I hate picking up a series midway
348389
3.5 Stars.

I hate picking up a series midway. I didn't realize Old Scores was a series until chapter 3 but by then I was hooked and didn't want to put the story down. This book makes a great stand alone, there was only a few times that a person was mentioned who I didn't know or wasn't given a good background on. Im interested in starting the series from the beginning now. I do think the language was a little off for the time period the book was set in. For example a character said are you serious in response to a statement once in the beginning and I don't think that fits the time period. I enjoyed the characters, Mac and Thomas best. Baker was a little closed off for me as a reader but I think if I had read the whole series I wouldn't feel that way. I did get a little confused towards the end of the story during the wrap up of the case. There seemed to almost be too many people and too much going on at the end that all needed to be wrapped up. Thomas has created an interesting Sherlock-ese world that I enjoyed. Thank you to NetGalley & St. Martins Press for this eARC of Old Scores. This review is based on a complimentary book I received from NetGalley. It is an honest and voluntary review. The complimentary receipt of it in no way affected my review or rating.
22582
The entire series I've read so far has been disappointing. While I don't expect magic to automatically make you smart, this family takes dumb to a whole new level. Maybe I'm spoiled reading about smart kids like Harry Potter. I just can't make myself buy the new book even though I normally complete a series. I'm actually deleting this one from my kindle.
2009816
Let me start off by saying that GA Aiken is one of my favorite authors, but the series is not what it used to be. Since Eibhear and Izzys story, a book that was highly anticipated, the author has shifted the focus away from the main couple. There is no romance and with each passing book it's just two people deciding to have sex without any buildup, dialogue, etc and decide that they'll be together forever even though they've barely spent anytime together. This last book was the worst. It's supposed to be about Aidan and Brawnie, but you barely see them, they're hardly together and it's completely rushed. They were in less than 10% of this book...which is supposed to be about them.

The entire book is about the war. It's incredibly hard to keep up, too many characters in a scene, had to go back multiple times to figure out who was talking and who was who. I understand the war is the main plot, but it's come to the point where I don't think this series can be justifiably be placed in the romance genre. It's more sci-fi at this point.

The humor was recycled, forced and repetitive. I really miss the way she used to write and I hope to see her come back to it one day. I would have given this book a one star, but like I said, she is one of my favorite authors and I just couldn't do it.
2777210
I LOVED this series and was really excited for the new book.  This book is not like the other books, the writing style has less imagery (I liked the imagery of the other books) and we alternate points of view between Juliette and Warner.  We do get more information on the history of the Reestablishment.  We meet a few new characters, but only one does anything interesting. The old characters, except Kenji, only have name drops here and there. What I really don't like, and why I want to forget the whole book, is the strong Juliette that emerges in Ignite Me goes back to doubting herself. I hated the conflict between Juliette and Warner, and the cliffhanger ending was out of nowhere.  At the end of the book, I'm thinking I spent hours reading this and nothing happened except in the last few pages, and even then it was so quick there was nothing to savor.  I've already ruined one of my favorite series by reading this, so I'll still read the next book for the conclusion to see if will get better.  But I will probably borrow it instead of buying it.
706492
This wasn't a movie... it was the 3 eps rolled into one tape.  It kind of sucked that way too, seeing as I already owned the first two tapes.  But otherwise, I love the series... it's just too bad they had to rip you off  this way.
196287
It is hard to rate these books as the standard has now become having Cliffhangers.  Some books are clearly already been finished as the author lets you know the release dates for all subsequent releases in real time.  Readers have been vocal in giving feedback about how they view the cliffhanger model but it obviously benefits the author and marketers in $$$.  I would rather be charged more fro the full book with one time delivery rather than being string along  Having to re-read parts of the first book to jump start my memory is no fun at all especially when you are trying to follow three or more series concurrently.  It dilutes your story.
115079
I must admit, I thought the first series I read by him (...green angel tower or whatever...) was a good story with decent writing. Unfortunately I found this series to be WAY too slow. Not to say it doesn't have any redeeming qualities at all .... I read the first book and found it mildly interesting so I went ahead and bought the second one. Like the pathetic series lover that I am, I even bought the third, which I'm reading now. Sort of. I tend to fall asleep after just 8 or 9 pages of ABSOLUTELY NOTHING happening. I really can't tolerate the "Steven King" style of over-desciptiveness. If you don't have any light forms of ADHD then perhaps you will enjoy this book immensely, but if you're like me, save some money and just let this series go.
2117618
I like the series okay. If it weren't for the fact that it is to long between books. You forget what the rest of the books were about until it clicks. I would rather have one long book to tell all than space them so far apart. Awfully easy to forget author and series.
4256507
First, I'll say, I haven't finished this yet.  That being said, I don't have a real drive to burn through this like other great series out there like Full Metal Alchemist, Darker than Black, Samurai Champaloo, Cowboy Bebop, etc.  The Guyver I remember was a lot darker than this.  I'm not talking about colors.  This has been dumbed down quite a bit.  That's disappointing.  I should've caught a streaming episode or two first before adding to my collection.  Moving on...

