A page turner that's equally cringe-worthy.
926027
Way of Shadows is a page turner for sure. The main characters are great but the others aren't very fleshed out. The plot is the best part of this book, though a few events feel extremely contrived. My biggest complaint is that the writing is salted with present day vernacular and sometimes comes across like a drunken sailor at the mall. I found myself thrown out of the story repeatedly by language that is out of character from the rest of the story. Worth reading since Way Of Shadows was a fun book but be warned that the style isn't going to be for everyone.
760426
I never hated a book so much that after reading the first 35 pages of it I wanted to physically burn it, and after 250 pages I wanted to speed read the last 50 pages so that I could write this review. I am glad to be done with this book, it is not going in my library bookcase, and it will not be shared, it will however reach the trash can.  Anyways I finished reading the entire novel to be greatly disappointed by the one-dimensionality of the plot itself. The character development was both steady and well put together. So I can't say he's a bad writer, per se but the author literally made me hate the book intentionally because of either the nature of the subject or the lack of passion for the characters themselves. Either way, I found the ending methodically stupid. I found the beginning to be somewhat enlightening if anything came from reading this book I picked up my phone and called my grandfather who served in Korea to tell him both how proud I was of his service and thanked him that his generation helped stop this madness, from spreading. That said, the book is totally unrealistic about both the politics of the world and of the time. Nothing was not predictable, even the page count... Please avoid reading this book maybe the author has other titles that are better but this will be my first and last Turtledove experience.
790984
This isn't a novel, it's a script for an XBox360 game. Novels are populated by characters - there are none in this agglomeration of pages stuck between two covers. I read about half of it and gave up. This may be the one book that'll make me rethink my opposition to book burning. If I could give negative stars, this one's a five.

Let me be specific:

Characters:  They're all cartoons, with no distinguishing characteristics, histories, or meaningful backstories. Even halfway through, I couldn't keep them straight in my mind. Less than one-dimensional. The problem's compounded by the fact that the "author" (to use the word loosely) has given each of the protagonists noms-de-guerre (and two of each per character, at that), and it became WAY too much trouble to try to keep them straight, especially since I didn't give a hoot about any of them. The smartest of the bunch seems to be a falcon (that's right, a bird) with an apparent IQ of about 170.

Style:  If you liked the old Batman TV series, this is right up your alley, with all the "BAMs", "POWs" and "CRUNCHes" all but there on the page. The prose is laid out in a breathless, frenetic style that made me think of the old-time pulp thrillers. It's almost a parody of the genre. If you're into speed-freak nightmares this is the book for you.

Science:  Good science fiction (and this must be characterized as in the genre - without the word "good") depends on the science being believable. Well, forget it here. The McGuffin (to use Hitchcock's term) is a "Capstone" that has the ability to attenuate the power of a sunspot capable of frying the Earth. Think about that for half a second and you realize how ridiculous that premise is. Further, it can apparently be countered by a chant of some sort. Granted, I didn't finish the book, but that premise alone is simply ludicrous. Then there's the "Warbler" which apparently has the power to redirect the trajectory of high velocity bullets by some unexplained scientific principle. Oh, Brother! The protagonists own a stolen 747 as their means of travelling around. It's apparently a version capable of being flown by one pilot (non-existent), that in one scene they land and take off from a golf course. I'd like to see that; a 747 weighs about 3/4 million pounds. In real life its wheels would immediately sink several feet into the ground, ripping off the undercarriage. Maybe the author forget to state that the golf course was paved over with a couple of feet of high-tensile concrete.

Plot:  Plot? We don't need no stinking plots! This is pure chase, chase, and more chase.

