Ryan J

This is a really good book that is very thought provoking. It definitely gets a bit ridiculous at times and jumps the shark more than once, but overall it's a good read. It brings up a lot of really interesting “what ifs” that truly make you think about the future. How will humanity react if we know a near-apocalypse situation is coming? Once it happens, how will we survive?

It's definitely a good book that I recommend, even if just for the science discussions and social thought experiments it brings up. That being said, the book has WAY too many convenient situations. The characters are often saved at the last minute by something unexpected, lots of deus ex machina situations going on here. Plot lines seem way too convenient for driving the characters in one direction or another. I found myself doing a lot of, “oh come on, really?” when things would happen. It's a book that wants to be taken very seriously and has some majorly interesting science topics, but it's hampered by plot devices that seem just a bit too perfectly lined up, you know?

If you like apocalyptic stories or dystopian stories, then I recommend this one, you'll probably enjoy it. But you'll have to be ready to look past some of the all too convenient plot devices.

Even as a guy, I enjoyed reading this book. It was funny, emotional, and and had some great character development. You really felt like you got to know these people and understood their problems. I also really liked the way it was written. BUT! The book has a problem...it's more documentary than fiction. The author is trying to push an agenda and raise awareness about domestic abuse issues. That's all well and good, but it's not clear at all that this is the intention of the book. It shouldn't be presented as normal fiction, in my opinion.

As long as you understand that this book has an agenda before reading it, then go for it, you'll probably like it a lot. Unfortunately, I didn't know this before reading, so I felt like the book was a deception of sorts. A documentary masquerading as fiction. It left a bad taste in my mouth at the end of the book, which is a shame, because I actually did enjoy the book.

Horrible ending. I am extremely surprised and disappointed by the way this series ended. I feel like I invested so much time reading (and enjoying) the first two books only to have it end like this. This whole book was disappointing really, as it wasn't at all like the fist two. There was a severe lack of character development and I never felt attached to the characters the way I did in the first two books. Overall, it was a letdown. Save yourself the trouble and only read the first book or first two books. Avoid letting this ending ruin the series for you.

This book was weird. After so many glowing reviews (and an excited endorsement by Gizmodo), I really wanted to like it. But it was so disjointed and all over the place that it was really hard to enjoy. The writing was good, and certain parts of it grabbed attention, but then it would cut away from a scene with no explanation and never mention it again. Then everything was very hastily explained at the end to try and tie the story together.

It wasn't bad, but it certainly didn't live up to the hype for me.

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This just wasn't a good book. The idea wasn't bad, but the execution was poor. Superhero books are hard to write in today's world where so many other superhero stories exist. The characters the new story presents can make or break the story and in this case, they broke it. So many of the superheros presented in this book were near duplicates of famous comic book superheroes, but with different names. And the names were bad! I simply could not take the book seriously with superheros with names like Idea Man. There was a clone of Captain America called Sgt. Hammer. There was a clone of Iron Man. Some of the bad guys were cyborg pirates that reminded me a lot of the Borg from Star Trek.

All in all, so many elements from this book seemed borrowed from other stories that it became distracting. Add that to the ridiculously silly names the superheroes/villains had, coupled with a mediocre storyline centered around rape (seriously), and you don't end up with a good book. I love superhero stories, but I can't recommend this one.

This is a good book, I enjoyed it, but it wasn't what I was expecting. It reads like a dry biography as a standard chronology of Lincoln's life, just with vampires. I expected a much more action packed read, more thriller than documentary. That's not to say it's a bad book, because I did enjoy reading it. It just wasn't what I'd hoped it would be.

This is definitely a young adult story and if you come into it knowing that, it's a very enjoyable book. It's a story of a magical world without being a rip-off of Harry Potter. The story focuses more on characters than on the magic environment itself, which makes the beginning of the book somewhat jarring. More than once I double checked to see if there was a book that came before this that introduced things that I was expected to know before reading this book.

But you get drawn into the story quickly and it's a quick, enjoyable book. Being a young-adult story, it does lack the intensity and depth of a more advanced novel. Things definitely come a little too easily to the main character, and she is able to solve the crisis a tad too quickly.

But, like I said, if you come at it knowing what to expect, it's a very good story with great writing that describes the scenes of magic in ways that make them almost come to life.

The story has its fair share of violence, but there's almost nothing in the way of language or sex, which is refreshing for a young-adult novel. I would have no problem recommending this book to anyone, adult or teen.

Very good book, Better than Ganymede, but nowhere near as adventure packed as Boneshaker or Dreadnaught. This one was more about the characters than the adventure, which is okay. It was still an exciting read and I look forward to starting the next one!

Well. That was...weird. Definitely not up to par with the rest of the Clockwork Century books. Even though this is just a short story, it has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the series and was, frankly, really strange. I look forward to moving past it to the next real book in the series.

While brilliantly written, the story was far from gripping. I had to intentionally finish it, and even then the ending was predictable. It took literally the entire first half of the book to finish setting up characters and get to the action, and then the action was over exactly the way I expected it to be. I will say that the writing was fantastic and I really was able to visualize the scenes because they were described so well. Even so, the book left me disappointed.