unfortunately of a couple of the best characters. Otherwise
358834
Didn't care much for this one.  There were plenty of graphic fights, some sex scenes and a few losses...unfortunately of a couple of the best characters. Otherwise, not much development of the story.  Many of the characters seemed "out" of character to me, and several times did some incredibly dumb things.  The ending left us hanging, so guess that maybe some of the villains will get caught in subsequent books?
3435318
I like how the characters are flawed but the flaws are their great strengths.
81428
A book I find myself very torn reviewing.

On the positive side, we have some fantastic and innovative art here. At times, characters are a bit off-model. But a series of iconic and breath-taking panels more than make up for any qualms I had with the art.
We also get some fantastic set-up and a great overview of lesser-known DC characters. For a short story that moves from character-to-character very quickly, Meltzer manages to quickly shed a new light on characters with whom I was already familiar as well as to make me fall in love with characters with whom I was unfamiliar.
Characterization, for the most part, is great. And the handling of heroes making a controversial decision was refreshing, if a little melodramatic.

But on the negative side, I couldn't help but feel an overwhelming sense of misogyny while reading. I'm not of the opinion that (SPOILERS) killing off a female character as the inciting incident automatically makes a work misogynistic. But the way that the other heroes talk about the death, as well as the handling of other female characters throughout the comic really rubbed me the wrong way.
Building from that complaint, the resolution of the mystery was both contrived and disappointing.
The impact of the (SPOILERS) first death seemed to be remarkably exaggerated. I can understand other heroes being shaken, and many even being destroyed by the event. But the fact that nearly every hero was portrayed as having a close, personal relationship with the deceased just felt out of place, given that the character has never seemed to be THAT important in the past.
And lastly, I felt that several plot points were tacked on, underdeveloped, and/or inconsistent with other interpretations. Captain Boomerang's role comes to mind as an example.

Overall, we have an flawed-but-iconic story here. Definitely worth reading and discussing.
2994368
The story involves two brothers, and they are very likable and I enjoyed these two main characters. The way the story is laid out, was not the best, slow at the beginning, and seemingly rushed at the end, so much so that people were introduced out of the blue and even the answer to the mystery killings was not quite clear. Even Underwoods love life suffers along in the same way.
4882013
This is a REALLY hard book to rate for me. Why?

Because it is right on the CUSP of greatness, but somehow misses by inches. This story was first published as a serial in four parts, then made into a book and now has been revised and is being reissued.

Let's talk strengths first. First and foremost the author's writing is beautifully polished. Her descriptions of the places and people are interesting and she does a solid job of world building. The plot is consistent, coherent, and interesting.  And speaking of plot, here's the summary. A physically and emotionally damaged Lord Firth is the last of his family to survive an invasion his lands and he is out for vengeance. He believes that the power needs to accomplish his goals is hidden in a structure,  called the Citadel,  built by long dead mages. The problem is that no one has ever entered the Citadel and come back out alive.  He hires two sell swords, Wydrin and Sebastian who are looking to save their friend who is lost in the Citadel, as companions and guides. Unbeknownst to them, however, an ancient evil is waking in the citadel and they are the instruments of its liberation. The good news is, they are the first people to ever escape the Citadel alive. The bad news is that they let loose Armageddon in the process.

Now for weaknesses. The story has one major weakness: it's characters. Unfortunately,  the characters are largely one dimensional and unsympathetic.  Lord Firth, is an unpleasant man who puts his vengeance and his quest for power above the lives of, well... everyone until it is convenient for him to do otherwise. Wydrin for her part only does the right thing because her actions have made her a pariah at home and she has no where else to go. The best "protagonist' in the book is Sebastian, who would sell his very soul to right wrongs, but the lack of consequences for his actions ultimately depreciate his nobility. The result overall is that the most engaging and interesting characters were the eclectically self named reptilian daughters of Sebastian. And they were monsters massacring the populace.

My standards for a 3 star review are that I would read another book by the author based on the book. And I would definitely do that. My standard for a four star review is that I would read a sequel based on that book. Would I read a sequel of this story? Maybe. So I would ideally give this 3.5 stars. But since I cannot do that, I will round up, based on the polish of the author's writing.
3955857
This author is clearly quite talented. Overall I liked this book, but it had a couple issues that cut into the enjoyment.