Anyway, you get the gist. I spent more time writing this review than you should spend reading this book.
737297
It is always disappointing when a good author delivers an inferior work, and it makes me harsher than is generally my wont. But in Melanie Rawn's case, stepping old cliches up a notch is unforgivable.
1) She doesn't like her bad characters, but unfortunately can't make us hate them too. I happen to like her villains more than her good guys (which are way too goody-goody in my view), and that's unhealthy. Not everyone can write people like G.R.R. Martin, of course. However, when all the remotely decent people gush out completely undeserved praise for the good guys, I personally start liking everyone who opposes them. If I find myself cheering when the _good_ guys get their comeuppance, something is surely wrong.
Come on, the bad guys are _supposed_ to win significantly and live to see the results. She managed that, marginally, in her Sunrunner series. Not here. A little more dimension to characters wouldn't have hurt either.
2) Plots _are_ predictable. Fine, so I couldn't tell which of the two boys was the evil one. But I was sure he would turn up and be evil. You call that a twist? 'Cause I don't. Just like it was clear as the summer sun that the good girl would not truly fall in love with him, and learn to do without him real fast. Or that the evil victory would turn out halfhearted at best.
And politics? Please, Melanie, don't get into politics. The intrigues of the supposedly perceptive and brilliant are stillborn to say the least. When a girl barely out of adolescence and far-off wastes can foil a (so-called) twisted ruse without half trying, or a couple of kids escape arguably the world's most powerful mage, that makes me laugh.
3) Sunrunner magic was probably the most beautiful type of magic ever described in fantasy. Really, I've read loads of fantasy, but the sheer brilliance of that idea just plain took my breath away. Or the Golden Key paintings -- that was remarkable too. Here, the magic is nondescript. In general terms, that's not a crime. For Melanie Rawn, it is.
I'd just like everyone to be just a tad less beautiful and a tad more human, that's all.
I appreciate the end, by the way. I understand how it must have hurt to make it so, too. Let's just have more of it. Better the author hurting than the reader.
2393563
Amazon lists this as Suspense and Romantic Suspense.  I list it as Horror and Southern Gothic Horror.  It does both tropes very well.  The southern atmosphere, particularly the southern winter weather, is spot on, as is the desultory and decayed vibe of post-Katrina New Orleans from a police detective's perspective.  the book has the requisite cringe-worthy Horror-story moments where the reader gasps, "don't go in there!" or "don't open that!"  The pacing, the enexorable unfolding of layers of evil, was very well done, as was the extreme ambiguity surrounding the main character's history and memory gaps.  The book is also well edited: not one wrong word choice, no gramatical errors or misspellings.  Yet I almost stopped reading it due to pervasive mysogyny particularly as relates to victims.  And if that weren't bad enough, the only two persons of color in the entire book are nothing but stereotypes.  And I do mean nothing: they don't even rise to the level of plot devices.  Appalling!  Lastly, gross inaccuracies with regard to the treatment of mental illness pulled me out of the story several times.  Now, I'm not a purist and don't expect light-weight entertainment to be 100% politically correct, but it's just incredible how many times and ways this book goes beyond the pale.  Plus, I feel chumped by its marketing, as I rarely pick up a book that's tagged as Horror, and for this book to be tagged as anything but Horror is, in my opinion, quite deceptive.
2583909
I read this book in a 24 hour period. I read it in the bathroom, I carried it in my purse doing errands, I read it before bed, and I read it when I woke up in the middle of the night. You can say what you want about the flaws of this book, but I couldn't peel my eyes off it until I got to the end.
The story has been described by other reviewers: something is happening that nobody understands. People are overcome by homicidal and suicidal fits. Some think they saw something that drove them mad. The few survivors huddle together in homes with all windows covers, and go outside only blindfolded. How do you fight something that you can't even allow yourself to see? One of these people is Malory, a pregnant girl who joins a home of other survivors. Until something happens... and she's alone with 2 small children who have never seen the outside world. So she sets out in a rowboat, blindfolded, chasing a glimmer of hope.
Let's get it out of the way, since everybody, especially the negative reviewers, already said it: no, by the end of the book you don't get to know what the supposed creatures, if that's what they are, are, where they are from, what they want, and why they drive people mad. If you can't deal with not having all the lose ends delivered to you in a pretty bow, don't read this book. Reading some of these negative reviewers I get this mental image of a whiny toddler in a high pitched voice asking "but mom, WHYYYY???" Some books are about the journey, others are about the destination. One isn't necessarily better than the other. What's important is being entertained. The best example I can think of is Van Der Meer's mind blowing "Annihilation". So if you are incapable of enjoying the journey and need to jump right to the destination, this book is not for you.
Of course the book has flaws. The characters sometimes do some pretty dumb stuff. Like not knowing you boil water if you don't know whether it's contaminated. Or planting a stake in your front yard and hope that on your way back you'll stumble on it blindfolded and know you are home. But then, there's also people who think checking and updating Facebook while driving is a swell idea. And I wonder how many stupid things each of us would do if plunged suddenly into this kind of situation. I doubt some would find their own feet with both hands without help. So there's no reason why the characters of the book should have all the answers, or have the best solution for everything.
Anyway, there's a good reason this book has overwhelmingly good reviews: because it's good. It was so good I can't decide on what book to read next because I am fairly sure it won't be this good. The only other book I read recently that did that to me was "The girl with all the gifts" (please, please do yourself a favor and read it).
2527990
This book cracked me up... and made me cringe (in a good way). I totally saw the ending a mile before I got there but loved it the whole way. The girl in the bathroom and the pregnant lady, yeah, those were the cringe worthy moments. (shivers!)

