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bmartino's reviews
1204 reviews
Bid Time Return by Richard Matheson
4.0
4.5 stars really. Rounded down because I thought the ending could have been fleshed out a bit more.
Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness
4.0
4 stars for the same complaint as book 2 - not enough differentiation between the two main characters. Book 1 didn't suffer this problem since it was written only from Todd's viewpoint. Otherwise the plotting was excellent.
Under the Dome by Stephen King
3.0
3-3.5 stars. This was the first Stephen King book I had read in a while, so it was comforting in that it was so easy to fall back into his writing style and rhythm. I had forgotten how well he can write assholes. But I didn't care for the ending at all. And I'm not sure he was really able to sustain the plot and twists and everything for 1100 pages. Needful Things? The Stand? So much happened there that it warranted the massive size. This one, not so much. I'd have to rank this near the bottom of King books I've read.
No Enemy But Time by Michael Bishop
1.0
Okay, maybe 1.5 stars. The plot in the main portion of the book was alright, but the writing/storytelling style was so very UNengaging. The coda at the end didn't even feel like the same book, and it made so little sense. I just did not enjoy this book at all. It must have been a thin year for sci-fi for this to win the Nebula.
Feed by Mira Grant
4.0
3.75 stars. A little slow at the beginning, but it picked up about 100 pages in and I couldn't put it down after that. Stylistically well written, with a couple plot problems.
A book like this is tricky - when the focus is "near future" technology, it's so easy to get it wrong. When someone reads the book a couple years after it's published, you hate to see it already be out-of-date and completely unrealistic. Especially these days, where media has changed *so much* in the last 10 years, it's impossible to actually predict how it will look 28 years in the future. This book teeters between making the social media world vague enough for it to still sound plausible in several years, and providing enough details to make it already feel out of date. My final reaction was similar to some other reviewers, in that bloggers are already making a huge difference in the news world. Thirty years from now, why is it such a huge deal that they've been invited on a presidential campaign? That particular detail made it seem like this book was already written 5 years ago.
I do admire the tactic of making the zombies in the book behave exactly like classic movie zombies. It saves a ton of time in having to explain what is expected of them. The reader isn't hit repeatedly in the face with how "Our Zombies are Different." (ref. TVtropes.org) Much more fun this way.
Where the book really fell down for me, however, was the final confrontation with the immediate villain. ("Immediate" in that the shadowy conspirators are presumably left for the sequels.) Talk about one-note and cliched. They actually got him *monologuing* about why he did what he did, and again it felt like this might have been written 3-5 years ago, when people wanted to ascribe the same kinds of motivations to the Bush administration. This wasn't the only example of lack of character depth and development, just the most egregious, and ultimately keeps this book from being really spectacular.
I know that sequel(s) are already planned, and don't get me wrong, I enjoyed reading Feed, but I think I'm content to leave the series where it ended here. Sometimes one-and-done is the best way to go.
A book like this is tricky - when the focus is "near future" technology, it's so easy to get it wrong. When someone reads the book a couple years after it's published, you hate to see it already be out-of-date and completely unrealistic. Especially these days, where media has changed *so much* in the last 10 years, it's impossible to actually predict how it will look 28 years in the future. This book teeters between making the social media world vague enough for it to still sound plausible in several years, and providing enough details to make it already feel out of date. My final reaction was similar to some other reviewers, in that bloggers are already making a huge difference in the news world. Thirty years from now, why is it such a huge deal that they've been invited on a presidential campaign? That particular detail made it seem like this book was already written 5 years ago.
I do admire the tactic of making the zombies in the book behave exactly like classic movie zombies. It saves a ton of time in having to explain what is expected of them. The reader isn't hit repeatedly in the face with how "Our Zombies are Different." (ref. TVtropes.org) Much more fun this way.
Where the book really fell down for me, however, was the final confrontation with the immediate villain. ("Immediate" in that the shadowy conspirators are presumably left for the sequels.) Talk about one-note and cliched. They actually got him *monologuing* about why he did what he did, and again it felt like this might have been written 3-5 years ago, when people wanted to ascribe the same kinds of motivations to the Bush administration. This wasn't the only example of lack of character depth and development, just the most egregious, and ultimately keeps this book from being really spectacular.
I know that sequel(s) are already planned, and don't get me wrong, I enjoyed reading Feed, but I think I'm content to leave the series where it ended here. Sometimes one-and-done is the best way to go.
They'd Rather Be Right, or The Forever Machine by Frank Riley, Mark Clifton
1.0
Well, I can't say I enjoyed it. To me this was a mess of a book. It's like there were 4 or 5 completely separate science fiction "ideas" that the authors wanted to explore, but they didn't hang together at all. Immortality, telepathy, computers that make decisions for humanity, and "single-value" vs "multi-value physics" (whatever THAT is) all make cameo appearances amid a very light framework of a plot that could have been MUCH more interesting. There's much better classic sci-fi out there, so I probably wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who isn't reading through all the Hugos like I am!