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3/5 stars

This was a b-day gift from my sister. Now I'm all set now for when I have to land a airplane, with my arm severed, and then ride into a sandstorm while trying to stop the out of control camel I'm riding. If the camel bucks me off and I fall into the ocean, I will expertly swim out of the riptide, and will clean out any leeches that are stuck in my nose. I will immediately take measures to protect myself from the aliens that caused the plane to crash and then bribe them into letting me go. Thank you "Worst Case Scenario Travel Handbook" and thank you Holly! :D

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5/5 stars

Wow, I LOVED it - and to think I nearly didn't bother reading it. So many of the reviews are about how hard the book is to understand, and how much you have to really concentrate to follow what happens. It made me really leery to even want to try the series. I recently had a really bad experience with another series that was highly recommended - The Claw of the Conciliator/Book of the New Sun - which has got to be the biggest pile of crap I've come across in a long time. That series really is impossible to understand. I was so fed up by the 2nd book I couldn't even continue. I was worried that GotM was going to be the same way - but it wasn't at all. Don't let the reviews scare you. The book is not impossible to understand, nor is it hard to get into. It does require more careful reading than I am used to, and I found myself constantly referring to the list of characters and glossary - but totally worth it. I did feel lost sometimes, but in a good way - I never was frustrated like I was with the New Sun books. One thing I like about Erikson is that there isn't any extraneous verbiage in his book. Everything that's on the page is important and there for a reason. One of my biggest pet peeves with authors is when they go on and on and on describing something that doesn't matter (George RR Martin does this all the time, he'll spend 5 pages on describing food or clothing and the New Sun books I referenced earlier do the same - there will be huge chunks of chapters that go on and on about nothing at all). I just really appreciated that GotM didn't fall into that nonsense. GotM had several characters in it that I loved (in particular Rake and Quick Ben) and several that were barely mentioned that I wanted to learn more about. I have seen in the reviews that this book is considered the weakest of the series, so I can't wait to get cracking on the rest of the books.

[bella-geek]

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4/5 stars

I really liked this one - it only took me two evenings to read it. I found it difficult to put down. In 2015 I spent a lot of time reading the Malazan Book of the Fallen which is dark, and complicated, with hundreds of characters, and finishing one of the books leaves you feel emotionally brutalized (which isn't a complaint), so it was nice to read something simple and interesting and not too complex. I had pretty much all of the ending already worked out about halfway though, but that didn't make it less interesting. My main complaint is that it really bothers me in novels when a main character falls in love with someone really quickly and for no real reason and of course he's some super-perfect-dark-and-dangerous type who just needs to be loved. It's very "young adultish". Anyway - it was a good entertaining read, just don't expect anything too deep or surprising. This book reminds me some of the Abhorsen series or the Graceling books. I'd call this a "beach read" for fantasy lovers.

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5/5 stars

Book 1, Sailing to Sarantium, was good, but this follow up book was fantastic. I'm a #GGK fan, and this is possibly my favorite book of his that I've read. I was happy, sad, in suspense, and even had a sickening pit in my stomach for part of the book. The big chariot race and what happened after was bittersweet as people more or less got what they deserved. I agree with others here that the epilogue ending was pretty unexpected, but I didn't hate it.

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4/5 stars

I really do like GGK's books but there's something about his style of writing that always stops me from giving his stuff 5 stars. The plot started out slowly and ended slowly once it switched back to Gisel. Some of the characters are so beautiful, so strong, so perfect, so clever etc that it gets a bit silly after awhile. Regardless, I enjoyed the book and just bought the follow up to it.

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2/5 stars

I gave this series a fair shot, but I just can't make myself be interested in the plot or care about the characters. I'm not interested in the gods or the magic system. I find this author to have a very confusing writing style...it's hard to tell who is speaking or who is performing actions. Also, I have a MAJOR reading pet peeve about books that have a plot that only consists of people traveling somewhere. It's boring...I'm looking at you GRRM. The Malazan Book of the Fallen has ruined fantasy for me, because I cant help but compare everything to it...and this one comes up way short. I will not be finishing this series. Too many other books out there to waste any more time and money on something I dont really like.

