blairconrad's Reviews (1.12k)

Fun! Cool origin stories, Bad Horse, laundry, and an awkward encounter between Felicia and Moist that really worked for me. What's not to like?

Disappointing, especially after The Bishop's Man. I didn't find the protagonist to be the least bit sympathetic, and the storyline didn't draw me in. The historical flashbacks and plethora of former husbands did little to enlighten me. About anything.

An engaging series of stories, each of the last day in our hero's life, showing the paths a man may take. By the end, I was completely sucked in - I cared about Bras, and was moved by his deaths and lives. And the art was beautiful as well.

A lackluster story about an unsympathetic character, who turns out to be surrounded by other unsympathetic characters. Skippable, but a quick read.

Interesting. A quick jump into a world with a seemingly rich, although largely unseen, backstory. No mollycoddling here - you pick things up as you go, or you don't pick them up at all. The story was moderately interesting, but it's the flavour of the world and the Company that really sells the book. The copy I read had a blurb by [a:Steven Erikson|31232|Steven Erikson|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1219169436p2/31232.jpg], which is telling, since the influence of this book on Gardens of the Moon is clear.
I usually like my "good and evil" a little more distinguishable than I found it in here, but I had a good enough time that I'll keep going.

I just couldn't do it. The alternation between the two protagonists was kind of fun, and I was beginning to become interested in the mystery and how the two worlds(?) were related, but ultimately, the bad writing and story-going-nowhere and the weird explicit sexual references that just popped out of nowhere killed the book for me. I couldn't take the idea of another 400 pages or whatever it was...

A somewhat interesting view into the world of competitive Scrabble. If you liked Wordplay, you'll probably like this. I enjoyed learning about the mechanics of tournament play and the kinds of things people do to improve their game. Unfortunately, the book dragged at times. The mini-biographies of some of the players really went on too long and in most cases didn't really add much to my understanding of them or the game. I did find that when the book became more memoirlike - focusing on Fatsis's personal journey - it picked up and I wanted to keep reading.
Overall, an interesting if not compelling read.

Really enjoyable. An improvement over [b:The Black Company|140671|The Black Company|Glen Cook|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1317066907s/140671.jpg|390334] in almost every way. Since we're now the second book in the series, there was less need for introductions and explanations, (not that The Black Company was profligate with those), and that made for a less jarring introduction. I thought the mystery around Juniper was very interesting, and I was sucked right in from the beginning. The best part, though, was the alternating viewpoints - seeing events from Croaker's and Shed's eyes was a lot of fun.