Frustrating, tired plotline
359696
Ah, the standard Barsoom plotline. Beautiful princess gets captured by enemies, brave warrior has to rescue her, and they fall in love. It was pulpy fun in the first three books, it was starting to get old in the fourth book, and by this book, it's just plain irritating.

This time, the story verges on parody. Our heroes run across not one, but TWO city-states full of hostile Martians that somehow have never been discovered before by anyone else on Barsoom. (Seriously, how does this keep happening? Did the Barsoomians ever explore their planet AT ALL, either before or after the oceans dried up? Do they just not pay any attention to the land when they go flying?). The heroine is captured and has to be rescued at least four or five times. At one point, the hero gets past some guards by hiding in a haunted room, pretending to be a ghost, and terrifying the guards with screaming (seriously).

What makes this extra frustrating is that at first, it seemed like Burroughs would do something different from his usual formula. In this book, the heroine is Tara, daughter of John Carter and Dejah Thoris. Now, since she's John Carter's daughter, you'd think she'd have all the incredible running, jumping, and fighting skills in low gravity that her father and brother have, right? Wrong! You see, Tara's a girl, so she has no incredible abilities, is constantly manhandled by muscular warriors, and has to use a dagger to defend herself. Gravity is apparently gender-oriented on Burroughs' Mars. And the hero in this case, Gahan of Gathol, wears diamond-studded trappings and is fashion-conscious; in fact, in the beginning, Tara is contemptuous of him, thinking of him as an effeminate weakling. Does he prove his worth to her by using brains instead of brawn, teaching her that you don't have to be a mighty-thewed warrior to be a hero? Of course not! He's really an expert swordsman and fighter underneath the fancy trappings.

Even when it seemed like Burroughs was setting up a reversal of the gender roles, or at least trying to subvert them a little bit, he didn't. This was not only annoying, but it made no sense, at least in Tara's case. There is no reason whatsoever why the low gravity wouldn't have the same effect on Tara as it did on Cathoris, except for Burroughs' unwillingness to deviate one step from the beaten track.

This is not to say that there aren't some cool, pulpy ideas in the book. One is the kaldanes, or as I like to call them, the spider-heads: heads on legs that can detach from the bodies. Also, there's a living chess match, where warriors act as chess pieces on a giant chessboard and kill each other when they take each other's squares. Unfortunately, the fun, pulpy elements aren't enough to make the story any less tiresome, or the plot any less trite. From what I've heard, Burroughs continues with this formula for the rest of the Barsoom series. I'll probably stop here.
2985788
I did enjoy the first book in this series enough to go for the second. But, it turned out to one where it's not quite bad enough to give up, but bad enough to cause skimming and hope that the end is near. Too much stupid fighting, and worse still, a ridiculous time loop based plot which I found impossible to follow. Maybe because I skimmed, but I don't think so.
3846430
Oddly inconsistent. At times, the author goes into elaborate descriptions and dialog, and then entire plot developments are summed up as, oh by the way, THIS happened.... It was like the author got bored writing and was too lazy to actually develop the narrative --- just POOF!

The characters were unsympathetic, one-dimensional and cliche. We've seen this plot too many times; the ham-handed writing by Scarsella does it no service.

I'm glad it was free.
3479697
This book promised a more complicated plot than the last, and it delivered, but Roarke and Eve's overwrought, sappy and sickly sweet declarations of love are enough to make me wince. And the plot, while it was complicated and often intense, was just not believable.

Spoiler Alert!

What are the odds that the bad guy would be an escaped violent pedophile, and that the bad guy's partner in crime would turn out to be Eve's mother?

What are the odds that two well planned busts would fall apart, purely by coincidence and bad luck?

What are the odds that the bad guy would escape a dragnet, get himself into Eve and Rourke's hotel suite and come close to re-enacting the beating and rape committed by Eve's father, that she has been struggling with for the whole book.

Even the bad guy's initial escape from prison seemed overly complex and not believable.

The entire plot seemed false and contrived and in the end, I could only shake my head and hope that the next one is better.
4495938
I had high hopes of this novel, which were unfortunately not fulfilled.

The premise of the young paster's wife being out of her depth coping with a husband who should have had a good swift kick up the crotch, a strange community and being pushed into parrish work, is okay as it stands. However, for me this plot had me gnashing my teeth with frustration.

The news that she has to spent six months living with him in order to achieve her inheritance and he, a sizable donation to the church is okay - just - but for the parrish council to be interfering and sucking their teeth over the two living in the parsonage together is ridiculous. It's none of their business! After all, the couple could be reconcilingfor all they know.

