Great concept fails in execution
938031
The concept of Shuriken and Pleats  schoolgirl ninja  is short but interesting. Sadly, the execution is slow and obvious. Author Hino Matsuri is best known for the popular Vampire Knight series, which I don't remember being this patchy in plotting.

The young female ninja is Mikage, whose older master wants to adopt her and take her back to Japan with him. There, she plans to enroll in school, but she quickly finds herself protecting a younger man, part of an adversarial, conspiracy-minded family, when hes attacked by other ninja.

Exciting as this plot sounds, particularly once people start trying to poison each other, it lays flat on the page, with slow pacing. The art is noticeably sparse, with lots of white space and no tone or shading in many panels. These characters seem to exist in a series of white rooms.

Much of the text is dedicated to Mikages internal monologues about her lack of emotion and how nice her masters are to her and her resulting dedication to them. I found the typeset text poorly suited to this frequently recurring content, since its mechanical perfection conflicted with the emotional message. Combined with the sketchy art, which doesnt demonstrate any feelings of the characters, this made the content feel remote and unaffecting. Otherwise, the cast talks in plot exposition.

At the end of this volume, I felt as though twice as much should have happened as did. Theres a lot of potential here, but its not taken advantage of. The project feels unfinished or rushed. Theres only one significant scene with Mikage at school; Id have rather seen more, because that was the most entertaining part of the book. Although this volume wraps up events neatly, there will be a second  maybe that one will be more what I wanted. (The publisher provided an advance digital review copy. Review originally posted at ComicsWorthReading.com.)
752002
I loved the idea of&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/One-Second-After-A-John-Matherson-Novel/dp/0765317583/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">One Second After (A John Matherson Novel)</a>. The concept is similar to the short-lived TV series, Jericho, which I also thought was a great idea. Unfortunately, I'm not a big fan of the author's writing style. I think he did a fairly decent job of telling a story, but there were far too many lines of dialogue and actions that I felt were juvenile and not inline with what the characters would actually do or say. The scale of the disaster, as told in this novel, is too small to really allow us to feel like we're a part of it. We never really get to know the secondary characters enough for us to even care about them. So, although I loved the idea, the book really fails to live up to its potential.
3088288
The concept of a book about living on the moon was brilliant. Unfortunately the execution was poor.
2634878
I really don't know what to say:  this was a great premise for a book; the "what if you could go back in time and save Kennedy, kill Hitler, stop Pearl Harbor, or whatever"  scenario.  In King's version, Jake Epping, a 35-year English teacher has the opportunity to go back in time and attempt to avert the Kennedy assignation.  Epping is introduced to the concept of time-traveling and the prospect of saving Kennedy by Al, the proprietor of a local diner.  Apparently there is a "rabbit-hole" in the pantry of the diner that deposits anyone climbing through to September 9, 1985 (always the same date).  Al asks Epping, a man whom he only knows as a customer, to "carry on his mission" since Al is now dying.  After thinking about this for precisely one day, Epping goes back in time and lives there for five years while he concocts a plan to stop Lee Harvey Oswald.  The story starts out well enough and then it just falls apart; it is a rambling, clich ridden mess where the past is romanticized/sanitized and the protagonist develops amazing (read: unbelievable) skills (spying, shooting, planning) .  Great concept, lousy execution; this book would have benefited from a heavy editing hand, 300 less pages, and two less story lines.
4360494
Empire of Bones starts out as a great concept, but the author lets herself slip by putting in some foreshadowing that is actually explicit information to the reader about what is to come.  The last third of the novel loses momentum, and the ending is much too open and refuses to suggest answers to some major questions about self-determination and humankind's place in the Universe.  Also, if the alien culture is so similar to India's and the Hindu religion, why didn't that culture become the dominant one on Earth?  This is a wonderfully original story that loses power like a balloon running out of air.  I wish I could rate it higher, but its flaws bring it down to a level of only above average.
1138408
I wanted to like this book.  I really did.  It has a great concept.  Roman mercenary fighting against the Greeks in the war with Persia gets injured so that he loses his memory.  Not only loses his memory, but cannot keep his memories from day to day.  He is given a stylus and scroll and the book is all about his writing down what has happened to him by day so as to weave the narrative for the reader.  He finds he offended a god in her temple and must make amends. So his journey begins.  He meets a lot of people and sees the ancient Greek countryside and is present at many historical events.  What's even more exciting, due to his injury, he can now see the world of the gods and no one else can until he touches the being.  He realizes how interwoven the supernatural and divine world is with the natural world.

