Interesting subject poorly told,
356983
This book could have been very interesting based on a true incident in Damascus in 1840 concerning the arrest of many Jews for the murder of a Christian monk. Sadly the narration was very clumsy which is likely to be due to a combination of the author and the translator. Aslan, the main narrator, is barely plausible as he strays between his homosexual urges and his betrayal of his father and uncles. The plot around Aslan's difficulty in consumating his marriage to the Rabbi's daughter was very tedious and there was nothing in Aslan's character to give the reader anything to admire. I grew very tired of the direct referrals to the reader with the quote "My happy friend" as I was far from happy reading this book. One reviewer on the backcover describes this book as "gleefully bawdy" which would indicate to me that the reviewer did not get past the second paragraph.
3743026
This is an interesting topic but the author is not a good writer. The book reads more like a high school or college term paper. It definitely could have used a skilled editor. Additionally, the layout of the book's chapters is also odd and disjointed. There must be better books on the topic than this.
2937924
Elsie and Mairi Goes to War had the potential to be a great read as the subject matter is interesting and exciting.  However the author writes more like she is writing a dissertation rather than a book.  The story is disjointed and frequently rather confusing, with a number of detours into largely irrelevant directions.  I don't regret reading it, but I can't recommend it.
4478105
I felt like the book could have been better written; it was almost like reading my old book reports from High School.  Perhaps it was the constant "more on that later," instead of actually making a point...  The topic itself is interesting, but  I find it difficult to read a book where the author claims that they've got the 100% truth, no ifs, ands, or buts, while complaining about how stupid other religions are.

How about you prove it, instead of just saying it?  Kinda why I left Christianity behind with my dolls, when I grew up.  Cuz I like the proof, over the promises and demands of faith.

Granted, maybe I would have gotten some actual information if I'd been able to hold out past the 60% mark, but I was afraid I'd roll my eyes so far back that they'd get stuck that way.
400823
What could be more interesting than a look at medieval outcasts in a time of conform or get roasted on a spit? The subject deserves a better telling than this collection of run-on sentences. The text is cobbled together from contemporary accounts of crime and punishment lifted from the annals of history. The chapters are laid out as if there is meant to be some coherency to the subject matter. There is a bit but not much as the subject of heretics, for example, can jump from treatment in the year 850 to 1450 with little regard to the subtleties of cultural change during the interim period. It's as if the book was written by a scholar who forgot to take his Ritalin. The information is so poorly organized that it is hardly memorable. I came away with a few nuggets but I wouldn't recommend the book.
2534121
not as good as I was expecting, a bit drawn out, subject matter interesting, though
2056520
The topic was interesting but many things just didn't make sense, mostly with timelines. Background information on the women was sparse or confusing.  The whole book just reminded me of a first draft of a history project by a middle school student.
3560303
I honestly think that the subject matter of this book would have been easier to express as a plain-old non-fiction book or a novelization of the documentary material.  The author, however, had become fixated on the idea of a graphic novel (oxymoron though that expression might be) and teamed up with an artist who appears to be of the "blurred and hard to make out" school.  As a result, the information the author is attempting to get across, important though it is, becomes lost in facile word balloons and textual "voice over" narrations.  And, more often than not, the renderings of characters are indefinite, leaving the reader (viewer?) in doubt of who is being depicted, thus thoroughly muddling an unfortunately overly-simplified narrative.

Please pull out the word processor, sit down, and do it right.
817399
While presenting information that is, in itself interesting, this book was difficult for me to get through.  The use of italics in place of quotation marks seemed pretentious, and the book itself leapt from topic to topic, so that I was frequently confused as to who was doing what to whom.  Better books on the topic might be _Excellent Cadavers_, an exhaustive book on the Mafia, and _On Persephone's Island_, about an American woman's experiences after marrying a Sicilian.  I really wanted to enjoy Midnight in Sicily, but wasn't able to warm up to it at all.
3934018
The general subject is certainly interesting - a crime which most people would not have suspected even existed; international smuggling of endangered butterflies. However, I did not learn enough about the actual objects of desire - the butterflies - to motivate the story. If this had been an article in the New Yorker, by a top writer such as John McPhee (or Vladimir Nabokov?) there would have been far more natural history about the actual butterflies, their habitats, why they are endangered. There is also not a single photo of the butterflies in the book, and not even detailed information on the prices involved, so how are we supposed to get involved in it?

