Daniel Vanzin

The parts concerning Dracula were interesting, specially the beginning, but they amount to maybe 8% of the book. The way the story is told, read from the diaries of the involved people, felt like a detailed account of an actual events, not the work of literature I find enthralling to read. So, too much useless details, not enough mystery, horror, fantasy, character development or whatever.

By the way, Van Helsing is a completely asshole. In multiple occasions he possess the facts of the situation and chooses to withhold them from everybody for days, leading them on and asking them to trust him utterly, without asking any questions. Then he acts all sanctimonious when he reveals what he knows.

I'm surprised how well rated this book is, but I guess people are just suckers for a good survival story, where someone persevere when everything seems doomed. For the fiction part of the book, you might as well watch the film, which faithfully represents the book.

What you get when reading the novel is... numbers. And a lot of them! I thing that 3/4 of the book is strictly about calculations, statistics, measurements, physics, chemistry, botany and what not. It is very technical stuff, although written in an accessible way. Think the TV series CSI. Most people have no clue what's going on when the expert meticulously explains what has happened, but hey can't stop watching it anyway.

It is not bad writing, just not compelling fiction. If I were to judge the 1/4 that does not relate to technical stuff, i would give this a 3 stars. This is sort of my kind of book really. I like technical stuff. But its just not what I am looking for when I'm reading for entertainment purposes.

The thing I like about the book is that it faithfully represents what would happen to a scientist when he is forced to survive in an improbable situation. Scientist are great people! They do not give up, they are intelligent, creative and logical thinking. the world is your oyster when you understand how the building blocks of reality work together to create anything.

The prologue was very interesting, then the first chapter started and it had nothing to do with it. It takes too long to introduce the protagonist, which at the point I stopped reading there was two of them. I'm sure their stories would connect at some point, but up to that moment they were very uninteresting, specially the woman protagonist part.

I hate when an possible interesting story is littered with boring fillings in order to what? Build the world with excessive descriptions? Narrate every single aspect of a characters perspective? Add dialogs that do not further the plot and reveals only how tame the protagonist is?

From what I could gather there was this Kaladin fellow who was a very good fighter and then he was captured. Then there was this Shallan woman who did nothing for many, many pages.

In modern times, Addie is a woman who loves books, drinking coffee, and doesn't want any man to tell her what to do. But when she was born centuries ago, she as supposed to be married and be a breeder as it was the costume of the time. To escape that fate she made a pact with the devil to live forever, but he also made her to be forgotten by everyone who meets her as soon as they loose sight of her.

Good premise, but cliched heroin and I didn't connect to the characters, places or prose.

Read 2:11 / 17:10 13%

Nothing much to say, neither does the book.

A guy is envious of another guy, yet he is his best friend. He is constantly feeling like he has it all, and that he is the one that deserves that. Girlfriend, family, money, better ideas.

Something happened between them, and the other guy imprisioned the main character, and now he wants to kill him.

Oh, and they found out that you get superpowers when experiencing near death experiences.

Read 1:05 / 9:54 11%