Not as good as Fields of Fire
926329
Still though, interesting background of Viet Nam. I thought it would be a good first novel in a series with the same protagonist.
667627
ThreeStar
The Storming Love: Flood stories are part of the second Storming Love anthology.

Compared to the Blizzard stories, these are much more cohesive. They all focus on the same flood, in the same small Texas town. Each writer has chosen different men to write about, but the stories interlink and build on each other.

Patric and Sam have history, but after serving in the army, Patric seems keen on forgetting the time he and Sam spent together. Things become awkward when Patric is hired to take Sam hiking.

This wasn't my favourite book in the anthology. I found the relationships and dialogue between Sam, his mum and his sister overwritten and unbelievable. I failed to warm to either man, and I didn't really enjoy the relationship as much as I did others in this series.

There were a few links to other characters in the other stories which I enjoyed. There wasn't a huge focus on the flood in this one - I think my favourite stories were the ones where the characters spent the majority of their story fighting the flood.

I was given this in return for an honest review by Inked Rainbow Reads.

Sarah
2401569
After being highly impressed with the first book in this series as well as the fact that I am traveling to Louisiana this week, I had looked forward to the second book the Irish Angels series. Unfortunately this book fell short of my expectations. While there is material that I found highly interesting, most of the story seemed to go the way of both traditional romances or Christian historical romances. I didn't feel as if I got to know Maddie as well as I had Laura from the first book.

I felt Maddie's and Tom's relationship to be extremely rushed. I didn't feel this from Maddie's end so much as I did Tom's. I mean he's known her for a few days and already he wants to smell her hair or kiss her? He knows nothing about her but is already falling in love? Also I felt too much emphasis was placed on Tom's position as a Pinkerton agent. I feel that authors tend to use this label too often to make their hero be able to get in places normal people can't. From what I've studied, the agents didn't have all the prestige or privileges they tend to have in books.

I did find the plight of the street children to be fascinating and disturbing at the same time. It's extremely sad to hear about what happened to orphans and those who were unwanted. I have always found society's views on orphans to be disheartening especially when they are treated as if it is their fault their parents are dead. What Maddie did to make the children "forget and change" is psychologically horrifying and the ramifications of her actions continue to haunt her. I wish more emphasis had been placed on that part of the story as opposed to the romance.

Overall, it was a less satisfying read but still interesting. The culture is interesting and for the most part, the plot is unique in Christian fiction. I am looking forward to seeing the rest of Laura and Maddie's siblings being rediscovered so I will continue reading the rest of the books in the series.
3688755
The latest installment of the Inferno Club, My Notorious Gentleman, does not have the same dash of adventure as the previous novels.  It is a rather staid, slow going read, set in rural England.

Lord Trevor Montgomery, has decided to give up the spy business.  He is a bit jaded and when he sees the innate goodness in heroine Grace, he moves into the estate next to her and her father's home.

Grace in some ways overshadows the hero in this story.  She is depicted as kind, thoughtful, caring, understanding, all the traits a vicar's daughter should have but she is also stubborn and self-righteousness.  She comes across that way in her dealings with the hero and she is sure he is a rogue out to corrupt the provincial neighbors in her village.

Trevor is long suffering with Grace who ridiculously feels she must manage everyone's life in the village to include Trevor's.  Honestly where does she get the energy.  I just never warmed up to this heroine and her romance with Trevor is not overly exciting.
3415173
It's a post-apocalyptic world in which people catch on fire and burn. There is no cure once you have it.

Focus in on Harper as she tries to survive in this new world.

The audiobook was well enough but overall it just seemed that the tale meandered at times and dragged.
1052905
This is the first book of The Haardrad Trilogy.

First let me start by saying that this story was disappointing. This book is not as great as Brenna's daughter, Kristen's story (sequel: Heart's Aflame). This is the story of Brenna and Garrick. They are separated more than they are together in the book, which is frustrating. I kept waiting for the romance or at least to see and feel that the couple were falling in love instead of being told about their feelings. I read Kristen's story first and from the ending, I thought Brenna and Garrick's love story would be equally or if not nearly as good as Hearts Aflame.

The trilogy follows of Brenna & Garrick's two children, Selig and Kristen

1st book- "Fires of Winter"  The parents' story
2nd book- "Hearts Aflame"  Kristen's story  *loved the best*
3rd book- "Surrender My Love"  Selig's story  *liked this better than Fires of Winter*
3696261
"Pestilence", one of the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse showed up out of nowhere about 5 years ago, randomly riding his horse through towns and cities to indiscriminately spread death with his plague. The world has apparently fallen to ruin with the fall of technology and communication. When Pestilence is expected to ride through Sara's town, she draws the short straw and has to stay behind to make a last ditch effort to kill him (she's a firefighter).  She ends up biting off more than she can chew and Pestilence takes her prisoner, determined to make her suffer for trying to off him.

