Robert Wilson
I listened to the audiobook. If I had merely read the book I think I would give it a higher rating. The problem with the audiobook is one that many current urban fantasy audiobook suffer from. The narration voice is both annoying and inappropriate for the story. This is most definitely the fault of the voice direction. Not every fantasy audiobook requires a high-pitched, nasal, everything-is-a-snarky-joke, early-20's know-it-all bimbo voice. But that specifically is the entire problem with this audiobook. The author has been done a disservice. And so was I.
I was unable to finish this book. It is one of the most poorly written books I have read in a long time. The uneven pace and boring repetitions of the protagonist's insecurities were infuriating. I just wanted the author to get on with telling me her story. Instead I had to constantly relive the character's several-years-in-the-past-trauma of cutting her hand while slicing a bagel. This is boring, lazy writing. And much of the secretive plot revolves around the standard trope of characters withholding vital information from each other.
A good story with plot twists and an uncertain finish
I read this to get a sense of the original story before the soon to be released MCU Avengers movie. Although a couple of plot elements may be retained, I don't think the movie will bear a lot of resemblance to the comic. Without the Adam Warlock character (who has not appeared in the MCU movie universe yet) the plot will stray quite a bit from the comic. Looking forward to the mixture of the Guardians of the Galaxy with the rest of the Avengers characters.
While this graphic novel is pretty self-contained, I still wondered what else was going on with the characters in the start and those who weren't included. There is no real time-frame within the story. The lack of any member of the Fantastic Four made it feel very stand-alone rather than a true universe-altering plot line. When I was finished, it felt like the story took place over the span of a couple of minutes.
Overall, I'm glad I finally read this book.
I listened to this book with my 7 year-old son. I will say that he enjoyed it much more than I did, but then, he got to play video games in the back seat of the car while listening to it. The plot has a couple of good twists for the younger readers. I personally didn't like the initial chapters setting up the story. And in the end, the main character's change from bully to just average pre-teen jerk seemed to happen all at once. But it worked for my son and that was really all I was looking for.
Amongst the crop of YA-Teen-Heroine-Saves-the-World trilogies (and I assume that this is the start of a trilogy) this novel stands out for have consistent internal logic. The writing moves quickly and draws the reader into the story. I enjoyed the attention to details as various characters' actions reverberated through time and the memories and situations of other characters are affected. I would recommend this novel to anyone looking for YA science fiction. However, I did not feel that the Audible reader did justice to the material. Especially during conversations her phrasing and intonations did not sound like people talking and failed to put stress on words and syllables where it would naturally occur. Perhaps she did not have the opportunity to read the work before it was recorded (though I doubt that very much), but the recording indicates a lack of preparation to me. I recommend skipping the audio version and reading this book with your own eyes.
I was a fan of the tv series and I enjoyed the movie when it came out earlier this year, so it probably comes as no surprise that I liked this book as well. The writing is as good as the show and the plot takes place shortly after the events of the movie. That means that Logan is out of the picture for the most part and that is a good thing in my opinion. There is plenty of emotional angst without that story line. Most of the cast of characters is present as well, although more Weavil wouldn't have been a bad thing. All in all a pretty good mystery with a few twists to keep you guessing.
This book really surprised me with it's theology so well integrated into all of it's character's lives. It was a wonderful set-piece revolving around the themes of loyalty, duty, and love. I recommend this book to anyone who has grown tired of the usual over-wrought drama of today's fantasy best-sellers.
This book is really well written and perfectly complements the second and third books in the series. I suppose that it could be read as a stand-alone like the others, but I think it would leave more questions since it glosses over many events that are major plot points in the other books. I now cannot imagine reading [b:The Last Colony 88071 The Last Colony (Old Man's War, #3) John Scalzi http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1312021759s/88071.jpg 18279847] without reading this book with it.
This book is self published and has a lot of typos and grammatical issues. That said, the plot was pretty good and the pace was terrific. I'm certain that other reviews will go into the plot in detail (because that's what people here seem to want to do for some reason) so I will just say it's about a somewhat regular guy's entrance into the world of con artists. Why? For a girl, of course.
This book revolves around an Arab terrorist plot to use computer viruses to bring down the US and European powers. The story is a fairly by-the-numbers thriller which stands out primarily for the fact that its author is a renowned computer expert. Not much of his expertise really comes out in the story, however. That is probably because he was consciously trying to hold back for fear of boring non-computer-literate readers. My guess is that he should have gone for it and made a book that at least stood out for its in-depth explanation of the inner-workings of our cyber-culture. This is clearly a first effort and maybe we'll see something more interesting if he attempts a second book.
This book was much improved over the first ([b:The Magicians 6101718 The Magicians Lev Grossman http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1313772941s/6101718.jpg 6278977]) by moving away from solely following the story of Quentin. In the first story he moped the whole way through even as he was granted whatever he wanted, time after time. This time out, we still follow Quentin in the present but are given the story of Julia in alternating chapter flashbacks which truly create the backbone of the story. Julia is a much better formed character than Quentin and she doesn't make the nonsense life choices that plague Quentin's arc. I'm sure that there's probably another book on the way to tell us more about how Quentin will continue to pout his way through life, being handed everything he wants on a silver platter and finding it all wanting. Unless he becomes a changed character following the final scenes from The Magician King it will fall back to the bland story arc that marred the first book.