Friday, November 30, 2012

read: Frozen Heat (3 stars)

Frozen Heat (Nikki Heat, #4)Frozen Heat by Richard Castle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The latest tie-in novel for the Castle television show is pretty much exactly what you expect a tie-in to be. Therein lies my growing complaint.

While the stories and writing are pretty good, and this plot is (ultimately) one of the best so far, I am tiring of the Mary-Sue of it all. The 'real' Rick Castle would never write this book. In retrospect, he would have never written any of the Nikki Heat books. They are too on-the-nose reflections of his (fictional) life. These are books about Castle, rather than by (Richard) Castle.

The first two-thirds of the book moved pretty slow for me. Either it's chock full of too many introductions and traveling about, or I was just impatient. Either way, it seemed like it took forever to get through. But then things picked up and I liked how they wrapped things up.

Summary: Almost 4-stars for overall writing and plot. Marks off for some boring bits and for Mary-Sue (Ricky-Sue?).

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Tuesday, November 13, 2012

read: Stories: All-New Tales (3 stars)

Stories: All-New TalesStories: All-New Tales by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was just getting into Neil Gaiman when this was announced and had to have it. It had to be good. Right? Eh.

Neil's contribution was pretty good, as were a couple others. A few stories were real clinkers. The rest pretty average. There are some big names here. I expected better.

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