These were different than the norm zombies in the way that they had some form of muddled rational thought and they seemed to have super-speed despite their crippling injuries, ie. missing tendons to hold muscle and they still spring up to attack.
4582180
As I turned each page, I kept asking myself, "Why am I reading this?" This certainly is not a"Girl on a Train" type of a book.  It depicts a rather horrible, self-indulgent young teenager named TifAni. The book travels back and forth in time from the present where she's marrying Luke pretty much for his money and status and her past where she did stupid things.  I kept thinking - this is just awful.  TifAni is just depraved.  But I decided to stick it out to the end.  I did not enjoy following the horrific antics of a young teenager, and her friends who are just as bad a TifAni.  And the parents who don't even notice that their daughter has gained a lot of weight even though she's on the track team.  And the father who really doesn't want to be a father or a husband.  And then I read the anticlimatic end which was expected.  I did not feel sorry for TifAni who as an adult tried desparately to have a relationship with her former teacher who is married and has kids.  It was just not the type of reading material I like to read to be entertained.  It was certainly a lot darker than A Girl on a Train especially since it involved teenagers and their horrible antics.
2962475
The world of "Lemur" is at first glance as seemingly banal in it's detailing of wage slavery and small town numbness as our own, except that Bradley has peopled it with such an unbelievable parade of grotesques that it becomes a horrifyingly distorted reflection. The prose sketches Scarfe like portraits which then become animated by bizarre purposes to produce... an idiot savant bus boy who is attempting to become a serial killer; a cellulite worshipping store clerk who views his hyper-obese customers as "God-babies"; a paedophile restaurant reviewer; a trio of cops that includes not only an uber-Marxist but a female who wishes "to become the toughest creature on the planet"; and the various vicious co-workers, holocaust survivors, and mascot worshipping dumpster divers that you would expect.
A savage satire of the fast food trade with zero fat content and complete free of literary MSG.
2930100
OK, we get it.  Andrea Sachs has the worst boss ever.  That's about all you need to know about Lauren Weisberger's novel "The Devil Wears Prada."
True, the title is great, and so the subject matter could have been.  Instead, though, the book is a seemingly endless litany of all of the insane things fashion editor Miranda Priestly does or demands her peon assistant to do or get for her, and the gag grows old. Undoubtedly, Priestly is pathetic, unable (or just unwilling) to do even the simplest task for herself, while demanding others do the impossible.  (It's a thinly veiled secret that Priestly is based on Anna Wintour, the famously icy editor of Vogue, and the fictional Elias-Clark Company is of course Conde Nast.)  Weisberger has some fun mocking the Manolo-clad fashion assistants she calls "Clackers," as well as the fabulous, excessive Conde Nast cafeteria.  And Miranda's craziness is a scream, but that's where the fun ends.
The problem lies with the protagonist herself.  She doesn't have to be likeable, but she could at least be interesting.  Instead, Andrea Sachs is a whiny, spoiled brat who thinks the world should just fall at her feet.  She makes no attempt to hide the fact that she thinks working at a fashion magazine is completely insignificant and beneath her.  We may be able to identify with having a hellish job, but the thing is, that doesn't make us sympathize with her.  Everyone, unless they come from extreme privilege or just have damn good luck, has had a horrendous first job or a terrible boss, so we don't exactly feel sorry for her when she must deal with Miranda's antics.  In fact, Andrea has such a sense of entitlement, such a ridiculous superiority complex, that we almost smile when she must search block after block for an antique store Miranda remembers seeing once.  It's as if no one ever had a bad job or a crazy boss until Andrea did, and of course, hers is the worst of the worst. The ironic thing is that just as her boss is completely wrapped up in herself, so too is Andrea.  She may not get to order assistants around, but her inability to see beyond her own nose makes her just as insufferable.
And her personal life?  Wish I could tell you, but I skipped those chapters.  They weren't particularly interesting or enlightening. (Yes, we know the housing market in New York is ridiculous.  And gee, it's awful, isn't it, when an attractive, wealthy, amazing writer for the New Yorker pursues you?)  Besides this, her constant moaning that no one understands just how horrendous her job is and that no one has a job worse than hers wears thin almost immediately.  Sachs doesn't even appear to learn anything from her whole ordeal and doesn't seem to be aware of her spoiled behavior, which is perhaps the most obnoxious and annoying thing about the character.
Andrea wants to work at the New Yorker, the sterling example of good writing.  But if Weisberger's writing is any indication, the New Yorker won't come calling anytime soon.  Boring and repetitive by the halfway mark, the novel reads like a first or second draft, not a polished, finished product.  The dialogue is stilted and wooden, and the prose is so ungrammatical, I found myself having to reread or just skip passages altogether.  Granted, it's not intended to be Tolstoy, but there is an art to comedic writing, as evidenced by Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones books and even, "The Nanny Diaries," whose "expose your boss" style the book emulates.
Unfortunately, Weisberger falls short of both, leaving us to wonder what the novel would have been in the hands of a better or more perceptive writer.
3834627
I found this book on a list of top 25 horror novels written after 2000, and when I read that Jack Ketchum is a writer friend of Stephen King, I was optimistic. Too bad. The Lost was terrible: not scary, not believable, not interesting. I usually don't finish a book I'm going to rate 1 star, but I disliked this book so much that I was curious to see what kind of catastrophe the ending would be and in that, at least, I wasn't disappointed.

