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The Lion of Farside (Farside, #1)

2008-11-24 00:00

Cover for The Lion of Farside (Farside, #1)

Review:

Some writ­ers take a small theme and cre­ate a land­scape. Dal­mas takes a big premise (Al­ter­nate uni­vers­es! Mag­ic!) and cre­ates a puny sto­ry about a guy that has no idea why he does things and is lead by the nose by his des­tiny, un­til things just stop.

Yes, the writ­ing has a style, and the char­ac­ter de­vel­op­ment is not as ter­ri­ble as it sounds like, but the lack of am­bi­tion is stun­ning.

I had the same re­ac­tion when read­ing Sol­diers (Alien­s! In­va­sion! Geno­cide!) which turned in­to a sort of com­par­a­tive imag­i­nary re­li­gions pam­phlet.

I am not sure I will read oth­er John Dal­mas books un­less I have noth­ing else at hand.

A Mankind Witch (Heirs of Alexandria, #1.5)

2008-11-18 00:00

Cover for A Mankind Witch (Heirs of Alexandria, #1.5)

Review:

Fun and en­ter­tain­ing. It's a sort of vol­ume 1.5 of the "Heirs of Alexan­dri­a" se­ries, and if you read any of those, you could call it "Prince Man­fred goes to Nor­way".

Lighter in tone, not sur­pris­ing since it has a dif­fer­ent au­thor, it is a good fan­ta­sy/ad­ven­ture book.

Soldiers

2008-11-15 00:00

Cover for Soldiers

Review:

Long and a bit bor­ing, over­fo­cused in re­li­gion. The au­thor seems to feel a need to make all char­ac­ters deeply re­li­gious and tol­er­an­t, and to pack as many dif­fer­ent re­li­gions (re­al or in­vent­ed) as he can.

Not smart enough to be in­ter­est­ing that way, the mil­i­tary ac­tion fiz­zles by cre­at­ing a ter­ri­bly in­ef­fec­tu­al fic­tion­al ad­ver­sary.

Posleen Fanfic

2008-11-09 00:00

Cover for Posleen Fanfic

Review:

I can't be­lieve I am the first per­son read­ing this in all of goodread­s.­com :-)

I could not fin­ish it. The first sto­ry "Food will win this war" is ok, but the fol­low­ing two dig them­selves deep­er and deep­er in­to mil­i­tary slang, it's al­most as if their on­ly goal was to make you un­der­stand what an S-3 is.
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