Brian S

Disjointed. That's the best way to describe this book. It's as though half the book was meant to fill in the cracks of the other books in the series. Reminded me of the Appendices of The Lord of the Rings.

I got this in a goodreads giveaway, and it was surprisingly good. Without having read the previous books in the series, Speak of the Devil held up very well. The characters were very well written. The relationships were interesting. The suspense was... suspenseful. What more could you ask for?

It was a decent read, but it felt rushed. Especially the relationship with Xi Bang.

I had no idea what to expect going into this, but was surprised at how entertaining it was. Genuinely laughed out loud at parts.

As the number of pages until the end dwindled, I wondered how Goldman was going to wrap everything up. Well, he managed it, and it was a surprise.

I laughed through most of it, but parts of it I skipped entirely.

Like getting an appetizer when you expect the main course. Story was engaging, but ended too quickly.

About half-way through, I thought I had it figured out. Turned out, I was mostly right, but picked the wrong character for the bad guy.

Compared to others of the series, the macguffin in this one required a bit too much of suspension of disbelieve.

Just like the first Mercy Gunderson book, I read this one in one long sitting.

I have no doubt that this would be considered a good book by some, but it simply doesn't stand in line with the other Halo novels.

Not as entertaining as the first book.

Grrr.

That's the sound I made when I ‘finished' this book, since it has no ending.

A good mix of stories that flesh out the world of Halo.

I know that this is a dysfunctional family drama disguised as a snarky sci-fi story, but neither really were done well. Most of the sci-fi aspect was technobabble. The family drama was, perhaps, too well hidden beneath that technobabble.

Mixed bag, this one. The main character, Milo, is a guy you want to root for, but he makes it hard. There are plenty of points where the author was able to sell him to me. But then, there were also points where I was skipping entire chunks of text where he went preachy / philosophical.

Really, just too much time spent world building.

As a collection of stories, it was okay. As a novel, I found it disjointed and often rambling. Many parts seemed to run on in a seemingly endless stream of consciousness. Good characters; human, I'd say, which is a compliment.

Read it in one (long) sitting, so I suppose that says enough about it.

Really weird story. Hard to follow, but I guess that was the point.

I know that the Nick Stone series isn't all about action-packed adventure. But this is just bad. The most boring book of the series to this point.

This was better than the previous books in this series. It didn't feel like every clue fell into Carpenter's lap. There were still plenty of times when he and the other characters still did completely idiotic things. Plenty of times when the characters butted heads for no apparent reason other than it should make things dramatic. Worth taking a star away, in my book.

Heartbreaking, but good read.

Good story. Needs professional editor.

As always, the story is entertaining. Unfortunately, the sheer quantity of grammatical, spelling, and editing errors drag it down. Nearly every page of this book is littered with at least one error. Sometimes a character has their name spelled differently. Often the author confuses “there” and “their”, “too”, “to”, and “two”. Sentence structures often break, leaving the reader to backtrack to understand what the author was trying to say. Missing words, or words entirely wrong for a particular turn of phrase, confuse the reader.

Simply put, if just one experienced editor took a pass at this book, it would be significantly (and easily) improved.

This series seems to be getting less and less interesting and more and more far-fetched.