Kyle
This book was fine, maybe even pretty good. I may be being a bit hard due to its place on the New York Times bestseller list. But it has so many small issues that I feel like I kinda have to knock it a bit. It doesn't feel like DeMille is really ready to take on the topic of Cuban-American Relations, with both sides basically having simplistic stereotypes for they're characters. I never really bought any of the character motivations. Sara jumps back and forth from being a serious member of the mission to letting her passion endanger the mission to an extreme level. Mac develops a strong soldiers code out of nowhere. The only character that is consistent is Jack. The whole book feels like it takes twice as long as it needs to to say anything. And (I recognize this is a real nitpick) DeMille uses “Mac and I” and “Me and Mac” in the same paragraph. I wouldn't normally give a shit if you used “me in Mac”, but to do it two different ways in the same paragraph is just annoying.
This is not a book. This is a fanfiction of history. Turtledove does not develop his own characters, he pulls some ready made characters out of history and drops them in a plot of his own making. And that plot is wonderful. He clearly has put a lot of thought into his premise, making reasonable guesses about the course of history if the South maintained it's Independence. But that does not excuse the lack of character creation. This book includes Lincoln, Custer, Theodore Roosevelt, Stonewall Jackson, and many other famous characters as it's main cast, and they are all paper thin foils of their real selves; Lincoln's a revolutionary, Custer's a bloody leader, Roosevelt's a Jingoist, and Jackson's a loyal military commander. By far my favorite character was the German Military attache, Colonel Schlieffen (who would go on the be the architect of the Schlieffen Plan), just cause he wasn't shackled to a historical portrayal of his character. I could learn and explore who his character was, rather than knowing as soon as the word Custer was written on the page. He gave Lincoln an interesting spin by making him a Marxist, and if he had done that with every other character I would have shouted his praise from the rooftops. But he didn't, so I call this a fanfiction because Turtledove blatantly grabbed characters from another medium and used them for this own story.
Also, this book loses another star by having frayed fucking edges. I'll keep doing this until publishers stop.
I haven't liked Stephen King books. They always seem like they came up with a couple good ideas, but then does the minimum amount of work to thread those ideas in the story. So maybe it was a mistake to pick up The Gunslinger, but everyone kept raving about how great of a fantasy series it was. Maybe this one's good, maybe this is where King comes into his own. But once again, I was disappointed. Kings done an okay job world building, even if it's a bit cryptic, but there's nothing else. Very little character development, a plot I can summarize in a few sentences. I didn't hate it, but I was bored pretty much the entire time.
Take the fact that I have given every book in this series as huge praise for it. Few series manages to keep the same characters fresh while not letting the plots get too overcomplicated. Fforde does a beautiful job dancing around cliché while never stepping on it, and the series has a feeling like good improv, where you can tell that he's making it up as he goes along, but you can't wait to see what he comes up with next.
None of the characters have any redeeming qualities. I hate them all and they all deserve a lot worse than they got. The writings mediocre and the plot is basically nonexistent. Rekulak tries to kindle the nostalgia of adolescence in the 80's, but the kindle turns into an all consuming fire that destroys any other values of the book. Hard pass.
Pretty good for a self published book. There is a chronology error, but it's really well written. The characters are cliched, but solid. The plots got a unique spin on the crime writer wrapped up with his fans thing. I don't know where the series is going to go from here, since everything is pretty neatly wrapped up, but as it's own story, it's worth a read.
A really good political dystopia book. The world Orwell creates is very detailed and well thought out. My only complaint is that it's a little over the top, which is kinda it's job as satire, but it's still somewhat jarring. I can understand camera's in everyone's house, but they're monitoring your facial expressions?
Good Russian romance. It kinda loses focus whenever it looks away from the two main characters, but it stays on track. I was kinda confused with about what was happening a) because of all the Russian names that I couldn't keep track of and b) because Pasternak doesn't take much time to give context to the situation the characters are in. It's understandable; the intended audience wouldn't need context having just lived through it, but I feel like some translator notes would not go awry.