The premise: we open with the random murder of two teenaged girls by another teenager, Ray Pie, who tells his friends/forced accomplices that he does it to see what it feels like. His real motivation seems to be the thrill of power he derives from killing two rich, college bound girls, who represent everything Ray Pie hates and can never have. He gets away with it, and the book resumes four years later. Okay, I'll bite. How does this kid turn out, what is it like in his head, what further violence is he capable of?

As to what it's like in Ray Pie's head: one clich after another. Ketchum seems to draw from a wikipedia list of common sociopathic attributes, trying to make Ray embody all of them, and succeeding only superficially. For instance, Ray is supposed to be a sadist because he twists his girlfriend's nipple during sex, but almost all of his other sexual behaviors run along the same nervy, exuberant lines of normal adolescence. We're supposed to believe he's evil because he has thoughts like "that rape scene in Rosemary's Baby is terrific!" and "he liked to give [his friend] the willies just because he could." Oh, the terror. Other serial killers hurt animals for fun, so Ray does too. He tries to run over a cat once. He misses. All in all, Ray is your white bread, whiny, totally unconvincing and not scary villain.

Because Ray starts out as a flat character and never really changes, there's no build up to the last scene. The middle 70% of the book drags. The only build up, if you can call it that, is that Ray happens to get spurned by three women at once, so he goes through one short, weak scene in which he dissociates in front of his friend. Then, kill, kill, kill! For good measure, he kills one of his own family members too, supposedly out of simple hatred of women. Ray's family life and childhood are left largely unexplored, so we have to take it on faith that he just hates "little bitches." If I had a quarter for every time I read "little bitch" in this book, it would have been worth reading at least in a financial sense.

The ending was consistent with the book's terribleness: predictable, gratuitously violent but not emotionally evocative, slow moving, and even surprisingly racially offensive, in one random inner monologue Ketchum inserts from Ray's new cell mate after he's been sent to jail. After thinking about what a "big, mean n*****" he is, and how much he misses "Loreen's big black ass," the cell mate thinks about what a great bitch Ray is, and then about how the he, the cell mate, has started getting these weird symptoms, which are obviously AIDS. So yay, Ray is getting AIDS from being raped by the most stereotypically offensive portrayal of a black man ever! Some kind of messed up poetic justice?