1. Tool, over time, became way too knowledgeable about humans: their history, their philosophy, their attitudes, how to manipulate them. This simply would not have been in his background given his reason for existence.
<SPOILER ALERT>
2. The army faction (UPF?)which ambushes Tool does so using a large number of tranquilizer darts. I found it entirely too convenient for them to come up with this ammunition, the weapons to deliver it considering the state of the drowned cities as well as the lack of more common equipment.
3. The whole ending battle sequence seemed a little too deus-ex-machina.
4405699
I enjoyed this book for the most part, but as with previous Beverly Barton books, I have mixed feelings.

FBI Agent Nic Baxter and PI Griffin Powell team up to play adversary to the second half of the story of The Beauty Queen Killer's (from THE DYING GAME)--a killer only the two of them believe existed.

This is the first problem for me.  It is so obvious there were two killers in THE DYING GAME.  Two bullets struck the first killer, only one was accounted for.  After tearing apart the first killer's house, evidence from only half the murders attributed to the Beauty Queen Killer would have been found.  This is real basic stuff here.  To go along with the premise that only Nic and Griff see this as proof that there were two killers means you must believe an entire task force of FBI agents are idiots.

If you get past that, and you can if you concentrate on the storyline that eventually moves past that belabored point, the next problem is lying in wait.  Nic and Griff don't get along.  The same things are stated over and over again; `I don't like you', `I don't like you either', `We're not partners', `This is an unholy alliance', `You're not my type', `You're not my type either'.  I dislike Ms. Barton's redundancy, and have since the first book of hers I read.  Show me, don't tell me.

Nic is difficult to like, despite, or maybe because of, how often her past traumas and their effect on her are mentioned.  The abrupt change in her personality feels fake.  And, if she truly loved Griff, she wouldn't have by-passed him near the end of this story.

Griff is more likeable, although he never seems quite three-dimensional in this tale.  He also has a major personality shift, but his is slightly more believable than Nic's.

Although there are other characters that appear interesting, they are never really fleshed out into characters you can actually care about.

There are blatant typos in all of Ms. Barton's books, but that fault should be shared between her and her editor, and perfection in a book--in any written work--is nearly impossible to achieve.

Still, I was intrigued with the storyline.  Other than the glaring plot problem of the question of two killers, the tale moves along and finishes okay.  I will read another of Beverly Barton's books.  Despite finding some fault with her work, she has a certain knack for story telling.

Shelley Dawn, author of&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Sweet-Sweet-Jessie/dp/144954892X/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Sweet, Sweet Jessie</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Dark-Nights/dp/B003F24J2A/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Dark Nights</a>
1177912
Well, I'll start by saying this book kept me interested until the end.  I was invested in the connection between the H and h. I also enjoyed the secondary characters. That being said, I ultimately felt the commitment between the H and h was frustratingly loose.  I patently dislike a H who participates in liaisons during the development of a romance. And I patently dislike a h who makes no bones of it. For such a strong h for almost the entirety of the book, she didn't think twice about accepting a man who the night before went drinking, gambling and whoring.  Lovely.  Perhaps the attitude is canon for the time period, but it didn't endear me to these characters.  This romance took a careening left turn off a cliff for me, and it's not often that I end indifferent to a couple after reading an entire story, but these two left me frustratingly indifferent. Bummer.
3610937
In a funk after another encounter with Elizabeth goes awry, Darcy retires with his failures into the Lucas library, ready to leave Hertfordshire.  His musings on Elizabeth are overheard by Mr. Bennet, and thus begins a growing friendship between the two, with the twist being that Mr. Bennet refuses to introduce himself.  Darcy meets with (the unknown) Mr. Bennet several times, learning of the Bennet family and his and Mr. Bennet's favorite, Elizabeth.  Eventually, Darcy conquers Elizabeth's dislike and they fall in love and marry.

The good:  The story is pleasant and features the three ever-present villains, Caroline Bingley, Mr. Wickham and Lady Catherine.  All three villains get their just desserts, and most decisively too!  Lady Catherine is especially evil in this telling.  I loved the character of Lady Matlock, and that Mr. Bennet was such a lovable character in this novel.

The bad:  All three villains are defeated by someone other than our two lover protagonists, Elizabeth and Darcy, and all are defeated too easily and too quickly in the novel's structure.  Editing was non-existent, and errors were present to such an enormous extent that the reader is taken out of the read trying to decode the author's text.  Ms. Hox is in desperate need of a copy of "Eats, Shoots & Leaves."  I also thought the dialogue was a bit childish in places.  Had the writing been better, this novel would have earned another star.
17024
J. k. Rowling is a genius at creating a world of interesting and dysfunctional characters. She succeeds at creating no fewer than twenty well developed characters all linked together by the death of a major character in the first ten pages. The competing political interests of the town and their disconnect from their children, who operate as a separate subculture create all elements for a terrific book. . . And then she inexplicably has almost all the main characters act in such heidious ways, that at the end, you are left with two major characters who have some redeeming value- oddly disappointing!
3808839
I liked parts of this book.

