Bob Nelson

Goopy romance is good! Shinn's Angelica series is about as goopy as it gets, so I loved it! Shinn can do non-goopy stuff, too -- her Twelve Houses series is more straightforward adventure, but equally well done. Troubled Waters can't seem to decide if it wants to be adventure or goopy... and ultimately falls a bit short on either side. Shinn fans will not be disappointed, but newcomers may be...
Not particularly recommended

Brandon Sanderson is a skilled writer. Good plot. Coherent fantasy world. Characters well developed -- I should hope so, in forty hours!

But... this is one of those grandiose "vast armies clash" books, where the heroes slay their adversaries by thousands... anonymous foot-soldiers of no more significance than dust. Each of those dead was a person. Each could have had a story. By the end of the forty hours, I was sick of the slaughter. So were some of the characters of the book, but Sanderson arrived at their distress through them, not through the dead.

So if you like "noble" heroes who commit mass slaughter on their way to saving the universe -- that will happen in Book Three -- then "The Way of Kings" will please you. It IS well crafted.

Personally, I'd prefer a sequel to Lois McMaster Bujold's "Sharing Knife" series. Credible characters doing a bit of good in their world, but not saving the universe.

"The Way of Kings" has two readers, a woman and a man. Both are quite good... but it was a bit shocking for them to pronounce characters' names differently.

Connie Willis is a conceited author. In the Old English sense of "conceit" -- a clever construction. Willis's conceit is to write about "historians" -- time-travelers from the 2060s who go back in time to observe "ordinary people". Her Doomsday Book, about a village during the Black Plague, was one of the most riveting evocations of human emotion I have ever read.
This time, Willis's "historians" are covering World War II in England.Their observations of ordinary people are of course an excuse for Willis to dress a fascinating parade of characters, dozens of them, all bound up in the everyday heroism of enduring a war: the evacuation at Dunkirk, the children's' evacuation from London, the Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the V1s and V2s, ...
Of course, the "historians" get caught up in the movement, and do heroic things themselves. Which should be impossible, because "the theory of time" forbids any time-traveler's meddling with the past. So... is there something wrong with time itself? Willis's characters must battle the Germans while they battle against the fabric of time itself!
These two books are in fact a single work, so you must read them in order. But DO read them! They are excellent!
... and then we must wait another ten years for Willis's next work... :-((((

Connie Willis is a conceited author. In the Old English sense of "conceited" -- a clever construction. Willis's conceit is to write about "historians" -- time-travelers from the 2060s who go back in time to observe "ordinary people". Her Doomsday Book, about a village during the Black Plague, was one of the most riveting evocations of human emotion I have ever read.
This time, Willis's "historians" are covering World War II in England.Their observations of ordinary people are of course an excuse for Willis to dress a fascinating parade of characters, dozens of them, all bound up in the everyday heroism of enduring a war: the evacuation at Dunkirk, the children's' evacuation from London, the Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the V1s and V2s, ...
Of course, the "historians" get caught up in the movement, and do heroic things themselves. Which should be impossible, because "the theory of time" forbids any time-traveler's meddling with the past. So... is there something wrong with time itself? Willis's characters must battle the Germans while they battle against the fabric of time itself!
These two books are in fact a single work, so you must read them in order. But DO read them! They are excellent!
... and then we must wait another ten years for Willis's next work... :-((((

In his intro, John Scalzi describes this book as a "re-boot" of H Beam Piper's marvelous classic, "Little Fuzzy". Like a lot of old SF, Piper's book shows its age just about every time it mentions something technological. That may bother some, so Scalzi wrote this modernized version. It will please both those who, like myself, like a good story and are not at all bothered by the anachronisms in "Little Fuzzy"... and by fans of modern, fast-paced smack-down dialog.
Piper's original is also present -- I haven't listened yet. I'm rarely happu listening to a book I've already read...
I wonder if Scalzi's version will age as well as Piper's...

I'm a sucker for Hornblower wannabes, and this was particularly fun because it takes place in the English Channel, quite near to where I live in Calais, France.
Good story, solid characters, salt wind and booming cannon!
Recommended!

I have a problem with McDevitt. I'm not sure whether I appreciate his work or not. His books loop back and forth through the same territory, both literally and figuratively. His future universe is tired. His characters' centuries-long lives are not easy to fill. Is McDevitt creating something profound, something worthy of our attention... or is he a skilled counterfeiter?
His characters have depth; his stories are not an Nth rehashing of an old standard... but I have trouble caring...
I don't know whether I recommend this or not...

I finished the book. Ouf!
Resnick writes decent prose, so the story moves along pretty well. Good thing, too! 'Cause if it ever slowed, the reader would notice that the plot is trite and predictable; the characters are stereotyped and predictable; that there really is no reason for this book. Not recommended at all.

Actually, I think this is probably a "young adults" book. Who cares? Foster is a first-rate wordsmith, crafting a solid storyline and moving it right along. The characters are nice to know (for some) or great to hate (for others), but constantly credible... including Flinx the flying, acid-spitting snake. Yes.
This is not great literature, but a pleasant pass-time. As such, recommended.

I like eccentric English detectives, so this looked like it might be good. It is.
Arthur Bryant is seventy-something and would like the world to have stopped somewhere in the 1950s, before the Empire disappeared and more importantly before electronics invaded every corner of his life. John May is a couple years younger and has more or less kept up with the world, and now makes a career of saving the catastrophic situations created by his genial but wigged-out friend and partner. Both are still on active police duty, as the prime movers in the Particular Crimes Unit, which takes on the odd cases that other police branches cannot fathom. These two are only the first of a battalion of savory characters that are the strength of the book. The plot is worthy of X-files, but who cares?
Recommended.

An introduction by John G. Hemry (the author's real name) tells us that the series's title (JAG is Space) is a pure rip-off of the TV series. In fact the central character is not JAG at all, but a brand new ensign joining his first billet, on a medium-sized "US Navy spaceship". Ensigns always get a primary mission and several secondary missions. Paul Sinclair gets stuck with "Legal Officer". Campbell/Hemry could just as easily have situated this book in today's Navy. The congruence is about 99%. The ship is nothing particular, with good officers and lesser ones. The captain is a careerist, but no more so than many in the armed services. Then "stuff happens", and Ensign Sinclair must make some tough choices.
This is a book about the military... in which there is almost no action. It is not about war, it is about sailors and about one man's apprenticeship of duty.
HIGHLY recommended.