Boring, flat, achingly uninteresting
347175
I just opened this book yet again before bed and realized that I was dreading it...yet another night's slow slog through this impossibly boring book. The characters are flat, the storyline is stupid and there is nothing of interest anywhere. I'm 45% though the book and am setting myself FREE. Delete. Not finished. I hate not finishing books, but I refuse to put up with this ridiculous sham of a novel. I usually like Marian Keyes' books. Utterly disappointing. Stop phoning it in Ms. Keyes, your disrespect for your readers is showing.
1714727
Skewed sits squarely where the vast majority of these types of books reside, in the throes of mediocrity and a resultant sense of deja vu because you've been here before and done this previously. The single unique plot point in this drab, often uninteresting fare is the birth of twins after their mother is murdered. Thus begins the saga of the "Haiku Twins" and their quest to find out all the sordid details of their mother's demise. Many reviewers gave this book a free pass, and I applaud their ability to be absorbed by the rather pedestrian writing, uninteresting characters and utterly foolish actions of many of the players. This is a shallow whodunit, and I was never engrossed or absorbed by the plot. As I neared the end of the book, I evaluated whether or not I cared what happened to the characters, and found that I did not. There is a whole host of them to choose from, but none of them particularly resonated. There is an undertone of religion bashing and one of the more cliched holy roller types ever put to print. There are contrived episodes of tension and drama throughout including one utterly, preposterously ridiculous sequence in a storage unit. Many readers have complained about the ending. I felt more put out by the journey getting there.
3651159
Buying Time was a waste of time.  It was probably written only for the purpose of introducing characters for a series. It was a painfully dull read with no enterainment value and no insights. The author needs to get a vocabulary that extends beyond the words "beaufiful" and "magical."I felt as if I were reading the same sentences over and over. Folks, this one is a dud!
4278204
Boring, Boring, Boring!  Too much blah blah, small amount of action.
3766367
While Ian Banks is one of the most interesting writers I've come across in the last few years, unfortunately "A Song of Stone" is one of the least engaging novels I've ever finished.  Muted, yet overwrought, this  tale of dissolution is less shocking than turgid.  The extended and tedious  stretches of "purple prose" in this disappointing book, which  were apparently consciously intended to embody the self-absorbed and effete  mental state of the protagonist and narrator, did little but lose my  flagging interest repeatedly.  Coyly lurid, and basically quite  unsatisfying, this dim variation on an apocalyptic, Road Warrior-ish theme  goes nowhere and then dies...Read anything else by Banks before or instead  of "A Song of Stone".  Though I do rather enthusiastically  recommend Banks as an author, I can't in good conscience give thumbs up to  this book.
1184655
Uninteresting characters, wooden dialog, unimaginative plot, atypical (and non-logical) punctuation, minimal proofreading. Didn't finish. Won't be reading any more by this author.
4712673
If it had been a freebie I'd still feel like the download was a waste. This book reads as if the author normally writes technical manuals. It's like a first draft laying out the bare bones of the plot with no emotion, color, or interesting bit of detail to flesh it out. Even the dialogue sounds stiff and unnatural, like it should be narration, with the occasional swear word thrown in as a vain attempt to make these flat, cardboard cutout characters sound like people. It's rare for me to put a book down without finishing it, but I just couldn't force myself to care enough to make it to the end. Do yourself a favor, folks, and hit the back button.
3061939
is what I would've called this novel, because it's what I stopped myself from doing each time I commenced to reading again. My respect for Koonst withstanding, I honestly don't see how this was published. It's boring. A third into the book I saw and sensed no thrill or horror. The protagonists are so uber good and fortunate there is no sense of turmoil. I skimmed through their chapters eventually, because they so bored me. The antagonist, who this book is actually about, is far more interesting and keeps the reader engaged enough to see what the hell happens to him. All in all, it ends cliched, like many of Koontz from this decade (minus Odd Series). It wasn't a great read, but it isn't chill inspiring. I should've asked for a sock and tie from my Secret Santa instead.
667350
Am I missing something here? After reading some of the other glowing reviews, I'm forced to ask: Did I read the same book? This book was my second attempt at joining the Ian Rankin Admiration and Marching Society, and frankly, I just don't get it. The story moves at a lethargic pace with no high or low points in the whole book. All the characters are interchangeable and boiler-plate for a "police procedural". The "dying father" plot line fails to rise above tepid and Fox's sister is just a pain-in-the-arse. When the protagonist finds his house has been broken into and ransacked, he treats it as if the neighbor's dog pooped on his lawn. Sorry folks, I'll just have to push on in my search for a good book. This was like watching paint dry.
