Steve B

• Rated 4 stars

“This is probably my least favorite Ian M. Banks book...but the worst Banks book is better than 90% of the books I read in a year. It's got everything that a good Banks book has, though it drags a bit at the end.

Particularly impressive is the extensive world-building in this one-off non-culture book.”

Steve B wrote this review Tuesday, July 21 2009. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 2 stars

“I'm not sure I will finish this. The first few chapters were extremely amusing but in the end, it is really just one joke, and I'm not sure that is sustainable for 400 pages.”

Steve B wrote this review Saturday, May 9 2009. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“This was enjoyable as all of the Old Man's War books, though there is a lot that annoyed me. However, most of what annoyed me was the sort of stuff that would have made me think this was an awesome book when I was 16. I guess I'm just an old fart who can't stand teenagers.”

Steve B wrote this review Saturday, May 9 2009. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 5 stars

“Womack does amazing things with language here, using the changing speech patterns in a girl's diary to illustrate her descent as her family sinks from upper middle-class Manhattan to the ghetto in a New York that like the country around it is falling into anarchy.”

Steve B wrote this review Saturday, August 30 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“I read this because I saw it in print and because I loved "Little Fuzzy" as a child. This is old pulp space opera of the purist kind, and while to plot is good and the characters are about as good as you can expect from pulp, I had a hard time getting past the politics, which were pretty offensive.”

Steve B wrote this review Saturday, August 2 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“This is amusing fluff. It is a choose-your-own-adventure book for the cynical internet age by the author of the girls are pretty website.”

Steve B wrote this review Saturday, August 2 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“Not the best book in the series, but one worth reading. When it started out, it seemed like it was going to tread too much old territory, but like the animal the book is named for, this is about transformation, so things change. It is a bit of an oddity, so it takes place in the human realm, before the events of Athyra and Orca, so don't expect new revelations. The setting makes it a bit of an oddity in the series in that none of the other characters are here.”

Steve B wrote this review Saturday, August 2 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“This book started out a bit slow but picked up near the middle and by the end I was a big fan. This is a prequel to the other books that take place around Yellowstone, and the only one that takes place when the "glitter band" was still the glitter band. But book doesn't really solve any of the mysteries of the other books. It's more of a standalone novel, and more contained. In the end, it is a plus.

For the rest of it, it is pretty much what you'd expect from Reynolds: Lots of dark doings, secrets and tense scenes.”

Steve B wrote this review Saturday, August 2 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“This is a short collection of very short stories about God. Imagine if Vonnegut were raised an orthodox Jew.”

Steve B wrote this review Saturday, August 2 2008. ( reply | permalink )

0 of 1 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 1 stars

“This was pretty ghastly. Cardboard characters and contrived plot full of holes. He could have saved us all some trouble by replacing it with an essay on civil liberties and a could of Yelp reviews of San Francisco burrito places.”

Steve B wrote this review Saturday, August 2 2008. ( reply | permalink )