The story begins with the wife landing in the lift (elevator) and coming face to face with the husband, to whom she has not spoken for six years. Being as they were only married five months before she left without a word, this is not plausible. Any woman worth her salt would have announced with greast drama that she was leaving and why.

It takes six years for the husband to realise his past neglects, where it seems to me he would have thought about it sometime during the time they were separated and at least gone after her to talk. This twit accepts the word of her father after one phone call! Maybe she was right to stay away for six years. Then there is the fact that the wife leaves him without at least confronting him over his neglect, suffering her misfortune alone. The least she might have done is bounced some crockery off his head. Now that she is back in the town her lack of recrimination, for me is a glaring ommission. The forgiveness too "forgiving," and her reaction not natural.

A disappointing read all round.
3813365
2 1/2 Stars

I really loved the concept of this book:

One hundred and fifty years ago, the first dinosaurs were cloned. Soon after, they replaced humans at the top of the food chain. The only way to survive was to move into underground compounds After young Sky Mundys father vanishes, she must break out of her underground home and venture topside to find her dad, following a cryptic note he left behind.

The book starts strong, with Sky following instructions her dad left behind to delver a data plug to a mysterious location in Lake Michigan. What is so important on the plug? What will she find in the middle of Lake Michigan? Is her dad still alive? Will she ever see him again? Thats the big mystery the author sets up nicely at the start of the tale. Skys adventures topside roll along until suddenly, the book ends! After outwitting the guards that followed her from her underground home and battling ferocious dinosaurs, thats it. Will she make it to Lake Michigan to deliver the plug? Will she ever see her dad again? Better buy the next book to find out, because this book only covers act 1. Ugh I hate when authors do that. Sequels and trilogies are fine, but please write a complete story in each book.

Another thing i couldn't get past was the authors overuse of generic verbs and descriptors. Initially, I couldn't quite place my finger on why this book seemed to drag. Then I realized it was the overuse of these descriptors that took away the flow from the story. Character grin, grumble, hiss, complain, gulp, sniff, snap they show amusement by cackling, chortling, chuckling, giggling, guffawing, snickering, sniggering, tittering, crowing, whooping, simpering, or smirking. Reading good dialogue makes you feel like you are actually listening in on a real conversation. Its very disruptive when the author keeps interrupting the dialogue to tell readers that the speaker intoned or declared or asserted or retorted.

The authors adjective/adverb-a-rhea is also quite jolting, as in:

 I didn't ask him to. Shawn shrugged sheepishly.

 I grinned wickedly.

 Shawn agreed grudgingly.

 Shawn asked, eyeing the carcass nervously.

 This is the kind of pulley Todd needs back at the tree house, Shawn said excitedly.

This is a common pitfall in writing. An occasional descriptor here and there is acceptable, but this book is peppered with them on nearly every page. It really is quite distracting. The book did, however, seem to flow better in the later chapters, as if the author was honing her craft the more she advanced crafting her first novel. A better editor would have had these rookie mistakes corrected before publishing.

Overall, just an OK, if incomplete, book. I anticipate as the author hones her writing (and finds a better editor), subsequent novels will get better.
393885
Annoying is the one word that keeps coming to mind when I think of this book.  It seemed to jump right into the story without much of a set up.  I guess you have to have read the first 2 books before this one.  The dialogue grated on my nerves so much with words like 'plucking' replacing the f- word, and the use of stupid phrases like 'what the stinging nettles is this?'.  Just needless insertions by a character overly anxious to make it known that she is a witch.  It was just plain annoying.  I got 5 chapters in and ditched it.  I wouldn't pick it up again for the sheer fact that dealing with the stupid wording isn't worth whatever story line the author has going on.
2404393
Intriging plot idea. Writing full of meaningless cliches.
3817593
The lack of character development and the excessive main character whining, complaining, indulging in her self-pitty and remembering all her anger and pain over and over and over is frustrating.  We get it, she's complicated and conflicted!  The author will set a scene, begin the action of the scene, then spend an excessive amount of time explaining a character or another place in the scene, explain a couple sentences of action again, and then back to 2 paragraphs of more descriptions and inner thoughts (usually the main character indulging in self-pitty).  It's exasperating.  I struggled to follow the plot line - when there was one.  It seems like she had a great idea for her characters, and it would have been wonderful if she would  stop explaining every person, scene, action and thought.  Unless  you just LOVE detail, don't bother with this one.  It's significantly worse than Red Queen and the storyline does not keep you on the edge of your seat or make you even care about the characters, you just want to get it over with - not a good purpose.
2924469
If the choice is between D'Orlaans and Vianne, I'm not sure which represents the rougher road. Indecisive nincompoop or bloodthirsty regicide?

