Gregg Nicholas
In my opinion, this isn't really a story. The author gives us a few paragraphs, describing a vignette in the guy's life. These scenes jump back and forth in time, giving us little snippets of how the character came to be who he is. Eventually the reader picks up enough details about the character, the world, and the way magic works to (hopefully) want to read the trilogy.
Somewhat like the X-Men, a small percentage of people are born with magic capabilities. Each gifted person has a single talent. In most cases, it is very weak but some few have more natural power. Practice can increase an individuals power. There are more details and twists in how magic works in this series, but I wouldn't want to give spoilers.
This story has similarities to the classic “Ender's Game” by Orson Scott Card. In fact, the main character in this story even expresses disbelief that his real life could possibly be mimicking that story. There are so many references to sci-fi, gaming, and music from the 80's that I was overcome by nostalgia and had to dig up some of my old music and games.
This story imagines a near future when there is a greater disparity between the very rich, and everyone else. Advances in automation, artificial intelligence, and recycling with magic ‘fabber' printers have put most people out of work. A growing number of the debt-ridden poor decide to walk away from civilization and live on the fringe of society. Their lifestyle is only possible to the highly improbable technological advances that enable them to print just about anything they need by recycling junk they can scrounge up. For some reason, these refugees decide to gather in what I'd call ‘pacifist hippie communes' - where people only do what they choose to do, including recreational drugs and non-hetero, casual sex.
An interesting idea of how humanity might fit in with alien civilizations. In my opinion, the enjoyment of the book was hindered by a couple of the author's techniques. Some parts of the book seem to be written for video, with each paragraph, the scene may shift from a group of people on earth or to a different group of people in space. This is difficult for the reader to follow by the author's words alone. The author also has a tendency to refer to characters in a confusing number of ways. A single character may at times be referred to by their name, at other times by their military rank or an abbreviation, or a nickname, or a slang term, or a general description ... in some areas of the book, it's hard to guess how many people are in the room because their names keep changing.
An excellent fantasy story. Although the two main characters bear some resemblance to Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, the author assures us that he hasn't read that series. In my opinion, the resemblance of these ‘heroes' is merely superficial. Their personalities are quite different from that earlier series by Fritz Leiber.
How can I give such a high rating to a book that angered me in every chapter? This book should be recommended reading for all of the American Congress. It tells many details of how Americans have lost their privacy and the dystopian consequences that should inspire all of us to reconsider the direction things are going. In my opinion, the book failed to deliver on telling citizens “what to do about it”. Peons like me don't have many options to effect change - except perhaps recommending that everyone read this book to learn what has been publicly divulged about how our government is spying on us - and what it is costing us in taxes and lost foreign trade.
Andy Weir knows how to write an enthralling tale. Got to give the guy credit for having the guts to use a female protagonist. A couple things bother me about the story, but the author is well-known for getting his science facts correct - so I won't question that part. The leading character has some very strange morals.
This book employs a literary technique that annoys me. I believe the proper term for it is ‘unreliable witness.' It is frustrating to read a story, and eventually learn that the narrator / author has been lying to the reader about what is real. About the only redeeming part of this book, in my opinion, was the imagination shown by the author, writing in 1969 - and imagining how things would change by 1992.
Despite the disgusting nature of magic in this series, the author tells a riveting tale. This book of the series has a bit more humor than I saw in the first two books. Amazingly, the author doesn't tie up all the loose ends, but I'm still satisfied with the story. Even though this is in the fantasy genre, not every character gets a happily ever after. To paraphrase one of the characters, “it's a pretty effed-up world, isn't it?”
In this story, the author has come up with a novel mechanism for magic. At least, I don't recall anyone making magic work like that before. I try not to visualize the action while reading those sequences, because it's truly disgusting.
The descriptions of the viper serum and the firedrake scales are a little over the top. They're sort of like the unstoppable force meets the unmovable object. The logic of the two items is not consistent. At one point, the viper serum can only be contained because it's in a container strengthened with firedrake. Later, the firedrake walls can only be dissolved with the viper serum. How do you take a liquid described as so powerful that it spilling it would cut all the way to the other side of the earth - and use it to burn through a few feet of cement - which you're bound to brush up against when you crawl through the hole?
I guess that's why they call it “Magic” . . . it doesn't have to make sense.
There's very little ‘science fiction' in this series. It's mostly ‘historical fiction' with a generous amount of ‘romance'. In my opinion, this series is an example of how the industry has changed since it has become so easy to publish books. The whole four book series should have been edited down to one, or possibly two books. The whole trope regarding World War II and Nazi's is overused - especially in time travel stories.
Set in World War II, this book of the series shows the characters reacting to the uncertainty of life in wartime England. I'm not fond of war stories, but even if that weren't the case, I'd get a little tired of the repetitious nature of their struggles with food, travel, bomb shelters, and sleep deprivation.
This series seems to cross several genre categories. You'll probably like it more than I do, if you like Romance, Mystery, Steampunk, and time travel paradox. Your enjoyment of the book will also be enhanced if you can tolerate multiple concurrent confusing dialogues. It will help if you aren't bothered by a lot of archaic words, some of which aren't even in the dictionary. Perhaps I would have understood more of the references if I was a fanatic anglophile with an interest in England's history from a hundred years ago.
I don't want my review to be entirely negative, so while I don't think that the rules for time travel are consistent in this series, it was still a readable story - even if it was a bit sappy.
This book is more ‘Historical Fiction' than ‘Science Fiction'. There were some sections of the book that I had trouble following due to the author's usage of words and phrases that I couldn't find in the dictionary. The characters seem somewhat mentally challenged because they spend two thirds of the book, looking for the answer to a mystery, that the reader can already guess at based on the clues they were given.
