A good premise poorly executed
356955
This book had a great concept, but fumbled on the delivery. The main characters, Greg Douglas and his wife,  Naomi, committed the same sins, the same crimes, and had the same survival instincts. This should have made for a good read, but instead there was more more of the author telling as to what the characters were doing, but no real insight into the why. None of their thoughts, feelings, or motivations were given which would have this read been this so much better.
615175
I got this book based on the premise, which sounded extremely intriguing. Unfortunately, the book appears to be badly in need of both editing and rewriting. The characters are wooden and ill-developed. To describe the dialog as stilted would be an insult to stilts everywhere. There are long periods between battle sequences and, said sequences really being the raison d'etre for the entire novel, it's very hard to care about the one dimensional characters whose misadventures and witless spoutings make up the bulk of the novel.

There are books that you buy and put on your bookshelf to read and reread over the years. Then there are books that make you glad the library doesn't charge for it's services, because it would be a terrible waste to lay out good money for such atrocious reading. Sadly, this is one of the books in the latter category.
609755
I wanted to like this book, really I did, but I just can't. The author takes a really great premise (what would happen in a world where everyone could live as immortal juveniles) and does nothing with it. The dialog is wooden, with 'conversations' that are actually just data dumps on some random subject loosely related to the story. The biology of Bristlecone Pine trees is fascinating, but not enough to be worth bringing the plot to a screeching halt.

The characters are one dimensional; the only one even remotely interesting is the 'villain' of the story. The protagonist here is especially bad. If you are at all familiar with the term 'Mary Sue', here is a textbook example. Perfectly perfect in every way. Rich, handsome, brilliant and apparently able to be a full time practising Neurosurgeon while ALSO serving as Surgeon General of the U.N. AND a teaching professor as well. His romantic interest is the same, but somehow manages to be even less fleshed out as a character. The villain I mentioned before actually get some depth, but he is badly undercut by jarring shifts from misguided but sympathetic to full-out, mustache twirling cartoon.

Even worse than the characters is the plot. This may be some of the wort pacing I have ever encountered. Literally NOTHING significant happens for the first 3/4 of the book. The last 1/4 is a badly rushed climax that ends just as abruptly as it began. The small issues are resolved, but all the truly significant problems are left hanging. The end is nothing but another exposition dump between the main characters where they relate to each other how everything was wrapped up 'off screen'. Throw in a last minute twist that would make M. Night Shyamalan cringe and an otherwise disappointing book becomes anger inducing.

Honestly, this feels more like fanfiction writing than actual literature. Hopefully, this author can improve in the future, or at least find a better editor. In the mean-time give this book a wide berth.
3573921
The book begins with an outlandish premise, but that can be excused if what follows is an interesting tale - well told. Sadly, there are glimpses of a great idea lost in a miasma of trite, syrupy dialogue and stereotypical characters. Our heroine is vapid and immature at the beginning, middle, and end despite the heroine saying she has developed self confidence.  Her romantic interest is a velvet-tongued douche named Ridge. That sentence is probably all I needed to say for this whole review, but Amazon wanted 20 words. Their chemistry is nonexistent - frankly, I thought she was better suited to Luiz, the French writer whom she spends time with, developing an insipid subplot. The conflict between her allegiance to Ridge and her intellectual connection with Luiz might have saved an otherwise torturous story, if there had been an intellectual connection. The book read like bad fan fiction about Paris bookshops by someone who never visited Paris or a bookshop but saw a tv show about it once. It needed an editor for simple grammar, style, geography, and continuity or to simply reject it.
4412113
The book's premise has a lot of potential, but the subpar writing detracted from the overall reading experience: some of the characters' actions and reactions seemed illogical; the author switches between using first names and last names when referring to the characters; the romance developed between the main characters wasn't convincing...
4429018
The book starts ok with an interesting premise, but drags on around that premise without much development. The basic idea of the book (A world with safety regulation so absurd that make people lose touch with real life) is interesting enough, but then it drowns in too many internal jokes about current pop culture. The reader is asked to believe that pop culture did not develop at all about 150 years after the end of the 20th century since all the cultural references of the characters in the book refer to that period.

Too many plot lines appear suddenly and end abruptly and too many characters appear without explanation or serve no purpose at all in the plot.

To sum it up, the writer had a very good basic idea that pushed him well through the first 5-6 chapters, after which the plot dissolves into too many not-so-funny jokes and lazy screen-writing moves. More work and more editing could have made this book much better, since that first part clearly shows the writer does have talent. For that, I gave it 2 stars.
1610174
I really like the premise of this story.  And I read through the entire series hoping it would have something to say other than one-liners, bad dialogue, flimsy characters, and predictable plot-twist with clich&eacute; revelations.  But that's about the sum and substance of this series.

I get tired of stories in which the protagonist is not a likable character, but not dislikable for the purpose of story.  Yorick is just a dumb-ass who bumbles and stumbles his way through things without regard to anything other than his base desire (e.g. hunting for a girlfriend who was about to dump him before the plague hit).

The use of <dialogue within brackets> to indicate foreign language being spoken is a tried and true device in comics/graphic novels.  So why mix and match within the same scene?  To show you can use a foreign phrase now and then?  This got to be annoying with the Israeli subplot.

I think the most glaring fault in the writing here is the inability to capture a female point of view without being so obviously a male-construct.  Inane repeated comments about tampons and vibrators does not give depth to a female character and continually demonstrates a lack of understanding, and perhaps imagination, on the part of the author.