If there's an upshot to reading The Lost, it's that some sociopathic murder is probably as depressingly uncomplicated and pathetic as it's portrayed here. We're attracted to true crime because we try to understand how anyone can be capable of such atrocity. Ketchum's answer is that it's not a big mystery. If you're a stereotypical male narcissist, apparently it's just a matter of time. To be specific, eight hours of time that I'll never get back.
583914
Novels of this genre walk a fine line: with every scene, there is the potential to either titillate or inspire cringing.  This novel falls on the cringing side every time.  The heroine is likable--she has wits and guts.  The hero is a parody--a narcissistic fop busy playing roles rather than being an actual person.  His back story does not make his posturing any more endearing.  The intimate scenes are just....awkward--you want to look away and leave them to whatever it is they are trying to do.  I heartily vote this a SKIP!
1530969
Hiaasen has a way with rapid quick fire dialogue, and creating colorful and memorable characters, and although his newest book moves at a clip and produces some genuine laughs, it peters  out a bit simply because of it's subject matter. Cherry Pye is a LIndsay Lohan, Brittany carbon copy, a lip synching pop star who's out of control in her personal life to the point where she has on call a lookalike to step in, to make appearances when she's shipped off for  a routine detox. Add to this mix an obese tabloid photographer, and a menacing body guard who's one arm is replaced with a high powered weed whacker, and you enter the familiar zany world of Hiaasen. The downside is, for most who are disgusted by the tabloids and the idiots they hound, the book is centered in that "inside" world which is chock full of unlikable people. The only completely redeeming character is the winning lookalike, Ann DeLuisa, a struggling actress who get mistakenly kidnapped by the piggish paparazzo. The problem is she's only in a third of the book, so much of the rest of it is spent witnessing Cherry Pye's ridiculous behavior and her handlers attempt to deal with her relentless stupidity. It's a mindless beach read, but if you're not someone who's routinely checking out TMZ, you'd be better off picking up his excellent, "Skinny Dip".
1234234
Book 1 of The MacDarra Chronicles opens with a rather distressing scene--a ten year-old boy has just arrived at his new foster parents' home out in the middle of Nowhere, Georgia. He quickly finds that life with this new family is going to be anything but pleasant from that point on. He will be stripped of dignity, community, civility, and stripped as well of his name. "Hear that boy?" The woman glared venomously at him. "Unacceptable. That's what you are. Ugly as sin and twice as stupid." But why would a character like the vicious foster mother hate such a boy immediately? There is a reason, and there is also a greater reason why an angel we meet later has let him be led into this nightmare existence.

Jump forward six years to a high school in Connecticut. Two best friends, Celeste Kelly and Katie Grandol are in English class, still wondering about a young guy they had seen the evening before at the mall, when in he walks. The new student. Handsome as Adonis. Shy, unassuming, self-deprecating to a fault, mysterious, and cloudy about things modern in a way that no twenty-first century teen could possibly be confused about. Cell phone texting. Gym class exercises. Sword play--NO, not sword play, but nearly everything else. How odd until we jump back three years or so and pick up with the 14 year-old foster child living in his private hell, locked in a basement, subjected to privations and regular beatings that even prisoners of war would cringe at.

Cian MacDarra miraculously--and that is not an overstatement--survives until he is rescued (miraculously) by an inept Social Services Agency a few years further down the line. One of the most appealing, if not horrible, aspects of Colella's writing is her ability to walk the reader graphically through young Cian MacDarra's torturous existence; so effectively that the reader feels the verbal abuse he suffers wholly, and feels as well the whip on his back.

Celeste, Katie, and young MacDarra soon enough become friends, more by accident than amorous plotting by the two girls. A ride missed after school, a rescuing mother, a visit to Celeste's home, and a magical harp that Celeste will become master at playing--all of these things play a key role in a heaven-inspired mission Cian and Celeste will be called upon to walk into...and win. It is Good vs. Evil. Frodo vs. Sauron. David vs. Goliath. Celeste and Cian vs. a dark, malevolent angel.

Leap backward again. More detail of poor Cian's painful existence and further loss of identity.

Forward to the present again.

Backward.

"Time jumping." That is an appealing part of the narrative structure, as well as key to who Cian actually is, and why and how three beautifully constructed characters nudge him forward until the end of the beginning. They are "portal guardians," a beautiful harp-playing angel named Celesta---do you get the connection to our young heroine Celeste?--who protects the Hub of time from the evil forces. There is a "Keeper" sent to watch over and ready the young boy Cian for his calling. And the introduction when they meet (again) is an ancient harp purchased at an estate sale.

