cavalary's reviews
269 reviews

Great. Interesting world, again a "what if" about humanity starting over, great idea about the close star systems, both personal and general views of the society, a healthy dose of the supernatural... Unfortunately too much traditionalism, but it was fought against and left only on a personal level in the end, which sends a good message.
Found the Asian theme (names, traditions, etc.) a bit odd, but after thinking about it I guess it's as good as any...
There were a few things that bothered me, but most were personal... Ideas some of the good characters had and things that the same characters did, usually or a personal or family level, that made me frown and clench my teeth for a moment... If they were one-time things, I'd have assumed they're there just as a reminder than no one is completely good (or completely evil for that matter), but some are recurring and that bothered me... Difference of opinions with the author I guess.
Still, a great read.

Just great! The only problem is that there are some moments when characters just happen to pop in the right place, at the right time... But I suppose that can't be avoided, there are so many stories interwoven here that explaining those events as well would make the plot have to slow to a crawl. And I'd have liked the overheard dialogues in invented languages to be translated too.
Things are moving in a direction that could bother some, but that seemed very logical and even quite desirable for me. You have a plot and definitely a deeper meaning here... But keep in mind these are not separate books, they're a single story.

Really good, though those random and incomplete bits and pieces thrown in sometimes put me off a bit. Sure, they complete the picture, but finish the sentences!
All excerpts from Chad's books, and several other things, were great food for thought, but the eugenics legislation described in this book is only the very first step of what needs to be done... yesterday; stops far too short.

Surprisingly good for something under 200 pages. A good base idea and a likely outcome.
Assumes, like most SF, that humans will get to the point where they'll no longer depend on Nature before they'll harm it so much that it'll destroy them in self defense. I find that laughable, but I guess it's kind of hard to write SF without assuming that.
Besides that part and the ever-present human evilness, saying it again, surprisingly good.

In this case, it's obvious the author is not the same as the one who wrote the previous book and it's also obvious he's not better than that one.
In this book, the characters don't move from one world to another, all the action being on the fifth world, minus a certain illusion at the beginning. In the first, they started on the Earth of 1868, wound up in the first level of The Dungeon and the end of the book caught them in the second level. In the second they really marched on, starting in the second level, passing it, then the third and fourth, with the end of the book catching them just as they're passing into the fifth.
The transition from world four to world five is troubling for Clive, as apparently the forces that run The Dungeon, and for whom they're mere pawns in a game, decided to test him by giving him an illusion of being back home and having all that he ever wanted. He didn't fall for it and was brought back, his memory of the event being wiped afterwards, though he still occasionally recalls troubling bits and pieces of it. The wondrous white suits given to them in the third world are also taken away during this transfer.
On another note, the author obviously likes dinosaurs and had to find a way to fit them into his book. Fitting them in was easy, but he made a slip: Chang Guafe calls them by their Earth names. His species never reached Earth, so how could he know all that?
About the story, Annie rebels when entering the fifth world, considering that Finnbogg kept her from exiting The Dungeon when she had the chance at the end of the second book, and wants to look for a way out. Clive wants to look for a way to the next level, still in search of his brother. So all the others choose who to follow. As expected, the group splits evenly, Smithe, Chang Guafe and Finnbogg going with Clive, and Sidi, rescued at the end of book two, Shriek and Thomas going with Annie. The two groups are followed in alternating chapters, their adventures showing two completely different parts of this fifth world.

Spoiler

Still, again as expected, they meet again at the end, to move on to the sixth.

This is "entry-level" Modesitt... Very light on the philosophical stuff, hardly any in the story itself, just the three "excerpts" and the tie-ins at the end about the different meanings of beauty. Good in itself, but not what I'm looking for in SF; I want concepts that really make me think hard, as in his other SF books.

Second book by Heinlein that I read and it just confirms what I thought after the first one: This guy's good! But I did see several reviews on a few sites that could be summed up as "Heinlein is a man of extremes, his books can be either great or awful, never in between" and that makes me uneasy about picking up one whenever that crosses my mind.
About this one... Well written, nice concept, believable cat. The bad thing: It was way too short, therefore the story badly suffered.

Picked this up for free and I'm rather sorry I did. A fair amount of work seems to have gone into it, but I couldn't even tell you precisely what it wants to be, and the writing style and the approach, not to mention the rushed ending pulled out of a hat, certainly ruin any potential the topic might have had.
The little action is no more than an excuse for convoluted descriptions and confusing references which may perhaps have some appeal for those with a particularly keen interest in the time and place the story is set in, but will probably be largely ignored by most others. Add the fact that everything takes the form of paragraphs that can stretch for a page or more, containing entire dialogs, multiple confusing descriptions and rushed mentions of entire lists of complicated names, as well as events and myths likely to be unfamiliar to most readers, and you end up with something that's quite a pain to read.

This might just be the best of the series, if you ask me, though I didn't read the sixth yet. Some interesting, but horrifying, concepts are presented here. One has to wonder if that's what it'd take to make humans at least appear to get along with each other. Probably so.
And it also shows the full extent of the timespan of the series. Amazing vision from the author, but I still hate it for the "reality" of everything in it.