Much Ado About Nothing - A Meandering Mess
586484
This book seemed promising at first but quickly self-destructed.  The characters are flat, unlikeable and uninteresting if not downright annoying.  There is more name dropping in this book than at a pseudo-intellectual convention.  The dialogue is stilted and the situations often contrived and ridiculous.  I felt like I was reading a final exam in an introduction to creative writing class.  Amateurish and directionless.  The author obviously wishes us to be impressed with his literary and philosophical references.  I found it pretentious, condescending, self-serving, intrusive and distracting.  I gave it two stars instead of one because the ideas were interesting though poorly developed, the book held me for the first quarter or so and there were a few precious beautiful turns of phrase.
2089582
I agree with the reviewer who stated this novel has a great premise, but is badly executed.

INTERRED WITH THEIR BONES tries to be a DA VINCI CODE of Shakespearean history, which sounds like a very promising idea for a suspense novel.  But Carrell stumbles badly in her plotting and characterization.  None of the characters are remotely three-dimensional, and the story is confusing and filled with a lot of silly, over-the-top moments (such as when the lead character dresses like a boy to escape the authorities).  As a result, I didn't find this book even remotely engaging.

There is a great deal of information about Shakespeare crammed into INTERRED WITH THEIR BONES, but Carrell fails to make much of it interesting or accessible to the layperson.  In the end, it was difficult for me to track with the endless number of names and places and time periods that this book deals with.  Unless you're a Shakespeare fanatic, you will probably find all this minutae to be quite tedious.

Overall, this book was disappointing, and I would only recommend it to people with a pre-existing interest in Shakespeare's life and background.
787847
2.5, rounded up

POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD. Kudas to Ms. Hall for tackling such an ambitious project. Shes a good writer, for the most part, and she obviously did a considerable amount of research for this historical novel. However, it wouldve benefited greatly from rigorous content editing.

The plot is off-balance and poorly paced. Fully the first half of the novel crawls through character introductions and backgrounds. Its also rife with descriptive passages and interior monologues that quickly become repetitive and tedious. Much of this fat shouldve been trimmed. All it does is weigh down the storyline and keep it from going anywhere. I nearly lost interest.

We also see the main characters devolve into stereotypes: an increasingly weak and passive heroine; her uncaring mother; an iron-willed Cruella De Ville aunt and the oily son who panders to his wicked mamas every wish; a white knight of a suitor; a doting grandfather too enfeebled by age to do much of anything but die (rather conveniently, just as the suitor rather conveniently lives far, far away); a loving governess-cum-BFF whom the conniving aunt recognizes as a threat and thus sends packing.

Just past the halfway point, the author spikes the reader from Nothings Happening to Gothic Melodrama. Crushed by the weight of her nonstop misfortune, which gets downright grotesque, the heroine becomes even more of a dishrag until she cant even stand herself anymore. The single worst part of the novel, though, is the meandering epilogue. Its embarrassingly awkward, even silly, especially when resolution comes (very abruptly) in the form of lyrics from a Disney song. I was also left wondering if the ghosts bones were ever discovered, and why this fairly obvious question was never answered.

Throw in occasional anachronistic dialogue, and Im afraid I was more disappointed than satisfied with Miramonts Ghost. But at least it kept me reading, and I still think Ms. Hall has a good deal of potential as a writer.
2293085
It is with great trepidation that I write this review, knowing that the great majority of readers will likely not agree with me.  I consider myself a fairly well-read individual, and I am well aware of Tolkiens legacy as the Father of Fantasy Fiction, however, I struggled through this novel.

In no way am I minimizing his contribution to English literature, as I realize that his imagination is above reproach, his rhetoric, impressive.  However, I truly detest monotony, and this novel is laden with it. I trudged through the overly-detailed descriptions of the geography.  The characters seemed to languish during the prolonged events, and very little progress was made through the entire novel.  Also, the ever-growing list of names for the same character or location was exhausting!  I just cant understand why so many aliases were necessary, other than to create complete confusion.

To some degree, I truly feel that the same effect could have been accomplished (even to adequately set the elaborate scene), in  or less of its current length.

When all is said and done, I cannot, in good conscience, rate this novel less than 3 stars; the impact of his work on literature, and as previously mentioned, his extraordinary imagination, are priceless.
2739866
Although this book is marketed as history, on a cursory examination, I should say this is particularly saccharine and dewy-eyed romance.  How very disappointing.  I had to force myself to plough through the one chapter I really hoped would be useful, the one on Dorothy Stafford, who has been a subject of my research for the last 20 years.

