Gregg Nicholas

The first 2 books in this series were difficult to follow, with frequent changes of narrator and jumping back and forth in time. This book was easier for me to follow. At times, it seemed like the author was capitalizing on all the character background information she had developed in order to write the first 2 books. This book did a good job of filling in details that were missing from the earlier books, and revealed the end of the story.

The first half of the book was very confusing. The story keeps jumping back and forth in time, and from one character's viewpoint to another's. I found it hard to keep everything straight. I think the author also had trouble. There was some repetition in the narrative.

In my opinion, the first half of this book moved too slowly. The first 200 pages could have been condensed to 50 without losing anything of interest. They have an unbelievable level of control over designer genetics - and I mean that literally - I can't bring myself to believe these manipulations are possible.

In my opinion, this book is not so much a ‘story' as it is a depiction of a dystopian world that we are all too close to becoming. I believe the author wished to exaggerate the trends in the hope that people will turn from this horrible vision. I've given this book a good rating because I see these trends, and hope that readers of this book will fight to regain some of our privacy. (How ironic is it that I'm posting on a social network, applauding a book that decries social networking?)

Before I consider crushing all my computing devices and hiding in a forest somewhere, I'd like to turn away from the political statement of the book, to discuss a couple things that struck me as weaknesses in the story. The main character, Mae, is a caricature. How can the reader be expected to believe her casual attitude toward sex with complete strangers? What sort of mental illness would cause her to willingly give up her entire identity to devote every waking hour to the company? Sorry if this offends anyone, but this character strikes me as a ‘bimbo' - easily swayed by the charisma of the cult leader to the point where she just can't think for herself.

The author also brings in an almost irrelevant story line about some deep sea creatures. They are probably only in the story so that he can say that the company is like the shark - consuming everything in its path. I was distracted from the story, wondering how these creatures who were accustomed to tremendous water pressure could survive in what was described as an unpressurised tank.

This book is fiction, but I find that the depiction of the lawyer matches many observations that I've made in my dealings with lawyers. While the ‘hero' of this book views his actions as working within the ‘system' - my viewpoint is that he has no moral compass. He will charge whatever fees he can get away with, stringing them along for as long as their bank account holds money. He will manipulate people, deceive them, and outright lie to them. He will bend the rules and even break them - so long as he doesn't get caught, it must be okay - all part of the game. His priorities are first - to his own income, and second - to win his case, regardless of the facts.

What's the difference between a catfish and a lawyer?
One's a slimy, bottom dwelling, scum sucker. The other is a fish.

Every character seems to be mentally challenged - and many of them have drug addictions that make the reader distrust the story line. The story wanders, pointlessly, and never achieves any resolution.

it took me many chapters to begin to understand what was going on in this story. There are still quite a few things that don't make sense to me.

Significant portions of this book rely on illustrations that are not in the book. If you don't have access to the online materials, don't even bother with the book.

Most of this book gives details and history of crimes facilitated by technology. People might find some of his stories to be inflammatory or exaggerated. In my opinion, he's intentionally being ‘alarmist' in order to incite us to action. Toward the end of the book, and in the appendix, he does give some fairly common-sense actions we can take to improve the situation. When I say ‘common-sense', that doesn't change the fact that almost no one follows these suggestions - because they make life more difficult.

The final short story could use a Mature/Adult rating.

In my opinion, this final book in the series would have fared better with less ‘Adult' content, and more adventure. If listening to the audio book, be sure to do so privately.

I've got to give the author credit for writing an engaging tale, although I think he could have made it better by leaving out some of the non-scientific, fantasy elements of the story.

If the creatures die from sunlight exposure, why aren't we seeing that used as a weapon? I'd suggest punching holes in walls and roofs, using mirrors or metal reflectors to light a lobby further, perhaps using a prism or disco ball to spread the light through a room. Haven't seen anybody using a generator with ultraviolet lamps to clear out a building. The author has made it clear that Jack believes that sunlight would be torture, but certainly some of the groups he met would have no such compunctions. From the foreword of the next book, I see that the creatures wouldn't be susceptible to commercial UV lights or grow lamps, but none of the characters in the series have even tested UV lighting, so how would they know? As I see it, the creatures are fighting a losing battle. The environment itself will kill them in minutes if their shelter is compromised. Like the classic vampire, this monster has fatal flaws that should prevent it from dominating the world.

There a handful of errors that should have been caught by the editor. For instance, a physicist is not the same as a physician.

The writing style seems designed for a television miniseries - with lots of descriptions that are meant to be developed into computer generated graphics as done by the CSI series. In my opinion, each book should be able to stand alone as a story, and not end with such an obvious cliffhanger.