Aside from things of that nature, the story hold interest--albeit, just barely through most of the plot arcs--and wasn't insulting to basic intelligence.  But try as I might through 10 graphic novels (read on loan, not on purchase), I couldn't find a reason to want to keep reading these other than a round-trip plane ride of nine hours.
402342
Here and Now begins with a promising premise. A very pregnant Suzanne McDermott, who's just tossed out her unfaithful husband, rescues a mysterious man from the river who, in turn, helps her give birth and heal her broken heart. Charles Garrity has been thrust from the Roaring Twenties seventy five years into the future and has his own broken trust and anger to deal with. Will Suzanne and Charles be able to overcome their emotional baggage to enjoy the true love they slowly find together?
The novel suffers mainly from being overwritten. I don't mind much the mundaneness or even the absolute predictability of the plot. But the bland, wordy dialogue and the endlessly repeated emotional descriptions should have been cut drastically: at least 50 of the 351 pages could have easily gone and left a better novel.

Also, the characters are largely bland and two-dimensional. If they displayed a more complete past, more complex emotions and a livelier feel, then the novel could have been interesting. For example, Suzanne and Charles both describe the other as funny, but there is no humor in the novel, just a bit of annoying sarcastic corniness.

If you're suffering from recent marital breakup, Here and Now may provide some comfort. Otherwise, don't waste your time.
4682309
I enjoyed the premise of this book, which is why I read it to the end and gave it 3 stars instead of 2. That being said, nearly ever page had run-on sentences broken by commas instead of proper punctuation and sometimes the dialogue was unrealistic.  There were also lots of awkward sentences and clunky words along with a few typos and grammatical errors that a good editor would have caught. Finally, the pacing could use some work. Though the story has real promise, the writing is a bit naive. It reads more like a draft than a finished book.
3497503
Interesting premise but it could be way way way better. The subplot of the teacher-student is just not necessary for this novel and a bit weird because that section felt long. It was also a bit predictable and the reason for the characters not calling the police are just beyond bizarre. I give it two stars because the premise is interesting {SPOILER}  but I wish they kept with the ghost premise rather than a brain disease. Also, I felt the prejudicial slur/generalization was a bit uncalled for.
1126424
Started with an interesting premise, then forgot it was supposed to be funny -- pretty much unforgivable because it wasn't anything else, either.  Instead of just gluing together some sort of episodic fiction blog the author really needed to figure out what genre it was, who the protagonist was, what person it was being told in, and maybe even have done an outline in advance so there could have been a plot.
2118076
As many reviewer pointed out, the premise is interesting mixing physics with an action story. However the execution is poor, there are so many holes in the story that it is not even worth to point out.
Halfaway through the book it took me a lot of effort to finish it.
Not worth the time.
2729319
The premise of this book is funny enough...a slightly
mismatched gay couple buys a mansion in a small English
country village next door to a homophobic retired
brigadier general.  Unfortunately, this cute premise is diluted by the
author's introduction of far too many characters and
subplots that go nowhere and a writing style that feels
as if the author was being paid by the page.  There are
entire chapters that have no laughs, no insight, and
no significance to the main plot.  Boil this book down
to half of its length, and it would be a winner.
4369691
There's a good premise here but the characters weren't likable for me.  More importantly, this would have benefited from a strong objective edit to cut some of the verbiage and pull things together a bit.  Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.
3268358
The premise is not too awful.

The president gets tired of criminal drug lords so arranges for a secret US organization to go eradicate them. Not exactly a premise that is real original.

I read about a fourth of it and gave up.

It has a lot of issues with proofing. I am willing to give books that are free or low cost at least some dispensation on the editing and proofing side, but at some point those issues overwhelm a story, and this is a case where that happened.

I also have to believe that there is some chance that the events as they unfold are even remotely possible, but this story just is not believable.

I got tired of a general, a junior officer, and a Sgt major in the army all calling each other by their first names. Just ain't' gonna happen, and no amount of claiming it is a security procedure is ever going to make that believable. In fact, the calling of each other by their first names just made the story confusing, as the reader has to keep track in his head who David is versus who the others are. It makes the story flow oddly. It might have worked better if the author referred to them by rank or position in the third person, even if in narration they used first names. In any case, it just did not work.

The idea that for $10 million one could fund an organization of maybe a dozen individuals to wipe out the drug lords is just ludicrous. In fact, in the small part of the book I read, I think there was already $20 million or so spent on boats, and planes, and of all things - a resort. And they had not actually done anything yet.

The author does appear to have done some superficial research as there are a lot of factoids inserted into the story, but they really don't add much to a tale where a junior officer and a Sgt major call a general by his first name.

The hacker being brought in on a black op did not work either. Almost like a juvenile fantasy to me. Another just ain't gonna happen thing.
2923294
The rich subject matter of Superman's on- and off-page history through the decades makes for a promising premise, and occasionally Weldon delivers. Far too often, though, a paucity of detail and an over-reliance on the author's own highly subjective judgment-- typically given voice in a snarky, message-board-friendly style that anyone over twelve will quickly find irksome-- means that powerful potential remains mostly unrealized. That sub-twelfth-grade phrasings (like using "Because, comics" as a rationale) made it into a work that is actually published and carried in bricks and mortar stores can only mean one of two things (if not both): somewhere, an editor is asleep on the job or a major motion picture-inspired cash grab is going on. I'd like my twenty dollars back; it would have been better spent on a few months of actual Superman comics.
2857296
This is a good story idea poorly written. At times, I was convinced that Crichton's twelve-year-old (if he has a 12-yr-old) wrote it. It was just that bad. The dialogue is often comical and should be embarrassing for a writer of Crichton's credentials. Crichton's insistence on using sentence fragments masquerading as complete thoughts was annoying. Literary license is one thing if it adds to the story. But sloppy sentence structure that leads you off in the wrong direction, or leaves you wondering what is being said, is inexcusable. If this story makes it to the big screen, it will need a major rewrite, hopefully by someone other than Michael Crichton.