The author has NO CLUE.  She also has very poor writing skills. The chapter is riddled with bad grammar and irrelevant material, much of which concerns matters that there could be no record of, so how does she know?  I'm not just talking about things that there might be a record I haven't found yet; but who would ever record that Dorothy Stafford whispered to the captain of the ship that took her across the Channel that her name was spelled Dorothe with an accent?  And why would she bother?  Later on, the writer describes her as "calling herself 'Dorothy' now."  This demonstrates considerable ignorance of contemporary spelling habits;  at that time, people would spell their own name five different ways in one document without turning a hair (viz. Walter Ralegh and William Shakespeare).  I am puzzled as to why the writer would think this is important.  She appears to imply that this is a disguise; a very thin one, methinks, even in modern times when how you spell your name makes a difference.

Then there is the matter of the Crown Jewels.  The author is very impressed that Dorothy "legally inherited the Crown Jewels from Anne Boleyn," via Anne's sister Mary, who was Dorothy's husband's first wife.  This ignores two important issues: firstly, that when convicted of treason, all Anne Boleyn's possessions were forfeit to the Crown, so any will she made disposing of her property was irrelevant; and secondly, that these are the CROWN JEWELS, folks, so not Anne's to dispose of in the first place.  They are the property of the Crown.  And even if Anne could have willed her personal property to anyone, she didn't know of Dorothy's existance (she was aged about ten at the time), so anything she willed to Mary would have become the property of Sir William, not of his future wife.

The theme that links the ten subjects of this book together is their support of exploration and colonization of the New World.  The tiny seed of this in the chapter on Dorothy Stafford is that she encouraged Bartholomew Gosnold to continue his explorations.  The author also states that Dorothy invested in a French expedition to colonize the New World, but gives no supporting references for this, and it occurs during a period when she was financially strapped, so it seems unlikely to me.  This does not really seem to be a very big contribution for the subject of the second chapter of the book; surely others did more?  The Countess of Warwick comes to mind. Before I got my copy, I had some doubts about it, since I did not know of any such support; my principal fear was that the author might have conflated Dorothy Stafford with her daughter-in-law, Douglas (Sheffield) Stafford, who was a patron and supporter of Richard Hakluyt, who really was a major contributor to the exploration of the New World through his writings.

Most of the references to this chapter are very old; the writer has not apparently consulted any more recent publications.  A pity; if she had read Dorothy's father's entry in the "Dictionary of National Biography", she would know that many of the Stafford family, whom she describes as strongly supporting the Reformation, were actually closet Catholics.  Though she cites the "Calendars of State Papers" in the bibliography, she doesn't seem to have noticed a lot of very useful material there.

I hope that the other nine chapters are not as bad as this one.

P.S.  The author has Jane Grey refusing to learn the waltz ... a dance that was not introduced into England until the early 19th century.
3495681
This is a ponderously long novel. It seems like there's a lot going on, but not much happens. The plot does take a number of turns, yet Hartwright, an artist and adventurer, suddenly becomes a super sleuth all for the love of a woman, Laura, whose substance is questionable and his character takes on an unbelievable quality. Laura's sister is the character to admire, yet she too becomes submissive when Hartwright takes control. The two main co-conspirators get their due. Fairlie is a useless character and adds little to the story, except Laura's child becomes heir. A long read to wade through to discover what the good guys and bad guys are up to here....mainly evil plotting.
3093723
I wanted to like this book, and I read all the way to the end hoping that the book would do something, *something* interesting to redeem itself and deserve the high praise from other reviewers. Sadly, it didn't.

The writing is technically good--I thought the author's style was enjoyable, and the grammar and syntax were compatible with Jane Austen's world. However, there was very little plot to speak of--nothing interesting happened, except Darcy jumping to some crazy conclusions and in general being an unlikable character. Elizabeth and Georgianna speak of his goodness frequently, but the story doesn't provide much in the way of evidence. At the very beginning of the story there is a major plot deviation (Elizabeth is in Ramsgate with Georgianna, befriends her, and warns Darcy of Wickham's scheme), resulting in Elizabeth having a positive opinion of Darcy, instead of the prejudiced perceptions she had in the original. However, everything else appears to progress as normal--Bingley meeting Jane at the assembly, the stay at Netherfield, Elizabeth going to Kent--the only difference being that Darcy never makes his infamous "tolerable" statement, so no one in town thinks of him as an abnormally proud jerk. Throughout the story the author continuously drops in references to famous Darcy and Elizabeth conversations (although we are not shown them in the book), but considering the major plot change it's hard to imagine that these conversations would have taken place, and certainly not with the same wit and carelessness that Elizabeth first exhibited due to her dislike of Darcy.

Georgianna was a stronger character here than in other JAFF offerings, but ultimately had little to offer the plot other than as a pen pal to Elizabeth.

