Reviews :: Book Rating :: Books that are Mediocre :: Page 16

As much as it pains us, because we love Gail Carriger, we were a bit disappointed when we finished CHANGELESS (Amazon), book two in The Parasol Protectorate. It’s possible most of what we didn’t like about CHANGELESS comes from a comparison to SOULLESS (EBR Review). It just didn’t match our expectations following her excellent first effort.

You see, all the cute things that worked FOR Gail in Book 1 (SOULLESS), started to work against her here in CHANGELESS. We thought the plot basis in Book 2 was much more interesting than the first book, but it was slowed waaaaay down by the dialog and interchange between characters. This led to the great idea for the story feeling unfocused.
Read the rest of this review »

With luck, intellect, and an innate skill with strategy on his side, Basso is a powerhouse of ambition. His goal: to take everything he can and control the rest. Just because he can.

Well, at least that’s what he’ll tell you. But, as Basso would say, there’s always another reason.

Set in the ancient Rome-like city of the Vesani Republic, THE FOLDING KNIFE (Amazon) follows the life of Bassianus Severus, First Citizen, from the odd circumstances surrounding his birth, to his meteoric rise in the banking industry, to becoming the elected leader of the most civilized city of the known world. It’s a story of politics and business, of love and hate–and how little it takes for one to become the other. But mostly it’s about Basso, and no matter how great a man becomes, and how pure his intentions are, when everything finally crashes the sound can be deafening.
Read the rest of this review »

In our ongoing effort to read all the Hugo nominated novels for 2010, we continue with Robert J. Sawyer‘s WWW:WAKE (Amazon). Maybe it’s just us, but it seems like Sawyer is consistently nominated for the Hugo for “Best Novel”. Does this mean his books are always awesome? For many people, yes.

But not for us.
Read the rest of this review »

The Hype Machine strikes again.

In case you didn’t notice, the Hugo Award Finalists were announced just a bit ago. Among the contenders was listed WINDUP GIRL (Amazon), by Paolo Bacigalupi. There has been all sorts of hype about this novel. People are heralding it as a masterpiece, or as a frightening look into our future. And it’s true, on the surface the ideas that make up the setting seem pretty outstanding.
Read the rest of this review »

Steampunk. You can hardly go wrong with it. It’s that genre that is filled with airships, goggles and adventure. With the novel BONESHAKER (Amazon), Cherie Priest tries her hand at the steampunk genre.

We had heard a lot about this novel. Authors, editors, and readers everywhere called it amazing. We had heard it called one of the best steampunk novels ever written. Do you see where this is going? Yeah. We were let down. WAY down.
Read the rest of this review »

Sometimes, no matter how much you like an author, their latest book ends up being a disappointment. NEUROPATH by R. Scott Bakker (Amazon), fit that description for us. As you all well know, we love his Prince of Nothing series. NEUROPATH is Bakker’s attempt to put his spin on the thriller genre.

It is evident within the first 20 pages (probably less to most people) that Neuropath is written with a very strong bias and moral (if there is such a thing… dun dun DUN) bent. This book, while a mystery/thriller, is not the typical fare in the genre. There are lengthy discourses about free will vs. determinism, what free-will is exactly, identity issues, and the possibilities of contemporary neuroscience.
Read the rest of this review »

So. DEXTER BY DESIGN (Amazon). The fourth novel by Jeff Lindsay that follows the exploits of Deviously Deadly Dexter — if you followed our advice earlier and read the first novel DARKLY DREAMING DEXTER (), you know why we use the alliteration… and it should be fairly obvious anyway. To be quite honest, we are getting tired of the novels, and are turning more towards the Showtime Series for our Dexter fix.
Read the rest of this review »

K.J. Parker’s THE COMPANY (Amazon) has a paperback release here shortly. We figured after reading the Engineer Trilogy that we should give her (K.J. Parker) another chance. Bottom line here: we really wanted to like this novel, but at the end of the day, we were left unsatisfied.

Let’s be clear here, we didn’t hate THE COMPANY, but we sure didn’t love it either. This novel follows the story of A Company, a small group of soldiers who were considered the most fearsome during a past war. THE COMPANY is partially about their attempts to reintegrate into society after the war, and partially about their attempts to colonize an island they… procured.
Read the rest of this review »

The first thing that comes to mind to mention for K.J. Parker’s first entry into her Engineer Trilogy, DEVICES AND DESIRES (Amazon), is that the author knows how to do her research. There are very technical descriptions for nearly everything in the novel, and it really lends a lot of credibility to both the story and the writer. However it isn’t without drawbacks.

We will get to those later though; let’s do like we were taught and focus on the positive. The book was interesting and the plot is engaging. Most of the character’s exploits are fun to read, with a few exceptions. The plot is also laden with political intrigue and it plays out remarkably well.

OK, we did our job as reviewers and at least acknowledged the good.
Read the rest of this review »

THE STEEL REMAINS (Amazon) is Richard K. Morgan’s first foray into the fantasy genre, after a strong history in Science Fiction, as well as being a winner of an Arthur C. Clarke Award, Philip K. Dick Award, and a John W. Campbell Award. Obviously, we were interested to see how he would do in his new genre experiment. There was very little that disappointed, though we did give thoughtful pause as to just how good it actually was.

Morgan doesn’t seem to be one for half measures. We are under the impression that he is either 150% or 0% in his writing. In this first entry into a planned trilogy he establishes that he does indeed have what it takes to be an epic fantasy writer. However we wonder whether we can place him on the level of Abercrombie, Martin, and Bakker, and are interested for the series to be finished so we can decide.
Read the rest of this review »