Admittedly, Judith Krantz doesnt receive credit in the academic world, but she writes with much more gusto, heart, acuity and genuine warmth than most, and her expressions of hatred and deep emotion are palpable.

Admittedly there are flaws.  Sentimentality, lack of credibility and terrible corniness, and I loathed the character of Kiki.  I didn't stop reading after she was introduced, but soon after.  She was an extreme annoyance.  A waste of time and space.  However I did like the character of Daisy.

I liked Daisy.  I didn't admire her, but she was suitable as an heroine.  She was not particularly special but for she was extremely beautiful.

But the most fascinating character was her nemesis, Ram, the lesser loved perfect child.  Daisys brother.  I adored the parts featuring Ram.  Ram is craven and crazed, and yet, he was the most fascinating character of the whole book.  Second is his potential paramour, Sarah Fane.

The book spent too much time with minor characters, who had no appeal.  Kiki and her profound tiresome idiocy.  The history of the lurcher dog.  Even Patrick Shannon was dull.

But what is admirable is the emotional intensity.

It could have been tightened.  The deep emotion seemed separate from the book, as if Krantz were occupied with something else.

I loved Ill Take Manhattan and I admired Scruples, but this is a book that needed some editing.
856358
I would have given the book 4 stars, as I think, in some ways,  it's one of the better installations in the Dresden series. It's fairly extraordinary for a series to maintain good quality over this many books. Several the good things about the series are here; Harry's wry wit, interesting bad "guys" (people, critters, whatever), intro of new characters plus appearances by long-standing characters.

Unfortunately it's in those long standing characters that the serious negatives arise. Two of the worst characters are here featured prominently, and it's deeply irritating to have to keep dealing with these two unrelenting morons. I speak, of course, of Molly & Morgan. (Perhaps it's something about the letter "M.") I swear, animal shelters across the land euthanize thousands of dogs every year who are smarter, more trainable, and less obnoxious & malignantly inclined than Molly. She was a snit-filled, spoiled, bratty, stupid teenager when she appeared & the only direction she's taken since is downhill. She's absolutely intolerable & why Butcher hasn't had her character grow in any direction but "worse" is beyond me. And yet clearly she's supposed to be a sympathetic character, on the side of the good guys. But there is nothing sympathetic or good about her; she remains an unrepentant twit, utterly impervious to any alternate learning entering her stone-like skull. Rather, she pretends to repentance after she's tried yet again to screw around with someone's psyche, going through her incredibly obnoxious sobbing & whining routine, but if she really was capable of regret or education she wouldn't keep doing that which reduced her friends' minds to twisted mush long ago.  If I could ooze into the world of Dresden I'd behead her myself and throw a great big party afterward.

Then there's Morgan. Narrow-minded and self-righteous, another character who's completely incapable of having new understanding squeezed into the rocky prison of his head. At least at his age, it's somewhat understandable that he'd be so completely impenetrable, his brain having had over a century to ossify. This does not make him any more pleasant to have to live with in the books.

I guess these two jackas$es typify one of Butcher's authorial flaws: his characters just don't grow. In Harry's case this is mostly okay, tho there are times when he (again, again!) loses his temper, shoots off his mouth, & makes a bad situation a zillion times worse, that I come very close to just tossing aside the series & never picking it up again. Bob the Skull is a cheerfully leering smart-alec, but he's one of the better & more interesting characters. Murphy is always The Kute and Kompleat Kop. The M Twins are & always have been intolerable twits. Etc. It's as if once Butcher creates a character, gets an idea into his head of what they're like, that's it. No more creation; just continuation....as he or she is, so they ever shall be.

