Brian S
Slow start, decent read
The pace was too slow at the beginning, causing me to not really be interested in the story. But once the hook was set, it sped up quite well.
I liked most everything about this book, except its pacing. It sort of meandered from past to present and back again. I don't know that the story could have been told any differently, but it was still frustrating.
Far too much navel-gazing. I honestly skipped full pages at a time, when the main character was simply spinning his wheels in the “woe-is-me” morass. The main character wasn't interesting. A simple people-pleaser tied to a narcissistic boss.
I don't care about either of them. I could not be bothered to like either of them. The motives of the boss are at least understandable, if cookie-cutter. The main character... well, so wishy-washy as to be pointless. And by the end of the book, he hadn't changed or grown, even a little bit.
You can skip just about 80% of the written words in this novel, and still follow the story. The author uses far far far too much descriptive text, and annoyingly long and repetitive introspective passages.
The plot, when you get to it, is a good one. But most authors would have condensed this entire novel into a handful of chapters.
Weakest of the series so far. I have a feeling it's probably because there was no family conflict for Cork.
It's interesting to see the humanization of what has in the past mostly been portrayed as unfeeling, almost robotic soldier. I think the author did a good job with the SPARTAN Naomi character, as well as her father. There were some decisions made that were rather transparently intended to force the plot, but aside from that, I thought it was an excellent read.
I've always felt that the best Lucas Davenport novels were the ones where Lucas had something personal at stake. This is not one of those novels. It's certainly interesting and readable, but it's not overwhelmingly engaging, because there wasn't much at stake for any of the characters known and loved by long-time readers of this series. That being said, I'll still be reading the next novel in the series, whenever it comes along.
I had been putting off starting this series for a long while now. With 12 books already published in the series, I was hesitant to devote myself to an unknown quantity. When I start a series, I finish it, no matter how bad.
Thankfully, I loved this book. I liked the characters, I liked the setting, I liked the writing. I'm kicking myself for not reading it sooner. Looking forward to reading the rest now.
Not a good book. Not a good story. Not good characters.
I bought this because it was written by John Locke. If I'd have known beforehand that it was written for tween or teenage girls, with a cast of utterly vapid, venial, and unforgivably stupid teenage girls, I'd have skipped it. I found myself wishing the bad guy would kill them all before the end.
Bleh.
I feel like I need to take a mental shower to rid myself of the putrid franchise this apparently belongs to.
The first half was a bit sluggish. Re-establishing Janeway took a bit more pages than I would have preferred. At one point, I even thought to myself “I sort of liked it better when she was dead.” It got better, though. And I'm glad that some interesting things have been set up in the delta quadrant.
I really liked the first Spero Lucas novel, The Cut. The Double has little in common with its predecessor.
The Double is stark, to the point of simple. Like the main antagonist, it's ham-fisted and blunt. Large portions of text throughout the book read like a travel guide for the DC area. The pacing is non-existent. The main plot and subplots do not align.
I was relieved when the final confrontation finally came about, because I knew the book would soon end.
It felt weird reading this book. The tone was off for a John Locke book. And the ending... well, there was no ending. It wasn't even a cliffhanger. It was like Locke just chopped off the back half of the book.
Really disappointing.
The quantity of grammar errors, and general poor editing knocked a star off this book. The spartan nature of the first two-thirds of the book knocked another star off. Really, this was a story that deserved more detail.
Average.
There were large portions that were bogged down by minute details that needn't be given to the reader. For example, I skipped several paragraphs at a time describing that planet, and didn't feel I missed a thing.
The pacing was chopped up again by flashbacks, though at least these were new content. Some editor was again asleep at the wheel.
Once the book had slogged uphill to the point where the Enterprise encountered the freighter, things started to pick up a bit. The comic book villainy of these spec ops characters, and their seemingly never-working plans and traps kinda ruins it, though. (How many times this series did this type of character exhibit the same failings?)
The ending... well, it's better than no ending. Neat little bow? No.
Now, some comments on The Fall as a whole:
Yeah, R&D was completely unnecessary. But I'll take one stinker that deserves flushing down the toilet if I get one like The Crimson Shadow and a few average reads. I'd like to hear from the defenders of R&D, who said that novel would be an integral part of The Fall. It really doesn't appear to be the case at all. So many threads from R&D, and the only one closed was the assassination. What was the rest of that book for?
The idea of the assassination was a lot more appealing than the end result of The Fall as a whole. There was just too much fluff and filler in the set. Drop 80% of R&D, edit out portions of 3 others (The Crimson Shadow can be left alone, in my opinion) and you've got a 3 book series that holds together much more tightly, and tells a story much more succinctly. The Powers That Be seemingly couldn't decide whether they wanted a series of standalone novels touching on a common thread or a serial novel telling a single story. This resulted in a schizophrenic set of books that at some points relied too heavily on flashbacks and rehash, and at other times had to skim over some possibly interesting background stories because the books were already getting too long.
Overall, the series was Average. It started with one of the worst Trek novels I've ever read. One of the worst novels I've ever read, period. But The Crimson Shadow was one of the best. The others adequately played their roles.
The only thing keeping this from being 5-stars is the fact that Twain positioned all people from the past as being naïve rubes, with no fundamental grasp of human nature (such as the basic act of recognizing a lie when told).
Mixed bag. Most of the stuff on the farm was fairly boring. Though, it was nice to get some time from Mary Catherine's perspective. A slight bit of suspense at the end, but aside from that, none really.
I received a free copy of Dead Insider via a goodreads giveaway.
The first thing I thought when I opened the package was that it was a surprisingly small book. Short. But really, it was long enough.
This was my first time with a Victoria Houston book, and I worried about jumping into an existing series. That turned out not to matter in the least. As far as I could tell, this book did not assume any previous knowledge. I never felt confused or excluded due to it.
As for the story... It was a good little mystery. Maybe a bit too convenient, but that's not always a bad thing. It's a light read.
The characters were likable, as well. I could tell they had depth and a history, barely scratched at, but there. I'm considering going back and reading the other books in the series, actually.
Matt Hilton seems to have finally gone over the top. This series may have just jumped the shark.
The villain was comical, in that you'd expect him to have been ripped from the pages of a superhero comic book. The idea that the victims would all keep quiet and meekly accept their deaths, rather than band together or ask for help was just plain stupid. The constant checking in on Joe Hunter's ever-rising anger and moralizing about his penchant for violence got old quickly.
Just a great big meh.
I hate to pile on, but like a few earlier reviewers, I was not impressed with this outing. I liked the first Marie Donovan novel, but this was not up to par. It needs editing badly. And, as previously stated by others, the first two-thirds of the novel are fairly boring.
Slow start, but then it got really good. Indications that there will be more set in this universe, but I'm not sure that will be a good idea. As a one-off, this novel was really good. As a series, I see it turning into a mess the same way the television series Heroes did.