Aimee

Seriously, how can you possibly go wrong with steampunk and vampires? I absolutely enjoyed this book. The character of William in particular was great fun. He had me laughing through the most absurd moments, and then ticked me off in other places. What a wonderfully complicated character.

That being said, I only gave the story four stars because there were a few elements that I found predictable. Still, Will's humor through it all kept me engaged and I look forward to reading more in this series.

I was waiting for Clockwork Princess to be available, so I decided to try Clare's other works. I knew it was a modernized telling of pretty much the same sort of story, with the same urban magic system going on. However, I have to admit I prefer the Infernal Devices series over The Mortal Instruments.

That said, this was a good book, even if she did take me down a weird road at the end. I don't like spoilers, so I won't go telling exactly what this twist was, but as a sister I have to say .... ack! Clary's reaction to this revelation wasn't great, either. There should have been more going on in regards to that.

Yup. I laughed so hard at this book that I knocked my coffee over. And I was at work when this happened, so you can imagine the hullabaloo that caused. I don't want to give any spoilers, but if you're a Star Trek nerd like I am, then you're going to love this book. Walk into it with that lighthearted attitude you use to watch the original Star Trek.

The characters were fun -- even if I was just waiting for them to get melted somehow. I loved the dialog, the debates, and the premise. The performance was excellent!

I totally wanted to smash the main character's head into a wall. Seriously. She was so ... so .... insipid. She had a bit of thought process to her -- in fact, that was all she had since she was sort of the female version of Hamlet, always whimpering over what she should do and not taking any action -- so I can't call her vapid.

She was "Aargh!"-worthy.

I liked the world. I liked the setting. But her inability to take action frustrated to the point that I just didn't like the book.

I loved this story. The characters might have had a little more depth to them, but for the most part I just loved it. The sheer creativity of the setting was wonderful. It was a fun ride from start to finish -- and the girl in the story kicked some butt without being cliche, which was a plus.

I picked this book up because everyone told me it was great science fiction. In truth, I thought the science was interesting, and some of the games were exciting to see what Ender would do with them, but I couldn't get past the boy's age. If the story had started with Ender just a couple of years older I could have enjoyed this book more. Or, if they had discussed what made Ender so special in more depth, I would have been able to swallow the plot a little better.

However, the author did not sufficiently describe this for me and instead of being able to suspend my disbelief, I was just annoyed. The performance was good, but the story had me shaking my head.

Also, the very, very end was weird. In a book where religion was just skimmed over, suddenly having Ender's words as "holy writ" felt strange. It was like the author told himself he needed to have something spiritual there so he crammed it in and tried to make it fit.

On a whole, however, the book was interesting and I liked the science, so I gave it three stars for the story, five for the performance, and then let it even out at four overall.

I couldn't help feeling like I was breathing in the classics while listening to this book. The performance was stellar and I actually cried at the end -- which is weird, since I read enough books that this really shouldn't have happened. The prose is so poetic that it makes the world feel tangible and alive. I loved every second of it.

I loved the world. Rothfuss built a beautiful, interesting world, but there were several events in the story that just made me wonder why I should care. I kept looking for the big motivator that tied in all of the events of Kvothe's life, but that key motivation had little or nothing to do with the storyline. In fact, at some points I thought I was reading about one man's D&D game. The only character who felt like he had any real depth to him was Kvothe, and the rest of the people on the page were just glorified NPC's.

That said, the world was awesome. The explanations of the magic system was great. I just wish there had been a clearer, tighter storyline that had a focused motivation for me to care about.