Black Water Rising by Attica Locke
Published 2010 · 448 pages · 22,429 words · about 1 hour at an average pace · Thriller & Suspense
How hard is Black Water Rising to read?
Black Water Rising scores 45 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 40 out of 100
- Houston legal and political vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 40 out of 100
- Clear, thriller-paced sentences.
- Abstraction: 45 out of 100
- Race, justice, and corruption.
- Information density: 50 out of 100
- Dense with Houston detail.
- Narrative indirection: 45 out of 100
- Mystery plot unfolds.
- Symbolic density: 45 out of 100
- Water, rising carry weight.
- Ironic distance: 45 out of 100
- Locke maintains thriller engagement.
- Resolution withholding: 45 out of 100
- Mystery resolves; history continues.
- Structural complexity: 45 out of 100
- Legal thriller structure.
How Black Water Rising is regarded
Black Water Rising holds a literary regard score of 55 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.