Incredibly boring, disappointing sequel
579955
(There will be some minor spoilers in this review.)

I loved His Dark Materials. So I had high hopes for this book. But it was INCREDIBLY dull. The first half of the book follows our protagonist, Malcom, as he very slowly learns about some high intrigue regarding a baby, Lyra, who will grow to be the star of His Dark Materials. But it's just SO SLOW, I kept waiting for interesting things to happen, and basically nothing interesting did happen. I don't know why I kept reading - I suppose it was partly due to the fact that I wanted to get my $11 worth, and also because I felt some misplaced sense of loyalty to the author, perhaps? If it were an unknown author, or I hadn't loved the Golden Compass trilogy, I definitely would have put the book down halfway through.

The second half gets a little better, because finally something happens (a long, drawn out low-speed chase through a flooded England). But there were a couple scenes that felt incredibly out of place, mostly where Malcom and Alice meet magical creatures. I'm all for magical creatures in a book, but when you've spent the whole first half of the book basically living in a normal world (albeit with daemons and alethiometers), with no real evidence of the supernatural, it just feels very odd to suddenly be thrust into a full on fantasy novel.

All in all, I was incredibly disappointed by this book, and I am not looking forward to book two.
1125611
This book is a miserable follow-up to The Shining.  It starts out promising enough, and to avoid spoilers will just add that it quickly turns into a circus.  Literally.  It doesn't feel like, even after reaching the end of the book, that it fit in even remotely with the first book.  Many people went into this book with no expectations of a direct sequel, and with Stephen King's recent reputation for writing ability, with additionally low expectations.  Sometimes, you can't set the bar low enough. The villains in this book, while detestable, didn't feel real.  Only three of the characters in the novel felt like someone you might know or might want to know.  The plot is interesting to start with, but when you get to the end of the book it is so anticlimactic that you will find yourself yawning and actually feel a tinge of anger at having wasted your life reading this or wondering if a vital chunk of the book fell off.  Read other balanced reviews before purchasing, would be the only advice.
2311526
I am one of those people that loved the first movie. It had a great plot and thrilling action that was relentless. Therefore, I was really looking forward to getting a second helping. Sadly, I could not have been more disappointed. This time around, the plot is pretty fill, and as a result, they just went with over the top action scenes that get annoying extremely fast.

A girl that can't pass her driving test all of a sudden can drive away from trained killers using a stick shift? A hostage that can measuring distance listening to the time between explosions? Really? The movie, may have a small redeeming factor with the entertainment, but that's all it is, SMALL, and not enough to give it more than one star.

Pretty much everything that was good about the first one got lost here. I guess it happens in many cases, but this one is one of the worst yet. To make matters worse, the conversation and action in the final confrontation is just senseless. I could not emphasize this enough, STAY AWAY!
158059
I can't believe I read the same book as some of the other reviewers.  This book was incredibly boring and depressing:  Boring because there are two parallel narratives, so that the reader knows from almost the very beginning (Kate's first chapter, in which her relationship to the victim and the reason for her murder is made clear)what is going on and depressing because the book is set in 1984 Scotland, where almost everyone has lost their job, and Paddy's life as the sole wage earner for her entire family (including the obligatory abused sister) is depressing and full of cheapness and meaness.

I (generously) gave it a star because, for me at least, it sounds authenic and somewhat exotic.  Too bad the strong sense of time and place was entirely wasted.
2121867
What a complete disappointment. After 10 years of teasing fans of the original movie with promises of a sequel, THIS is what we get?? BDS2 was complete schlock.

Much of BDS2 is just re-enacted scenes from the first movie, forced-in where they don't really fit. The story is a series of contrivances that undermine the story of the first movie.

The MacManus brothers are no longer presented as shepherds set on a righteous path by God.  Instead they are now born killers who cannot control the hunger to kill again, which is backed by some vague desire for personal revenge.

The MacManus brothers are in conflict with each other, but not in the same good-natured way as in the first film. This never plays out to any kind of conclusion, making it one of many things that just don't make any sense in the movie.

Some new characters:

Romeo.  Apparently the movie needed a new Rocco.  Unfortunately, what we end up with is a Jar Jar Binks character that everyone would have been much happier without.

Eunice.  She wants to be a badass lawgirl.  Instead, she comes across as a stripper who likes playing pretend cops-and-robbers.

The Roman.  The new "bad guy". This character could have been *anyone* - it really wouldn't have made any difference to the story.

Returning characters:

Detectives Geenly, Duffy, and Dolly are superfluous to the story and are there almost solely to remind the audience that this movie is supposed to have something to do with the original BDS.

Agent Smecker is briefly onscreen.  Again, this is a contrivance - put Willem Dafoe on the credits, draw in that audience...

Billy Connolly is back as Il Duce.  Unfortunately he isn't given any good dialogue and doesn't play much part in the action either.  If he had been given something to do in this movie, there would have been little need for Romeo.

