Great beginning, a lot of merit, ultimately too long and gets tiresome
579859
Great beginning. Couldn't put it down at first, and got really immersed in the story and character. Alas, this book is just too long and begins to drag. All the diving stuff was boring, and eventually (about two-thirds through) I just couldn't anymore. The Dexter Styles subplot was interesting, but I couldn't bring myself to care that much about Anna, and I know I was supposed to. This book had a lot of promise early on and then just slowly fizzled away.
99552
This book starts off very well.  However, the book is about 400 pages too long.  There's a reason why the period between the fall of the western Roman Empire and the Renaissance is called "the middle ages", yet this book has hundreds of pages dedicated to telling this story.  For some reason, every English author who writes a book about England feels compelled to tell us, ad nauseum, about the myopic minutia of the lives of the aristocracy as compared to the lives of the common folk.  This book is no different.  Every English author feels compelled to tell us stories about how shallow, overwrought characters sit around talking about how so-and-so is fine gentleman, and worthy of marriage, but his accounts are not quite in order.  Oh, what a scandal.  His accounts you say?  Why yes, there was the incident only last week where, against my better discretion, so-and-so received an unfortunate price for his wares.  Oh, dear, how unfortunate?  Well, let us say, he might not be marriagable after all.  Oh dear.  This type of droll goes on for page after page after page after page.
3778012
I especially love biographies and usually get a charge out of those describing especially eccentric subjects. That is how this book began and it held my interest well for the first 100 pages or so. Then it really gets tedious and I kept wondering why no editor had been at work here. I almost always finish books completely, but this is one that got so bogged down with tedious details in the second half that I couldn't make myself.

  If you have an interest in Oppenheimer, you'll probably find a lot to like in this book as parts are very interesting. If you generally like biographies, you are likely to find yourself aching for a good editor as you plow through this one.
4825061
This book starts off fantastic. We get an overview of comics as they first come into existence. There is some great information about the early creators and publishers such as Lev Gleason, Charles Biro, Will Eisner, Harry Donenfeld, Jack Liebowitz, M.C. Gaines, Bill Gaines, etc etc. Hajdu explores the environment of the early shops, taking the reader back in history rather than just spouting dates and facts. There are plenty of interviews with comic book creators from the Golden Age. And we really learn a lot about shifting trends in the industry from superheroes to crime to romance to horror. Each genre's genesis is explored in depth: how it started, why it started, the major creators involved, etc.

The main focus of the book is on the controversy around comics primarily between 1948 and 1954, hence the title, "The Ten-Cent Plague." This starts off fairly interesting and then goes on far too long. I appreciate Hajdu's dedication to making this book as strongly researched and well documented as possible. 50 pages of the book are end notes. Nearly another 30 make up the bibliography. The actual text ends on page 334 out of the 434 total pages. If you're looking for a scholarly book with endless sources to branch into further reading, this book is the one for you.

Hajdu's meticulous research is a bit excessive, however. At times he recounts incident after incident after incident of comic book burnings, boycotts, and protests around the nation. At other times he focuses heavily on localized legislation, which can be very dry reading. I understood the relevance behind relating the organized crime trials to the comic book hearings, as well as McCarthyism to the comic book witch hunts, but at times it just droned on far too long.

Due to the rather dry text, I had difficulty finishing the book. I had to really push myself through the last 100 pages with the exception of segments focusing on Bill Gaines and EC Comics.

I rather enjoyed the first half of the book, however, which was full of wonderful trivia such as J. Edgar Hoover's love of comics; an in-depth view of the comic publishing environment of the Golden Age; and interviews with those who lived through it. As a source to mine for further reading, this book is also invaluable.
2138475
the characters so well defined.  I could hardly put it down, couldn't wait to pick it up again to see what would happen next.  It was so captivating!  But sometime between the middlle and the end it seemed like a different person was writing it.  I began losing interest.  The plotline became redundant - too many new characters were introduced, their identies became muddled.  Too much time wasted on an uninteresting event.  Then, the book began getting so abstract  and philosophical - and also very repetitive that I found myself rereading paragraph after paragraph trying to understand the "hidden meaning" behind the elegant words on the page but I was still in the dark.  Very soon this became frustrating, then annoying,  then boring.  I only continued reading to the end because I had invested so much time reading it I felt kind of obligated to finish it.  At that point, the thrill was long gone.  The rocket took a nosedive and landed with a thud.
2427275
I thought this novel would end up on one of my mental best of lists when I first started reading. Nadeau's writing is as sharp as the daggers one of his characters expertly wields, and his fantasy world is inviting. He has a firm grasp of psychology, battle tactics (both small- and large-scale), diplomatic strategies, and so on  all the heavier concepts that give a fantasy novel depth.

