Michael Best
My favourite of the Bronte books (I have not read Agnes Grey as yet) but, like Emily's books, I feel it is too long and rather excessive on the Christian moralising sermons.
Not for a moment did I believe in the premise behind “The Procedure”. I had no liking for the main character. I experienced no tension, no suspense, no excitement, not a single thought provoking moment.
Increasingly, my hopes for this book dissipated and it became a process of reading words until they stopped and I was filled then with an immense sense of relief.
Sorry, got to 45% and gave up.
Possibly an interesting story, but the gooey-eyed, awful romance sub-story was just too awful to get through.
I am left with very mixed feelings. I found the ambulance/army episodes realistic and believable, so completely in contrast to the awful romance scenes and dialogue.
DNF after 22%.
There may be a decent SF idea in here but I was utterly bored by the banal relationship drama.
It is perhaps somehow appropriate that in a book about Earth time slowing down to a fraction of that of the universe, the first 80 pages seemed to last an eternity.
In my younger years, I loved reading Ipcress File and Funeral In Berlin but gave up on Deighton after Billion Dollar Brain.
After so many years, I picked this book up because it was cheap and I am so glad I did. A really enjoyable, twisting, alternative history thriller. A cracking read.
I had no idea what this book was about when I purchased it; I bought it because it's author is Dan Vyleta.
Had I known the subject matter and not the author in advance, probably I would have been scared off - a Victorian world where people's emotions produce smoke which can affect others.
I thoroughly enjoyed what Mr Vyleta has done with this concept. It had me gripped.
All the double dealing, two-faced treachery one expects from a cracking British spy novel.
Unusually for me, I read each in the trilogy back to back.
Books one and two I really liked, but book three was too long, with too much time spent on her “will she/won't she?” affair.
Possibly a 3.5.
Not my favourite Vargas read so far, but still a really enjoyable, fun read.
I enjoyed reading this book. It is a fascinating story, but I felt the telling of that story was a little unsteady at times; too often chapters would veer off to the left or right before coming back on track.
Probably a 2.5.
As a fan of C J Sansom, S J Parris and Antonia Hodgson I thought I would love this book, but it did not quite flow for me.
I enjoyed this book, but some of the coincidences seemed a little too fortuitous to be credible.
I have no idea why it has taken me so long to getting round to reading this great little thriller.
Oh dear, this is a DNF for me. After 20%, I simply have no interest at all in this - the effort to try and turn the words in to current English requires a desire to continue which I lack.
Well, I am glad that is over. Which ever little devil convinced me it was a good idea to buy this book, I hope I do not run into it again!
In a world where it seems everyone has deep, dark secrets or violent longings, I confess to my ugliest act - forcing myself to finish this book. There, said it. May the literary gods forgive me.
To my shame, I had never heard of this book until I heard it talked about on BBC's A Good Read.
It is a rollicking good read.
Whilst I generally enjoyed this book, it did not grip me or carry me through in the same way Gorky Park did.