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2016-03-05 06:13

Ex-Isle (Ex-Heroes, #5)

  • Author: Peter Clines
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  • Review:

    I just finished reading The House of Rumour, an excellent but rather dense book, so, consider this series a palate cleanser: Supers versus Zombies. Fun story, easy reading, goes down quickly, no aftertaste. 4 stars if you know what this is and you have the right expectations. If you don't ... YMMV.

2016-03-03 00:00

The House of Rumour

  • Author: Jake Arnott
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  • Review:

    You may wonder (not really) why it took me years to finish reading this book. The answer is, of course, that it didn't, but that Kobo had sold it to me, I started reading it, and then they took it away because of bullshit reasons, so I restarted it once I found it on Kindle Unlimited.

    Now, about the book: it's quite awesome. The author brings an encyclopedic knowledge of random trivia and organizes it into a coherent tale covering some 50 years. I am not sure what the point of the story actually is but it's very interesting and quite a bit of fun to read.

2016-02-24 00:00

Axis (Spin, #2)

  • Author: Robert Charles Wilson
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  • Review:

    Didn't like it as much as the 1st one in the series. The hypothetical's power set is veering dangerously to the arbitrary, which, considering their 1st known action was wrapping earth in a membrane that slowed time is really a bit much. Not sure if I will get the 3rd one.

2016-02-10 11:43

Spin (Spin, #1)

  • Author: Robert Charles Wilson
  • Rating:
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  • Review:

    I think the out of sequence narrative structure removed a bit too much of the suspense. It's a "high concept" book, so it takes an idea and runs with it, revealing it gradually, but knowing a few of the things that are revealed so early in the book removes the mistery, and I may (or maybe not) prefer if it were told in a more straightforward way.

    I liked the characters, though, they are grownups, which is almost refreshing nowadays.

2016-02-01 00:00

All the Birds in the Sky

  • Author: Charlie Jane Anders
  • Rating:
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  • Review:

    Could be 4.5 stars maybe, even 5 for someone who was more into this kind of thing.

    Of course the complicated part there is, what kind of thing is this?

    * Debut novel, with the expected overgrowth of random ideas that could be awesome in a separate book.

    * Puppy love.

    * Apocalypse.

    * Magic vs. Technology (the magic system could use a bit more detail, the tech system, if that is even a thing could also (where did the 2 second time machines schematics come from?)

    * Lovely writing

    Did I mention that Technology here feels more like a separate school of magic than what we IRL understand as technology? In some other book (Wearing the cape, maybe?) I read about a sort of superheros/supervillains called "Verne" who were able to create random "technological" gizmos and materials that despite looking science-based were in fact totally impossible for normal people to reproduce. That's how some of the "tech" things in this book appear to work, and I think it makes the book slightly more interesting to me: it's a book about a war between two magical factions, where one of the factions doesn't know what they do is magic.

    All in all, very solid, entertaining book.

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