You'd better read the original book by Marie Corelli "Vendetta!" than this one.
342657
This book seems like "Vendetta!" by Marie Corelli. The style of writing and the description of events are very similar. In my opinion it is better to just read the original by Marie Corelli.

Marie Corelli (1855  1924) was a very popular English novelist. In the Victorian era she sold more books than any other author! She was extremely popular, but her popularity was without merit. She produced pulp fiction for the Victorians. Franois Ozon directed a movie in 2007 titled "Angel", that was based on Maria Corelli's life. It is a beautiful, touching movie and it made me interested in Marie Corelli and her writing. Nowadays her books seem very dated and ridiculous, full of embarrassing sentimentality and questionable morality. They are painful to read at times, but if you want to know what Victorian bestsellers looked like, then you should check them out.
2744867
This book should not have been written to begin with.  The Forever King (the prequel) ended appropriately, and did not need a follow-up.  Somehow, the originality of the previous book has lost its luster the second time  around.  Many of the prolonged passages between Merlin and "the  Innocent" are drawn out too long.  There is too much emphasis placed  on the evilness of the villan.  This is mostly done through the graphic  depiction of gory, sexual satanic rituals which were not necessary to the  story.  When I first read the summary of the book, I thought "Reading  about the Knights in modern N.Y. City will be cool," however, there  was very little of this.  I must strongly urge anyone who read and enjoyed  The Forever King to avoid The Broken Sword at all cost.
811624
This is one of those "lost opportunity" sort of novels.  The premise of this book was a potentially clever and compelling twist on the Faustian legend.  Unfortunately, Corelli, in her inimitable way, turned would-be Gothic tragedy into Monty-Pythonesque vaudeville.

Corelli's writing style--melodramatic, preachy and completely humorless, even for her era--makes it impossible to take anything in this book seriously.  During the passages most meant to thrill the reader, one is instead left giggling at lines like, "when I recall those white leaves of days that were unrolled before me fresh and blank with every sunrise, and with which I did nothing save scrawl my own Ego in a foul smudge across each one, I tremble, and inwardly pray that I may never be forced to send back my self-written record!"

However, what most sent this book into a foul smudge was the "heroine," Mavis Claire.  Mavis is angelic, pure, noble, high-minded, author of novels beloved by the public (yay!) and disdained by those petty, un-discerning, foul-minded critics (boo!) This character would be utterly insufferable in any case, but when one realizes Mavis is meant to be a self-portrait of the author, she becomes completely unreadable.  This is quite possibly the most jaw-dropping ego trip I have ever seen in print, and every time Mavis appears on the page it is enough to make you want to send the book...to the Devil.

"Sorrows of Satan" has a certain perverse amusement value, but it is the sort of book that I could not read for more than a few pages at a time before feeling smothered by the sheer narcissistic looniness of it all.
2941907
This book was too redundant from the first book Marie wrote. Additionally, it was almost silly at times, how she personifies "stuff."
3697594
I now have read a couple of these Kindle Literature Summaries, this one takes the cake for being a total ripoff of the original. In no way does it even come close to depict what the original book is all about, with its 300 pages of witty prose, photos and illustrations. I think Philip Miller, the now deceased author, would be outraged if he could see what his book has been downgraded to. This is a total waste of your money! If you really are interested just buy the original book.<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Screw-the-Roses-Send-Me-the-Thorns-The-Romance-and-Sexual-Sorcery-of-Sadomasochism/dp/0964596008/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns: The Romance and Sexual Sorcery of Sadomasochism</a>
3583284
Like another commenter said this book is a rip off of Billionaire Bodyguard by Kristi Avalon, in the description and the story. Read that one, the original is so much better.
4534143
Terrible book.  Just awful.

It's about on the same level as the horrible french movie a few years ago, Antonio Vivaldi - Un prince a venise.  Ms. Quick makes an amateurish attempt to weave together snippets of historical incidents that she has gleaned from a cursory study of Antonio Vivaldi into a coherent novel and the effort doesn't work.  It comes across as very contrived and awkward work.