I really feel that the author has the skill to write an excellent story--if provided with a more interesting plot.
3903478
I've never written a negative review before, but keep looking if you're trying to find a book on the "soul".  The writer meanders aimlessly through the book, almost like a very long free-association about anything and everything... yet, ironically about nothing substantive at all.  It's full of generalities and countless shallow ideas-- like the basic analogy that runs through the work: the acorn theory of calling, fate, and character.  (Yawn.)  Other words that come to mind to describe this: inane, trite, boring, obvious.  And the extensive peppering of references to the great minds of philosophy and psychology (etc.) doesn't raise the level of the work.  Did you ever have a college professor that could drone for an entire hour and say virtually nothing?  That's what we have here in written form.  Finally, the style is awkward.  An example: "The contrary direction to narrowing nature to brain simplistics is expanding nurture to a far more embracing notion of environment.  If environment means literally what's around, it must also mean whatever is around."  (What?!)  Get ready for almost 300 pages of that.
3544759
Unfortunately, this is another book I finished for two reasons only: a) I always finish a book. b) I felt a moral obligation to do so.

The problem with "The Third Day" is that it tries to do/show a lot of things in parallel and doesn't succeed in any. Take two people dissatisfied with their lives; a depressed agnostic widow and a faithful scholar. Their lives basically change over night due to a spectacular discovery; building the story up from this, describing the protagonists *before* their, let's say, departure, is where the author succeeds - it's believable and interesting.

*** WARNING *** Spoilers ahead *** WARNING ***

From that point on, though, things spiral down: The widow and the scholar basically exchange their roles and beliefs; while the former turns into a fervent believer, the latter becomes a fanatic closet-opponent. Even if we simply accept this process (which at least in the scholar's case is not really believable at all), the means this is achieved by are ridiculously annoying - enter a time traveller. A well-known antagonist, disguised as a time-travelling scientist, tempts both our "heroes" and succeeds in one case and partly in the other.
While I do understand the author's motivation and the idea, the implementation is tiresome and doesn't really fit with the characters as sketched out up to the respective point in the story.

*** No important spoilers from this point on ***

Most of the remainder of the book is basically a rather naive re-narration of the New Testament (NT) - with a strong artistic licence in some parts. This is what annoyed me the most - I've read the Bible, thank you very much, and I really don't need to re-read the NT in the words of some novelist and with a strong focus on the more "spectacular" parts, skipping the more seemingly "boring" but important parts - and, in the process, spending a lot of time telling the reader where Jesus and his disciples are going.

If you want to write some kind of religious novel, please have the decency to choose religiously important parts and expand on those.
If you just want to write an interesting historical novel, please don't mostly re-narrate but boldly take more liberties and write what *you* think is important.

If you, dear reader, want to read a very interesting albeit controversial religious novel, give "The Shack" by William P. Young a try. Much more ambitious than this one - but Young actually pulls it off while Graham bit off way too much.
3394507
I do not know why I am reading this book. Neither the author nor the publishing company knows how to chapter a story. It rambles. The first chapter took long enough, and God knows when I'll be able to finally get through the second chapter. So many events happen, one after another, in an alleged chronological order--for what purpose other than to bore the reader with insignificant details.

I suppose this is better than reading Game of Thrones, which was so impossibly disconnected. I suspect that this is another Maleficent, whereby the Wizard is a really bad guy and the green Witch of the East is the poor misunderstood good guy who gets smacked in the end by Dorothy, who will probably turn out to be a bad guy as well.