It's easier to start with the flaws in the book. Vianne is tiresome. She is about as useless a heroine as I've ever had the displeasure of reading in a book. Dumb, too. Not Elle Woods-yeah-she's-fluffy-but-she's-smart-too kind of way. No, Bella Swan of Twilight is a member of Mensa compared to Vianne. (Can I drop in a "girl, please" for yet another heroine who thinks herself plain but is really unbelievably beautiful? Let her be plain. There's no harm in it.)

Vianne spends the entire book doubting her situation that a) she's the rightful ruler of Arquitaine and b) Tristan is in love with her. The entire book. Which might not have been so bad if the book weren't so long. Two-thirds of the way through it, Vianne says to herself, "For the love of every god that ever was, I thought, desperately, stop whining, Vianne." I concurred so hard, I might have hurt myself.

Saintcrow goes overboard doing that thing that authors sometimes do when they create these mirror it-looks-just-like-ours worlds: she changes the spellings of words to emphasize that This Is Not Our Worlds. Aquitaine is now Arquitaine. The Bastille is the Bastillion. Earrings are ear gems. My personal least favorite, dungeon has become donjon (which I kept reading as DON JOHNSON for an unknown reason). At first, I thought perhaps the author's spell check was broken. The number of instances of these substitutions far exceeded my general tolerance.

So, what do we have thus far: insufferably weak heroine with a Walter Mitty-esque resistance to reality and a lot of goofy spellings. Add to that the book is far, far too long, and the twist at the end is uninteresting.

On the upside, I was drawn into the story, and wanting the resolution carried me through the dull slog of a middle. Vianne and Tristan are two-dimensional characters, but the rest of the Guard show signs of being interesting. The mysterious figure who appears at a random moment was sort of cool, and I would love to know more about what happened there. I'm interested in the world Saintcrow has crafted, despite not particularly liking Vianne as a character/narrator.

Yeah, this is a two star read, but I'll give it three anyway.
4685258
This book has a great premise that it simply doesn't live up to. The new characters are one-dimensional, and they get as much, if not more, time than the beloved characters. Also, the book drags out a fairly simply story. After a while, it becomes repetitive and dull, and you wish the author would just hurry it up. I forced myself to read the whole thing because I don't like to *not* finish books, but the temptation was definitely there to abandon it.
154014
The premise of the story is good.  Our heroine is a witch from a long line of witches and can also see and converse with ghosts.  It was this that led me to read it.  The story is laid in a small town that is converting itself into another Salem in order to attract tourists and a rather startling murder takes place.  BUT, the story gets totally bogged down in the long standing problems of the witch's family, especially her two totally obnoxious cousins.  There are way too many family squabbles that slow down the action.  I became thoroughly bored and actually never finished the book.  The best way to improve the series, in my opinion, is to kill off the cousins.
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.
3865806
I began the first book of this series with high hopes. I thought it had an  interesting plot and it was fast paced and kept me interested. However, as  the series progressed I found myself more and more frustrated with it. The  character of Richard went from a believable everyday guy to this Uberhero  who slaughters thousands of people and gets called "great" for  it. The way Goodkind interacts his characters is annoying. In one of the  books Khalan and a Mord-Sith patronizingly (and for 5 pages) describe their  views of loyalty while a would-be assasin lays on the floor in  semi-conciousness! Don't you think that conversation could have waited  until afterwards? Goodkind writes as if his readers were 5 years old and  slow, spending countless pages describing a miniscule point then backing it  up with 3 pages of gut-wrenching and unexplainable gore.  Also, NO ONE  EVER CRITISIZES RICHARD, EVER. He will do something incredibly stupid and  someone will say "You shouldn't have done that". Then Richard  replys with a vague (yet still chapters long) and thin explanation why what  he did was right, and his would-be critisizer ends up saying "Richard,  you are a very special person, and what you did was absolutely right"  It is very unbelievable and frankly very annoying.  His world-building  also leaves much to be desired. It seems as if, once Richard completely  wipes out one threat to his home, Goodkind says "Oh, and there's this  place that's really famous and evil even though I never mentioned it before  now, and there's this guy with a big army and he's bad, and, um, he wants  to take over the Midlands" And of course Richard runs in there,  slaughters the evil and innocents alike, explains why that was a good thing  and moves on to the next slaughter-fest. This series definately needs to be  better thought out.
1245403
I really, really wanted to love this book.  I loved how immersed it was in the Highlands of today.  For me that was the best part.

