Samuel Proulx

I have no idea why people give this 4 and 5 stars. I could only get through about ten percent of the book. The writing is just unrelentingly awful! Filled with typos, point of view and character changes that are never clearly indicated, short sentences that repeat words, and unclear descriptions. This is a perfect example: “Each time, the square side of the stone was facing the center of the strange gemstone, which was glowing with a strange white light.” Keep in mind that the adjective “strange” had been used three previous times on that single page! Without some heavy editing, this book is just unreadable.

This book says many of the things I've ranted about myself over the last couple years, but says them more eloquently and with more research than I would or could. I'll admit one part probably does slog a bit towards the end, but reading someone else extensively rewrite opinions I already agree with really doesn't bother me much. Though if you're not generally interested in the subject matter, I can understand how your eyes would glaze. However, if you're at all interested in the unfair media coverage “girls” shows are subjected to, the history of the various Pony incarnations, or some of the drama that has gone on in the MLP fan community (or just want something a bit deeper than “Wow, bronies. Huh.”), I'd strongly recommend this book.

They wanted $7.99 Canadian for this on Kindle. It's way too short to be worth that price. $2.99 perhaps.

Too much information (and not the right kind of information) to be a useful quick-reference, and too little information to be a fully fledged guide to the subject. As a ham myself, the ARRL has much, much better guides on the subject, useful to hams and non-hams alike. I really can't think of the kind of person who would find this particularly useful.

These books are slowly improving. Were I the target audience, I would have quite enjoyed this one. As it is, I mostly read them whenever they pop up in a place I can get them for free, out of a sense of fandom completionism.

I read this via the edition at: http://comicsempower.com/wynter-issue-1.html

That was produced for the blind, so I'm sure my experience is slightly different from sighted readers. However, this story holds up really well in narrative form! The reader/describer does her job nearly perfectly. The descriptions of the panels give enough detail to follow the plot, but are short enough that the suspense isn't lost. If you're a blind person who has never read a comic/graphic novel before, I'd recommend this as a darn good place to start.

I didn't like this book nearly as much as I was expecting to, and I'm having trouble articulating why. It is well-written, and well-read in the case of the audio edition. It does a good job telling Harry's story, through the eyes of some notable participants of the fandom. It's positive coverage of the fan community, something that is always good. And yet...I didn't like it. Maybe it's because I suspect that if I met the author in person, I wouldn't particularly like her. No, wait: that's too strong. I'm not saying I dislike her or anything, but for two people who are members of the same fandom, I think you would be hard pressed to find two people who have less in common. I was an anti-social teenaged male fan, and she was a 30-something professional female fan during the time the books were released. I was, and still am for that matter, a devoted Harry/Hermione shipper. Not because I have any problem with Ron, but because of how deeply I dislike Ginny (and how much I like Hermione). The anti-Ginny camp hardly gets a mention, putting all of Harry/Hermione down to evil Ron. I had never heard of Harry And The Potters, and didn't like what I heard when I looked them up just now, but I think The Butterbeer Experience and Lauren Fairweather wrote some of the best Harry Potter related music I've found. Yet, they get passed off with a one-line reference as Harry and The Potter clones. I never spent any time at all on The Sugar Quill or Harry Potter for Grownups, and my only involvement with Leaky was as a reader and listener. As an aside, I'd really like to see a source for the claim the author makes that Fiction Alley was only created because Cassandra Clare was banned from fanfiction.net for plagiarism. Even back then, there were lots and lots of perfectly good and ethical reasons not to want to have anything to do with fanfiction.net. All of the fanfics and fanfic authors she mentioned, I either didn't read, or didn't like. Not a single one of the fanfics I absolutely loved, and followed religiously, even got a mention.

I think writing this out has brought me to the reason this book doesn't sit well with me. The subtitle is “The true story of a boy wizard, his fans...” I think it should have been along the lines of “Harry: A History: The True Story Of One girls Life As A Fan”. Because as it stands, the book seems to be trying to sell itself as some kind of complete story of the fandom, and it just isn't. My experience, and thus I'm sure the experience of millions of others, is not in any way reflected by this narrative. Honestly, that really doesn't matter all that much. But I guess what turned me off of this book was that I was expecting some kind of unbiased recounting of the history of Harry Potter fandom, and what I got was a biography of Melissa Anelli. I'm much, much more interested in the former. So someone go and write that book, please.

This feels like classic British science fiction, transplanted and updated for the 21st century. While it's a little careless with scientific accuracy, the story is compelling enough that this doesn't really matter.

The potential for this to be a really good science fiction novel exists. Unfortunately, it's just potential. In order to achieve that, it would need:
1. Another round of editing. A few tense shifts, some head hopping, and some grammar mistakes need to be shaken out. The beginning of the book could use a little work, especially keeping in mind the old writer's saying “show, don't tell”.
2. The book needs to decide what it wants to be. Mostly, it looks like a coming of age science fiction adventure novel. But then, out of nowhere, two characters start quipping about man salad (in the context of eating...ewww!). This does not belong in a young adult novel. Then we suddenly get a bunch of romantic angst that feels quite out of place. This could be a good young adult coming of age adventure, a good science fiction comedy, or a good romantic hero story. But it can't be all three at once.
3. The setting needs more thought. It has futuristic technology. But it also has modern day things like Google, Snickers Bars, and new releases of modern video game series. It also apparently has events based on Roman history. A war is in progress, but who is fighting and why are never really covered. They're just generic rebels.