So it seems that BDS2's goal was just to get fans to open up their wallets and bend over.  But if you're a fan of the first movie, you're going to (try to) watch this one anyway.
965422
I was caught off-guard by how slow and boring this sequel was. The story is unconvincing and superfluous. It did not come close to drawing me in the way Metro 2033 did (I must have read it 4 times by now).

The actual print makes for a fair amount of confusion on who's speaking. There is odd-spacing, unnecessary hyphens, and odd paragraphs. The weapons are described incorrectly and contradictory in many places. A Stechkin is a machine-pistol, for instance, not a revolver. A Krinkov is not a submachine gun, either.

Some of the thoughts expressed are wonderfully written, per se, and I hate to assail the author's hard work. However, this book just doesn't add anything, actually raises unanswered questions, and leaves you less satisfied than a date with your cousin.
514900
Yep, I kept reading this series in the vain, vain hope that the author figured it out. Not-Really-A-Spoiler: she didn't! But WHY did the overall rating go UP for this book compared to the first book? Maybe this author has written other books well, but I was too disgusted by this trilogy to ever try any of her other novels.

Everything that was wrong with the first book (read my rather long review for details) is back with some new annoying developments.

Alena still hasn't shaken off her strict religious upbringing and refers to her fellow creatures as "Super Dupers". That will always be ridiculous, as will her inability to curse. Which would be fine, if she didn't instead use such infantile phrases to insult. UGH.

The book synopsis claims that Alena's allies refuse to take her seriously and let her make her own way. She turns into a GIANT SNAKE, she bloody forces her own way through! She takes on a vampire gang in a poorly devised or choreographed attack, she storms into a god's "stronghold"  and on. Like her false humility about her new amazing beauty, Alena is also grasping for martyr status.

If you couldn't tell from the first page, Alena is a baker. She loves to bake. It's in her every other thought, to the detriment of problem-solving. Also, the vampire boss' fang chin piercing is still incredibly dumb and pointless.
3152532
Its hard to know what to say about this book that others have not already mentioned above.  In the first book, I really liked the concept, the characters, etc.  Towards the end of the second book, things were starting to go downhill. This book started downhill and stayed there.  The plot barely progresses and it seemed like about half of the book was wasted on new characters in order to set up something which may occur two books from now.  I'll never know, because I won't be reading them.

What does happen plot-wise, is barely worth mentioning.  The characters fall into cliched roles where the same thing happens over and over again.

Total let down.
95999
Garbage! Pales in comparison to its already mediocre predecessor.
647185
Mary Monroe is an awesome author, and immediately after I found out she had planned a sequel for God Don't Like Ugly, I waited with baited breath. Not everything can be as good as the original. That's for sure.
As good as the first novel was and all her subsequent novels were, something tells me that the fault does not lie in Mary Monroe for this sequel falling so flatly. I could be wrong (I usually am), but something tells me a hatchet job was done on this book. The characters were not nearly as strong or well written as the first book, and the story itself just meandered about until it came to a much needed rest.
Very disappointing and definitely not up to Ms. Monroe's usual caliber.
2429480
The plot of "Son of Rosemary" has already been discussed in great detail by other reviewers, so I won't go into detail about what, specifically, I didn't like about this undoubtedly silly tale.

I also now know the answer to Mr. Levin's anagram "roast mules." I admit that I didn't know the answer the first time I read the book, but having since learned the answer and reading the book again to apply this new theme and information, the book still isn't very good.

The point is, you'll probably be tempted to snap this novel up if you really enjoyed the first novel, but this newer story shares very little of the first book's quality.

The dialog is stilted and boring. Worse, it thinks it's being more witty and clever than it really is. Mind-bogglingly irritating.

Probably most disturbing to me when I was reading this book was the nauseatingly incestuous dynamic between the adult Andy and his mother, Rosemary, the latter of whom had been in a coma since 1973 and had apparently forgotten that Andy was her son.

It truly made me want to wretch.

This book is an insult to the original and its flaws can either be attributed to an ageing Ira Levin or a quick-buck attempt to cash in on millenium paranoia, or a little from column A and a little from column B.

I am glad that this dreck wasn't adapted to make a movie.

I could tell this book was going to stink right away once Guy Woodhouse's character -- arguably the most fascinating character in the first novel, since it was his monumental behavior of his wife that catalyzed the action -- was so dismissively written out of the next novel, merely, it seems, to make the novel's conclusion more "interesting."

What a dumb idea, and what a horrid failure of a book. I'm glad it's out of print.
2789540
Ugh, I did it again: I went ahead and bought the sequel to a book I really liked (The Power of One), only to be disappointed. This book felt like an insult to its predecessor, with its annoying, unconvincing characters, redundant storylines, endless pontificating about racial equality, and its over-glorification of the main characters. If you decide to read "The Power of One", do yourself a favor and quit while you're ahead.
2153590
I always see this guy's books at the library, so when this one came out I decided to give him a try.  I guess it wasn't completely terrible, but basically the only reason I kept reading it was because this and its sequel were the only books I'd gotten from the library (ultimately, I was not even able to finish the sequel, as it was just more of the same).