If Don Vivaldi and the girls of the Pieta could only read this they would surely get a huge laugh.
4013856
Meh. Not up to Ms. Rowlings' usual exacting standards for writing; the plot was lackluster, predictable, and thoroughly unengaging. I found myself rooting against the protagonist, who is nothing but a spoiled brat. Your time would be better spent reading one of the original Harry Potter novels which were decidedly more...well, original.
1345287
The Italians have an expression in relation to translated works: "Tradurre e tradire", meaning "to translate is to betray". Indeed, this book by the renown French writer Boris Vian fits the description. After reading the oeuvre in it's original French, I found this English translation to be completely flat and, dare i say it, unpoetic. And what a shame, since Vian's original work was anything BUT unpoetic. Having thought this reaction was limited to those who read the original work, I was surprised and even a little relieved to discover that my fellow classmates who did not read the original French version found the English translation just as monotonous. For those without the aptitude of reading the original French edition, I strongly recommend buying a different translation of the Boris Vian's "Foam of the Daze".
234938
This novel would have been a lot more interesting if I had not read One Hundred Years of Solitude beforehand. I found it to be a poor (in relative terms) imitation of Garcia Marquez's masterpiece. I was neither moved nor  touched by the saga of the decaying family precisely because the Buendia's  power is unmatched. Allende is a writer of much talent, but let's say that  originality is not her strong point. I saw the same thing happen with  Afrodita and Como Agua Para Chocolate...please, there are some well-read  people out there...give us a break.
3219304
Jules Verne must have rolled in his grave when this butcher-job of a book was published.  When I was a kid, I loved Jules Verne novels and read them in their entirety and unabridged, so I was very excited about reading this abridged version to my five year old, who loves sea creatures, ships, and adventures.  Man, was I disappointed!  This is not an abridgement so much as a molestation of the text.  The sentences are so choppy and the pacing is so utterly destroyed, that you will feel more like you are reading a grocery list.  And, as if that wasn't enough, the butchers who had the gall to publish this book so watered down (no pun intended!) the content and themes as to make the story almost totally unrecognizable.  The encounter with the giant squid?  Hacked down to one poorly written paragraph, mentioned almost in passing.  The battles with the warships?  Gone.  The maelstrom at the end?  A "storm" in which Arronax, Conseil, and Ned almost casually walked out of the ship and rowed away on a boat!

Remembering even a little of this atrocity now makes me cringe, and I only finished it out of a kind of morbid curiosity.  That, and the fact that it really will put you to sleep at night!

And, please, don't get me wrong - I'm all for abridging texts for younger readers.  I was introduced to Moby Dick and many other classics in this way and the good ones made me thirst to read the "real" versions when I was older.  This version, however, is so horrible that it may put your kid off of the English language all together.  So, next time you want to read 20,000 leagues, do yourself a favor and let the "Classic Start" RIP and read the original.  And if you don't think your kid can handle the battles and the political commentary and the themes of loss and and revenge, then just go to the grocery store and browse the seafood isle.  It'll be more entertaining.
1859189
I also have been quite disappointed in the quality of Ms. Weiner's  work since "In Her Shoes".  Sadly, this book is nowhere near the essence of her early work.  The plot (if you could call it that) was filled with a few highly stereotypical women whose actions are so predictable you may as well not read the whole book.  The one who ran out on the first pregnancy runs out on the second.  The one who regrets what she sacrificed for her family gets the reward she seeks.  The spoiled heiress is angry at the gold digger wife.  The one love story in the book reflects the old saw of: woman finds her true love- woman loses her true love- woman regains her true love and goes happily into the sunset.  And so on.  Zero points for originality; buckle up for some boredom.

The author also wastes a great amount of time explaining silly details such as what a china pattern looks like, what color the walls are in particular rooms, the fact that there are lemon slices in the water pitcher and a description of the Target break room.  This is just the beginning - prepare for even more boredom.

I borrowed this book hoping that I would like it, but that did not happen.  I won't be reading anything by this author anymore.  The caliber of her writing had greatly diminished and is not likely to return.  There are many other authors to read that will touch and thrill you without wasting your time or money and will actually do research on their subjects.  (The infertility information included in this book is woefully inadequate.)
2377405
"The Rescuers Down Under" is supposedly a sequel to its' original.  However, the dictionary defines a "sequel" to be a "work whose narrative continues that of a preexisting work."  In other words, a sequel is supposed to extend and continue a storyline... however, "The Rescuers Down Under" fails to continue a storyline, rather it recreates the storyline in the original into a twisted case of dj vu.  Basically, if you've seen the original, you've already seen the less pleasing "sequel."

 This time around a young blonde boy, by the name of Cody, replaces our charming Penny from the original.  Cody is sent out by his animal friends to rescue a trapped golden eagle.  Unfortunately, the villainess poacher who captured the golden eagle in the first place out of greed, doesn't take too kindly to this rescuing and locks Cody up to keep him out of the way.

 The Rescue Aid Society is sent out to rescue Cody, and we see a triumphant return of the same pairing of voices for Bernard and Miss Bianca (Newhart and Gabor).  Since these two characters were in the original, we already know their personalities, lucky thing, because the sequel takes no time to portray any of the character's personalities.  Other characters in the film are introduced with no personality, who serve only one purpose -- to make the film happen (although we would have been happier if it hadn't happened in the first place).

Bernard and Bianca are promising characters (since they came from the original) but unfortunately are overwhelmed by the less-pleasing qualities of the movie.  Including weak characters, a repeated storyline, an unoriginal villain who has no personality to define him by other than "the bad guy."  Everything about this movie is just an ailing repeat of what has happened in the original, even their mode of transportation, an albatross named "Wilbur" is a repeat.

 The film parallels their efforts to find and free Cody, who is held captive throughout the film while the villain, McLeach, attempts to intimidate the boy to tell him the whereabouts of the insanely large eagle's nest.  Which, as viewers of the original can see, is a complete repeat from the original.  In both films the villains held the children captive because they needed the children to help themselves quench their greed.