If those three things could be fixed, this would be at least 3 stars, probably 4. But alas, this e-book is already published.

I don't think I've ever read a book with quite this many different genres mixed in. It's a fantasy detective zombie novel...with shotguns. Surprisingly it all somehow works.

I'd heard Mur Lafferty's name in association with good things like the Escape Pod podcast, so when I saw her name on one of the books included in the Bundle Of Holding, I was excited to get to it. And I wasn't disappointed!

While the premise of the novel is a humorous one, mutants with second rate powers gathering together to save the world, Playing for Keeps isn't played for laughs. As most of the superhero novels I've read are nearly exclusively comedy, this is refreshing. It's a rocking good story, with original and well written characters, that I cared about by the second chapter. Once I got into this book, I just couldn't put it down! I'd love a sequel in the same world, featuring some of the same people.

Those who know me are surprised to find that I am, in fact, not a particularly big fan of the cyberpunk style vision of the future. That's probably why it took me so long to really get in to this book. However, I'm glad I stuck with it. The character development and plot turned out to be much better than I expected, based on the first part of the book. If you're a fan of this style of science fiction, I expect that you will probably enjoy this novel from the start. But even if you aren't, give this book a chance. You might be surprised.

I always feel bad giving small press books 1 star ratings. So let me make it absolutely clear that the poor rating was because this book is not at all to my taste, not because it is a terrible book. I rate books based on how much I enjoy them, and I did not enjoy this one at all.

With that said, I found this book confusing. My taste runs to linear stories, told from one or two points of view. I like stories that start at the beginning, and travel towards the end. As one of the characters said near the start of the novel:

“You showed up at the end of a really long story, okay? We don't have time to explain everything to you.”

I read this one entirely in one sitting! It's classic science fantasy action adventure, but with Victorian space merfolk, basically. If you enjoy books like Starman Jones, or the Seafort saga, you'll probably be entertained by this. If I hadn't already spent my e-book budget for this month, I'd go on to book 2 in the series right away, assuming it's already published; I refuse to look, in case I get tempted to spend money I shouldn't.

This is a standard, paint-by-the-numbers fantasy. I don't mean that to be as critical as it sounds. Get yourself a drink, sit out in the sun, and read and enjoy it for what it is. Not every work needs to be groundbreaking. The tropes this author uses are handled with skill, the writing gets out of the way and does it's job, and the plot will keep you entertained.

There were 2 quite good short stories in this book. The rest of them didn't work for me at all, though.

This book tries a little bit too hard, in my opinion. When it's funny, it can be laugh out loud funny. But unfortunately, it usually isn't all that funny. What it is, mostly, is strange and slightly unbelievable. But if the subjects of music and copyright interest you, give it a read anyway. It won't change your life, but you'll at least have an enjoyable time with it.

It's another DW book; what more could anyone ask? Not quite as funny as some of the others, but still worth reading if the disc is something you enjoy.

I ran across this book when looking up words at wordnik.com; it was quoted in one of the examples sections. I didn't intend to actually read it. I'm almost 25, yet Boy Scout books can still capture my attention. This probably says more about me than about the book.

If you read this book as a kind of self parody of our CNN run culture of fear porn, you'll get some enjoyment from it. If you try to take it seriously as an actual information source, forget it. Unfortunately, this book is not nearly as funny as [b:Everything Is Going to Kill Everybody: The Terrifyingly Real Ways the World Wants You Dead 6697553 Everything Is Going to Kill Everybody The Terrifyingly Real Ways the World Wants You Dead Robert Brockway http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320454952s/6697553.jpg 6893238]. But it isn't nearly as offensive and childish.

Someone dies. A huge number of characters spend a bunch of time discussing it. By the time anything else happens, nobody cares. The writing is just not good enough to make me feel attached to any of these people.

This was too short, and did not contain nearly enough details.

I really enjoyed this book; it presented not only a picture of what it was like for the people on the ground, but also did a good job of giving a picture of the overall war, and putting all of the battles in context.

The internet hype machine indicates that this is some of the worst writing ever printed in book form. Now that it's available as an ebook, I decided to pick it up, ready to be amused. My reaction was...blah. I've come across much, much worse writing. Yes, it's silly and unoriginal. But I can name you dozens of fantasy series that are silly, badly plotted, and unoriginal. Same goes for characterization: lots of books get this wrong, and Gloria Tesch is no worse than some other self-published authors that have crossed my path. Sure, the writing is stilted, but it isn't stilted enough to be particularly amusing. In short, Gloria Tesch's awful promotional techniques, internet drama, movie and theme park delusions, and Youtube clips are all much more amusing in their badness than are her actual books.

This book is so dated as to be useless to the casual reader. While the cases it presents may still be interesting for those in the profession to analyze, people reading from a less professional perspective will find nothing of any worth. This book is so full of horrifying 1970's style racism (comparing “savages” to children and “retards” and “simpletons”, calling cases retardeds, simpletons, idiots, and worse, etc) that while some of the information may still be valid today, I cannot take a single word of it seriously. If the author took the time to read and write a forward for the audio edition, why on earth didn't he take the time to go through the text, and at least update some of the worst blunders? Yes, I realize time and language have changed. But that's no reason to perpetuate historical mistakes in what is sold as a popular psych book, especially not when the author is alive and well and could update the text.