Unfortunately, as the tale went on, I was wearied by the endless cast of characters. Every time I thought I had a handle on someone, we'd jump to another scene with a person I had only a dim memory of. It's reminiscent of the hefty number of viewpoints in the Game of Thrones series, but in GOT, we usually get beefy chapters with a lot happening, so the characters can develop in our minds. In Seeds of Hatred, things bounce around so much it's difficult to understand the characters. Oftentimes a character's section is superficial, with them having a largely uneventful conversation with an underling, or staring out of a window and plotting.

But, as my four star rating indicates, there's still a lot to like about this novel. The characters Nadeau spends the most time on are fantastic (the time spent, of course, having a lot to do with them being fantastic), such as Alex, Dorn, and Marac. All three of these characters seem to be one-dimensional at first, but they slowly evolve until they become realistic and memorable.

The characters of Elyas and Soren are worth mentioning, since they're important to the plot, but I found these two to be less interesting than the ones above. Elyas's transformation from bookworm to bloodsucking mage/shapeshifter/badass should've been a satisfying beginning to a revenge angle, and it has its macabre moments, but as he lost his basic humanity, so too did he lose my sympathy. Part of the problem is that he's mostly by himself in the latter part of the novel, and it's hard to develop someone when they don't have another character to play off of. Soren is too much of a bleeding heart, and, frankly, a wimp  I thought for sure his grizzled soldiers would turn on him, but they remain loyal, even though he's the least inspiring character in the novel.

The plot itself concerns the machinations of various factions, mainly the Brotherhood, the Lightbearers, the Darkbearers, and the Fey. If those weren't enough, there are disagreements within these groups, or outright schisms, and there are shadowy players pulling strings from afar, which means you can't paint any group with a broad brush. Oh, there's a group of disgruntled nobles as well...and the Lutherians, rebels who've broken away from the Brotherhood...and the mysterious Scions...and...you get the point. It's convoluted, and there's going to be a lot of fighting, backstabbing, shifting allegiances, and pure chaos as this multifaceted conflict develops.

But, again, the novel goes overboard, and gives us too many factions like it gives us too many characters. If you love convoluted stories, where you need an organizational chart to keep track of everyone, this novel will satisfy your craving for the labyrinthine. Myself, I prefer simpler fare.

If Nadeau trimmed down his tale, it'd be, as I said, a best of. The story as it is has plenty of action, some intriguing characters, strong prose, and enough moral ambiguity to make it more than a defeat the Dark Lord plot. If this author adopts a leaner, meaner writing style for subsequent books, I'll gladly read them.
728724
I really liked this book at the beginning.  The world was very interesting.  I liked seeing the changes in the world due to people suddenly being able to use magic in the mid-1800s.  The quotes from historical figures heading the chapters were really fun.

The characters were interesting as well, though calling the lead character a "Private Eye", when we never actually see him doing any private investigation was a bit of a stretch for me.  If you're going to make that such an big part of how the character sees themselves, it needs to occupy an equally big part of the story, and in this case, it didn't.

Despite the excitement of the beginning of the book, by the middle of the book my enthusiasm had waned.  I'm not really sure why.  Perhaps it was too many reactionary action scenes in a row.  I prefer books where the characters are choosing their actions, instead of having outside forces driving them.  The level of detail in the gun descriptions got a bit old as well, as I really don't know that much about guns, or have much interest in them.  I think I'd also learned all the big pieces of each character, with no other mysteries to learn. Almost all the characters were also firmly set in stone - no character growth there.  The one character that was changing, it felt less like character growth, and, once again a character having decisions made for them, not organic changes.

Regardless of the reason, my attention drifted and I skimmed to the end of the book.  I really didn't care for the ending.  It just didn't work for me.

This book will probably be a huge hit for plenty of other people - there was some good stuff in there. There was just too much that didn't work for me.
4109546
There is much to like about this book, but enough lacking that I put the book down about half way down for several weeks before picking it up to finish it.
Not the best sign.

