Astor Reinhardt

Not one for reviews but I'll share some thoughts I had once I finished this book.

There's a lot of unanswered questions here.

Like:

- Alexander and Borphis. Does Alexander recover fully? Does Borphis go home? Do Marcia and Alexander ever have that much needed talk to answer her (and our) questions?

- Suzy and Marcia. Where do they next go? After Father? Where is he? Where is Annie (was that her name?)? What about the ring? And the Goddess? Hannah?

Given that the book was published two years after I was born...I'd say there's a good chance that the author isn't going to make a fourth. But it seemed like there should have been another book...or at least a short wrap up to all the characters and their stories.

I loved this series but it feels wrong to end it here when we still know nothing about Father, the Sisterhood, all the issues in their world and what will happen to the characters.

I really struggled with this book. The massive amount of “made up words” threw me off. I didn't understand half of what went on in this book. If your book requires you have a dictionary in the back...you're doing something wrong.

It was not an easy book to get into...I stopped reading it at one point early on but I forced myself to read this book. If only because a lot of people seem to think it's a must read for sci-fi lovers...it's not. It's dull and needlessly convoluted.

The only saving grace for this book is the setting. I thought the setting in a desert planet was pretty cool. I also liked the plans the Fremen had for reshaping the planet.

But the writing...I'm a fast reader and it took me nearly a month to read this small (in my opinion when compared to some of the things I've read) book. Somethings wrong with that.

People keep calling this book a “grand epic”...I can think of plenty of other books that fit that title a lot better.

After reading the amazing nerdgasim that is Ready Player One, I went into this book thinking I'd be reading nearly the same amazing story...just set in space...and with aliens. That didn't happen.

I'm not huge on space/aliens in general...same with “war” stuff as well. But I figured I could give this a shot given Ready Player One was so god damn mind blowing.

How Cline went from RPO to this...mess, I will never know.

It has ok parts...I like the geek/nerd references, Lex was pretty cool, and I liked Milo and Shin (yay for gay characters).

But it has a lot of bad parts. The main character and nearly every character (ignoring the ones I liked) were boring. The plot was...convoluted. All the EDA terms were just...god a mess. Maybe it's because I'm not into mechs and war games...but I was skipping over whole chunks of the book just to get through all the junk about EDA mechs and drones and blah blah blah. BORING.

And the self sacrifice bit was pretty obvious as soon as they introduced the dad.

I thought the “romance” between Zack and Lex was...shallow and shoved into the story. I get that “omg the world is ending...let's find a corner and $%*^” mindset...but it just wasn't needed. Lex could have stayed a friend to Zack...and just been a cool kickass strong female character. I think she was cheapened by the need to force them together for a romantic angle.

I'm not terribly great at reviews, so there's probably a better review on this book that you can read.

That being said, let's get into it.

I started this series years ago, when I stumbled across the first book in a thrift store. Ever since then I was hooked. I've actually had a hard time tracking down all the books in this series (some of them I had to buy online), but the series was so good I wanted to get all the books! And then...the series changed. I can't remember which book Hirata was forced into the group (was it the one before this one?) but it started going downhill there. Rowland has used ghosts and the spirit world before in her books, that didn't bother me. What bothered me is she made a “get out of jail” card with Hirata and the ghost. I suppose it really started when Hirata was injured and had to turn to the mystic arts to get strong again. She was making this character...overpowered and totally different from what he used to be. He loved Midori and his kids...now he leaves them and ignores them? When he's with them he fights with Midori? That's not his character. She totally messed up Hirata.

And she keeps doing it. Giving him more and more power. Putting him in an impossible position and finally throws the character in the trash when she has the ghost possess him. She would have been better off just killing him. So now she has an overpowered character that can come in and wrap up the ending of the book, fixing all the problems she made. Lazy writing in my opinion.

I guess as series build and get longer and longer...the author just gets lazy. It's happened in other series that start off fantastic and end horribly. Steven Kings The Dark Tower series comes to mind.

I feel that she could have took her time and made a longer book or another book altogether and actually spent time on fixing the mess she made of the characters and the world. Not only did this book make a mess of everything in that world, it felt rushed. Like she just wanted the series to be over. Which after 18 books...I suppose I can see that.

It's a poor ending to what was a great series. The characters deserved better.

So Dust Lands #2. What a mess. I'm not one to do reviews, but when/if a book I read flops hard...I make an exception.

Let me start off by saying the first book was great. It wasn't a total Hunger Games cash grab...as it had some different things in it. Not much but it was there. Enough to make me ignore how much it was copying from Hunger Games (main character is female, who has a sister, MC has to fight for her life and over throw a powerful person to be free.) If she hadn't been shaved she'd have the long hair as well. But I digress. So the first book was good. Second book started off strong and then lost me near the end when she meets up with DeMalo. Really? TWO love interests?! Three if you count Tommo. Just...no. I can't keep saying that the series isn't trying to be a HG cash grab anymore. It's copying it way too much. Maybe all post apocalyptic young adult books start to sound the same? I just wish there were some where the MC DOESN'T have a love interest. That's the weakness in Hunger Games as well. Why does such a strong female lead need a love interest? She doesn't. Same here with Saba. She didn't need a love interest.