This is tedious, to say the least. I'll hang with Butcher for the next book for the benefit of the entertaining & very creative elements (like the use of Silly String in this book, which was just inspired)....unless I read in the reviews for it that the Odious Molly is heavily featured, in which case I simply refuse to subject my psyche to any more of her.
878862
I'm a sucker for evil women and lesbian romance, so this should have been right up my alley. Sadly, only one of the two main characters has a definable personality, and promised evil witch shenanigans manifest in a really minor, petty way. Some of the scenes between the two main characters are fun, and I'll check out the sequel, but what should have been a slam dunk for me became a wait-and-see-if-it-improves situation instead.
4122161
Although characterized by the same lively prose that made Ella Enchanted such a delight, Gail Carson Levine's newest, The Two Princesses of Bamarre is unfortunately seriously flawed.  It remains a quick, readable fantasy, but often fails to hold up under scrutiny.
 The basic premise of the book is a flip flop of the traditional heroine found in fantasy novels-- you know, the one who is invariably impetuous, brave, handy with a sword, and ready to cut down any monsters that stand in her path.  Addie is altogether different (she's even good at embroidery), but although it is nice to have a less courageous heroine, she never comes alive for me as a real person.  Her sister Meryl, who does fit the stereotypical heroine, is even less convincing.  Quite honestly, my favorite character in the novel is the dragon, who with her moral ambiguity-- first roasting her prisoners out of boredom and then regretting their deaths and remembering them fondly forever afterwards-- is actually the most realistic and well-rounded character.
 The characters, however, are not the major problem.  The most severe failing of The Two Princesses of Bamarre, particularly as it is written as an epic high fantasy with dragons and fairies and sorcerers, is its continual failure to ask *why* things are the way they are.  Why do specters persist in misleading humans?  Haven't they got anything better to do?  Why do they have to prophesy when commanded?  Why did the fairies stop interacting with humans, particularly given their need in the plague?  Why does the Gray Death choose the victims it does?  Does it consciously choose?  How is it spread?  Why is the king such a coward?  (He is characterized throughout only by his cowardliness, which misses a great opportunity for an interesting three dimensional character.)  Little questions that I didn't think about until I finished the book and realized that nothing is explained; everything just *is.*  Patricia C. Wrede uses many of the same steretypical elements in her Enchanted Forest Chronicles (dragons, princesses, sorcerers) more successfully because of her ironic tone: she mocks fantasy conventions where Levine tries to follow them without really expanding or explaining very much.  A pity, since she did such a good job in lending plausibility to the story of Cinderella.
 The Two Princesses of Bamarre also suffers from a sudden and rather incongruous ending, two seriously unconvincing romances, and some fairly unsubtle messages about the various forms of heroism.  However, to make up somewhat for its shortcomings, the plot moves quickly, and the lore about the sorcerers is particularly creative.  There's also a bit of humor as Addie contemplates the difficulties that might be had in attempting to extract an invisible splinter obtained from an invisible table and the dangers of traveling with seven league boots (dangerous road blocks, for one).  But it all still remains a little shallow, a little generic.

Probably a good coming-of-age choice for younger fantasy readers who may not be bothered by the lack of plausibility, but better choices for those who like their high fantasy well doused with wit include Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain, Vivian Vande Velde's A Hidden Magic, and Patricia Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles.
Ailanna
4628000
Well, I am well and truly caught up with the story arc so far, and that is satisfying. There is much and more to like here. But on the little and less side, I have some quibbles. I have been willing to put up with the lists of names, shield devices, and sigils I will never remember and the detailing of even the smallest of small clothes in the service of "being there." But I can't help but be disappointed in the failure to give previously detailed characters the smallest of progression, relegating them to the chronic cliche of their theme song (I'm looking at you, Princess Shireen and Patches, oh, oh, oh). People with interesting back story and condition who should have had at least one further part to play to justify their existence. And one newish character with whom we spend a lot of time and learn to care about to some extent, only to have that time seem pointless in the end. But oh, yeah, if I am still above the grass when volume 6 comes out, I'll be right there in line.

Kudos on the other reviews that point out other unsatisfying aspects.
2037179
There are many things to like about this book, including interesting characters and harsh issues (domestic violence) that are good to bring forward. Unfortunately, I couldn't relate the character's odd personality changes (overly abiding at times, to the point of stupidity - to rash reckless another, when the situation really didn't call for it). I'm sure a character like Emma would have major swings of behavior, but the inner dialog just didn't seem to reflect the outer swings for me. In addition, the aunt wasn't developed enough for me to believe. She was a rather 2 dimensional character, and that is a shame.

I was surprised by the ending, and found it a bit of a cheap trick on the part of an author who is otherwise a skilled writer.

The book was good, but I was disappointed.
2399054
Oddly enough I liked the secondary characters in this book the best.  The writing was competent, but the main characters just didn't engage me.  The heroine spent too much time being rescued or snarky.  The neighbors, otoh, were quite amusing.