Sounds great right?

The problem is that the teller of the tale is the guy with the lost memory and the story is told in the first person.

He loses his memory each day and he doesn't always write in his scroll each day.  So the plot is disjointed.  You get to know characters and their names one day then with the next chapter's reading, all you have is a description.

You as the reader, cannot be sure who the cast of characters are in Latro's life on the day he is writing each morning, because he doesn't either.  He doesn't know why he is where he is and is doing what he's doing.  You, as the reader, might think the action is continued from the chapter before, but then you realize as you read, no, he didn't write down events that day and the chapter is picking up a few days later so he's now describing some other event.

It's incredibly frustrating.  This isn't a book you can put down and return to later, because you'll have forgotten the disjointed plot-line and the main character is no help in jogging your memory, because he doesn't remember either.

I've tried at least 3 times to finish this book but each time, no matter how determined I am, I get bogged down in the slow pace, flat narration (Latro is a solider not a poet so his narration of what is going around him is less than lyrical) and the confusion of events.

You will need a good memory for names - and they're ancient Greek names - a good eye for descriptors, a lot of concentration and a lot of time to slog through this one.  Good luck.
3072485
excellent concept, but unfortunately it is inadequately executed.

the fasteners that hold it together are gradually popping so I expect it to gradually come apart.

I'd give it a life of a year.

A pity because it composts well, is easy to operate, and people love it as a piece of garden sculpture.
943251
My overall review. The story's premise has promise. I tend to agree with the 1 star reviewers, and also agree with the 3 star reviewers.

 Premise
5 stars. The author had a original idea that could have been gold. I read through about 28% of the book and it's picking up speed, but I so badly want to put it down.

Story 1 star. 2 pages in the book's transitions are not proper english and they do not allow the right pacing. I am fine with a open ended story but this type of story needs a better introduction, it's awkward because you miss the introductions to the characters as it's hidden in-between some text here, and then in another chapter. It's not like 1 chapter or section to each character, or it's all at once or one sentence. I should not have to go back to look while reading for the information. So there's lvl 1's they have a quest. The NPC's are made fun of, then they decide to go on the quest. How did they get a massive quests? How did they die? I was so hoping based on the introduction of a redshirteque type idea where the main characters have some life to them where you follow them for awhile and then you move on. It's a sad trope but one that's new. I did see an explanation, but if they are NPC's don't they have no free will? The author bedazzles me and eludes all of this assuming you already know.

Trope: 1
There also was the trope of a like-fantasy VRMMO or ''SAO'' idea that the author could've expanded upon. I think the author totally missed that as he could've had another storyline going so that the pacing is set up better. If the author used a little more premise on, "Why I should care." I might have gone back and checked, but I wanted to read something more interesting.

Characters 2 stars. I mentioned that the characters have no depth whatsoever to them. They are NPC's and almost treated as such. It's like handing you a baton, deal with it, awkward pause......The author has great ideas but expects them to translate on paper. I can see that the author is definitely brilliant, I understand where he's coming from, but at the same time cannot feel where he's going. So one side of my brain understands, but left side is bored and cannot connect.

Action 1.5 stars. It's slightly better then legal work. I've read laws, and laws sometimes are pretty interesting. You can use laws to your advantage, you can try and solve puzzles with laws. This book, I'm having to work to get my imagination going. The problem is I see some rocks, and a desert. Maybe a hut, and a wall with the castle. In the first quarter of the book I just see them wandering in the same zone that I mentioned, and have no reference to where they are located. It drives me crazy.

Overall score 2.
3364303
I loved the concept of this book.  A virtual, year-long game with only one winner.  Fabulous.  And we get to participate by following a few of the key players: Nova, Arty, and even the bad guys.  And, honestly, that's where the good ended.

None of the characters were believable or ones you could relate to.  The main character of Nova was a Mary Sue, perfect, except with the cute boy, better than the FBI at finding evil cults' hideouts, and on and on.  I couldn't stand her.  Everyone was the same, two-dimensional and ultimately boring.

