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A Reader's reviews
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-08-26 12:26:50 for The House of Power (Atherton, Book 1) (No. 1).
(Language: English)
 
Having a hard time reviewing this. I believe as a twelve-year-old I would have found the story intriguing enough to pick up the second book. As an adult, I find the story a bit sparse -- in 320 pages, the Highlands collapse, there's a brief battle, then Tabletop descends and -- that's about it.
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-08-23 09:16:07 for Da Vinci Code.
(Language: English)
Truly one of the worst books I've read in the last twenty years, I've been consistently puzzled how any professional critic could fawn over it the way so many did. The book suffers from bad prose, broken grammar, B-grade dialogue, cardboard characters, and Dan Brown's infamous unfamiliarity with his own subject matter. His command of art and church history resembles not so much the impeccable research of James Michener as it does an afternoon spent in front of Google. The most glaring example screams out right from the cover: the man's name is Leonardo, NOT da Vinci, as any first-year art student -- let alone Brown's "art historian" spouse -- should have told him. More puzzling still is how any decent editor could have let this one by. (Oh, and, by the way, Opus Dei doesn't have monks.) Most of the puzzles Brown set for his protagonist were simplistic enough that I sometimes spent half the book waiting for Langdon to realize the obvious. This not only undercut the respect I was supposed to be according Langdon's intellect, it reduced many of Brown's plot-driving cliff-hangers to ennui. At the core of the Da Vinci Code lies an intriguing idea that, in the right hands, might have blossomed into a genuine historical thriller. Unfortunately, those hands don't belong to Dan Brown.
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-08-23 07:31:08 for Harry Potter and the deathly hallows (ill., engl.ed).
(Language: English)
A flawed conclusion to a generally excellent series, Deathly Hallows suffers from poor pacing, excess plot devices, and story arcs that go nowhere. While the plot takes off quickly, it soon slows, as Rowling spends a good third of the middle portion of the book sidelining our intrepid threesome while the wizarding world falls apart around them. The reason: Harry's indecision about which of Rowling's dueling story arcs to pursue -- Horcruxes or Hallows. Turns out he makes the right decision -- finally -- as the entire Hallows plotline ultimately leads nowhere, except to a confusing "musical wand master" speech by Harry that trashes everything we ever knew about wand lore in the Potterverse. The problem with the Deathly Hallows plotline is not simply that it contributes nothing positive, but that it severely morphs the book's pacing. By the time Harry finally makes his decision, Rowling -- despite the book's length -- finds herself with precious little time to wrap up the plot. The result is that not only is she forced to haphazardly scatter all the remaining horcruxes around Hogwart's just for our heroes' -- and her -- convenience, There are other problems as well: the Unforgivable Curses have transmogrified into the "What the Heck Hexes", which Harry tosses around with abandon. Snape, who through the first six books held the potential to be by far the most complex and interesting Rowling character, turns out to be little more than a creepy stalker, endlessly pining over a lost schoolboy crush. And the epilogue offers surpisingly few insights or surprises: twenty years after the epic events little seems to have changed in the wizarding world. All in all, a disappointing ending to an otherwise great series.
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