Terrible beyond words
597890
This book is pointless.  The author has absolutely no sense of pacing or character development.
This is a childish, careless and embarrassingly unskilled attempt at writing.  It is surprising that someone with so much education could write something so juvenile.
The plot is ridiculous and the entire book is clumsily executed.  It is so poorly written that it is just torture to read.
You would think that someone with as much education as a doctor could write better than this.  You'd think that, at the very least, he could get all the medical details right.
2439949
There should be no stars for books this bad.  I went in with such high hopes after reading an article recommending this book.  I think any of the positive reviews may have been based on the first 2 chapters.  No one that read past that could have possibly rated it any higher.  Just terrible.
2580888
I hate myself for reading this book all the way through. It's violent, gory, and so ridiculously impossible it wasn't even fun. It makes absolutely no sense at any level.

Streiber is a better writer than this, I think. I enjoyed some of his other works, but this is a cluster of a train wreck.
3743965
Ugh. No thanks. This was a really terrible book. The endless descriptions of the priests "perfect body" every single person who met him had an internal monologue about his body! That does not happen. Plus the whole pedophile angle. A grown man falling in love with a 10 year old? Please! Finally both Fee and Justine (from birth!) apparently shut off their emotions and that's it, they stay shut off. I could go on and on (like the book) but in sum, do not waste your time.
573244
I can't say enough bad things about this terrible excuse for a novel. Unrealistic, boring, contrived, unrealistic, stupid, inaccurate....for a start.  I bought it based on all the cheerleader-type reviews, and really wished I hadn't.

I ended up returning the book for a refund.

This author needs a lot of work to refine his writing, and I'm going to just leave it at that.
3497523
I have slogged halfway through this book and stopped there. It really is that bad. The characters are indeed weird, the kind you wouldn't want to deal with. I thought this would be a funny book filled with hilarious mishaps and faux pas. Instead it drones on about Liv's messed up life on all levels and her basic dimwit approach to decisions. She goes from one bad decision to another and frankly you just want to smack her and tell her to pull it together. She surrounds herself with such weirdos that you would think it would be funny, but it ends up being pathetic. These are not Anne Tyler oddballs, these people make you want to cross the street! I couldn't figure out whether the author lost the bent of the story or meant for it to be so uncomfortable to read. I won't be sharing this one with any friends.
4864115
If you like reading a book with tons of profane language and way too much graphic sex, this is the book for you.  I hated it.
I wish Amazon books had warnings about this -- I never would order such books if they did.
4095472
I purchased this book, thinking for 99 cents, what the heck, how bad could it be and besides, I was in the mood for fluff.  Well, this was a total waste of time.  I had to give it one star, but I wanted to give it zero or half a star. I don't believe it was edited; if it was, then Ms. Lucas should get her money back.  There were misplaced hyphens, and's instead of an's, words that should have been separated were written as one, and quotation marks omitted.  My favorite was when Lord Thomas was sometimes spelled Thomas and other times Tomas. It appears as though Ms. Lucas thought if she sprinkled a few words from medieval times, that would be sufficient to have you think it was in medieval times but trust me, the language was distinctly modern.  Evidently Ms. Lucas didn't have time to truly research anything to make the story more credible. Or palatable for that matter.  I also loved it when Ms. Lucas got her own information incorrect saying that Indiri gave the flint to Sarah and showed her how to light a fire when in fact, earlier she said she received the flint from Margery. Finally, the whole idea of the evil wife having a diary which was found only by her son and Sarah was laughable.  The whole book was insulting to readers; we do have brains and can figure things out!
3526529
Life is too short to waste your time and brain cells on this kind of crap.  This book has absolutely no redeeming qualities.  The author is beyond narcissistic and focused solely upon serving his own purpose in any and every situation.  The stories about his personal life are vulgar, quite likely fictional, and sophomoric.  I kept reading hoping it would improve, but it didn't.  I quit part way through after tolerating way too much of his f-bombs, stories about getting drunk and high, and his boasting about seducing anything that moved.