I didn't mind that Pestilence was cruel and downright abusive towards Sara at first (his actions DID verge into the territory of unforgivable but I ultimately think the author pulled it off - I also happen to like romances where the characters hate each other at first). In fact, I enjoyed the romance here, but I think this book would've been way better if the author had developed the characters and world better.

As it is, this story felt a little too basic and repetitive. The characters travel from town to town and do the same thing over and over again, barely interacting with the world or any other characters. Pestilence felt a little flat as a character; he doesn't seem to have much reason for his judgmental perspective and hatred of mankind. Sara was also a little too Mary Sue, at times. The ending, while not a cliffhanger, was not very satisfying IMO. I guess you have to read the next ones to figure out just who Pestilence and his brothers really are and where they came from...

The author presents Pestilence and the other four horsemen as being actual messengers of God, but she didn't bother to develop a mythology or their origins or anything beyond that. Pestilence is here to kill mankind and states that the Bible and other forms of religion are just creations of man but that's it (as in Pestilence and his 3 bros came in the form of the four horsemen because that's the only way humans would understand what they were, I guess). This kind of felt like a cop out on the author's part. I don't know if it was because she didn't want to get into religion or is planning on developing this later on but this lack of development combined with the lack of world development in the rest of this story made it all feel a little too stripped down and flat.

Ultimately, I liked this story and think it's worth reading if you're looking for a romance where the main characters hate each other at first, just don't expect an epic adventure.
3862092
Kenyon's last novel won an award, was nominated for another, and got an effusion of effulgent praise from a multitude of sources.  Now, "Bloodstone" was okay, but it wasn't THAT good.  "The Reach" is certainly superior in almost every way.

 During a snowstorm ten years ago, when she was just a country doctor trying to escape the pressure of the big city, Jean Shelley is forced to deliver a child during an emergency situation.  The delivery doesn't quite go as it should, as first the electricity goes out, then the hospital burns down.

 Ten years later at the Thomas Ward School of Psychology, Shelley is now a professor, and "The Reach"'s main character Jess Chambers is now her prize student.  One day Shelley informs her that she wants Chambers to look at an old patient that is being housed at the Wasserman Facility and who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and has withdrawn from reality.  This patient is the now ten-year-old child that Shelley had delivered on that snowy day so long ago.

 Chambers finds that things are going to be tough going as Sarah has withdrawn to an almost catatonic state, making Sarah hard to communicate with; all of this while having to deal with the supercilious, effeminate, controlling and overly anal third generation Evan Wasserman, who has taken a personal interest in Sarah.

 As the novel proceeds we learn that Sarah has the potential to be very dangerous when she gets excited, and she can get VERY excited, and that Wasserman is operating on an agenda all his own.  This is an agenda that involves Sarah, and her powers, but not necessarily in a beneficial way for Sarah.  Things start to get sticky as Chambers starts to lose her professional distance and perspective, as she starts to get "involved" with Sarah, mostly because Chambers still feels guilty over her failure to have successfully protected her younger autistic brother when she was only ten years old herself.

 "The Reach" is a much better plotted and interesting novel than "Bloodstone", as the action, mystery and fantastical elements are much more evenly leavened throughout the novel instead of coming in preordained lumps.  Instead of a common cookie-cutter background, like the one in "Bloodstone", "The Reach" shows that Kenyon has done the research and work to not only create a new world, he could after all just have gone for a sequel to "Bloodstone", as Kenyon gets micro-managing all of the little details of his story right.  At least, as far as I can tell.  I appreciated the techno-speak, it gave the story a sense of authenticity.  Kenyon also creates a better cast of characters this time around.  While the main lead of "Bloodstone" was a colorless, almost passive character, all of the leads, and even most of the secondary characters in "The Reach" have a personality all of their own.  Nothing groundbreaking, but good, solid, easy to identify characters none-the-less.  Although this is the SECOND novel in which at least one character is a doctor, and while it doesn't say so in his biography at the end of the novel, I can only wonder if Kenyon is in the medical field.

 And while you can see Stephen King's influences here, the out-of-control psychic child can be seen in the King novels "Carrie", and "Firestarter"; there are other influences that are evident such as the psychiatric hospital background which can be seen in the novel "Deathward" by Richard Lee Byers and the cult movie "The Sender".

