books
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis, 1952, 216 pages.
9/10. Easily the best book in the Narnia series. I read them in grade school, and this one and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe are the only two that stuck in my memory over the years.
Detective Comics #853 (Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? part 2 of 2), Neil Gaiman, 2009, 28 pages.
7/10. Nice. Not a terribly satisfying ending, but not disappointing, either, which makes it loads better than any other recent issues.
Shadow of the Hegemon, Orson Scott Card, 2000, 451 pages.
6/10. Even though you know how this story has to end if you've read Ender's Game (although you don't necessarily know how many books it will take to get there), it still sucks you in and is hard to put down. It's a fairly enjoyable read, but there are a lot of problems. It's not science fiction. It happens to take place in the future, but there are no sci-fi elements whatsoever; that's just an excuse for Card to make up whatever he feels like regarding world politics. And those politics are simplified to a level of a game of Risk. Characters can predict the future of world events based on a handful of pieces of information, which is especially unbelievable since Peter Wiggin, the supposed political genius, comes across as a complete twit in this book. And he and two other of the four main characters are insufferable smart asses. Even Bean comes across that way sometimes. The dialog is often terrible. Sometimes it's just awkward and unnatural. Sometimes Card uses it to frame things he wants to say to the audience, which is the most unfortunate aspect of this book. As great a storyteller as Card usually is, he's kind of a d**k, and as soon as I feel like I'm hearing his opinions rather than his characters' opinions, the book loses a lot for me.
Total pages: 6,898/10,000 (68.98%)
Time left: 4 months, 14 days (37%)
9/10. Easily the best book in the Narnia series. I read them in grade school, and this one and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe are the only two that stuck in my memory over the years.
Detective Comics #853 (Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? part 2 of 2), Neil Gaiman, 2009, 28 pages.
7/10. Nice. Not a terribly satisfying ending, but not disappointing, either, which makes it loads better than any other recent issues.
Shadow of the Hegemon, Orson Scott Card, 2000, 451 pages.
6/10. Even though you know how this story has to end if you've read Ender's Game (although you don't necessarily know how many books it will take to get there), it still sucks you in and is hard to put down. It's a fairly enjoyable read, but there are a lot of problems. It's not science fiction. It happens to take place in the future, but there are no sci-fi elements whatsoever; that's just an excuse for Card to make up whatever he feels like regarding world politics. And those politics are simplified to a level of a game of Risk. Characters can predict the future of world events based on a handful of pieces of information, which is especially unbelievable since Peter Wiggin, the supposed political genius, comes across as a complete twit in this book. And he and two other of the four main characters are insufferable smart asses. Even Bean comes across that way sometimes. The dialog is often terrible. Sometimes it's just awkward and unnatural. Sometimes Card uses it to frame things he wants to say to the audience, which is the most unfortunate aspect of this book. As great a storyteller as Card usually is, he's kind of a d**k, and as soon as I feel like I'm hearing his opinions rather than his characters' opinions, the book loses a lot for me.
Total pages: 6,898/10,000 (68.98%)
Time left: 4 months, 14 days (37%)