1894989
This book is painful. No interesting characters. Long, drawn out, BORING explanation of guns, tactics, military acronyms. Save your money.
1049971
Dreadfully slow, poorly written, bland characters and a dead end plot.
4974644
Dull, with low production values. While the story ought to be inherently interesting, I just couldn't care much about anybody.
2961297
I have no idea why this book was written, nothing of any interest happens, the characters.. who cares about them. Pointless, I kept hoping it would get better, what a borefest. Watch grass grow, it's time better spent.
1309513
I should start this off with a disclaimer that I hadn't read the first two books in this series. As such, I've tried to not hold certain things against it. For example, if the book fails to describe an area, I just assume that it was described in thorough detail in a previous entry. Even going easy on the book, its still just terrible. We have a story about three women who meet gods and demigods and react to it with absolutely mundanity. Maybe they weren't so unenthusiastic about it in the first or second book, but even so the casual level of disregard for the strangeness of their circumstances is absolutely mindboggling. They're literally meeting gods and they're more concerned about petty, inconsequential things. The same goes for the author. For a story that concerns to care about deep, emotional connections it spends a lot more time obsessing with materialism than describing the characters or their behavior to any capacity. She's go on for pages about unsubstantial material things and then skips over the act of making love in the most lazy way imaginable. The supernatural people for the most part act like normal people, what? People who have lived for thousands of years probably wouldn't behave the way they do, especially in the face of the circumstances of a big important quest. I don't know about the previous entries, but this book spends a lot more time on talking about opening a beauty salon than a conflict of good vs evil. Where's the sense of urgency? Where's the passion? Maybe the characters were actually interesting in the previous two books, but in this one they're dreadfully uninteresting and boring. Its painfully full of cliches, which isn't necessarily a detriment as long as the story remains interesting, but this book fails to be engaging at any level. I have read many far better stories written by middle-schoolers than what I encountered in this book, so I don't think I'll ever be reading another book by this author if this is her standard of quality.
2017150
If I could give it no stars, I would. Boring piece of drivel.
824192
I've always counted my time as being far more important than the few bucks we spend on ebooks. This book, or what I read of it (the first three stories) were a complete waste of my time. I only got this book because it had such high reviews, which are completely baffling to me. I didn't read all the stories. I read the first one, and was disappointed by the overly simplistic writing style and the way the concepts were handled. Then I read the second one, which was so utterly forgettable that I can't recall anything about it now, and finally I moved on to the prison story with my rapidly dwindling  hopes, but that was the lamest one of all. Maybe it's me, but I found these stories dull and pointless. Absolutely pointless. I'm still mad about how much time I wasted on this book. While I was reading it, I didn't look forward to my breaks at work like I do with most other books. This book was just so incredibly boring and I couldn't feel a connection with any of the characters. I have taken the unprecedented step-- for me, anyway-- of deleting Galactic Energies from my kindle and my kindle library.

My apologies to the author-- I'm sorry for disliking your book so much. I have written and posted this negative review for the benefit of other readers. I wish there had been a review like this to warn me. All those (in my opinion) undeserved five star reviews raised my expectations to the point where I was extremely disappointed with the reality.
1861811
I did not and could not finish this book. It had no depth. The story was flat and had no meat to it. It was boring and dragged out. The main characters were 2D and had nothing to them. It was simply flat. Words pieced together to form sentences, sentences to form paragraphs and so on. But nothing brought on any type of feelings. Abby was so annoying and she did absolutely nothing. I mean nothing, I don't know why she annoyed me so much since she barely spoke and I only got 21% into the book. But yeah, I couldn't stand her. And Javon or however you spell it since even the author seemed unable to keep it straight. He was, I don't know, simply not a vampire. When we read these types of books we expect vampires to be rough around the edges, steamy hot, overly protective, but oh so sweet to his mate. He was none of those. Again, simply boring.
This book was free thankfully and  I was excited to see it was actually a full length novel. Those books divided into parts andareonly a hundred pages long irritate me to no end. But this book, 420 pages. Oh yeah, I was overly excited.
Complete let down. I couldn't imagine reading all that run down, dragged out mess of a book for 420 pages.
I only gave this book one star because it wouldn't let me submit my review without giving the book something. So I wouldn't even give the one star if I didn't have to. But to each their own. It is free so no reason to give it a try and see for yourself and decide what you think.