Latest Book Reviews
Horrendous book. Can’t believe he did us dirty like this!
I've Always been a fan of Wings Of Fire books. I started to read them at the age of 9 years old. Now, I've been working on creating my own book! I've always wanted to be an Artist,Soccer player, And Author at the Same time! My Main reason for this Review is because I wanted to get better at Drawing. Anyway This is a Great tutorial on how to draw the dragons in, "WINGS OF FIRE."
This book had me throwing my hands up, laughing, yelling WTH at times, even wanting to throw the book. Best yet, I am completely invested. The audible narrative as always on point as well as the song Playlist. So ready for the next book in this series, just sad there is no audible narration yet. But I will purchase when it becomes available and relisten.
This series is great, this read kept me enthralled. Again audible narration on point as was the song Playlist. The darkness, trauma and then you throw in the light. The strength it shows amd being able to overcome, is crafted beautifully I think. The chess game that is still being played between all the moving parts is amazing. I cannot get enough
Ummmm..... so Dark and Delicious, once again the Audible narration is divine. Playlist is on point, love, love, love the playlist! Knox and Aria what can you say, I cannot put the book down. It hade shook!
Not for the faint of heart, this book kept my listening. The audible readers are awesome and the Playlist of music is insane. This book is definitely a page turner. Do not expect to put it down and you better have the next in the series ready to read
Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 (S5 from here on out) is the best book I’ve ever read during my 40+ years of reading. If I had to describe S5 in one word that word would be perfect.
Prior to reading S5 I had often heard people saying this book or that book changed their lives. I’d never understood how a book could do that until I read S5.
Needless to say, it’s changed my life.
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Not in any dramatic way, but it changed what I thought good writing was. As a writer, it completely changed my perception of what one could do with the written word. It’s hard to describe except by saying that once you have witnessed your conception of perfection in a particular form, your perspective of that form changes, whether that be in the consumption of it or in its creation.
As far as the book itself goes, S5 isn’t for those looking for an escape into a world of action/mystery etc. It is definitely a thinking man’s book. It’s an Oscar Award vs Summer Blockbuster type of thing, with S5 being one of the former.
S5 is both one of the funniest and most heart wrenching stories I’ve ever read. Vonnegut’s writing, his style, just moves you.
You know those moments when you read a line or two that particularly moves you to where you want to highlight it or write it down somewhere? My copy of S5 has yellow throughout it. I can remember first reading it and there were so many instances where I’d stop and just reread what I’d just read, amazed by the power of the words. In fact, the Introduction or prologue (I can’t remember which the beginning part of S5 is called.) is so full of those instances that I read it through a second time before proceeding with the rest of the book my first time reading it.
If there was an award for best chapter of a book, that first part of S5 would take my vote with nothing even coming close to competing with it.
In fact, to those wondering if S5 is for you; just read that opening part. If your anything like me you will be hooked.
This adventure took me on a ride of a lifetime. I have never been captured by a book to this magnitude before. I’ve read EVERYTHING that James Rollins has published but this is way beyond anything that he has done so far. I read book 1 and book 2 in succession and have read a couple of novels since but in my head, and in my heart, I am still happily hanging out on James’s Urth waiting to see where he takes me next!
Not the easiest or fastest to read (maybe because of the poetic language or because English is not my mother tongue :D) but definitely worth it! The book was like a gothic fairy-tale with horror elements (such as the creepy creatures in the forest that I loved), mysteries and lgbt+ characters. I also loved how all the details of the forest were described and felt like I was breathing the forest too. I got goosebumps at the end. So beautifully written! Tessa Gratton is one of my favourite writers!
A mass-produced road map so valuable that someone is willing to kill people to get it. Just when you thought cartography was boring.
Easiest 10/10 decision ever. I read The Cartographers as a geographer and a lifelong lover of maps, which may have had some effect on how much I enjoyed it. But then again, if you combine maps, magic, thrill, and history in a suitable ratio, can the result be anything but one of the most enchanting reading experiences of your life?
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In my opinion, the book has the potential to become an international blockbuster. Peng Shepherd's previous work, The Book of M, has been translated into a few languages. I would like this to spread even more widely so that everyone who fancies maps, magic, and/or exciting stories would have a chance to read it.
I loved this story. The beginning for me was intense. Waiting patiently for the Gods Eye series to continue.
This is an amazing book! 100% the most immersing of the dragons of destiny! So amazing, and the details are amazing.
Ann Leckie's latest novel is a standalone effort set in her award-winning Ancillary universe, though the term standalone should come with a caveat anytime it refers to a part of an already established canon. Translation State, like the previous standalone Provenance, offers an expanded understanding of the world Leckie established in her Radch trilogy, but probably shouldn't be thought of as an entry point to the universe. It is also, for me, the least successful of Leckie's novels, though seemingly still an essential one for her readers, as it delves into several aspects of the earlier novels that were left ambiguous or incomplete.
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The novel begins with three separate storylines that converge as the novel progresses. It kicks of with Enae, whose Grandmaman and sole benefactor has recently died. Enae finds hirself disinherited upon learning that Grandmaman had essentially been broke, and only managed to keep herself and Enae afloat by trading her estate and the family name to a nouveau riche upstart for a sizeable personal allowance. Luckily for Enae, Grandmaman had cooked up an agreement with this interloper to provide for hir (Enae) after her passing. So Enae is secured a position at the Office of Diplomacy, and sent on a errand to find out the whereabouts of, or to learn the ultimate fate of, a long missing Presger Translator. (For the uninitiated, the treaty with the alien Presger is the only thing keeping human civilization from crumbling, and the Translators - an engineered race of people separate from the Presger themselves - are essential to the treaty's continued health.) Enae quickly learns that sie is not expected to actually complete the assignment, but simply to travel about and report back hir lack of success in doing so. Sie decides to make a go of it, anyway.