This is another series that makes me wonder about the "NEED" for a lot of animation to be on blu-ray.  This would have been just as "good" (loosely) on dvd (with or without an up-convertor).  There's just not enough detail to justify it.  Bright colors? Yes.  Sharp lines?  Yes.  Audio?  Ok.  But that makes it even worse.  Bright colors with the overall theme of Guyver is "odd" at best.  The characters are uninspiring and pretty bland.  The action is short and much to be desired.  I may finish this in 2012 just because I like the Guyver, but maybe not.  If you really want to see this, save a buck and get the dvd.  If you have a great connection, stream from one of the 1000s of  anime sites.  Don't waste on the blu-ray.  Not a must have on blu-ray.
1305729
I won't belabor the points already made by the others here...but I just want the FOX decision-makers to know that (1) there are others out here (like me) who will gladly pay a lot more for Seasons 5 & 6 if necessary, and (2) it really sets a bad precedence for you to release only part of a series. Also, when I see some of the absolute trash that gets released, in some cases right after it has been aired on TV, it just riles me that a show like this can't be completed. Even if you don't want to put much effort into extras, cover art, etc., at least you could put out basic discs. Luckily, I had videotaped all 142 episodes of the series over the years it has been in reruns, but it's just not the same quality and continuity.

Hey, here's an idea...if YOU don't want to put it out, can I do so?? Give me the permission, and I will sell them on eBay and Amazon (and help put my son through college with the proceeds).
74449
I don't make comments on books I read but I have to make an exception in this case.
The very first thing I did after finishing Book 4 is to delete the books from my Kindle library since I don't want my kids to know that I read them and to make sure that they won't stumble into them  when they run out of other books to read.
I like fantasy books in general since they can be filled with imaginary creatures, races, magic, noble pursuits, powerful artifacts, and fantastical sceneries. The authors are not constrained within the human bounds and therefore do not have to rely on cheap tricks to pad the stories, like sex and violence, and tons of human characters with little to differentiate between them.
This book series is almost all about sex and violence and tons of look-alike characters. The septas (nuns) are described as a bunch of "wrinkled c*nts, half of they pray for a good raping". It's not just a vulgar statement from an obnoxious character but it pretty much sets the tone for the whole series. Female characters can't wait until they reach puberty so they can claim to be grown women and have sex. Much old men also wait for exactly that as well. Violence is not just about blood and gore but glorifies tortures as well.
The vast majority of the characters in the books are obnoxious characters and if I read on at all, it's simply to see if they will get into a quick and violent end so justice will prevail. Unfortunately, the series just drags on and on and there is no quick end. The good characters either die very quickly out of sheer stupidity or become so inept and hopeless that it's frustrating to read about them. The whole Book Four is about characters I couldn't care less about and each irrelevant character drags in a family tree of even more irrelevant characters until you can't keep track of (or even care about) who is who. There's an appendix at the end of each book which lists all the names from all the family trees but, seriously !!
This books series is more like a TV series. intended to draw enough interest through violence and sex, bordering on child porn, to continue as long as possible. I suspect if I add up all the descriptions of the human body parts normally covered by underwears, they would be longer than the plots on the one or two characters I remain interested in by the end of book three (and book four does not cover those characters at all). It's that bad.
2691168
I really loathe this series. I confess I read the first sex before I came to that conclusion, so maybe if I had stopped with one I could have simply 2-starred it and moved on with my life, but nope, I choked down 6 because my brother had them.