So glad I didn't spend any money on it; too bad my tax dollars put it on the shelf at the local library.
2679552
I just could not believe a book could be this bad.  The author just sort of flits from one tired liberal trope to another.  Bad US military, bad US government, one world government, noble aboriginal folks and bad Christian terrorists, black Pope, women priests in the Catholic church, on and on.  I read about 40% of the book and had to delete it from my Kindle.  I just could not take it anymore.  I am sure MSNBC would approve of this guy.  Come to think of it, maybe they need an editorial writer.
2830733
This is the worst book I've ever read. It meanders. The language is excessive and gratuitous. The excessive footnoting detracts from the flow of reading. Oh, and all of that over the course of nearly 1,100 pages!!! I knew DFW was insane going into this endeavor, but it was excruciating. Save yourself the dain bramage and skip it.
864833
This is the first negative review of book I've ever made but it was just so terrible that I couldn't let people buy this without knowing what they were getting into first.  The main character Gareth is a 23 year old irresponsible idiot who cares more about what his brother thinks of him than the wife he married on whim and the constantly wailing baby that he acquired along with her. The book follows the same pattern: humiliating scene after humiliating scene. The one he falls in love with is Juliet, who constantly compares him to his dead brother; the babies father. The baby is also the most annoying child to ever exist, unless of course Gareth is holding her (she then gets magically quiet and turns into a giggling bundle of joy) and when he lets go and puts her into her mother's arms she'll start crying/screaming again.
Just about every character in this horrible book are immature and there are barely any funny, enjoyable, tolerable, or heck even non embarrassing moments in it. Please don't waste your time, or money on this sad excuse of a novel.
4341265
AWFUL, would give it zero stars if I could. Was unable to finish it.
4097339
Even giving this book one star is generous. This has got to be without a doubt the worst book that I've ever read.

This book isn't scary at all, like the description would have you believe. There are so many different subplots with so many different characters that you never really get attached to and frankly you don't even care what happens to them. The plot isn't memorable at all either.

The author tried WAY too hard to add shock value to this book, whether it be violence or sexual (mostly sexual). If I had a dollar for every time the author wrote the word "engorged organ", I'd be very wealthy indeed. There is a subplot where some young people are captured and repeatedly sexually tortured, but where does this go? Absolutely nowhere. That's right... nowhere. Completely, utterly pointless. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with the story. At all.

This story was so much more about terribly written sex/rape scenes than a mummy story. I seriously forgot multiple times that I was supposed to be reading a horror book about the walking dead.

Not kidding, I told a friend about how bad it was and she wanted to borrow it and see for herself. We then continued to have this long struggle of who got to keep the book - except it was her trying to give it back to me, and me trying to get out of taking it back. Lasted about two years. Eventually I did get it back and promptly donated it. To this day we still talk and joke about how terrible this book is.
4897076
I thought I hated those Zombie Jane Austen novels ... but at least the writers of those could write and it was clear these were pastiches. This is just awful. I got about a third of the way through it and thought my eyes were going to bleed. It's not just that the poor characterization, lame plot and just dreadful writing was such a slap in the face of one of the greatest writers we've ever had, it's that this is in itself so awful it should never have been written. It totally feels like a high school junior read some of Parker's novels and thought he'd take a crack for a school project. If this guy considers himself a friend of Parker, he should be absolutely ashamed of himself.
3903663
I cannot stress what a terrible book this is.  I felt like I was reading something from a writer's workshop, where the writer was on the right track but was in dire need of a good editor and several more drafts.  Newcomb has a handful of interesting *concepts*, but they are poorly thought out and strung together in an excruciatingly immature fashion.  Everything is too convenient:  Tristan doesn't have the time to take a bath, but he can lounge around and chat while waiting in the hall, and even make a side trip?

The characters are stereotypical and weakly drawn: the amorality of the sorceresses is unintentionally comic, the sister's conversion to their ways is not even remotely believable, and the dwarf is but a poor shadow of Martin's Tyrion Lannister.

This isn't even worth a mindless read, because it's so poorly written that you'll keep smacking your head with the book.  There's so much better fiction to be had out there.  Don't waste your time with this one.
1209483
I read this book because it appeared on the Kindle bestseller list and had 68 mostly positive reviews.  I purchased it and before I was 12% into the book, I asked Amazon for my money back because it was AWFUL.  The dialogue both internal and external is trite and badly written. The characters repeat the same thoughts over and over again.  Mind you, they manage to repeat themselves in the first 12% of the book. The characters are all action with no explanation for motivation.  It was just bizarre.  Anyways, I can't in good conscience recommend this to anybody.