The other two threads follow Reet, an orphan who gets caught up in the machinations of a political faction of displaced people known as the Hikipi, and Qven, an adolescent Presger Translator who is considered damaged goods after suffering a terrifying sexual assault. Explaining how the plot brings these disparate individuals together would spoil to much, though it quickly becomes clear that the confluence of circumstances has far-reaching implications for the upcoming Conclave, which was aggressively teased in Provenance and given even more weight here.
Translation State has many of the attributes that won Leckie her loyal fan base: the social and political maneuverings; her tart, sometimes goofy sense of humor; the imaginative perils and pitfalls she throws in her characters' paths. We get to learn more about the the Geck and the Rrrrrr, and especially the thoroughly fascinating Presger Translators, even if the Presger themselves are still shrouded in mystery.
Where Translation State falls short for me - and it's a pretty big fall - is in the three main characters themselves. Our introduction to Enae, who seemingly spent hir life up until Grandmaman's death showing no real initiative or assertiveness (at least, not that we are made aware of) does nothing but when the plot requires sie do so, with little indication of what might have brought about this sea change. That sie fades somewhat into the background as Reet and Qven take center stage is not surprising. Those two characters, whom the main action of the novel is visited upon, are impossibly earnest, cloying in their preciousness - much in the way adults idealize adolescence, rather than being believably adolescent (a common problem in many YA novels). Not to mention (sorry if this is too spoilery) a big chunk of the novel deals with their growing bond of friendship, which consists entirely of them lying in bed and binge-watching a streaming show. This is a growing trend in science fiction - the lionizing of modern-day consumerist habits in a far-future setting - and until now I would have hoped an author of Leckie's considerable gifts would steer clear of it, but here we are.
As a harbinger of things to come, Translation State gives readers plenty to look forward to, but for this reader, at least, less to hold onto right now.
A fantastic way to keep the story going unlike some sequel books that will leave you less satisfied than the first, this book did the total opposite in my opinion. Very excited for the third book release keep up the great work on this amazing adventure that is the bloodsworne saga John Gwynne !!
I normally have a hard time following multiple character stories and I thought this would be one of them but as I read on this book pulled me in and kept me on the edge of my seat. The author has an amazing detail he brings to life with every breath taking battle and a very unique way of putting man and gods in coexistence, way different from any other fantasy author I've read in the past. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes fantasy novels.
The plot of McDevitt's new Alex Benedict novel recalls his most recent Priscilla Hutchins novel, "The Long Sunset", which finds the author spinning a first contact scenario through a narrative of discovery and mystery. The book is like a comfortable old pair of shoes, for better or worse: its familiarity is beguiling and relaxing, though at some point you stop noticing it's even there.
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McDevitt makes it easy to return to the far future world that Alex and his pilot Chase Kolpath inhabit. It is a largely pleasant, low-conflict future, though not entirely lacking in the typical anxieties that attend human society. Alex, now re-united with his recently recovered Uncle Gabe, is still selling antiquities and artifacts, and Chase is still getting him wherever he needs to go. The story kicks off when an exploratory vessel stumbles on a tiny alien colony in the furthest reaches of known space. Up until then the only other alien race humans had encountered were the Ashiyyur, with whom they fought a long and devastating war before achieving a peaceful resolution. So when a follow-up mission is sent to make first contact, they are even more surprised to discover that the colony has completely vanished, leaving no trace of its presence behind.
In another odd twist, a third, completely different alien race of spider-like humanoids shows up to make first contact with humans. These folks, the Ulakans, are friendly and inquisitive, and their culture is so similar to that of humanity that one of their great works of literature seems lifted from Shakespeare.
While the encounter with the Ulakans is a positive one in contrast with their previous encounter with the Ashiyyur, the question of whether to send another ship out to look for the missing alien colony becomes a political hot potato: the general consensus is, we got lucky with the Ulakans, who is to say whether these elusive alien colonists have similar goodwill and peaceful intentions or not? It is decided that no further missions to that star system will take place, and furthermore anyone who attempts to privately undergo a mission there will be subject to legal penalties.
Alex is of course having none of that. Soon he and Chase have put together a party to reach out and find where the lost colony went, and hopefully pick up a few artifacts along the way that might make up the losses they will incur for defying the law.
The novel's strengths are those typical of McDevitt's fiction. His ability to craft an engrossing and suspenseful scientific mystery has not diminished over the decades, and his characters are as likable, and likeably flawed, as ever. In this case, though, his weaknesses are magnified by design. McDevitt has always been a proponent of the idea that cultures will necessarily evolve in the general direction that European civilization has taken, hence the very Eurocentric slant of future humanity and the aliens they encounter. It bogs the story down in a conceit that isn't particularly illuminating or wonderous - that humanity ventures out to the far reaches of the galaxy to find alien races that are really kind of boring and like us. Additionally, the lack of a true antagonist, or anything but minor obstacles in Alex and company's path, keeps the stakes too low for this to be anything other than a minor entry in McDevitt's canon.
This book is ok but I hoped there would be a lot more action and a lot more Darkstalker.
Best and longest book so far I hope there are more like it.
Battle scenes are choice
Alot of boring set up but man when it's done ... minus that one crap chapter.. is that a spoiler?... naaaaaah
This one is slow and kind of whiney but still interesting
Probably my third favorite book of the series the details.
Pretty good alot of character intro and story set up though
While the author doesn't have a set release schedule the books themselves are imaginative gems.
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