 In the end though, "The Reach" isn't really a pure horror novel, it's more of a creepy medical thriller, with a slam-bang action ending that will remind you, a little too much perhaps, of the movie version of  "Firestarter".  "The Reach" also has more than its share of urban fantasy elements, and if Kenyon should ever produce a sequel, these elements could be strengthened.  "The Reach" is a very visual novel and probably would make a good medium budgeted mainstream movie thriller, and earns its four star, really four and a half star, rating.
2166483
I just finished Fire Study, the last book in the Study series. It took me quite awhile to read it. It didn't have me as interested as the other two books in the series. I would go days without really wanted to read it. There was a lot of repetition in the book, summarizing from the other two books and repeating facts from earlier in the book, that dulled the book for me.  Didn't have as much adventure, rather boring.

Yelena, the main character, has to fight the fire warper. She has many enemies in this book. Ferde who she defeated in the last book but was freed from another of her enemies Cahil. Cahil wants to rule Ixia and loathes Yelena and Valek. Yelena must also battle with the 1st Master Magician Roze who doesn't trust Yelena and believes Yelena is a spy from Ixia trying to take over Sitia. So, Yelena has a lot on her plate as she tries to find a way to get Ferde back and fight the Fire Warper.

There is still the same characters from the previous books, Valek, Ari, Janco, Fisk, Cahil, and Leif. Even though I didn't like Valek in the second book, this one I started to see the old Valek again. Yelena did start bothering me and if you have ever read House Of Night novels, she began to remind me the the main character in that series Zoey.

Some of the dramatic scenes didn't really hold any emotion for me. I don't want to list any to give anything away. But, when someone would die or something big would happen I didn't really seem important the way it was described. It would be described in two sentences and that would be the end of it.

I enjoyed the first two I just wished this one peaked my interested as much as the first one!
1328047
I was excited to read this book, it looked like an excellent middle grade historical fantasy with some creepiness added.  It ended up being okay, but I had some trouble engaging with both the story and the characters.  There is a second book in the series called The Crowfield Demon.

Will is sent to live at Crowfield Abbey after his parents die.  There he works in the kitchen for the monks.  While in the forest one day he hears a cry for help and discovers a hobgoblin, apparently Will has the Sight and can see the Fey.  When some strange visitors show up at the Abbey, Will is drawn into a mystery involving a buried angel and some evil Fey.

I had a lot of trouble reading this book, but I also had a lot of trouble figuring out exactly why.  The book is a quick read and the storyline is interesting.  The book is kind of creepy and very much a historical fantasy mystery of sorts.

I found Will to be a very uninspiring character.  He just came across as very dull to me, the only thing that made him really stand out from anyone else was the fact that he had the Sight.  I just had a lot of trouble engaging with him as a character.

The story also lacked description, so the scenes never really came alive.  I had trouble picturing the settings and again trouble engaging with the story.  The whole thing was just told in a very dry way.

I did find the story intriguing.  It was interesting how the monks put religious beliefs toward explanations of their fey neighbors.  The story wasn't completely predictable and there is some interesting world building going on.

Overall this was an okay read.  The story is interesting enough, but it is told in a very dry way and the characters were hard to engage with.  By the time I finished reading the story I forgot it, it was just that kind of book...a very forgettable read.  I will not be reading the sequel to this series.  I was kind of hoping that this would be a book similar in tone to The Last Apprentice series by Joseph Delaney, but that series is much better than this one.
4334226
I was really looking forward to reading this book because i loved Kiss so much, but Burn didn't measure up. It started out kinda slow but i thought it might get better like how some of his other books do. But, it never really got better. it was pretty slow for me throughout the book and the end wasn't satisfying. it had some really good messages though. That we there are two sides of us and if the evil in us does not die, we will never be totally free. So, even though i really didn't like Burn, if you really want to read it, do it, but don't be surprised to find that it's not as good as Ted's other books.
2566230
I loved Steelheart, but I was slightly disappointed with Firefight. I really missed the original team, it seems like this team was just a plot holder for Prof. I agree with another reviewer in saying that the first 2/3's of the book was slow. It just felt like an in-between novel and not up to Mr. Sanderson's usual work. There were some good moments, I just wish it would have been more about Firefight and not them just wading around water forever.

I know must fanboys will simply give this a 5 star and down-vote anything else, I just expected a bit more from one of my favorite authors. I am not saying the book is bad, I actually quite enjoyed it. Just more of a stepping stone to Calamity than anything else.
1240876
Aside from a few slow chapters, this had some of the same action-packed excitement as the first. However, there were some issues that greatly cut down my enjoyment of it.

