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Undersea

2012-10-01 00:00

Cover for Undersea

Review:

Very in­ter­est­ing, well writ­ten book. It presents a sce­nario and fol­lows things to log­i­cal con­clu­sion­s, sets rules and keeps them. In­ter­est­ing char­ac­ter de­vel­op­men­t, too.

The not so great? Well, it suf­fers a bit from the "this per­son is in­volved in *ev­ery­thing* that hap­pen­s" syn­drome, but that's par for the course in sci­fi, and I have learned to live with it.

And this is to­tal­ly pet­ty of me, but when­ev­er Mrakas Gat­ley was men­tioned, I kept read­ing he's called "Mara­cas" and gig­gling, which kin­da spoils the page.

Journey to Hart's Halo

2012-09-25 00:00

Cover for Journey to Hart's Halo

Review:

Got this as part of the Sto­ry Bun­dle.

It starts in­trigu­ing­ly, and stays that way for about two thirds of the book. Then it all goes to hell in a hand­bas­ket and the end makes no sense what­so­ev­er. Feels like the au­thor felt not enough was hap­pen­ing, or de­cid­ed to do "a twist" or... I don't know, but the whole end of the book af­ter the "reap­pear­ance" (if you read it you know what I mean) ru­ined it for me.

I liked the be­gin­ning though, so I will try to read some­thing else by the au­thor.

Al­so: the face in the book cov­er is dis­con­cert­ing­ly sim­i­lar to Shel­don Coop­er from The Big Bang the­o­ry.

Heretic (Templar Chronicles, #1)

2012-09-21 00:00

Cover for Heretic (Templar Chronicles, #1)

Review:

Not my cup of tea. Ba­si­cal­ly the pro­tag­o­nist is a su­per sol­dier tem­plar knight with mag­i­cal pow­ers fight­ing for a catholic se­cret army.

The sole idea of such a thing makes me sick, so hav­ing him as the "hero" in a book is not my idea of fun.

Lots of ac­tion, and not bad­ly writ­ten, so I am sure some peo­ple will like it.

Missing Signals (The Diaspora Trilogy, #2)

2012-09-19 00:00

Cover for Missing Signals (The Diaspora Trilogy, #2)

Review:

Got this as part of the Sto­ry Bun­dle.

This is a se­quel to John Gone. While I found that first book dis­con­cert­ing­ly ni­hilis­tic, this one is dis­con­cert­ing­ly amus­ing. Strange things hap­pen for no rea­son, and it takes place in some sort of par­al­lel di­men­sion where teenagers can go to Vladi­vos­tok by train with­out pass­port­s.

Al­so, the rules that con­trol the tele­por­ta­tion de­vice seem to change ev­ery once in a while, and some things are just nev­er ex­plained. Fi­nal­ly, the au­thor seems to have no idea what­so­ev­er about how com­put­er net­works work (the thing with the sig­nals is ba­si­cal­ly Star Trek: Voy­ager lev­el tech­nob­a­b­ble, ex­cept it's about tech­nol­o­gy that's 50 years old al­ready).

In any case, liked it bet­ter than John Gone, I would give it maybe 2.5 stars.

While I am not re­al­ly a big fan of these book­s, I de­cid­ed to buy the 3rd, "Com­pa­ny Men" be­cause I want to see what hap­pens nex­t.

John Gone (The Diaspora Trilogy, #1)

2012-09-17 00:00

Cover for John Gone (The Diaspora Trilogy, #1)

Review:

Got this as part of the sto­ry bun­dle. It was an in­ter­est­ing book. I found its at­ti­tude to­wards some of the things that hap­pen some­what both­er­some.

Some peo­ple have de­scribed it as a YA nov­el, but while the pro­tag­o­nist is a teenager, the things he's in­volved in are a bit too dark, and the at­ti­tude a bit too ni­hilis­tic that I would not be com­fort­able giv­ing it to a young teen.

I liked the se­quel bet­ter.
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