid-December, but the reviewers at Publishers Weekly were kind enough to furnish me with a critique weeks before winnowing selections.
I have no illusion of advancing further but was pleased by my novel’s 8 of 10 rating – partly because Publisher Weekly is well-respected, and partly because Toys in Babylon was grouped among “mystery/thrillers” instead of satires or even fantasy/sci-fi. My short, gentle parody of Duolingo cannot possibly compete with the testosterone-driven works of Dean Koontz, James Patterson, David Baldacci and Tom Clancy, but I am nevertheless happy PW’s critics were entertained.