Aaron

Overall a good read, but a disappointing middle portion of “hero goes to school” that didn't live up to the rest of the book.

I can't believe it took me this long to finally read this. I really liked the movie and the book is even better.

It's better than my three star review might lead you to believe, it's just not my favoured brand of fantasy.

I don't know what to think of this book.

The accent the narrator used for the main character almost made me stop listening. Otherwise, pretty good.

Just the Iron Druid story, A Prelude to War.

The story was good and deserves four stars. The narrator had an odd rhythm that threw me off. It's really annoying that it's only an audio book.

Not as bad as Hammered, but the big ending battle was over even more quickly and made less sense.

This almost gets four stars out of me because it has the Morrigan showing her softer side and we finally get to hear how Attics got Airmid's herblore. But I stubbornly refuse on principle.

It was as advertised.

As good as the first, looking forward to the next one.

The translation from Russian is a little rough and it's not really a complete book (it ends in a huge cliffhanger without really resolving the central plot), but I'm a sucker for VR MMORPGs.

I liked this even more than the Eli Monpress series. It's the right mix of light, fun, and geeky.

Three and a half stars. I'd prefer less sappy/creepy romance between adopted brother and sister.

Not bad, but the pervading sense of political correctness was stifling.

More over the top. Less interested in what happens next than I was after the first book. I'll still probably read the next one.

After reading up on the next two books in the series, I think I'll quit while I'm ahead.

A coming of age story with enough new ideas to make it interesting. That said, there are a few things to be aware of. It's basically The Hobbit plus a little Dungeons and Dragons. It draws heavily on Tolkien's the Hobbit. There are a lot of parallels. Also, it's written in a similarly overly verbose “ye olde bedtime story” style. From D&D we get Adventurer's being a recognized profession and the bag of holding.

The last thing that annoyed me was that the protagonist did almost everything by accident. He was still roundly praised for his “heroism”, though. And despite all the talk of power being a responsibility and having a cost, there was no absolutely no cost for our hero. Everything came extremely easy to him and he never had to struggle even once. I'm much more relaxed about Mary Sue characters than I used to be, but it's still disappointing when they're taken to the extreme.

With all that said, if you're okay with the style of prose and the idea that you won't be treading much new territory, this can be a fun read. Just go into it with the proper expectations and you'll do fine.

The theme of the book is that war is pointless. The book was similarly so.

This would probably get 4 stars from me, but there was something bothering through the whole book. Sometimes it obvious that it was the author's intent, especially in the dialog, but other times it could just been a mistake. Many pronouns, articles, and other connecting words didn't make it to the page (like in my previous two sentences.) All those “nothing” and “unnecessary” words that make a sentence flow. It ruined the rhythm of the book for me. It's hard to enjoy a fantasy when you're constantly being dragged back to reality by the words on the page. I'll try the next one and hope it was just an editing mistake that's not repeated.

I'm not sure why we needed a pre-quel, but this is a great Dresden story and definitely worth reading.

I can't remember exactly why I didn't like this quite as much as the others. I think it was because it didn't have enough Halley.

Intelligent humor with just enough pop culture in the mix.

I'm trying not to be so hard on the books I read and let little things go. Like poorly formed sentences and misused and misquoted expressions. So, this book gets 4 stars for the energy of the story, the interesting characters, the creative world-building, and the touches of humor.

Well that escalated quickly. In the last third of the book all the characters start unleashing a level of power that was never hinted at them having, it comes out of nowhere. To be fair, it's sort of, kinda, barely hinted, but not really.

Other than that, I liked it.