Michael Flynn
My 10-year-old finished this last week so I read it on her recommendation. It was good. Probably very good for young adult fiction because it didn't get too explicitly preachy.
Thumbs up.
Visually stunning, like most of Sienkiewicz'z work. The story was messed the hell up though.
This is an action movie in print and a fun read. John Rogers recommended it over twitter and it was a free kindle download so I grabbed it.
Fun noir kinda hard boiled mystery.
Took me a while to get into his style. The sort of clipped, flat delivery was great, eventually.
Got the recommendation from a Grantland column, of all places.
Not really for me. It was way out on the super-violent end and that's not generally my jam.
The hook is pretty good, “those old Charles Atlas bodybuilding ads in comics are a recruiting tool for....something”, but the art was too J Romita Jr ‘85 and distracted me the whole time.
Did not like.
The main idea is okay. It got really wordy which is something I could get past if the art was good. I thought the art was terrible. It looked like lots of bad photoshop effects.
Didn't do it for me. There were some plot points I didn't like and I thought that some of the narrative choices were hokey.
Noir that was too dark for me. Recommended from Super Punch and he's done right by me in the past.
I've got a 13-year old daughter so the plot points based around the one in this story were disturbing to the point of taking enjoyment away.
Old timey in some of the references and stories, not always in a good way, but it is an interesting artifact from an era of the sport.
Glad I read it and I recommend it if you can find a copy.
The prehistory of the Americas is a concept I find fascinating.
The idea that North and South America were bristling with cities and towns and people isn't the way it was taught in school when I was a kid and I get a kick out of un-learning that the facts I was taught.
It's tough subject matter to present in a gripping way. There are lots of ancient New England Indian names and my South American geography isn't what it used to be so there was defintiely a “reading a text book” vibe that was hard to shake.
Still, the broad strokes were compelling and since it was a subject I really wanted to read more about I enjoyed 1491 a lot.
That's an easy 5-star. What a great book.
I'm hesitant to keep reading more in the series just because I thought is ended so well.
I liked it. it got slow once or twice but otherwise moved right along. It definitely felt like it could be a movie.
Great Ellis story telling. The research is all there on the page. There is plenty of his trademark over-the-top description of horrible things. Its introduced cleverly but if you've read Ellis you know its him as soon as you read it.
It was fine. I'm not rushing right out to read the next one (or six), but I will keep them in mind when I'm looking for a book to read in the future.
It was good. I think my enjoyment suffered a bit because I had forgotten so much of what happened in the first book. There were a couple of reveals that didn't do much for me because I forgot relationships between the people or the backstory of a character.
Still a good read in its own right. I had a hunch at how it would end and I didn't miss by much. I'll plan to re-read the first two before I start the third. I've got plenty of time on that score so I'm not worried.
Gripping read. I went into it cold, like I heard recommended over and over.
Since finishing it and reading one or two reviews and talking about it with other readers, I agree that the end wasn't as satisfying as I wanted it to be and i think that's because I was so mad at Amy. I really wanted her to get her come-uppance and it didn't happen.
The bad guy didn't lose and that bugged me. I can't call that a flaw in the book but it is something that has stuck with me.
Lots of cool ideas. Fantasy novel, some magic but not too much. All of the Big Ideas seem so to be really well though out.
I can't help but hold books like this up against The Name of the Wind. It's not as good as that but I'd recommend it based on what I've read so far, for sure.
Loved it.
It's been a long time since I'd read any King and it was fun to get back into his style. I especially liked the warts-and-all way the late 50's-early 60's are presented. I'm so completely over the way baby boomers romanticize that period of American history.
It's always tough to satisfactorily end these epic fantasy trilogies. This one ends on a couple of unusual notes for the genre including one that I didn't see coming at all and didn't really like because it was so far outside the norm.
In the end, that's what I liked best about this series. All of the trappings of a Traditional Epic Fantasy are there but events unfold in a very non-fantasy way. Characters die, difficult decisions are made, and the consequences of those decisions a addressed head-on.
After a sluggish first 2/3 of the first volume the rest of this trilogy held an strong pace.
I liked it well enough. I know it's the 1st in a trilogy, but I felt it took too long to get all of the players together. The last 250 pages were excellent and really got me excited about reading the rest of the series.
Trying not to spoil anything, I especially liked the “Unforgiven” moment towards the end. That tension for that scene was really well built and the payoff was outstanding.
I didn't know anything about this when I bought it. I was hoping for more tennis insight but the self-help-ish bits were good too.
After the slow-to-sluggish build of most of the first volume, this second book in The First Law trilogy is rolling right from the start and maintains the momentum through the whole thing.
It's a classic heroes-on-a-journey/battle-for-the-future-of-the-realm Tale but the action is great and the characters have plenty of life in them. I'm excited to read the third book.
Really, really enjoyed this whole series I was even okay with some of the corny parts because they didn't run contrary to the tone of the rest.
A+! Will buy from again!
This is as hard as I go with sci-fi. I thought all of the future physics got explained without bogging down the story.
Heads up, the novel stops at 51% of the kindle edition. The rest is extras. That actually lessened some of the impact of the story's climax for me since I was under the mistaken impression that it was further setup for the rest of the novel.