But I could look past her and Jack...fine. But her and DeMalo? Seriously that came out of left field. There's no reason for her to love him. NONE. The author just wanted a cheap way to make drama and a love triangle is the easiest way. That's poor writing in my opinion. I'm looking forward to the end of the series...I totally lost hope in the series after this book. I'll read till the end because I like finishing thing.

My advice to people who are new to the series? Stop after the first book.

I'll keep it short. This final chapter to the series was a convoluted mess. It's always a disappointment when sci-fi authors have to rely on over complicated words and phrases in their books. None of the other books in the series had this issue, so why did they do it in this book? I had a hard time trying to get through this one.

When a book needs a dictionary of terms for one of your main characters, you lost me.

The idea of this book is a great one. It just didn't take off very well. One of the characters speaks in code (took me half the book to figure out aff meant affirmative.) and the other...symbols? When you waste two pages for just symbols, that's lazy. I don't care if you're a well known author or an indie author; you use symbols to pad your book, it's lazy.

So much of this book just ticked me off. I love the idea of a post apocalyptic Seattle and as I said, the idea/plot was a good one.

You had several good ideas here. Like the neighborhoods all belonging to different factions. And coffee being a big deal (realistic!). But the dialogue sucks. And I couldn't connect to any of the characters nor did I care about any of them.

This book was a big let down and I actually regret buying it.

This book suffers from what I like to call “being wordy”. As in it sometimes gets so convoluted that it throws me right out of the book and it's hard to get back into it.

It's not the worst thing I've ever read, but it's not the best. Still better then The Handmaid's Tale, another...flawed...dystopian novel.

I like it enough that I'll read it again, and I might have to because some of it just went right over my head. So I'll hold off on giving a “final” review.

But from just my first read through...it's good, if a bit dull and “wordy” at times.

Where to start with this book? I guess I'll say what I liked and what I didn't like.

Liked:

The idea of this story. I'm all for dystopian, post-apocalyptic and so on books. The idea of women and men becoming sterile and having trouble making children, thus in the long run, having the threat of the human race dying out; is a really good idea.

The Eyes. The black vans pulling up and kidnapping people in broad daylight reminded me of Nazi Germany with the SS and Gestapo. Of the people in charge going mad with power, that they can do all of this and everyone turns a blind eye to it.

Moira. The one woman in this book who wasn't completely useless or dumb as a sack of potatos. A shame this book wasn't about her.

Didn't like:

The story felt all over the place. At the end (spoiler) the author gives a half assed reason as to why it seemed like this, because Offred had recorded her story on cassetes that were never labeled so years later the Professers who found the tapes had to guess what went where. It was a very lame excuse. The story didn't connect well and took me right out of it whenever it would change.

Offred herself. I get after having her family and rights and everything stripped from her, will change a person. But god damn I could not feel for her. She was a whiny little coward, she even says so in the book. That she'll tell the Eyes anything they want to know. She's also stupid as hell. She doesn't plot or plan to escape in detail, she just thinks of half assed ideas and never puts effort into them. Like an airhead...one second the idea starts to form and then the next she's thinking about flowers or something. Moira was a way better character and I wish the story had been about her, with Offred being the side character.

The sexism. Now I've read that people call this book 1984 but for feminists and how it's about women's rights and all that...but it's sexist. I know it's meant to be since the story is about a goverment power (?) who takes all the rights away from women and treats them as objects. But damn, when you have a shitty weak main character that just bends over to this BS and takes it...it loses the “feminist point”. I'm not a feminist even though I'm all for equal rights, so maybe I missed that part, but this book screams sexism.

The ending. It's bad. Hands down one of the worst I've ever read. It's like a TV show with that cliffhanger...and then it's done. Unless there was a follow up book (?), it just leaves off with a cliffhanger. Oh there's that crap about the Professor's but that's not an ending. Not a good one at least. It leaves so many questions unanswered. Like what happened to Moira and Offred? What about Offred's daughter, husband or Mother? The daughter is alive and adopted by a Commander and Wife but nothing else on her. Husband...dead or alive? At parts in the story it make's me think Luke is dead, other times I think he's alive? The Mother was seen in a film by Moira...that's it. And Nick...we can only guess what happened to him as well. This book just left me without answers and that's the sign of a piss poor book.

Overall feeling:

I'm glad I read it because it was a different take on dystopia from what I've read, but it was poorly written and left a lot of questions unanswered. I won't be reaching for it to reread it for some time but I also won't be chucking it into the donate pile. It's just good enough to sit on my shelf, but bairly. I wouldn't recommend reading this unless you ran out of dystopian fiction to read.

Here is my poor attempt at a review. I won a copy of this book in a giveaway on Goodreads.

When I had heard Robert Harris was writing another book about Nazi Germany, I was excited. I had loved his other book ‘Fatherland', so I expected to love this one as well.

Not so. It was very hard to get through and finish the whole book. It's dry and boring. There is a slight hint of excitement, but it never quite builds up. What you are left with is a fairly boring book about governments and meetings.

It's just dull. I can't honestly say more than that as...the book really is nothing more than what I just said.

I think the book could have been better. There is a tiny sub-plot, where the two main characters go to see their old friend. That character and her story could have been made more important. She was about the only interesting thing in this book.

It's a shame, I really did expect better. And I wanted to like this book.