Jase
I'm torn... there was a lot I like about the book, the unique style of vampires and the central story, but the main character, despite being 53 years old is depicted as looking like a 10 or 11 year old girl, and there is sex, with her, by older men. Yes, they are thralls somewhat trapped by her power, but it was extremely uncomfortable reading sensually written love making scenes involving a “child”. It was an interesting read, but one I'm unlikely to ever pick up again.
One evening lightning struck my brain. “I could write a story about a kid kidnapped by the closet monster or the boogeyman, and his teddy bear has to go save him.” And then I discovered someone had already written it. The only difference between what I dreamed up and what Mike Raicht has created is in my version the toys stayed looking like toys, ala Toy Story, as opposed to looking real once they cross into the boogeyman's realm.
I can't wait to get my hands on the next volume.
The first three of the four collected stories are pretty great. A nice cohesive narrative. The fourth story goes off the rails a bit and doesn't make much sense until you get toward the end, and even then it feels out of place. If you buy this collection, I recommend just reading the first three (12 chapters) and then stopping.
Loved, loved, loved it! The only problem I've got is that since it's a collection of an ongoing series, it ends with a giant cliffhanger. It would be nice if the collection held a complete story. Sure, the cliffhanger makes me want to buy the next one, but it also makes me feel like I HAVE to buy the next one. I hate being pushed. Putting that aside though, I like the world and characters that have been crafted here. Solid storytelling.
Nothing that special. I mean, it was decent, but being a collection of a typical monthly comic, it means that every issue has block of introduction dialog reminding the reader who people are, which is fine if you are reading it monthly, but in a collected work is just feels like the author thinks you are an idiot. Can't be helped though, a drawback of the formulas they work with.
I'm not usually one to read a bunch of self help sort of books, though I occasionally will run through one on a recommendation, such as the odd finance book about getting debt under control. But, despite other problems that I have in life the single biggest, hands down, is procrastination.
People who don't procrastinate will look at a procrastinator and see only that that person is either not working hard enough or putting off work. They don't procrastinate and as such don't understand the motivations and reasons behind why someone would. So they demand “get to work” and “just do it” and “work harder” which more often than not will just cause more procrastination.
This book is the first I've ever come across that actually understands procrastination. Reading through its pages I found myself nodding my head a lot because it described my internal struggle with work almost perfectly. And more importantly, the methods and exercises it provides for battling procrastination seem perfectly valid and easily doable. I've already started changing my habits by simply recognizing when I'm headed toward procrastination and being able to head it off before it happens.
And most importantly, this book isn't just about working harder. It's about working better and integrating play into your schedule because it recognizes the single most important element to procrastination - the reason we get bummed out and piddle around is the prospect that work is going to take away time from play. So by putting play on your schedule first and building work around play, you flip the whole thing on its head.
The only hesitation I had in giving this 5 stars is that the last couple of chapters delve into the sort of hippy zen breathing chanting mantra type stuff that I tend to loath in self help books. But up until that point it was an excellent book, and really you can ignore that part and still get a lot out of it.
As much as absolutely loved the first three books of Martin's A Song of Ice And Fire series, this one along with A Feast For Crows felt like a lot of filler. Originally, by Martin's own admission, he planned to have a gap of years after the third book and then to jump back in, but in tracing out the events that would occur during the gap so that he knew where all the characters would be at the start of his new story cycle, he got excited about the stories and decided to write them rather than have them skipped. The beginning of the series, A Game of Thrones, doesn't begin at the beginning. Much has happened in the land of Westeros, and part of the brilliance of the first three books is how they weave in details of the wars and events that came before without bogging down the story. You get the information you need, you understand that those tales you aren't being told are exciting and important, but you are in this story here which is also exciting. AFFC and ADWD contain elements of that, flashing back to days before AGOT, and those turn out to be the best parts of the books. The rest of it feels like moving chess pieces around a board with the occasional taking of a pawn and little else.
Despite the lackluster experience with these two books, I'll continue reading the series, but I can't help but feel that Martin should have stuck to his original plan, skipped some time and picked up the story again when all the players we in place again.
