• Au­thor: Mer­cedes Lack­ey
• Rat­ing: ★
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Review:

I had read the first cou­ple of Heirs of Alexan­dria books years ago, and saw this one for free at Baen.S­ince I had rather fond mem­o­ries of those first, I gave this one a chance.

The sto­ry is in­ter­est­ing enough, but ... the di­a­log. The di­a­log is try­ing so hard. Just so hard. It tries to be smart, fun­ny and clev­er, but it all comes out as weird, self­-­con­scious, and stilt­ed.

It's like read­ing the in­ner voice of a shy teenage boy who deep in­side knows he's bet­ter and smarter and more hon­or­able than the rest, be­cause oth­er­wise why would he be so lone­ly and sad?

I hat­ed the di­a­log.

Al­so, the way ev­ery "good" char­ac­ter is bet­ter in ev­ery pos­si­ble way than ev­ery "bad" char­ac­ter is grat­ing.

I am now re­con­sid­er­ing if the fond mem­o­ries of the ear­li­er books are just se­lec­tive mem­o­ry, or the des­per­ate grat­i­tude of a fan­ta­sy read­er in Ar­genti­na, where there just was­n't all that much to read at the time.

• Au­thor: Neal Stephen­son
• Rat­ing: ★ ★ ★ ★
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Review:

Con­tin­ues the sto­ries of the first vol­ume, of course.

Even if the books are com­ing out at a rather brisk pace, the sheer amount of sto­ry­lines and char­ac­ters made this a bit hard to fol­low, but a fun read any­way.

I pe­cial­ly loved read­ing it on Kin­dle and hav­ing Wikipedia right there for terms, so 'o­h, right, this is in Turk­menistan' and 'so there were on­ly eleven car­di­nal­s, won­der how that works out­...'.

Look­ing for­ward to the 3rd vol­ume.

• Au­thor: Er­ic Flint
• Rat­ing:
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• Au­thor: David We­ber
• Rat­ing:
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• Au­thor: Er­ic Flint
• Rat­ing:
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