Kamal

The story progresses well in this latest installment, and there is a good amount of plot development, with a greater focus on land battles than the naval battles of previous volumes.

The narrator might be tolerable enough, he has a good range of voices and does a good job adding some "character" to the various individuals, especially with the cast of hundreds that Weber typically has in these books.

However, I cannot for the life of me understand why the narrator had to change the accents, voices, and even the prononciations of each of the characters. I can understand a shift in tone with a new narrator, but I winced each time I heard him butcher the prononciation of each word, whether the name of the countries, or the names of the characters. Did he not even listen to the previous volumes to get a bit of consistancy? That was just inexcusable. Where were the producers?

I have listened to the entire series from the beginning on audiobook, and while the two previous narrators were both good, the shift in accents for the main characters was jarring enough when switching between the first and second narrators. With the shift again with the third narrator, it very much undermines the relationship that we listeners have built with the main characters, and the change in how the names are pronounced (Nimoo to Nimoway - phonetically), etc is very jarring.

Unlike some authors, Abercrombie truly wraps up his trilogy in - shocking - 3 volumes! :)

He wraps up the main storyline while leaving enough loose threads handy for followup stories (which are also excellent by the way). I'm very happy I was tuned in to this author.

As for the story, we see the various plot lines for the Cripple, the King, the Wizard, and the Bloody Nine and his gang, come to somewhat surprising conclusion. We learn the true nature of the Bank, and the true villain is....!

Great dialogue, clever lines, and some great, over-the-top violence.

I have since gone on to consume the next three books set in the same world, and each continues the tradition of bloody excellence!

As usual, Sanderson bring his imaginative A-game, with a new and interesting premise of a man with multiple personalities that he manifests to solve different problems. This was a good introduction, I'd like to see it developed in a longer format, to fill in more of the sketched-in background and pick up some of the undeveloped plot threads.

You can't beat free, and it was more than worth its price! :)

The book was a bit difficult to get into, with many new, fictitious words being introduced without the proper context, kind of expecting us to understand what they mean. Eventually most of these are described or defined, either through the story or through short passages from the "New Dictionary".

While the overall plot doesn't have a lot of surprises, its the exposition on the basic philosophy behind the plot, that provides the real meat of the story. An interesting view into a world where academia becomes a world of its own, quite literally separated from the rest of society both physically and socially, with its own world of custom and practise.

Give it time, and you'll come to enjoy the story - there are no great heroics, but the characters are likeable.

Oliver Wyman is the main narrator, the others provide supporting voices for things like chapter headings and definitions.

A fast paced start to the trilogy, it seems that the characters have just been introduced before the story is over. Each of the main characters is deeply flawed in some major way - a vain, shallow aristocrat, a bloody, psychotic barbarian, a murderous, crazed former slave-girl, a sorry, slow, magician's apprentice, and a bitter, crippled inquisitor. All have been marked deeply by life, and pulled together by a brotherhood of mages to take on an ancient evil reawakened.

A more unlikely group of heroes, I don't think I've come across.

The narrator does an excellent job of imbueing each of the characters with distinct voices, and just the right tone of voice to capture the the subtler nuances of each characters circumstances. He even manages to bring a "voice" to a mute character with no tongue.

Just enough of the history and geography of the world has been established to whet your appetite for more.

I look forward to the next volume!

An interesting premise - finally an explanation for why the anonymous "Red shirts" from the famous TV series keep dying off. I felt though, that most of the characters lacked depth (or was that intentional?), and it was a bit "meta". However, it was a good, enjoyable comedy along the lines of many Christopher Moore books with some dry humor and a break-neck plot pacing.

A good light-hearted diversion.

The book fills in much of the backstory that was just hinted at in the games, and serves to tie together the plot from both Bioshock games. No real surprises, but it did make me want to go back and replay the first game, and finally finish the second. If you were a fan of the Bioshock games, then you'll want to buy this book. If you were not, its still a good read, though not very subtle or particularly well-written. That's not really a knock against the author - the story had enough twists on its own, but he's working within a very rigid framework, more so than other works set in rich IPs.

There are very few books that I literally could not put down, and this is one of them. While the real identity of the "villain" was pretty obvious (at least to me), the constant, breakneak pace just does not relent, driving Robert Langdon (and ourselves) constantly through a single, helter-skelter night. The only disappointment I had was the wishy-washy moralization and prosletyzation at the end of the book.

I picked up this debut novel from Brandon Sanderson after reading the new Wheel of Time novel, where Mr. Sanderson has picked up the reins from the deceased Robert Jordan. I liked that book, so I decided to find some other works by Mr. Sanderson. I very much enjoyed this work, which shows some real imagination. I only regret that there do not yet seem to be more novels to make this a series! I have now picked up several more books from Mr. Sanderson and hope to enjoy them as well.

This is the most disappointing novel I've yet read from David Weber. The characters spend a LOT of time just talking, and their witty reparte (somehow they're almost all witty with a wry sense of humour and sarcasm) takes up the bulk of the book. There's very little combat or action, and very little new plot. What plot there is, is really just a bit of backstory on some of the happenings in the larger Honorverse. I won't say it should be avoided, but it might be better to read it where you can skim through some of the boring bits - like the beginning, when almost 1 hour or more is spent on a long, drawn out political discussion with little context as to what it has to do with the rest of the story.