What is left is an extremely odd story about the suspect, the cop, and the author, all of whom appear to have had some sort of sketchy personal acquaintance. We learn too much about that and not enough about the beautiful insects or the destructive effects of the trade in endangered species. The author appears to be the only woman in the world who fantasizes about being a wildlife enforcement secret agent - she wrote a series of novels about this - and actually skulked around pretending to do undercover work for this book. A strange babe, but alas not an expert on the order Lepidoptera, whose beauty infatuates mankind.
548864
Some facts were interesting, but not a great story, poor writing.
2790704
I wanted to like this book more than I did. The premise is promising and the issues with the book have little to do with the author. Rather, the story itself is the issue. The story just is not that worthy of a chase or manhunt narrative. Most of this is because very little is known about the actual events. So, instead of focusing on a riveting tell, the author is forced to describe tedious events such as personality clashes between law enforcement. Furthermore, the author cannot use a linear timeline because there just isn't a linear timeline. Supposition and guess work inundates the work.
The book does become more interesting when the author finally describes his own theory. Unfortunately, the author's own guess leave a bit too desired.
Overall, the subject is interesting. But, the broken narrative or lack of narrative strains the readers patience.
2059785
As a person deeply concerned about the relationship between birds and people, I was looking forward to reading this book by an esteemed expert on Avian science. While Their Fate is Our Fate has lots of information about the biology of birds and especially about the study of potentially transferable avian viruses to human populations, it failed to provide a driving narrative that could engage the reader inspired to learn more about this pressing subject. Instead it frequently veered off course into discursive discussions about the history of avian science, as well as somewhat demanding descriptions of bird physiology better suited for the specialist than the lay reader. The book's manuscript screamed for much better editing than it ultimately received. It was uneven in content and theme. This fascinating field is still waiting for a better text on this subject.
4677920
The Chinese building complete, detailed replicas of Western cities is a fascinating topic.  No mere theme parks, these are real communities meant to be full-time homes to hundreds of people.  Complete replicas of cities from Holland, Italy, France, even Southern California are being built as homes for upper-middle class Chinese who want a unique living experience without leaving home.

The story behind the creation and execution of these cities and the duplitecture behind them is undoubtedly a fascinating story.  Unfortunately, this book isn't it.  If you look at all aspects of the story - the who, what, where, how and why, this book spends almost all of its text on the why, at the expense of covering all the other topics.  Lets meet the people who plan and build these cities.  The people who live in them.  See what their lives are like.  But we get very little of this.

Instead, we have a book full of theories and history about what motivates the Chinese to build these cities.  While thats part of the picture, and is worth a few pages or maybe a chapter, its not the whole story.  Worse, the book is written in turgid, academic prose.  Quote: ...It will be demonstrated that while the forms in these simulascrascapes may be foreign, the desired functions are indigenous and driven by autochthonous demands, both functional and symbolic. (Teacher!  Look!  I used all my vocab words!).  This makes the books obsession with theory and historical topics all the more difficult to slog through.

The book is illustrated with many photographs, but even these are disappointing.  Most are excerpts from sales brochures, or timid snapshots from a distance.  Few of them take you inside these places and give you sense of what these cities are like.

I seriously hope a real journalist who knows how to write an engaging story writes a book on this subject.  Im eager to read it.
3335676
I wanted to like this book because the subject matter was interesting. However, there were some glaring grammatical issues that were difficult to ignore while reading it.
4293558
The author is not an expert on the subject, and although the book contains some interesting facts and anecdotes, they are presented incoherently.  Often the main explication diverges into tangential narratives that do not serve the larger thesis.  The subtitle claims to provide a history of plutonium, but the chronology essentially stops after the Manhattan project.  The use of plutonium in RTGs or nuclear fuels such as MOX is mentioned only in passing.  The unique chemical structure of plutonium was interesting, but the presentation of that information was not illustrative.  The last chapter is titled "Now What?" but it doesn't attempt to offer any possible solutions.

The book amounts to little more than "Cliff Notes" on a subject that deserves a deeper and more coherent treatment.
3326089
This book would have been a great one page, maybe even two page article. Certainly interesting subject, but just not enough story -- and not terribly engaging writing.