Jabartik

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.

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.

Pretty standard pseudo-science with religious overtones tech-thriller.

I first read this many years ago, and decided to reread it yesterday on a whim - it definitely still holds up.

Pretty good, slightly better than the previous one. Start there in any case, and if you hate it, don't read this, otherwise do.

I stumbled across this in the kindle store for 99 cents. It's a pretty decent quick read, although it seems targeted at the YA crowd.

The basic premise is about people stumbling on the wrecks of two alien ships that did battle and crash landed in new mexico in 1948. It could have easily turned into a rehash of so many other roswell stories, but it had some pretty cool unique elements instead.

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.

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.

Solidly mediocre, even for a younger audience.

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.

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Adding to to-read list. Somehow this got lumped in with discworld for my “read at the end of time after all the other books are done” list.

It was OK, but I'm not loving this series. Sorry Nick!

I find myself more curious about the underlying “b” plot of the third Oreska than I do about the main characters.

I'll probably finish the series just to see what happens, but I think I'll take a little time off first.

Not a great standalone book, this was almost all setup for what's to follow.

I'm interested enough to see how the second book fares, but if nothing noteworthy happens there, I may call it quits.

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.

I stumbled on this in techno-thriller best seller section of the kindle store. I'm assuming this was because of the price (99 cents), but it was surprisingly good if you happen to like the niche it falls info.

This is the author's (40-something male engineer) first book, but it reads like Tom Clancy. If he keeps writing, he may be worth keeping an eye on.

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.