Actual stars: 3,5/3,75Took me a long while to get into it (hence the 3,5/3,75 rating), but by Jove it was fun in the end! The dialogues were so witty and so terribly and delightfully English. It's a good thing I bought so many Georgette Heyer books, because at this rate I am going to just devour them! They're just the perfect fun comfort reads everyone needs once in a while. Ah what should be my next Heyer? I'm thinking Grand Sophy, or perhaps Sylvester or....
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*Sigh*...I really have thought long and hard about the rating of this book. There has been so much fuss about Orson Scott Card lately, so I won't reiterate the whole boycott thing here (we do have this glorious thing called google you know). And yes like so many others, I too, must get something off my chest.Anyhow, I started reading the book before I found out about his extreme anti-gay stance and so my first experience reading the book was actually very pleasant. It was basically INSTA-LOVE from the get-go. Interesting premise, likeable protagonist, witty dialogue and a great pacing of the story, what more could I ask? And then I found about OSC personal beliefs and I was shocked, especially because I could not (and still cannot) find a single trace of his anti-gay stance in this book. The book actually deals with a lot of important issues, such as bullying, xenophobia etc. and deals with it quite well. And after finish reading it, I must confess that I find myself still liking the book, to such a degree that I would have favourited it, were it not that it was written by OSC. So what the hell do I do with a book that I love, authored by a person whose beliefs are the opposite of mine? What does it supposedly say about me? Am I now automatically supporting his beliefs by loving something he created? It's stupid really that it had never occurred to me that this could happen. I mean, at some point I just kind of naively assumed that awesome books automatically had awesome authors. A lot of other authors (e.g. Robert A. Heinlein and even Tolkien) came up during online discussions of the boycott, and I thought: "How the hell am I even supposed to avoid reading these authors? And do I really want to avoid them?" The answer is: "No I don't want to avoid reading them. I am simply too interested in some of these works." It might be an easy way out, but in the end I decided that I have to separate the work from the author. Not that they are separate things (duh!), but because the one does not necessarily influence the experience of the other. I mean one can (as I have) love the book and dislike the author. It's simple really if you think about it, as it goes the other way around as well (loving the author, hating the book), but people tend to make less fuss about that.So I decided, with regards to OSC, I will only buy second hand books from him and yes I will probably go see the movie (simply because I would love to see the book re-imagined on the big screen), knowing that OSC will get some of the money I'll spend on it, but also knowing that other people who worked hard on this movie but do not share his beliefs, will (hopefully, I actually have no idea how movie cashflows work) also receive some of that. And yes, it will receive five stars, because it is simply a darn good read, but I will probably not favourite it and I will certainly not become a "fan" of OSC on goodreads because of the obvious reasons...Damn, I really wrote that down quickly...*sigh*...if only this would be the case with some of my papers....
Actual stars: 3,5This book was definitely my least favourite in the series so far. It's not that I missed pov's of the more popular characters such as Dany, Jon, etc. but because I felt that for the first time the book was too long in order to tell the story that Martin wanted to tell. I didn't particularly like the pacing and some bits (like 70% of Brienne's story line!) could have been cut in my opinion. This might have to do with the fact that I started reading it directly after the first three books and was having a bit of a Martin-overdosis at the time. In retrospect, I really think I would have enjoyed it more if I had a bit of break between the books. However, despite some minor problems here and there, I still enjoyed the book on some level and it definitely made me curious for A Dance with Dragons. Thus I'm giving it a positive 3,5 stars (leaning towards four) rather than the lukewarm 3 stars.
Actual stars: 3.5A fun and rewarding read! Storywise a bit lacking, but the characters more than made up for that. Will definitely be picking up the sequels.
I think I liked this book even more the second time around. And I have a feeling I will like it even more the third time, which is really the best thing that can be said about a book, that it gets better with every re-read. So, until the next time, lovely booksie! I'll be looking forward to it!
I just received the ARC! It looks awesome! Thanks to goodreads voor hosting the giveaway and Walden Pond Press for providing the ARC of course! Really excited for this one, will begin reading this after my current reads :D.
Actual stars: 3,5Really enjoyed this book! Not nearly as much horror as I had expected, but enough mystery to have kept me going. If you're looking for a quick, nonchalant, action-packed read, this is it. I'll definitely be picking up the sequel.
EDIT 02-08-2012: downgraded to 3 stars after comparing it to a lot of other 3,5/4 stars booksActual stars 3,5 (yeah I know, I seem to be giving these a lot lately...)Seriously, I don't know what it is lately but I just keep reading books that are hard to rate on a 5-star scale and this is definitely one of them.The concept of this book was ridiculously brilliant, as it is a romeo and juliet-like love story set within a dystopian alternative world where the darker-skinned hold the power and the lighter-skinned are basically rendered powerless...I know, it's sounds awesome. It was original (especially within the YA genre), relevant and provoking...and for that Blackman deserves my praise...That being said...I was really frustrated with the main love story between Sephy and Callum. They are obviously crazy about each other, but somehow they keep misunderstanding each other, which sets off a chain reaction of every kind of worst case scenario possible. At a certain moment I became really irrated with both protagonists. Bad things happen in this book, which I don't mind normally, but at a certain point it became more like a soap opera to me (e.g. Sephy becoming pregnant :S ), rather than a beautiful love tragedy. Personally, I would have liked more joyful moments between Sephy and Callum instead of the marathon of agony that I got.Also, I feel like the world could be a little bit more nuanced. The world presented was very black and white (no pun intended) and there wasn't enough grey characters presented (aside from the main characters of course, and maybe Callum's mom). There was certainly potential, with characters like Kemali Adams and Jack, but they were virtually unexplored. ...Actually, I think Minnie is one of the more interesting characters who could be that grey area and is relatively unexeplored...at least not until an Eye for an Eye I know this is dystopian fiction and therefore the world is automatically presented as very bleak. Perhaps Blackman did this on purpose to emphasise the hardships of interracial relationships and the blind hatred that racism is often accompanied with, but because so many bad things already happen to Sephy and Callum, the sum of it was just too much misery.So, seeing as I did enjoy it on some level, I normally would have given it three stars, right? But then I read the finale...and it was good! Not at all what I had expected...so then I thought...let's give it four stars instead, the ending just made it work...And then I read an Eye for an Eye (appended novella)...which was more of the above things I disliked about the book and thus it became the popular 3,5 stars I have been so keen on dishing out lately...