We step aside for a moment from the quest of Lyra to introduce Will, son of a lost explorer. He stumbles into another world after killing a thief, and there meets Lyra, journeying from her world. They team up to discover the secrets of Dust and the Subtle Knife, what Lyra's uncle is trying to do, the purpose of the mysterious angels, and what the witches helping them want out of all this. In the meantime, Lee Scoresby looks for a shaman and passage to Lyra's new world.

"Filler" sums the plot up. There are moments that spice it up, but some of the action comes from vague sources of danger, and many pages are taken up by self-reflection rather than action. (Let's be honest, angst gets old.) One of the central characters, Lord Asriel, is almost entirely ignored, and without Lyra's search for him, the book is directionless. When Lyra very quickly changes from the firebrand scamp into a meek lady around Will, her character was almost ruined.

I do like seeing a fantasy story that takes place partially in our world. While it's nothing like Gaiman's urban fantasies, Pullman does make for a healthy mixture of science and fantasy, something many modern fantasy writers don't even try to cope with. There should have been some kind of explanation for how Will's hole appeared, though.

There were a few points, though, where the narrative just derailed into author tracts. When the kids mentioned the hot weather and started talking about the Greenhouse Effect, out of nowhere, all suspension of disbelief was shattered. But much worse was the speech of Lord Asriel in his rare appearance: God is evil because his followers commit crimes and it's his mission to kill him; the way it goes on and everyone immediately supports his goal reminded me of John Galt's epic speech. Equating fallible and corrupt humans with clear understanding of the will of God, and ignoring all of the millennia of argument about this (Luther, Leibniz, etc), so that Pullman appears to be more of a febrile five-year-old more interested in pushing his atheism than telling a good story. The only Church presence in the book is the very cruel and oily Mrs. Coulter, and the cardinals who condone her actions. His efforts to vilify the Church seem one-sided and mean-spirited enough to turn me off from the book, even as an atheist myself.

It is an exciting book, and at several points I felt very sad over events. But I can't read it again, with the switch to a complete black and white, Church Evil Heroes Good morality, all of the complexity of the original is gone.
1383729
The flame of my passion for Valdemaran books was quenched by this series.  The series started off quite well, but as it progressed, there seemed to be less and less of what I regard as Ms. Lackey's style.  I thought we were going to see a heterosexual male come out as a pretty cool guy - not entirely unheard of in Ms. Lackey's books, but not standard fare by any means.
  I liked much of the story of the books except the way Gen. Tremane was portrayed.  It seemed to me that alot of effort was put into Tremane in the first book and to a smaller degree the second book and then he was just abandoned.  He grew in the first book, but by the third book, all of that growth was thrown away as if it had never happened.  This also highlights the vast difference between the first book and the third book where  in the first book all of the events were necessary and tied together well whereas in the third book everything was just kind of thrown into a salad bowl and not tied together very well.
just kinda disappointed I guess.  Ms. Lackey wrote some of the first great fiction I ever read.
2635270
It was a good read, and sorry Mr. Ryan, but no where near as riveting or exciting as the first book. Characters to fragmented, certain chunks felt either a bit forced or uneccessary, not enough main character and suffered from stunted character growth. I couldn't put Blood Song down and read it 3 times already and will read over many more times. Tower Lord though.... I will wait to read again until right before book three comes out. Should have stuck with just F, R and V....
3065834
I've read all of Joy Fielding's books and this latest one, The Wild Zone, is not one of her better ones. The writing didn't seem as good as in Ms. Fielding's other books. A lot of uninteresting dialogue and a lot of dragged out and unnecessary parts.
I didn't care for any of the characters in this book either.
The Wild Zone was missing the sarcasm that is usually present in a Joy Fielding book.
The ending was a surprise to me, but to get there I found myself rushing towards the last 1/4 of the book.
Overall, fair.
3285951
Marcia Lynn McClure definitely has a way with clean romance novels, unfortunately I think this one fell short of the mark.  When Marcia writes about the old west she is amazing. I even love her romance novels with Dukes and Highwaymen. This book takes place in the current day and just isn't as exciting.  Breck is the Great-Granddaughter of Jackson McCall who is the hero in Desert Fire which was a great book.  She lives in a city and yearns for the country. She has a crush on her boss Reese who is a farm boy moved into the city.  There are some cute parts but as with a couple of Marcia's books I feel like more character development would have held the readers interest better and made for a more endearing love story.
Final word: I love Marcia Lynn McClure books overall.  I would recommend the old west ones before this one though.