Peter Jones

I found the conclusion to the Hunger Games trilogy to be a grand disappointment. Gone is the strong, resourceful Katniss. She is replaced wholly by a whiney, self-indulgent teenager. That would have been fine at some point of the story arc, but not after all the life changing experiences she has been through. The deaths and violence often felt unnecessary, like they were just thrown in there to make the story more dark and grim. They didn't seem to.really serve much more of a purpose. Particularly the deaths of Finnick and Prim. Both of these felt like deaths thrown in there just to manipulate the reader.

Finally, the end left a really bad taste in my mouth. First off, the entire series starts off with the goal to protect Prim, and Collins doesn't even give that to Katniss. Second, I really didn't get the feeling at the end that the world was any better off than it was at the beginning. All in all, I don't plan to go back to this series again and am glad that I used the library.

Ender's Game is a classic. Probably my personal favorite science fiction book, it is perfectly paced. The action sequences are well written, and the more cereberal portions are incredibly engaging. Ender Wiggin and Bean are two of the best characters on paper. The catharsis of the final battle of the book is still one of my most memorable moments in fiction. Highly recommended.

I really enjoy the Silo Saga. Wool and Shift were both very interesting stories. Dust continues right where Shift left off. It does manage to pull the story to a decent conclusion. However, it felt like it took too long to get there. The first third of the book just didn't grab me and moved too slow. The end just sort of hits and didn't feel like we had a good wrap up. And while we got some small resolution for a very small part of the people living in the Silos, there were still too many unanswered questions.

Worth a read, but not quite the highlight the other books were.

As a huge fan of Rick Riordan's other books, I greatly anticipated his latest release. This release did not disappoint. I greatly enjoyed the mixture of Greek and Roman mythology, and the manner in which Riordan created two distinct worlds based on the difference between the mythologies. I did feel at times that the humor and “teenager-ness” was forced. The set up for further story telling is interesting, and I look forward for the rest of the series.

This is just... not good. I realize it is a set up for a much larger universe. But I don't see myself engaging in this universe anymore than I already have.

First off, the writing is incredibly amateur. This reads like some lesser quality online fan fiction. I can tell there is the germinal core of an interesting story. But I can't get past the poor grammar, the sloppy descriptions, and the ignoring or hand waving away any of the potentially more interesting points.

Also, it seems that the author thinks he is writing a “powerful, independent, liberated” main female character. So why is it that every description of her starts with how darn hot she is? And the one physical characteristic that changes when she becomes alien super vampire is her legs are longer and even more attractive? Let's see, we'll make her flawed by making her short, then sex her up by making her taller and her legs even more attractive? This is the sort of pandering in the guise of empowering that drives me up the wall. Let's make the characters interesting because of who they are, not because they rip people apart and look super hot while doing it. Groan.

At least it was a fast and easy read. Not totally worthless, but I would NOT recommend this to anyone I liked.