Later
Not quite as painful as Pillars of Creation and almost as good as Soul of the Fire, and that's saying something. TG has a maddening habit of repeating everything over and over and over until you just want to reach in and smack someone. Richard is, at times, a stubborn idiot. I'm so glad I'm done with this one. I may not bother picking up the next one.
Smaller “moments of awesome” than TGS but just as satisfying.
update 7/10/12: WTF was I thinking the first time?! There were so many moments of awesome in this book that it blows TGS out of the water.
Fantastic stuff. Cherie needs to do more urban fantasy. The book is engaging from beginning to end, although there were a few spots where I wanted her to get on with it.
Only Jim Butcher could kill his main character, bring him back as a ghost and still make him kick ass. I'm blown away every time; each book is better than the one before. AMAZING!
Starts strange then quickly turns into a typical Miles book. I had chills at the end. Can't wait to see what happens next.
This was “oh my freaking god” wow. One of the best things I've read from de Lint. Read it. You won't regret it.
A tiny bit too much starship fighting at the end, but a damn satisfying book and a good end to the series.
In general I'm not a big fan of Alan Dean Foster's writing style. It seems very old school, like something written in the 1980s. I haven't been a fan of his other Star Wars work either, and his original work has never spoken to me. This is almost more of a review of the author than the book.
The novelization didn't add much that wasn't in the movie, which is good for the future and all but not that great for the book. I can't take anything away from him for the plot, since it wasn't his. Most of the dialogue was exactly the same as the film, which helped a bit since I could imagine Adam Driver's almost lazy, emotionless voice delivering the Kylo Ren parts and the weirdness that is Maz Kanata. There are no big reveals in this. You don't get additional hints that Rey is Luke's daughter/Obi-Wan's granddaughter/Han Solo's secret love child/whatever theory you're currently buying into. Captain Phasma has no unshown hints of badassery. You could honestly just save a few hours of your life and watch the movie again.
Overall I really liked this book even though it has a lot of the same weaknesses as any of Terry's other books. He's got a point of view and there's no subtlety about the way he hammers it in. If someone were to do a word cloud on everything in this book “live”, “life”, “living”, and other similar words would be giant and everything else would be tiny. Not a bad philosophy, but I did get tired of having that point beaten in over and over.
One other very weird complaint... The chaptering in this book is kind of ridiculous. There's one sequence where Magda goes to visit a spiritist that takes at least 5 chapters when it would be more logically slotted into one. It's all one sequence of events and the way the chapters are broken up serve to falsely create cliffhanger moments that don't really work as such.
In any case, despite the heavy-handedness and the weird chaptering the story is really very good. It's much, much better than The Omen Machine and several books in the Sword of Truth series (I'm looking at you, Pillars of Creation).
This was always one of my favorite Star Trek books, along with The Vulcan Academy Murders (same side characters, same author).
Really insanely good. No one should write a book this good as their sophomore effort. Pat can take just as long to finish the next one as long as it's this good. Read it. Dive in and drown yourself in it. It's beyond amazing.
Man, I really liked this book. I was desperate for something good and light to read, and this filled the bill perfectly. Isaac is a great protagonist, the magic system is just a geek's dream, and the story is a great cautionary tale about what could happen if magic was real and the government got involved. Jim Hines deserved to be mentioned in any discussion about great urban fantasy books of the 21st century, and this one left me feeling just as good as if I'd read something by Jim Butcher. I can imagine Magic Ex Libris story continuing, but this is a good place to stop if the author wants to explore something new. Whatever he decides, I'm in for the long haul.
Starts pretty slow and the author is a bit chewy with the back story. A good edit could have cut out a lot of unnecessary stuff. Once it got moving it really took off, but that was about halfway through and the central mystery wraps up sooner than expected. The last quarter of the book could be considered hit or miss depending on how much you care about Mikael.
This has always been my favorite of John Ringo's series. I think part of that is because he can't indulge in gun porn the way he likes to. He still manages to wax rhapsodic on the 2nd Amendment (US Constitution), but without the guns it's not that bad.
The book is pretty easy to read, but it's not dumbed down. He has a tendency to use uncommon words in some places to describe something that it would be more appropriate to use a simple word (ie. “titian” to describe reddish hair). Thanks to the kindle I can look that stuff up pretty easily.
Usually John's books are absolutely stuffed with Pollyannas, both male and female. One of the things I really like about this one is that the main character, Herzer, is not 100% awesome. He's got a 5-10% streak of imperfection that allows him to grow a little.
All in all it's a light bit of fluff that will provide a fun adventure/apocalypse/rebuilding story, a smattering of sex, and a whole lot of military fiction. The second half is mostly like the generic basic training you see in movies with somewhat less screaming sergeants.
When this one came up on my WoT re-read, I was not super stoked. I've read it at least half a dozen times in the 12 years since it came out, but this was the first time I didn't hate it. I call that progress
What I liked: Who's the good guy? Who's the bad guy? What the hell is going on here?
What I'm mixed on: The magic system. Essence is meh, but Kan seems pretty cool. Shadows are cool, but the reasons they become shadows kind of sucks. And why do the people seem to hate the people that can't do magic so much more than they seem to hate the people that can do the magic they hate? I don't want to spoil things for you, but when one character meets Malshash, interesting times begin. It's very mixed because some stuff worked for me, but some explanations did not.
What I didn't like: Arbitrary, poorly thought-out limitations on magic users. The entire general setting of the world grated on me.
Good enough for a quick distraction but rough at times. The first half is a long, generic chase scene, and there's a story within a story that doesn't contribute anything at all to the larger narrative. At around 55-60% through it gets interesting and the whole point for Wiz being there finally starts to get some action. Even in the last half there are some asides to the main action that do nothing to advance the story and just took me out of it. I might check out the sequel, but only because it's part of the Baen Free Library.
The first 3/4ths of the book are fantastic, exceptional, amazing. Then the last quarter starts and it's a slog through WTF-ville. All of the plot build-up, all of the prior history of the universe, all of the potential, and Feedback leaves us with an ending that is bizarre, disconnected, and disappointing.
Elmore Leonard's third rule on writing is “Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.” This book is an almost perfect example of why that's such a good rule.
This rule, “Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose,” was also violated so much I don't know why the book didn't call the cops.
I hate to say it but “Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip” would have resulted in this book not being written.
It's not entirely the author's fault. No one knew who Picard, Riker, and Troi were really going to be when this book was written.
It's a great story and one of my favorites, but the characterization was a bit juvenile sometimes. Captain Kirk should not be as nice as he's portrayed in this book.