The main character Ellie, and her short fuse temper frustrated me. The continual back and forth with Ellie and Ben also frustrated me.  By the time we got to Jason Marks, I was exhausted from everything that was going wrong and he felt like a plot device that didn't really move the story forward.  I still don't understand what his purpose was in this story?  (Also why do all the women in books I've read lately not bother to report sexual assault to the police?  This is the second book in a row that I've read where this has happened.)

It was just too much by the end.  Too many arguments, accidents, too much bad news.  I was so tired by the time everything resolved, I didn't have the energy to be happy for the ending.
4194185
On a quest to escort the orphaned New Formorians (children born with wings) back to the land of their ancestors, Brighid, a centaur huntress, discovers a complication she hadn't anticipated: her quest companion, the warrior Cuchulainn, needs her help as well. Still grieving from the death of his love, it's begun to threaten his soul.

I enjoyed this series' first book, Elphame's Choice, reasonably well, so I thought I'd give this one a try. Unfortunately, it's too predictable and not especially satisfying. I think I'm through with P.C. Cast.
4321367
A duke's son rumored to have killed his father's young fiancee has the chance to prove rumors false and reclaim his rightful life after 12 years' ostracism, when the  extortionist heroine(sic) he supposedly killed turns up on his doorstep offering to reveal her identity and prove his innocence if he will refund money her brother lost gambling. Blech. Who wouldn't fall for Temple, the big, battered, unbroken sin-eater of the Fallen Angel gambling hell? Heroine, Mara, not so much. And I didn't much enjoy the writing either. It's in the Truman Capote "That's not writing, that's typing' vein.

Here's what I mean. Breathless writing that repeats phrases for emphasis. That repeats a word, sometimes a verb, over and over and over. That repeats them to make a point super-duper emphatically. To make each repetition mean more somehow. To hide how little it meant to begin with. To drum the point in to pad the text's word count? It was constant. It was relentless. It was annoying. And distracting. It reminded me of Stephanie. Laurens. (If you love SL's books, you'll love this. If not, then maybe not so much.) After a while, I just skimmed it. Picking out enough of the developments to get the gist. To follow the plot. To see who was doing what. To whom. And hoping Mara'd get her just deserts. Not her HEA. I ended up thinking he deserved better. Poor Temple. (Wow, it's habit-forming...)

If the annoying verbal tic hadn't been so ubiquitous, and if I hadn't found Mara so awful, withholding and manipulative, I might've enjoyed the story more. I understand I was supposed to feel she'd redeemed herself by running an orphanage, by not serving the pet pig for dinner, by nursing Temple through near-fatal injury, and by doing the 'right  thing' for him eventually, but by then I was pretty off her. This was not because she was evil but because she was selfish and amoral. She did things that harmed others without compunction in pursuit of her own goals (and with loads of limp justifications). First and worst for-instance: after she realized that she'd destroyed an innocent man's life by staging her death as she did, she did zilch. Even after it was safe to put things right, she hid rather than face up to her stupid mistake. I doubt she would've ever come forward, if not for the money she needed to get back. True, it was for the lit-tle orphans but still, she came across as a mercenary, self-serving wench. As for her nursing him, his nearly dying was her fault, too.

As she herself admits, she was the villain in the piece. (I don't enjoy reading about bitchy, shallow, mercenary, selfish heroines who are given one unrelated 'redeeming' attribute and this one was a prime example. Ick.) Poor, poor Temple. He deserved so much better than Mara.

Now, what do I mean by S. Laurens-style repetition?

"All she wanted was to say the right thing --
the thing that would bring him closer to her.
That would give her what she wanted.
What she ached for."

..."She'd been so caught up in him that she'd forgotten it --
forgotten that it could give her a view she'd never imagined.
Never dreamed."

..."What was beyond the mirror should have devastated her.
Should have scandlaized her."

..."closing her eyes to the vision.
To its power.
Terrified of what he would do next.
Terrified of what he would not do next."

"Wishing she could hear his thoughts.
Wishing she could tell him everything.
Wishing she could lay herself bare for him.
Wishing their future ahd not been so well cast in such strong stone."

I'm not cherry-picking. These come from a few pages in Chapter 14. Ick.
I would never read this again; I could barely stomach it this once. HATED Mara but Temple was an unusual guy, so it's 1.5- 2 stars for me.
BUT many others enjoyed it, so there're plenty of happy readers' reviews to consider instead of mine.