Jon

A good Pratchett adventure for Rincewind, but not my favourite so far.

and

Second time I've read this and this time around I wasn't as taken with it. It's an interesting idea but for me skips over the big bits of the story.too quickly. It also seems a bit maybe not quite sexist, but gender stereotyping perhaps, despite rhebowlrd having eliminated discrimation.

An interesting back tory to the main character of the series. Worth reading if you like the Matty series.

I've really enjoyed this series so far but I'm afraid I found this book a bit confusing (I even think Luna got a bit confused at one stage in the plot so maybe it's not just me and old age) I didn't feel the way Verus joined the keepers convincing or in keeping with his character. it seems to then change the whole world the stories are set in and made the book more of a cop fantasy detective than the quirky dangerous world that Verus loved in before. I'm still a great fan of the series though and hope that this book has been the set up of the next book and the looming encounter with Richard.

Another great adventure for Verus and more great dilemmas for the characters to chose between right and wrong. what I love is the way that right and wrong are grey and subjective and these books make you think about the choices the characters have made. there are the truly bad guys but there aren't any American clean cut hero types. Evil is fought (and ignored too) mainly by a mix of self interest and an occasional ‘it's the right thing to do' attitude attitude.

Excellent. I love these characters and plots. They really makes you think about right and wrong, choices and their consequences. I love the way that people don't live happily ever after and it's not all easy to hate the bad guys and love the good guys. To me its real world stay telling about real flawed people despite the magic.

Another great adventure for Alex, but not as gripping as the last I thought. I still thoroughly enjoyed it and am looking forward to the next one - i'd give it 4.5 if I could.

Great. I love the characters in these books and the very British way they behave - no tough Arnie action hero's - just almost reluctant and apologetically modest hero's. the relationships between them feel real - flawed and fragile and the world feels totally believable despite the magic. I hope we see a huge series of these books as I'm likely to finish all the current ones by the end of the month.

Really liked this, I loved the very British reserved reluctant hero, his flaws and strengths and the way he was clever without being tough and super hero like. the side characters were good too, Luna was great and I hope we'll learn more about her as the series develops and as for Arachne - brilliant. roll on volume 2

Not a bad book by any means but not great either. It was interesting how historical characters were tied in to the book but overall it was a bit dull.

Connie Willis says this sequel to Blackout started as a single novel and morphed into 2 books. I found the first book very slow and dull. The second instalment was much better and overall I quite enjoyed it but felt a bit cheated by making one fast paced good book into two. My dad always says word processors have made books too long, and I think he's right on this occasion. I also got really fed up with the constant worry of the characters and their inability to do almost anything without a disaster happening - they couldn't make a cup of tea without running out of water, the milk being off and the kettle blowing up and one of them dying... oh no they didn't actually die. This was another area of the book that left me a bit irritated. characters died, but came back to life too often. you just knew they weren't really dead. Most of the book is so predictable it felt a bit like a poor US scifi series, but the last few chapters had some good twists and meant I actually didn't feel completely frustrated by the book. I'd not buy another in the series, nor sadly Andy more Connie Willis books after this.

Nice idea, interesting characters and world. Looking forward to the next one

great fun, clever idea, good characters though the baddie was a bit of a clown character.

I liked the idea but I thought the writing style was more like a story by a teenager at school. Very few big words, lots of predictable events, poor descriptions. As for the baddies lacking night vision or infra red, I'd hope there would be some good explanation for this but either missed it or there wasn't. maybe I need to read the next instalment to find out, but I'm afraid I don't want to.

Not as good as the first book I thought, good twists though a bit predictable. Looking forward tot he next one....

Good fun, good characters, set in the UK not the USA which for British readers is nice.

Great fun book, loved the kids and the evil year head.

I can't understand how this book gets good reviews. It's dull, repetitive (how many times must each character say the same things about the retrieval team?) and ridiculous.
I'm happy with time travel and love the idea of historians observing the past, but despite it being time travel the team in Oxford are rushing about like headless chickens to send historians to events, barely prepared as well. The historians they send seem untrained and unprepared for their surroundings and they seem the least likely of people you'd send to a past event.

But above all my gripe is that nothing much actually happens. This seems to be a case of one book being decided into 2 and padded out. And the cliffhangers were so telegraphed that you knew immediately what was really happening each time before the cliffhangers was resolved after another 100 pages of fretting about the dam retrieval team... Lastly, these are historians from Oxford, yet their historical facts are dubious if not plain wrong. Oxford seems to have gone downhill in its standards since the present!

After the first two seasons, which were great fun and I just couldn't put down season three is a real disappointment. I can't really put my finger on why though! I had to force myself to read it, found myself skipping bits, especially some of the psychopaths dialog, and until the last third had no interest in whatsoever. I just didn't care if the characters lived or died and felt the resolution at the end was poor. I thought the first two seasons were Battlestar like - gripping, gritty and characters being driven by events, whereas the third season was contrived, too much flitting back and forth between before and after the event and almost like some TV series decided to drag the story out by adding another series or two and in doing so lose the best parts of the first two seasons.

I'm sure many will love this as much as the first two and will go on and read the subsequent series and good luck to you - each to their own, but I'm afraid I'm done.
What gripped me wasn't the writing, which I didn't feel was that good throughout, but the ideas, fast pace and great cliff hangars, many books don't have that zap that YG did in S1&2. I felt that the authors left this behind a bit in S3 almost in an attempt to become more mainstream.

Another thrilling season, great fun adventure and the usual cliff hangars all over the place keep you reading non stop. I enjoyed this one as much as the first season, let's hope it maintains the high standards for the next season...

Great fun read and as advertised it is a TV series in a book. Really enjoyed this and the great cliff hangars. Some Scifi TV shows could learn a thing or too about fast paced drama from this book. Looking forward to the next one.

I loved this! Steam engines, northerners, insurgents, loads of great characters and a really good plot, but it all kept coming back to the steam train. He manages to make you understand the fascination people still have with the railway and particularly steam trains whilst telling a great story. brilliant.

One of my favourite authors writing about one of my favourite TV series, can't get much better than that! a good Doctor who plot with John Pertwee series doctor being so real on the page and the master was fabulous, really good interaction between these two. Clever story but way to expensive for TV!!

I loved this book, it's such fun and so silly. It doesn't bother sticking to rules for books and just throws in characters from the real world for fun, making up adventures for them and generally having a fabulous time name dropping and planting loads of in jokes that I'm sure I only managed to half find. it's almost a book equivalent of a Carry On Film