In this series, the descriptions and details of battle action can be a bit repetitive. Since I don't understand the differences between various model numbers of military equipment, I get the feeling that some parts of the story just go over my head as gobbledygook. In my mind, the author never explained how a sporting goods store with its own well for water can handle the toilet usage for more than 200 people for several months. In my experience, buildings with their own well will also have their own septic system - and I just don't understand how that would have the necessary capacity. I think I can point out one other plot problem without giving a spoiler - the motivation of the female enemy is incomprehensible to me. If you accept her emotional motivation (for whatever reason), then I can't understand her actions in regards to Lynn. Nonetheless, I congratulate the author for writing a story that can still hold a reader through 6 books

For a self-published author, whose mother serves as his editor, this is a good series.

There are minor grammar and typographical errors that should have been caught by the editor. The ‘night runners' are nearly believable - far more so than the typical ‘Zombie'. Nevertheless, the author disappoints me by including impossible attributes like telepathy. Throughout the series thus far, he has also presented the idea that normal soldiers can sense when they're being watched because of an ‘energy' . . . to which I say baloney! I think the story had a few tactical mistakes as well. For instance, why would he bring the helicopter back to an area where the monsters are drawn to attack each night due to the presence of the food? Wouldn't that be a big risk for destroying the helicopter? In my opinion, there is a significant vulnerability that all these smart soldiers should have jumped at immediately. Their enemy must hunt a dwindling resource for food. They must kill to survive, but their numbers are out of balance with the available food supply. Therefore, the night runners need to range farther for food every night - but they have to find shelter before the sun kills them. I would think the soldiers would immediately jump to the safer strategy of setting snares, bear traps, pits, mazes, and other methods of letting the sun kill the night runners so that the soldiers wouldn't have to risk their lives and deplete their ammunition. At the end of this book, the author does actually let them come up with land mines. To my mind, this new species is doomed to extinction when all their food lives in the sun, but a few minutes exposure will kill them.

This story can get a bit too detailed at times, especially while describing specific assault tactics or building layout. This first book only covers a few days of time. So far, I'm enjoying how the author has made the disease more believable than many previous authors have done. It will be interesting to see if it is still believable as the story unfolds and the initial infection fades into the past. There are maybe a dozen instances where the author could have used a good editor to correct grammar, spelling, and sentences that made no sense.

This series seems to be targeted at young adults or children. The writing style reminds me of the stories about Tom Swift. I like the author's method of starting with a small element of science fiction, and then developing a story about what the impact might be if this science fiction idea was real. I think he went overboard in creating unbelievable super people that didn't seem to have much depth of character.

I'm still a bit put off by the unbelievable number of areas in which Vaz is an expert. However, I've got to admit that I like the author's imagination when it comes to near future technology advances. I'm not talking about the science fiction elements that are major plot points - but extremely unlikley. I'm more interested in the integration of Artificial Intelligences into our lifestyle that is treated as just a background element of the story. And yet, the capabilities of the author's imaginary AI's are probably not going to be realized in my lifetime.

The characters in this story are almost comic book exaggerations. About two thirds of the way through the book I was getting tired of the frequent repetition of the oddities about the main character. Frankly, he's unbelievable. I began to wish that the author had used the plot device of giving him alien DNA to explain why he and his offspring were so remarkable. There are no aliens, and no believable explanation for the abnormal elements in this family. I'm surprised that this book isn't in the Young Adult category. I gave it 3 stars for the same reason some people enjoy After School Specials and low-budget Grade B family movies - it's a quick read, just don't expect too much from it.

One of the tropes used in this story has been overused in other books and movies. I find the idea that normal people would condone and participate in years of violence to be unbelievable. Nonetheless, by the end of this book I was interested in starting the second book. Perhaps book two will provide justifications and explanations for what I consider to be the weak parts in the plot of book one.

Much of this book is disjointed. The reader frequently doesn't know who is narrating the story from one paragraph to the next. To make matters worse, characters sometimes refer to themselves in the third person - and then switch to first person in the same paragraph. Many times, a story line is suddenly stopped, and the next chapter occurs years later, with a different set of characters. Nevertheless, there were some memorable scenes and even one line that I had to copy into my list of memorable quotations. I won't include the quote here, because it might offend somebody. However, it speaks of the futility of reasoning with certain types of people.

This book is a mixture of autobiography and self-help. It may seem odd to have an autobiography about such a young person, but she's amazing. I don't want to spoil your journey through this book by revealing any of the details of her life, but if you've ever felt like you don't quite fit in, (and who really does, anyway?), you may enjoy some of the life lessons that Felicia shares. . . . I've probably said too much already, but read the book anyway. Or, better yet, get the audio book.

The magic scenes follow no logic. They also include confusing, out-of-body or dreamworld descriptions

This may be the best book Neal Stephenson has written. He could easily expand this with at least 2 more books. (that's not really a spoiler, is it?) However, it is a complete story already. Making this into a trilogy would probably be disappointing because he covered the timespan from the most interesting viewpoint.