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A Latent Dark

2013-02-13 00:00

Cover for A Latent Dark

Review:

It starts a bit messy, and some parts seem rushed, but not bad.

Taking on the Dead (Famished #1)

2013-02-09 00:00

Cover for Taking on the Dead (Famished #1)

Review:

A zom­bie book as writ­ten by Danielle Steele? There seem to be huge plot holes, which I will not ar­gue here to avoid spoil­ing stuff.

Not hor­ri­ble, but not my cup of tea, and will not fol­low the tril­o­gy.

The Drought

2013-02-04 00:00

Cover for The Drought

Review:

Clear­ly in­spired by Stephen King, spe­cial­ly "It", in­clud­ing an echo of that part ev­ery­one hates/loves.

In fac­t, if Stephen King was dead, I would sus­pect this was writ­ten dur­ing a séance. Not bad though!

Devil Said Bang (Sandman Slim, #4)

2013-01-30 00:00

Cover for Devil Said Bang (Sandman Slim, #4)

Review:

There is hard­ly a part of poor James Stark that has not been shot, cut, set on fire, hacked of­f, or sent to live in Bur­bank.

There is no weird wom­an in Los An­ge­les he has no his­to­ry with, no kind of su­per­nat­u­ral life he has not kicked the ass of, no lame bar where he has not had a drink, no clever but tough yet deep in­side nice bar­tender he has not hit for a smoke, no re­pul­sive act he has not com­mit­ed.

You get the same thing as in the oth­er three book­s. Ex­tra noir di­a­logue, smar­tass­ness, a clever phrase here and there, blood and gut­s.

The schtick is grow­ing stale.

A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5)

2013-01-25 00:00

Cover for A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5)

Review:

In an un­even se­ries, this is a good one, bet­ter than the 4th book, which was a not-­so-­good one.

Read­ing the se­ries en­tire­ly in se­quence in a few week­s, I no­ticed a few things.

1) The char­ac­ter sprawl is to­tal­ly out of con­trol, so much that the au­thor had to use two books to tell the sto­ry of a few weeks or month­s. That's nut­s, and hurts the book­s, be­cause there are a lot of char­ac­ters that are, sim­ply, not very in­ter­est­ing.

2) This sto­ry seems to be about 40% done, which means an­oth­er gazil­lion years wait­ing for it to end.

3) Un­like in star trek, here even is bad, odd is good.

4) If I had the time, I am sure I could find trends in word and ex­pres­sion us­age. Neep and nun­cle, leal and "The bas­tard of" are on the rise.

5) I don't re­gret read­ing it but ...

6) The sit­u­a­tion, af­ter thou­sands of pages, is com­plete­ly un­re­solved, and it's be­com­ing a bit grat­ing to move the ac­tu­al plot so slow­ly, even with all the things that are hap­pen­ing. It feels like noise.
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