Jabartik
Pretty bad. Even for this series.
This book makes many references to events that happened in a short story, but I had to go online to find this out. If you don't pick up on this fact, you'll feel that your memory has turned to swiss cheese. If they couldn't include the short story, the least they could have done was mention it.
Ok, turns out I hadn't read this one after all.
I liked it quite a bit, although I suspect my reaction would have been much different if I had to wait a year or more to read the sequel.
Didn't feel like a very satisfying conclusion. I might have liked it more if it wasn't the finale.
I just finished re-reading this, and I was curious if it would stand up to the test of time or not. If anything, I think it was better the second time around.
This is an epic space opera, and character development is largely non-existent, but worldbuilding and “big ideas” are more interesting to me anyway so that wasn't a big deal. For those of you who prefer character driven dramas, you probably won't find this nearly as exciting.
Compelling, well thought out, internally consistent and logically sound vision of a fascinating potential future with an interesting take on what it would mean for humanity to continue expanding for millions of years without the ability to travel faster than the speed of light.
Really liked this one, although I felt the ending was a little too open-ended. Maybe he'll choose to keep going with a sequel one day.
I've noticed a lot of other people call this “flawed”, and honestly I can't disagree with them. However, it's so ambitious and executed well enough that I truly feel it deserves 5 stars anyway.
I realize I may differ from a lot of other people in this area, but I don't start at 5 stars and subtract for things I dislike - I start at 0 and add points for awesomeness. By that measure, this is one of the relatively few things I've ever felt that actually deserves a 5.
Good read, standard Dresden. I'm sad I finished it, but I' look forward to the next one.
The best of the first trilogy, although I either missed something that contributed to the events in the ending, or I'm supposed to chalk it up to the universe's biggest coincidence yet.
I first read this many years ago, and decided to reread it yesterday on a whim - it definitely still holds up.
Brin's writing style is sort of maddening - I've never been fond of imperfect narrators - I don't mean omniscient, I mean narrators who are an integral part of the story who do “know” things, but don't “think” them where I can see them as a storytelling device to keep the suspense going longer).
Nevertheless, and despite the “main” story not being all that interesting to me, I'm fascinated by the world and backstory that he's created and want more.
It was enjoyable. Typical Dresden fare, if you like the series in general, you will enjoy this. I don't see it making any converts though.
I went into this book with high hopes based on recommendations from others. It sets up an interesting universe, and I very well may check out additional books in this universe, but I can't say that I was particularly thrilled by this book itself.
The plot wandered all over the place, usually at an unbearably slow pace. I felt like far too much time was spent setting up a couple of key moments that most people probably saw coming from 50+ pages away.
I've read some of Banks' other works and liked them a lot more. As one of his earlier works that does manage to setup an interesting setting maybe I should cut it more slack, but I just don't feel that it holds up that well.
I enjoyed the process of reading it. In many ways it's better than the first book. It doesn't really feel like a complete book in and of itself, but I guess I can live with that - if it was 500 pages I would have felt ripped off, but at 1000 it's hard to complain.
I have no idea how he's going to finish the storyline in one more book though, 1000 pages or not. We'll have to see if he pulls a dust of dreams / crippled god.
I am a big fan of Mr Reynolds, House of Suns will forever be a book I look back fondly at. Sadly Permafrost was the exact opposite of that experience.
Gives tantalizing glimpses of an interesting future, but there's very little meat to it. I liked the new view on what time may be and how it would adjust to changes, but at the end of the day this was very standard exploration of time travel + paradoxes with a stereotypical “closed loop” ending where the entire journey was invalidated in the last few pages. It was well executed and clearly the intention all along (and not an “oh crap, I can't figure out how to end this”) copout - but I found it extremely unfulfilling.
Characters are cardboard cutouts and undergo precisely 0 character development from start to finish. This is always a risk in hard sci-fi, but usually the “big idea” pay-off makes up for it, which this book cannot claim.
As an additional note, while I do not rate books on length or cost, but rather quality of execution and how long the ideas stay with me, potential buyers should be aware this is extremely short - novella length at best. Looking at my emails from Amazon/Goodreads I can derive that finished it in about 81 minutes, and this is one of the few times in my life I look back on the time I spent reading a book and wish I had that time back - which, if you think about how little time that actually represents is very telling.
It's been years since I read this, I actually forgot that I had done so until I saw other people's reviews pop up in my feed.
I recall really enjoying the ideas in this one. Not really the best character development/dialog, but I'm a sucker for stories where the setting itself is involved with the big mystery/secret/whatever.