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3/5 stars

I'm not really clear what the point of this book even was - except to set up book 2. There isn't much in the way of a plot, and a lot of the characters have no point. Why does Jame become a thief if she thinks it is wrong and doesn't even really steal much? She becomes apprenticed to the greatest thief in existence, but we really don't see him much or learn anything about her training. It was mostly entertaining to read, just not sure what the plot was or the point - except to meet Marc and get the cat as a pet. I also don't love her writing style. There were several times where she writes something and I'm unclear who she is referencing or who was speaking. There wasn't much character development either. There's no one you're going to fall in love with or even hate. I'll give book 2 a shot, since I already bought it - could be book 1 was just a really long set up for the rest of the series.

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2/5 stars

I know this is a popular book and considered a modern classic, but I thought it was slow and boring. It's not a horrible book, and I'm sure there's some deeper meaning about society and civilization that I'm meant to appreciate. I got half way though and decided to quit reading. I have almost 300 books on my "to read" list so I don't want to waste my time on something I'm not enjoying. I read spark notes for the last half of the book so I know what happens and I don't think I missed anything at all.

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3.5/5 stars

Let's call this a 3.5.   I read the first half of this book a long time ago, and then never read the second half.  I recently picked it up again and I can't remember what specifically it was that made me quit the first time around.  I really like Hadrian and Royce, I think the writing is good.  My main complaint is that some things seem a bit too cliche - specifically Arista the beautiful princess who is probably going to end up with Hadrian and can suddenly do all kinds of complicated magic.    Regardless - it kept me entertained, and I'm curious to see how things turn out.  

PS - I really like the book covers of this series.

[bella-geek]

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So, I was out of town this weekend and found this book available as an audio file from my local library. I chose this one because it was only 6 hours long and because it fits many fantasy bingo categories (magical realism, fantasy that isn't western culture, under 3k reviews, book published in the 2000s). Anyway - if I had been reading this as an actual book, I would have quit, but since I had nothing else to do for my 10 hour round trip drive I persevered just so I could check off one of the more obscure bingo categories. This book is an African fable and I hated it. It was really boring, I didn't care about any one in it. I thought parts of it were really repetitive and ridiculous. I was completely uninterested in the story. Everything just moved really slowly. Frankly, I'm probably being generous giving it two stars. Obviously, this type of book, just isn't for me.

[bella-geek]

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4/5 stars

An easy fun read with a book that has a bad ass heroine and a little romance. I see a lot of reviewers calling this urban fantasy - I consider it more sci-fi. Guess it doesn't really matter. I enjoyed it, liked the characters, will be reading more in this series.

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4/5 stars

This series has an interesting idea - alien “spirits” are on Earth but require a human body as a host - ti’s a symbiotic relationship and the hosts (willing or not) are pulled into an ongoing war between the aliens.

I really liked it - it's not a life changing book, or the greatest thing you'll ever read, but it was fun, fast paced, laugh out loud funny and had a pretty unique concept (at least for me). I'll read the rest of the series.

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book 3 #LiveshipTraders

3/5 stars

This series was no where near as good as any of the Farseer series. I really struggled to get through this one. I found the repetitive political discussions to be tedious and all the misfortunes that fell on every single character felt forced. I also didn't care at all about the serpents or dragons. I guess the book/series just felt bloated to me. There were a lot of great parts and things I loved/enjoyed. It was just spoiled by excess.  I will not be reading the Rainwild Chronicles

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1/5 stars

Tried really hard to finish this (got to 56%)...but I just can't make myself care about anyone in it and I can't get into the story. Every time the word "gnomestress" is used I want to gouge out my eyes. Good thing it was cheap on Amazon.

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3/5 stars

ugh. I'm conflicted on this one. One one hand, by book three of this series, you know exactly what you're getting into with Caine. On the other hand, this book was far more brutal, unrelenting, vulgar, disgusting and inhuman than the others. At least in the other two books there was a break from Caine being Caine. We had Hari and his relationship with his wife and daughter, we saw him care about people. We saw him have friends and a real life - there were other characters who were in the story. Caine Black Knife is 99% just Caine being an asshole, killing shit and being tortured. There's pretty much nothing humanizing about him. I'm not one to usually be queasy about violence in books, but this one was just too much for me - which is ironic because I thought Caine was a bit of a cry-baby pussy in book 2. I wish I had just read Heroes Die and stopped there - but I bought all the books, so I'll take a shot at the last one and see how it goes.