All our Wrong Todays is an excellent start for Mastai's future; It has wonderful characters, an interesting plot, and some very unique time travel mechanics. He needs to work on his writing style, especially his chapter organization. Two or three page chapters lead to a very choppy reading experience, like riding with someone who is learning how to drive, constantly slamming the gas or the breaks. Nevertheless, I would highly recommend Mastai's debut novel, and look forward to what he writes next.
Also, this review has been lowered one star because of the books intentionally frayed edges. Fuck those.
This is a really good setup to a very interesting series, but I'm not sure I'll be continuing it. The subject of political intrigue on the backdrop of a developing lunar society is masterfully done, and the writing is good enough to carry it, but the author tries to involve too many complex characters too early in his story. All but two of the main characters are arrogant assholes, which makes sense given the subject matter of high society. They all have redeeming qualities, but it leads to an oppressive feeling from the book. On top of that, most of the book is introductions for these characters. The last third of the book really describes what they do, and it ends with a clear sense that more moves coming. These things lead me to believe that McDonald has a fantastic story planned out, but this story didn't engage me enough to convince me to seek out the next one. If I'm really bored, I'll grab it at the library, if it's in.
About halfway through, the book about dragons introduces time travel. McCaffrey is clearly trying to blend sci-fi and fantasy, a noble effort, but in this case it just falls flat on it's face. It has some great pieces, but the time travel plot is so distracting that I can't enjoy the rest of the book.
Also, the plot relies on a bit of orbital physics (another attempt to mix the sci-fi into this book), but it gets it wrong. A planet with an extremely eccentric orbit would travel at about the same speed when close to a planet with a much more circular orbit, which would mean that a close pass of the two planets might last a couple orbits of the planet with a circular orbit, but not fifty. Maybe a personal niggle, but if you're going to base a major part of the plot around this, check to make sure it's right.
I really want to like this book. It's got a great core concept. Magic has disappeared from the world, and the last to English magicians work to bring it back. Magic with a backdrop of Napoleonic era British aristocracy is a great place to start, but it really doesn't do much beyond that basic concept. The characters are okay, but nothing to write home about. The writing style, which feels like an old Dickens novel, but this make the characters feel stiff and unlikable. The plot is incredibly non-descript and runs WAY too long. The last third is quite good, with the personalities of the two magicians colliding and dark forces working behind them, but it takes so long to get to that point that I really have difficulty giving this book a wholehearted recommendation.
In addition, this book has intentionally frayed edges, which docs it one star.
This book is great in the same way a bad B-movie is great; It's terrible, but its terribleness is inherently enjoyable. Anthony's choices are sometimes so bizarre, the real mystery in the book is what kind of drugs she's on. Why is there this weird love subplot between the General and the doctor who is removed from the main plot almost immediately after she is introduced? Why is Dee introduced as a character at all if she's just going to be killed immediately? Why is there a Zen master talking with a weponized video game nerd? I really enjoyed reading this book, but I can also completely understand the low scores some other people have given it.
Really good core central idea and characters that the whole book flows naturally from. The by the last quarter of the book it starts to get old; that section feels a bit padded. Niffenegger is definitely a stronger romance writer than a sci-fi writer, but since this book is more of a romance than sci-fi, it works.
Really good first half, but then sort of falls apart in the second half. The time spent in the Mote system is full of interesting characters and intriguing mysteries about how the aliens work, but once they return to the empire, the characters seems to get flatter and all the mysteries have been explain, so you're just reading to to see how it ends. I would have liked a bit more of a cliffhanger ending, where they're leaving the system with the Motie Ambassadors in tow. It would have fit the tone of the book a bit better
Interesting plot centered around good characters, but it just sorta peters out and the end rather than coming to any kind of conclusion. But then there's the big bugbear; I can accept a little historical inaccuracy, but this went a little to far. I had difficulty focusing on the narrative because I kept wondering, “Did North Carolina actually try and ban all slaves? I'm pretty sure not.”
Holy shit this one got to me. There are very few books that can bring you to tears, but this is one of them. It does the telling-two-stories-in-alternating-chapters thing, which has become annoyingly popular. As usual, one of the stories is much stronger than the other, but both stories and enough to stand up on there own. Like A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, Chambers focuses on writing characters rather than story. The plot is paper thin, but you keep turning the page regardless because you want to know what happens to these characters.