Reviews and Comments

Naturally without the aliens, this nonetheless had a feeling of Eifelheim about it and I soaked up every page and nuance. it felt more alive and vivid the further back in time you went, and I suppose that's partly intentional with the future so bleak and miserable.
Totally enjoyed start to finish, very much my sort of thing.

I found the opening of the book a little confusing, we were thrown at Absolom without much explanation. Despite that, or perhaps because I wasn’t quite clicked, the revelations hit me without me having guessed what was happening. Sam’s prehistoric time didn’t work as I thought it would and much of the “Try but the universe is helping you” motif annoyed me some. Still, from the beginning of part 3 onward, I was intensely hooked, determined to read and keep reading until the mysteries and all around them had been resolved. So in that aspect, the book was excellent, because if you’d suggested doing anything else, I’d have said no thanks!

I enjoyed the alien viewpoint bits quite a lot but somehow the writing didn't click to give me maximal enjoyment. Perhaps I'll try again one day, but even with that this was 'good' because it's Lerner.

I almost heard Peter David in these pages, Greg does seem to have been able to stamp Q in a similar way. It's a little sad that this is quite an old miniseries now; for many years, anything that happened beyond the enterprise D was new and futuristic feeling. Time catches us all, I suppose.

This was a little fun, light reading, good to pop into old friends. I felt sorry for poor Leyoro, and enjoyed very much hearing the tones of the familiar actor's voices as I read this one.

Despite feeling a little fanfic-like and the death count of redshirts seeming a little worrying, I still enjoyed this. Despite Kirk and 7 obviously being very different and there really being no rationale for them put together, it managed to keep my interest. Thinking on it at a day remove it feels a bit of a contrivance: some of 7's way of speaking didn't ring very true, and Greg always shows off his grasp of temporally accurate vernacular by contrasting landing party with away team in his crossovers. Still, a few hundred pages is not too hefty.

I've never read a Brown: I got pushed abridged audio of the Da Vinci Code on its release, and the furore around it failed to attract at the time.

It feels like this one was written earlier - cellphones are very new tech and even floppy disks get an honourable mention. The crypto side of things was pretty interesting and of course the trope of teacher turned superhero is widespread. Some of the language stuff felt a little OTT at times too, and of course the last-minute array of firewalls was pure visual cinema.

all that said, I still enjoyed it, even if, quite Ironically, the book comes across as quite dated - unusual when you consider Brown's plaudits as a new voice of his generation.

Classic James, although all-the-more so after his death of course. A giant of a man, this was one of only 3 of his books I have yet to read
Vintage WWII stuff here, with a lot of naval work and considerably less character detail than I'd come to expect. Still very much enjoyed.

Some books just grab you. This one was hugely thought-provoking, from the synopsis alone I knew it'd be interesting but of course the devil is in the detail: the execution was flawless, and the impact and motivations of the characters was brilliantly realised. There are a number of books and authors which have a lasting, resonant impact on me, and this is joining them.

Passable entertainment, but when almost every solution to a problem is set a dinosaur on it I do begin to drift, mentally.
Also, one of my pet peeves is books that use time or dates to no obvious result, which happens here when people cross over, and also when the author clearly hasn't even read their dates back by writing something like 25nd or 22th which happened once here too. Not sure I have much interest in book 2.

I quite got into this, and as it turned into an arms race of mental and physical excellence, I found myself even more absorbed. The ending did seem to appear a little rapidly, and as with some of these ubermensch stories, the thought processes of the enhanced all seem to asymptotically converge to a degree. In that regard it was refreshing to have a difference of view between two characters. Up there with Suarez’s Change Agent for pushing the boundaries of genetic resequencing and the GPA having the feel of Marcus Sakey’s Federal Brilliance agency, Crouch has shown that once again he can tell a superbly compelling story with bold extrapolation.

I enjoyed this quite a lot. Every single time someone tries funny light sci-fi, of course the inevitable comparison to adams pops up. But that aside, it had plenty of amusement factor all its own. I felt like I was reading a funnier Ben Aaronovitch.

A quaint thing of its time, although surprisingly lackluster for me at the moment. Perhaps I'm just feeling a little off.

This sounded interesting on paper, but the actualisation didn't really hit home for me as I`d have expected. Enjoyable as far as it goes, but I didn't find myself captivated as I'd hoped.