Also, I struggled with understanding when we were "in" the game, and when we were "out".  Nova would have her electropet with her as she got into the VR rig, but then he'd be with her as she raced around a virtual racetrack.  It felt like the game mechanics were supposed to read everything in the real world, but it wasn't made clear, and this proved a distraction.

My third pet peeve was the exposition.  Books that tell you everything that happens, as opposed to showing (obviously, the author struggled with showing events well) are boring.  No-one wants to be told how the bad guy killed his wife, we want to see it.  (This particular piece was also revealed far too early on, so we never learned to hate the character and then see his redemption.)  Exposition killed so much of this.

On top of that, there was extreme discontinuity.  We were informed that there was no chance for Nova to Google the answer to a riddle, but, when she was trying to figure out the bird puzzled, she jumped on a forum and found the answer.  Once again, this is one example of many plot holes.

Overall, a decent concept poorly executed.
4134372
I really like the idea of this book, and the quotes found are good (though Steve Jobs most famous one is not there, instead something there is not a quote is there). However, the execution is very very poor, it's like it's not been read through before publishing - I'm pretty sure it hasn't. There are a couple of typos, misplacements of quotes and too many repetitions - With Elon Musk, variations of the exact same quote are written 3 times.

All this to side, the idea of the book is really good, just work on execution!
2536813
This could have been so much better. It has a wonderful premise, terrific characters that you will really care about. The location is fascinating. But some parts of this were almost painful to read. The transitions are so abrupt you could get whiplash. The police procedural portions are totally laughable. The bad guy attacks s cop. You take him down and never get questioned, Don't go to the station, collect no evidence, never file a report. The autopsy was a joke. Little hint for you cause of death will never be determined without an internal. Never. Yet there were so many great ideas in this novel, so many unrealized plot lines that would have added so much were just hinted at. I really see potential here and hope this author keeps trying.
696662
This book introduces many fascinating concepts but does not develop them successfully.  The use of expletives and supernatural gore in ways that don't contribute to the story betrays a tendency to emphasize shock value rather than engaging characters and cohesive plots, and it's often difficult to follow the storyline through the excessive and confusing description.  Lots of potential, but not recommended.
4954844
Great premise wasted. Working in the tech industry myself, I was particularly excited to see where the book's main idea would take us, but I was disappointed. Eggers does not know how speculative fiction works. He had a terrific idea, and the book is generously littered with a whole lot of additional spins on the initial premise, couched as new spin-off projects or proposals, and these are indeed intriguing and though-provoking, and there are a whole lot of them, but rather than speculate "what happens next", he leaves that to us. One example: the book asks "What if we could track people with criminal records by making them glow red through retinal implants?" Terrific idea. But that's all he says on the subject. Or "What if facial recognition technology were perfected?" but again, the idea is not taken very far. This premise begs for a much more broad-reaching story which spans multiple parallel stories and many years, but instead he focuses entirely on one person's relatively shallow journey. Normally that would be just fine, but he has presented us with such a fertile premise that by not drilling more into it, I felt cheated..

The author spends too much time on Mae's two simultaneous personal relationships. I was never sure what was really happening and neither of them is terribly interesting. Also, he relies too much on alcohol as a device to forward the plot. Eventually I caught on, "Uh oh, there's wine involved in this scene, the plot's about to move forward", as a drunk Mae invariably takes actions she shouldn't which get her into trouble. So a lot of this book, much too much, is spent with her getting drunk and then doing something stupid.

I wish the author had used more feedback from the tech industry. I found myself thinking "that would never happen" or "Yeah, but what about..." that by the end, when things get even more implausible, the book had totally lost me. He didn't think his terrific idea through very far at all, and that's the real disappointment here.
1481240
The concept of this story is brilliant. The first sentence introduces a mystery that drives you to turn pages all story long. The events and backstory--on a macro level--are awesome. One of the most creative concepts I've read and I read a lot.

But the execution of these concepts was sloppy. Characters suddenly swing into rages, standing and yelling at each other. The health and fitness aspects weren't believable (some people run distances too easily and later in the story are winded by less, healing happens too quickly. The social dynamics aren't nuanced--they're pretty stereotyped. And for a long while I wasn't sure I liked the main character.

