GLENN O'BANNON

Coes is back on track with The Last Refuge! My disappointment with book 2 has been washed away. I loved the action and the political intrigue. Highly relevant to current geopolitical tensions. I enjoyed Peter Hermann's narration too.

At least one person complained about Scottoline's chapter. It was just as good as the rest, if a little short. Maybe they didn't like what happened.

On the whole the book was better than "The Chopin Manuscript." It was just as well-written but more cohesive and had a better plot.

As always, Alfred Molina's performance was OUTSTANDING. If you want to hear him at his very best though, listen to "Treasure Island."

I enjoyed the book and I think this multi-author experiment is working out well.

On any voyage of self-discovery there are bound to be potholes and missteps. And you can take the road less-travelled for a time. The diversions can be of great benefit. If your life is a map, you can take perhaps a couple of different freeways with side-trips along the way.

In this book, Roberts takes us from a maximum security prison in Australia to Bombay, India and beyond. He NEVER takes the freeway. He follows every plot thread and philosophical mind trip to a laborious conclusion, and sometimes no conclusion. It's a LONG trip.

It's incredibly well-written. After the first third of the book, I was prepared to give the book 5 stars as I fell in love with the Indian guide Prabaker and was intrigued by the enigmatic Karla. And I wanted to see whether Lin would find redemption.

Then the story gets bogged down. Just too many things happen as the book bounces down every fevered side-road that came to mind while the Roberts was writing the book.

So as I listened, I got the feeling that this book was less "How Green Was My Valley" and more "The Valley of the Dolls."

The book has some great moments and I was prepared to rave over this book. But as the plot careened to a stop I had to wonder whether the trip was worth it. This is the kind of story my son likes to call, "well written crap."

The characters were sympathetic and interesting. The readers were excellent! But the ending was so weird and unsatisfying that it left a bad taste in my mouth.

There was more detail about mercenary camp life than I cared for. Too much daily life and not enough action. When there was action, it was not as exciting as it should have been. Perhaps that was partly the reader's fault. She would be a wonderful non-fiction reader but she just didn't bring the characters to life like she should have.

Don't let the illustration fool you. I thought it was going to be a humorous book but it was a fantastic alternate history of Earth. Surprisingly good! It was really interesting to see familiar characters from history in different circumstances. Pinchot is a good reader.

What a fantastic series with a stellar reading performance! Just do yourself a favor and go get it.

And Tim Gerard Reynolds' inspired reading only makes the book that much better.
The characters are compelling and the story epic. Thoroughly enjoyable!

I am astounded. This book turned out to be so enjoyable, so epic, with such intrigue and action and humor. As good as any book I have read. The reader takes the great dialogue and performs it to perfection. A single word can be read a myriad of ways but the way he chooses to read it almost always seems absolutely perfect! I'm not reading anything else until I exhaust every last book in this series!

It was still good but I hope hoping that, since Geary was restoring not only tactics but faith to the Alliance fleet, that he would have higher moral standards when it comes to his personal life.