 Cody never gives McLeach what he wants, his death is faked so that the rangers won't come looking for him, and we watch the unoriginal story take place against beautiful scenery until the end where we find a literal cliff-hanger, and Cody is reunited with his mother.  It would have been nice, though, if the film had actually shown us Cody and his mother being reunited - she thinks he's dead, after all.  And the captive animals who were also in McLeach's lair, we find, were introduced only to be forgotten.

Overall, there are some beautiful sequences, Australia (where the film takes place), looks very appealing and the characters are all dressed in cleaned-up animation.  But the film itself is unoriginal with only a one or two breath-taking scenes.

Ironically, it seems that the fans of the original dislike the sequel while those who disliked the original enjoyed the sequel.  I never quite understood this since the sequel is merely an ailing repeat of the original, maybe some people find unoriginal films to be appealing...
2323253
Having listened to Kevin Sullivan's commentary on the DVD versions of the first two "Anne of Green Gables" series, I was forced to conclude that despite the excellence of those productions he really has a very poor conception of L. M. Montgomery's stories. That certainly helps to explain the travesty of "Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story." As co-writer, Sullivan totally abandons Montgomery's Anne books to spin his own overly melodramatic tale of World War I, even though the author's "Rilla of Ingleside" deals with that same time frame. Of course, Anne is almost fifty years old by the time of that novel and it is a pair of her sons who go off to fight in the Great War. Montgomery's novel was published right after the end of World War I, making it a uniquely contemporaneous work which richly deserves a film treatment. Maybe Sullivan objected to the novel's politics, in which the characters supported the war and the Empire, unlike Anne in this film, but who knows. Clearly they waited too long to get around to making this third part, since Anne and Gilbert should have been married long ago. Megan Follows and Jonathan Crombie are basically twice as old as the characters they first portrayed in the original "Anne." But while it is great to see these two playing Anne and Gilbert again and there is nothing to fault with either one of their performances, the story told here is just plain awful. There is no reason to tell the tale of a wife who goes looking for her husband in Europe using L. M. Montgomery's characters and if you want to do the struggling writer routine they could have turned to Montgomery's Emily books.
The first two "Anne" series were filled with warm and wonderful moments that you enjoy viewing again and again. The only moments that stand out in this sorry affair are when Anne finally finds Gilbert and when she goes back to the train station where Matthew first found Anne so many years ago to give us a sense of having come back to where we started. Of course, a lot of our disappointment comes from the heighten expectation of finally getting to see our beloved characters on screen again. I know I am not the only one who has read everything written by L. M. Montgomery after seeing the first "Anne of Green Gables" program, so I know I am not alone in being bitterly disappointed by this production. Even worse, the storyline here effectively kills ever returning to Montgomery's original stories, unless we are to suddenly believe Anne's kids end up being old enough to fight World War II. Watching this is just such a depressing experience that you have to go back and read again the best parts of Montgomery's novels or watch the first two series again. This is not something Anne's fans will ever treasure, even if they are compelled to check it out. When they see the ruined state of Green Gables, the aptness of the metaphor will be palatable.
2515478
I was excited to try out this version that was made especially for women and co-written by a woman, but wow, what a disappointment. I think that the original book, called The Easy Way to Stop Smoking, is a much better choice for all. Despite this book having a woman as a co-author, its attempts to encapsulate women smokers' experiences are largely clumsy and one-dimensional. I didn't even finish reading this version for women because the original is so much better. The original helped me quit smoking for good. No withdrawal, no need for a patch or a pill just cold turkey and happy to have quit.
4901075
Supposably an adaptation of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" with the insertion of a modern day character.  The modern woman through a fanciful plot twist has to substitute for Elizabeth Bennett.  This in its self could make an engaging alternative telling.  HOWEVER, this ploy is used to denigrate this classic novel.  The characters completely turn the plot on its head in an attempt to substitute late 20th Century liberal mores.  The movie has the modern character inform Mr. Bingley that Jane Bennett is a lesbian.  This completely ignores the perfectly valid customs and culture of the English country Folk of the early 1800s. It goes on to infuse Elizabeth Bennett with a modern "career woman"  mentality. Even a cursory knowledge of Jane Austen's letters would refute the intentions sometimes ascribed by modern feminist Literature professors to this work.  Save your time and money, instead pick up A&E's "Pride and Prejudice". Better yet, savor once more Jane Austen's original novel.
779078
_Nightfall_, the book, is "Nightfall", the Asimovian short story, padded into a novel by Robert Silverberg.  I enjoyed the original story very much, and apreciated Silverber's adaptation of _The_Ugly_Little_Boy_, but in this case, I think that Silverberg should have left well enough alone.
His additions to the story include a huge novelette that could have been a sequel to "Nightfall", "Daybreak."  Ugh.  This section feels forced, like a movie that's trying desperately to have a happy ending, so it just keeps going until something less depressing happens.  It is unneccessary, and detracts from the rest of the storyline as originally intended.
In summary, I can't see why this version is any improvement on Asimov's original, and I recommend that original instead of this superfluous adaptation.