Basically, this heir chick Mykella lives in a silly patriarchal society and it's up to her to save her kingdom with her super lame "table magic."  The story was incredibly boring and the development--character, plot, or otherwise--left a lot to be desired.

Mykella is basically all-powerful and all her various powers seem like an overdone mishmash of everyone else's powers from all the other fantasy books that I've read.  The worst part is, Mykellla acquires (or learns) these powers in an extremely tedious fashion, and we are forced to witness her daily routine ad nauseam.  It goes something like this: breakfast scene w/obligitory discussion of "matches" followed by a frustratingly descriptive period of Mykella going over paperwork in the Finance Ministry (taking FOREVER to figure out what we already know); followed by dinner with yet another obligitory discussion of these stupid "matches"; followed by another lengthy period of Mykella thinking about what she's learned in the Finance Ministry; followed by the period whereupon she finally retires and sneaks into the "table" room to learn her lame magic.  And my god, the author actually forces us to watch her learn it.

Also, I guess maybe this guy started writing back before they had a YA section, 'cause I'm pretty sure this book (and it's sequel) belong in the YA section. Either way, I'd say there are way better options out there for fantasy readers (YA or otherwise, you can do better!).
3846208
If you are currently an Amazon Prime member this film is streaming for free. I watched this last night, and still feel cheated.

I really enjoyed the first film in the series,&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Scary-Movie/dp/B00AYB16EO/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Scary Movie</a>, and also enjoyed the third installment,&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Scary-Movie-3-5/dp/B00C9S4AHA/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Scary Movie 3.5</a>, but this entry in the series just felt rambling and pretty pointless. It's almost as if they had some jokes left over from the first film and decided to stretch them out in a full length film.

As the film opens we get a pretty decent "Exorcist" rip-off with James Woods. This opening scene was the highlight of the film, and almost as soon as it's over the film travels downhill really fast. We once again meet several characters from the first film. Anna Farris reprises "Scream" knock-off roll again, and is joined by Marlon & Shawn Wayons, Tori Spelling and Regina Hall. A couple new characters introduced in the film are Tim Curry playing Professor Oldman and David Cross as Dwight Hartman. Unfortunately Curry and Cross are completely wasted. The sole bright spot of the film is Chris Elliott as the butler.

Traveling to Hell House, the group begins to experience paranormal activity, and we get references to "The Changeling" and "The Haunting". Unlike the first film, they references are done in passing and the humor in "Scary Movie 2" isn't really based on parody like the first film.

Overall it's a pretty boring, and tame movie. The jokes are pretty stale, and even the ones that work are spread so far apart, your bored and tired of waiting for the payoff. It's easy to see why the Wayans' brothers lost the series after this lackluster entry.
841456
I was so hoping to like this 3rd book after giving the second one 5 stars.  But the author's continuous use of completely useless information at the wrong time, in my opinion, made this one too boring to finish.  I got exactly 50% and could not continue.  In fact, I skipped ahead a few chapters and read some pages and it was the same issue.

The first book had a good story and nice characters.  The second one had a very good story and terrific characters. This story, while quite clever, was boring and had bad characters.  I don't see anything on the author's page regarding a 4th installment, but even if there was one, I will not be reading it.

The author's dialogue writing and plot ideas are very good.  But, in my opinion, his constant use of menial and worthless ramblings about nothing that enhances the story is just a way to lengthen the book.  In my opinion, I hope he reconsiders this type of writing for any future books.
3750075
SPOILERS! This sequel was a total disappointment, lacking the depth and beautiful prose of Book 1. Ava's feckless sister Delta travels to Florida to search for her in the wake of the devastating hurricane that has leveled Fort Lauderdale, (and probably killed Christian, Ava's absentee spouse from Book 1). Christian's former sailing buddy Jonny shows up as well, with letters that Christian asked him to deliver to Ava should anything ever happen to him. Jonny and Delta are drawn to each other, even though they know their circumstances make a relationship impossible. But then she becomes a huge country music star, and he finds his way back to her... all in the space of a few weeks. The timeline doesn't work at all. The plot depends too much on the main characters not being able to control themselves - being total victims of their extraordinary physical attraction, which they consciously acknowledge while they are succumbing. Delta in particular is obsessive about sex. It was off-putting, more cringe-worthy than sympathetic. The first book in the series was wonderful, but this one was poor.
2419053
I loved the first book, and gave it a 5 star rating. But this book SUCKS! The old characters are compromised by artless dialogue and unforgivably out-of-character actions. The newly introduced characters are flops and serve almost no purpose. The illustrator and author are different from the last book -- huge mistake. The illustrations do not look like the characters at all. I did not like this book at all.