I read this many years ago, pre LOTR movies.
But when I started this book, I had this overwhelming feeling that I had read it somewhere before. Eventually it hit me. The initial scenes are a complete rip-off of Frodo fleeing the shire. That was distasteful enough but the characters are what really put the nail in the coffin. Flat and yet stereotyped, total cliches, but boring. I disliked the men, but holy cow, the women were loathsome.  One-dimensional and even that one dimension was poorly thought out.

I know my Amazon review score will go way down for daring to speak out against this book, since people love to call a review 'not helpful' when they simply disagree with the sentiment, but this needed to be said. I realize this series is wildly popular. I can't find anything to like about it though. The storyline is somewhat interesting but the characters completely ruin it for me.
4696807
Ugh. This series took a serious nosedive. The premise was interesting. I liked the characters. The writing was fine (not amazing, but passable). The plot was a major issue, though. I kept waiting for the series to get better. While things did happen in the first and second book, there was a serious lack of story arc within the books and none of them really pushed the series forward.

The third book finally picks it up a bit, but still lacked a compelling story line and conflict. The things that really should have been more of a conflict or issue were rather brushed over. For example, the big question throughout the story is the location of the magical gate they have to protect. It has been missing for eons and they don't know where to find it. Instead of trying to find it themselves, they spend the books trying to find the people who can tell them where it is, only the people don't know where it is, either. Then suddenly, one of them figures it out while she's hanging out with her boyfriend. Just poof! There it is! They spend more time trying to save their mentors than they did trying to save the world. It's hard to really describe it without giving tons of spoilers, but it felt like the focus on the book was on rescuing people who had been kidnapped rather than trying to stop this looming evil.

The final conflict is ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. Here the girls have spent considerable amounts of time trying to protect their helpless friends and family, and then when the final battle is about to start, they call in all these helpless people to fight with them. And they all survived, too! Yes, they needed reinforcements, but having one of their boyfriend's soccer team (no joke) show up to fight monsters isn't exactly helpful when they don't know how to fight and they're facing mythological creatures with magic, super-strength, and even venom. It was absolutely ridiculous.

And though I did like the characters, in this book my love for them waned. I could go on and on about all the little irritating details that kept piling up to make this an awful read, but I really just felt like though the premise and characters were interesting, the actual plot of the books could have been shaved down into a duology, maybe even a standalone, and even then the story line just wasn't compelling. And the wrap-up at the end was really rushed. For a series that took its time revving up, it really skimmed over the aftermath.
1158748
Kiana you could have went on and finished this out with part 3 but for some reason you want the bleeding to continue.  Shame on you. You lose readers along the way because we forget about the story. I have missed out on a lot of series because i really do not want to re read just to get caught up. You are doing your readers a disservice as well as yourself.
The series is very good but not that good for 4 parts.
4098021
FINISHED THE FIRST THREE NOW I HAVE TO WAIT FOR THE NEXT ONE, I hate having to wait.
3484201
I tried.  Really I did, and thankfully I didn't have to pay for this one because, wow, the last book was bad and this, this was a juvenile money grab with a side of bitter to the fans who paid good money for a long series that ended in a whimper of fan pain.  If you read the books, your imagination will do a much better job of filling in the blanks and probably keep the characters more-- in character-- for you.
4757914
This is the first of the series that I've picked up, and though I liked it well enough, I have one serious problem with it:

I hate having to have read all the books previously in a series to get what's going on!

Now, I understand that in a series, there are a few things you can take for granted, and things that can be referred to, as well. However, as I depend on my library for most of my reading material, I can't always pick up the first 15 books in a series to decide whether or not I like them.

There's no real explanation of why the protagonist is a bad you-know-what. There are mentions of his mother, but the author assumes that you're just going to know what it's all about. Same with some of the bad guys. What's a jonah? Why is a jonah to be feared? Some of the questions I had I sort of figured out, but I finished the book with more questions than I had answers.

If this were just an installment of a serial story, fine, I could  understand the gaps, but it's supposed to be a stand-alone book -  part of a series, but definately a book in its own right.

If I come across other books in the series, I may indeed pick them up, but I was sufficiently annoyed by this book that I probably won't go out of my way to find the others.

Bottom line: If you're familiar with the series, it'll probably be a great read. If you aren't, it might not be that great.