dorinlazar's reviews
539 reviews

The closing chapter of the Hunger Games trilogy lacks the wonderful pace and clarity of the first two books. However, there is a new approach that reminds us that Katniss Everdeen is an underage girl, and she is given a bigger role than she can handle.

And she pleasantly fails in her endeavors. Just like a 17 year old would. She is caught between things beyond her comprehension, including her feelings.

Unfortunately, because of this conflict, foreseeable from the second book onward, the whole rhythm suffers; this is a book that should be read in a different voice.

Four stars for the great ending; while full of cliches, it's still a nice ending, and a natural resolution for the whole plot.

It's an interesting new perspective on Romania, a view from the outside. However the writing lacks the fun element, the stories become a drag.

Can't say I'm impressed, but it's an OK book. For a Romanian it's an interesting read, for a foreigner it's an incomplete view. In the end, it's all for themselves.

The more dense 'Exile' places Drizzt in the solitude of the Underdark, before his greatest decision. This is no easy feat; alone, with Guenhwyvar that can only join him for a quarter of his time, he becomes his darkest self, The Hunter.

It is a story of solitude versus friendship, it's a story about facing fears, about fighting your own instincts and overcoming your own dark self.

It is a lot more dense than the previous books (including the Icewind Dale trilogy, which should be read before the Dark Elf trilogy), with a lot more cinematography than the rest of them as well. The fight scenes are described in great detail and they are quite long as well; the author takes pleasure in describing swings of swords and clashes of weapons.

This set of adventures, however, manages to take off from the Dungeons and Dragons canons, becoming, even more so, a better D&D book; it has travel, it has fighting, but it doesn't have all the "now use the D20" feeling to it. It's finally a book that stands on its own, a book that can appeal to non D&D fans.

A book that explores more than just swords, but also the depth of the solitude of Drizzt Do'Urden, as well as a meditation on the value of friendship.

This is a dense story that takes us in the familiarity of the Icewind Dale trilogy. This book contains the final chapter of the Dark Elf trilogy, the 'get out of home and grow up' trilogy regarding Salvatore's best character to date.

It's inconsistent (now all of the sudden the dark globes can move, for example), it still has that 2d20 feel to it, although D&D transpires less in this part than all the other two of the trilogy.

The character of Montolio DeBrouchee has some legendary features (including seeing without eyes and talking with a bird very fluently), but in the end it's the source of the smartest and most emotional sequences of the trilogy.

Meeting Catti-Brie and Bruenor Battlehammer feels like home, and getting into Icewind Dale feels need, enlightening for anyone that read the Icewind Dale trilogy first (as Salvatore wrote them). If one fails to do so, they will find the Icewind Dale books a lot weaker in style and inconsistent as well. The order matters.

An essential book at the time, but now more or less common knowledge. The approach is less interactive than expected, and the book becomes quite useless after the introductory chapters.

This is an essential book for any developer, but I tend to believe that the techniques for refactoring presented here can be presented in a more intuitive manner. An accent on code smells would've been preferable. Most of the solutions are obvious and the cross referencing becomes tiresome after a while.

You should read this book in your teens or your early 20s. This is because Ender's Game is one of those books that you come to instantly know what will happen next. It's easy to see who the mysterious teacher is, it's easy to see when the games are not really games. This happens, however, because in many ways Ender's Game permeated popular culture and you can see the same things that happened there (and were mind blowing) repeated in popular culture over and over again.

It's 5 star material, however, I feel that the book main thread is uselessly filled with the backstory of Valentine and Peter Wiggins. The mystics of Ender's relationships (which is central to the book) is badly explored as well; a child of his age would not have the sort of refinement and sensitivity Ender has.

I would like to see a rewrite of Ender's game, in which the main flaws would be addressed. Make it not with infants, but with adolescents, make the backstory of the cold war work. That would make a five star book.

It's one of those progressive, liberal thinking that we so often see today that Jonathan Swift makes in this book. The perfect solution to eradicating poverty, and improving the lives of the rest of the world with it. Amazing stuff. It's the kind any new-ecologist would like, since they totally prefer animals to humans anyway ;)

Must read.

Bob Pape's story on R-Type brought back 'the good old days' of Spectrum games, and the fun we had playing that.

The story is not glamorous, and it's why it rings truer than ever. The story telling might be a bit too technical for the casual reader, while the technical reader might not be fully satisfied, even if we get to see the assembly code of the scrolling routine. It is, however, an insightful reading for anyone slightly interested.

R-Type used to rule, although my favorite spectrum game was Elite. :D