I'll slog my way through, but I'm certainly not enjoying myself.
2004798
Someone once said life is everything that happens, but a story is everything important that happens.  Unfortunately I don't think that David McCallum (absolutely one of my favorite actors and by all accounts a fine intelligent and amusing gentleman) has quite mastered the art of pruning a narrative yet.  Maybe next time?  Meanwhile, here we have a plausible plot buried under lots of simple, declarative sentences; lots of long, boring, and irrelevant incidents; and too many trivial thought bubbles.  Despite a few excellent 'scenes', no suspense.  Show me, don't tell me -- and please don't waste my time with oodles of mundane things that have no bearing on the story.
3529629
This book went into so many rambling directions that the reader is often left dazed and confused...led down a long winding road only to find that it is a dead end. Character relationships are not fully formed and therefore feel contrived. The relationship between Emma and Ollie was never explored in any meaningful way, he is never really fleshed out as a character. The whole concept of parallel universe traveling is interesting but is a convoluted concept in this story. It doesn't help that the story is weighed down by unnecessary technical jargon. All in all I would not recommend this book.
4887821
There were things that I really did like about this novel, specifically the non-rushed and genuine affection that seemed to build between the two primary characters.  Unfortunately, besides a number of editorial mistakes, the book just drags on and on, with Shy and Dutch seemingly doing pretty much the same stuff over and over.  About a third of the book could have been trimmed out without losing any of the important bits.  And then the end comes and . . . well, it just ends.  You get to the inevitable conflict that everyone knew was coming, and there's no real resolution to it.  There's a hint that there will be some kind of resolution (even if it's not a happy one), but then the book just kind of ends with what could be most generously referred to as a half-hearted epilogue, and then cue the end credits.  And that's it.  You have very little idea of what happens to Dutch, and none whatsoever of what happens with Shy.  I'm seriously confused as to what the author was trying to accomplish with this story but unless causing confusion was it, I would have to say that it just didn't work.
4366493
I really wanted to like this novel. I am a huge book lover, and especially this sort of older novel. I am sorry to say I was disappointed. The novel is much longer than it needs to be. I do not have a problem with long novels in general (in fact, I've read The Mists of Avalon an embarassing number of times), but I do have a problem with novels that are long for no good reason. I also understand this novel was released in short bits over the course of many months, but that does not excuse the meandering storyline. Thackeray jumps back and forth both in time and in place. He wastes many a paragraph describing things that have no importance in the novel, or people who have no bearing on the story. Then, to make matters worse, he simply jumps over, or glosses over the seemingly most important parts of the story.

Another problem I have with the novel is the way he writes the characters. None of them come across as all that endearing, except perhaps for Dobbins, who is so devoted and constant as to be unbelievable.

I didn't hate the novel (hence the 2 stars), but I doubt I will ever bother to re-read it.
4059446
This book contains lots (and lots) of details, some of them interesting, but the narrative is so poorly tied together, and so packed with inane and pointless analysis, "Mongo" is mostly discardable. Why do people collect things? This question is posed every other paragraph, apparently to fill space. At one point, a psychologist and psychiatrist are enlisted to answer it, whereupon ye olde theme of addiction is recycled: people collect things because of the temporary "gratifying physical sensation" it gives them. "It's like a fetish, or sexual arousal," clarifies the psychiatrist. Equally clueless theories are introduced elsewhere: a fear of death, a desire to snoop, a desire to preserve the past, and/or a need to feel immortal. Never entertained is the possibility that people collect things because they find them interesting.

And the book, while ostensibly about items found in the trash (or on the street, or under the ground), is very much about collecting in general. In fact, many of the items discussed are antiques or collectibles, not ketchup-soaked hot dog wrappers or used, ant-covered yogurt containers, or even soda cans worth a nickel ("Adventures in items retrieved from the trash" does lack the proper ring, though). And so the entire, cliched range of collecting is covered--from the first few pages, we know it's only a matter of time before the crazy-lady-with-400-cats motif shows up, for example. When it does, it's almost a relief. In fact, we get two cliches in one bag: the crazy-lady-with-cats theme combined with the house-piled-high-with-garbage motif. Something else we've never heard before: some street people are mentally ill. (No! Can that possibly be true?) As proof for this radical and controversial thesis, an interview with a psychotic bag lady is included. Her assertions and theories are carefully considered and, ultimately, discarded as too down-to-earth for a volume such as this.
1624573
i only picked this book up to get to the "origin" part, having struggled to get through the last book, with the author pulling magic tech out of thin air every time the story line wandered off. Between the characters crying at the drop of a hat and interminable, pointless mini-battles, there is way too much heavy handed teasing of ideas and fundamental parts of the plot to be interesting for very long. Book IV, however, starts with the first  seven chapters of absolutely nothing happening except the hero struggling to get through a non-existent hole in a big wall while pulling ever more outrageous physics nonsense out of his fundament to push the weak story forward. i found the Book III concept of a constricted corridor between two parts of a galaxy to be beyond any "suspension of disbelief", in a universe where just about anybody can cobble together a battle fleet, and the main purpose of the archenemy Empire is to build huge fleets to guard the corridor ... it feels very much like it was created on the fly. I can't image sticking with this mess through even more volumes to come.
189009
I have been an English history buff for over 20 years; pretty much read all the fiction/non-fiction (close as we can get) the several Henrys, Wolsey, Cromwell, Anne, Mary, etc.  So, was not much interested in another one, but this one got such glowing reviews, I thought I'd better take a look.

First off, it's too darn long.  I read 3/4 through and the plot just kept repeating itself; skipped to the boring ending, and sent it back to the library.

I agree with other reviewers:  characters/point of views very confusing.  Who?  What?  Where?  Why....?  Is the author trying to keep her readers confused, or what?  And if so, why?

The book did keep my attention, it is an interesting yarn, and well told; but it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, great literature.  Beach read, that's what it is.

Will not bother with the follow up.