The idea behind the book is excellent, surviving victim of a serial killer whose gaps in memory may let an innocent be executed. The writing is quite good. The characters were also very good, especially our own "black-eyed Susan" Tessa. But the beginning drrraaaaggggged. Yes, the middle picked up and I, for one, loved the slightly unbelievable ending. But I must say this was and example of another book that could have used the Big Red Editor's pen to cut out a fair amount of unneeded and repetitious prose.
2484912
Amazingly long and wordy for a book that departs the same points.
458286
Compelling beginning. Way too long and tedious with detail which clouds the focus. The ending seemed like rushed writing to clarify what the author was trying to say with the book, loading too much philosophical reasoning to tie together the loose ends in the plot. Why not have the narrator, who is articulate, voice some of these things during his life? I think there was a glimmer of purpose brought out in the ending centered on "the place where reality strikes the ideal." Preserving treasured art is worthy and endows the art with a human-made gift of immortality that future generations can experience.
4120011
What a great starting off point - an alien innovation that isn't the usual assortment of spaceships with guns blazing and whatnot. The vision of aliens invading from afar, getting rid of the pesky humans the way you'd get rid of pests in a house before moving in is creepy and compelling. Unfortunately, after this promising start the book descends into a fairly tedious trudge through the post invasion world in which the reader has figured it all out long before the characters... with many, many pages to go. About about 2/3 the length this probably would have worked.
153936
Questionable theology and long winded beginning, but very interesting.
1597500
Too long, too wordy, too much unnecessary detail.
3705147
Starts great, but toward the end goes downhill, as if it's written under pressure to end in a hurry.
14102
I really enjoyed the beginning of this book. Part of the way through it hits a wall. A serious wall. A pretty damn boring wall. But the cliffhanger at the end does make me want to read the second book. It's worth reading if you're into this genre.

I thought the characters were well developed but characters I really liked from the first half sort of go by the wayside (I'm trying not to include spoilers). They aren't dead. They just aren't main characters anymore which is sort of jarring.

I would have liked more of the beginning kind of action. The parts that were boring could have really only been one chapter but they're dragged out to be half the book.

One thing I really dug about the book was that there was no damn love triangle. It seems that every dystopian novel with a female heroine has a love triangle, which I hate. This book does a good job of avoiding that until about half way through. So, I ended up being disappointed on that front. Thankfully it doesn't drag the triangle aspect of it on and on like some series.

This author needs a good editor. There were not lots of grammar errors but lots of words used where they shouldn't be. You could tell they weren't picked up by spell check because they were proper words but they weren't proper in the context. An example: characters were to be reassembling supplies but in the book it says resumed. There were several errors like that. It was distracting at times and annoying to be reading a scene with lots of action and having to stop and decipher what the author was actually trying to say.

I will continue the series but I don't love it as much as some of my friends and I'll probably just borrow it from a friend rather than buying it.
4355771
While it took me a while to get into this book, I persevered because I though it would be worth it.  After all, it's on the best seller list.  About 200 pages in, I was engrossed in spite of the long descriptions.  Then it just got repetitive, and I found myself skipping pages.  Then I gave up altogether.  It's too bad, because this author writes well, and her descriptions are great (the first time around).  All in all, a story that would have been great in 200-300 pages ends up being a short story made VERY long.
617672
Murakami's lengthy tome begins with a strong, clear voice imagining an intriguing parallel world with two moons and magical Little People who fight with otherworldly forces for control of the planet and perhaps nature itself.  At the center of this struggle are two protagonists, a girl, Aomame (an assassin with an agenda) and Tengo (a gifted mathematician and want-to-be novelist).

It's a good start and an interesting set-up; however, over nearly 1,000 pages Murakami's prose slackens while the plot thickens almost into a muddy slog--at which point it takes a step or two off course into misogynistic territory that might be a bit too much for western tastes.  I, like Murakami himself it seems, began to lose interest about half way in, but being the good reader I soldiered on to the end, where he sets things up for a possible sequel.  All I can say to that is, "Please, no! Don't do it."

In this case the marketing hype surrounding the launch of this book far outweighed the actual value of this thick read.

I am a big fan of speculative long-form fiction--the mighty, and mighty long, Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson, is a good, recent example.  Where Stephenson continues to dazzle and engage after 3,000 plus pages, Murakami seems to run out of steam after 250.

An earlier review of this book warned off readers new to Murakami.  In retrospect I should have taken the advice.  At this point I'm simply too fatigued to consider buying another of his novels, and it seems that that's too bad.  It will have to be a while before I can consider picking up another Murakami novel, thick or thin.