So it's worth reading, but you'll have to be patient with immature writing. I'm hoping the author got better in the next books.
3516308
Great concept, terrible book.  The story starts with the idea that, in this world, food is scarce and thus everyone is monitored to make sure they have an acceptable BMI.  Those who are over are shipped off to a fat camp.  Our story begins with two girls who aren't over being shipped away.  (Given that the story also talks about a man, who at 160 was unacceptably obese, their standards are more than a little skewed.)

So we've got an intriguing dystopian fic going on.  That meanders on for a while, but then people start disappearing from the fat camp and we learn that they've been experimented on and died from it.  Okay, I guess that makes sense.

But then -- zombies attack!

At this point, I've gotten the idea that the author has no idea how to plot a book and just throws something new out whenever faced with a plothole or a scene she can't resolve.  This is born out by more of the same -- things just happening for no apparent reason.  The end of the book comes about in just the same way, leaving me underwhelmed.

If you've got a great concept, then bloody well stick to it and *plan* what's going to happen in a consistent, logical manner.  The firehose approach works on fires, not to create artwork.

I received an electronic copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
3423879
I've gotta echo some of the other reviews when I say that I really, really wanted to like this book. I started it once, got to about page 100, and abandoned it. I started over again about a month later, and managed to get to 124 before I realized what was killing me about it: SO little happens in the first 100 pages of the book.

Let me be positive for a second: Andromeda is a great character, very unique, very well written, very understandable. Her world is populated by believable characters and places. And her interactions with people ring true.

The issue I had is that SO few pages in this book are devoted to forward plot momentum, while so many have to do with her occult analysis and flashbacks to past events. It's sort of amazing in hindsight that this wasn't written in the first person, as we spend such a major portion of the book seeing into Andromeda's brain. To me, it makes the book move insanely slow - we want forward momentum, and Andromeda's character really comes to life when we see her actions and interactions, not read her mind. I hate to say it, but it's really filled to the brim with exposition.

The book ends up covering about 9 days, but the actual real-life events that happen in those days are incredibly minimal. And even events that occur in this time period are sometimes written about in the distant past - for example, a ritual that Andromeda performs on p. 363, which seems to be somewhat important (and risky!) and is even given a fair amount of build-up, is then described as if being remembered four or five hours later, instead of in the moment. Rather than experience it in the moment alongside Andromeda, it's treated as yet another flashback.

All of this wouldn't be so bad if the book weren't so complicated in terms of its occult authenticity. I really, really appreciate that Frank went out of his way to make a book that would have made a reader like his own Andromeda proud. However, I remember a suggestion I heard about writing, which was essentially "research, research, research, then throw away your research notebook and just write." Here, it feels like Frank is constantly referring to his research notes on a sentence by sentence basis (or is just an amazingly knowledgeable occult expert). Ultimately, it becomes near inaccessible, no matter how pedestrian he tries to make the concepts, and at best, you better hang on for the ride.

Unfortunately, many of the important plot points in the book hinge on the meaning of a tarot card, or interpretation of a synch, and the world is just too closed to be as amazed by their significance as Andromeda is. I really wanted to be as blown away by some of the occult turns as she was.

As I said in the beginning, this kills me, because without question the best parts of this book are the elements of actual real life events. Not the paragraphs of occult interpretation, or memories of past events; but the actual forward-moving story. Andromeda at school, Andromeda interacting with kids at a "tea party," at home with her parents, with boys, and dealing with a bicycle in a tree. These are the moments that shine, and fully convey Frank's wit and expertise at conveying high school life. It was a fight to get to the end, and it really shouldn't have been.

I would love to see Andromeda resurrected in future stories that continue her story.

Finally, I have to give the designer credit - without question, BEST book cover I've seen this year.
2559060
This product is a great idea.  Really great.  Sadly, in execution I'd say 'not so much'.

The buds do not stay in my ears properly, partly because they're heavy.  The connection to my iPhone is 'iffy' and drops for no apparent reason.

And the battery life is lousy.  They needed recharging after an hour, which is pretty much one walk around the block.

I wanted to love them.  It's such a wonderful idea.  Really REALLY wanted to love them.  Maybe after a few design iterations I will.  But this one is, sadly, not ready for prime time.