This is Young Adult fiction written by a very scene oriented and accomplished writer. Judy Colella has a firm hand on the often difficult, and often failed, challenge of plotting a riveting adventure set in modern America, and in the Hub of Time. HIGHLY recommended for young adults and older readers as well.
2073761
This book must be placed in the bin reserved for the highly over-rated. The writing itself is well done, especially at the beginning, but the characters are so shallow and repulsive that one loses interest by the end of the first half. The dominant theme of mannered pretension becomes tiresome very quickly, and the plot itself unravels a bit toward the end. This is the kind of story written by a somewhat precocious child, which perhaps is what Tartt was when she wrote it. In the last couple pages there is a horrific plot twist of the kind which truly marks the immature writer. I won't tell what it is, but the event underlines the aptness of labeling this as juvenilia.
2584803
It can't possibly get any more cliche than this, right? RIGHT?! Oh gosh. *headdesk*

I had some fundamental problems with this book. They include characters, plot, and the use of stereotypes. Just because a book is Middle-Grade and supposed to be "exciting and full of action" doesn't mean you can sacrifice characters and just make use of stereotypes! I think EVERY reader deserves to read about fleshed-out characters.

Take Sam, our bonnie lad of a narrator. I'm not sure his age (a quick Google didn't help answer this either), but from a reference I remember, I think he's not yet 16. I hope he's 13, though. He had as much personality as a spaghetti strainer. He was nice enough, I guess. But I feel like because he was the "narrator", whoohoo, no development needed. I'm sorry, I'm being too harsh. I know I am. Buuuut, I guess, as a reader, I want (no, actually, need ) to feel like I'm enveloped in the story. Here I just felt I was reading something that should be a cartoon for after school while you eat your snack of watermelon popsicles.

And Eva and Alex? They were just as stereotyped! Alex was the big mouth, doubter, and sarcastic king. Eva was, as so smoothly described "the goth girl". Oooh. Scary and ominous. Good thing she was a sweet little push-over. Didn't see that coming. No ho. They had no personality beyond this, too.

And the plot? I still don't really "get" it. I mean all this stuff about "Dreamers" and "prophecies" -- OH and let's throw in a special stone while we're at it! It's so overdone it's not funny.

Plus, let's not forget! They're parents weren't really their parents. Of course not. You can't possibly have an adventure with normal parents. So they're parents were secret agents... Excuse me while I strangle myself with afore mentioned spaghetti strainer. Look. I like parents in books. I think it speaks volumes to kids today to not put parents in the "boring box". Also: why is it that if you're kidnapped by strangers who tell you your parents aren't your parents and you have special powers and come with them to a school for special kids...why do you believe them? And why do you have to forsake your not-parents? I mean, they loved and raised you until you were kidnapped right? I think that makes them good people.

And for all the "secret agent" stuff, everyone sure bumbled a lot. Lora plays a big part, as one of the agents who stops kicking-butt only to give long info-dumps. But, gee, the amount of mistakes she made, I'd easily hire a 12 year old to be an agent too. They'd be on par.

Look. This book would probably appeal to 12 - 14 year old (boys, probably) and maybe I'm just waaaay out of the age range. But I've read books that are meant for 8 year olds and I've LOVED them. I just think this is a very simple adventure. It's a no brainer. It's totally cliche. And it could possible get better, who knows? Just because a book is dubbed "middle grade for boys" doesn't mean it can afford to be lax in any aspect.
2134137
This is a book that started out so quietly I feared I'd have to give it up but then it evolved into a full out gore-filled horror novel reminiscent of Richard Laymon (lots of sex related gore and grossness). It crept up so quietly that I was a little stunned which is a good thing because I'm too easily bored lately.

Damara cannot allow her imagination to run wild because even the most innocent of daydreams can often have deadly consequences. She's suppressed her imagination for years and lives the life of a shut-in. But her power has started to seep into the lives of her neighbors and all h*ll is breaking lose.

This book was gruesome and then some. Yikes, this guy is right up there with the likes of Ed Lee for the gore factor. I had to put it aside because it was so bad at one point but, of course, I just had to go back and read it. Awful, nightmarish and completely horrific stuff. Recommended only for those with strong stomachs.