The writing is just plain and simple bad. Stilted dialogue and ridiculous improbabilities abound. I got all the way through it, but will not waste my time on the other book in this series that my MIL gave me, or, most likely, anything else by this author.

Not really worth consuming, but not too bad, either.

Too many plot threads for such a slender book—worse still, every single one of them (at least four by my count) was resolved by the end of the book.

I swear the chapters in this series are rapidly becoming a joke… When the narrative dialogue continues and there is no ‘cliffhanger’ at the end of the previous chapter, make it one chapter! Book has over 400 pages and whopping 136 chapters! You do the math. I think someone needs to tell Patterson and Paetro that they are not Faulkner…

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Fallen Woman of good family must, soon or late, descend to whoredom.”

That captivating sentence begins a richly patterned ride through a skewed bit of history and introduces a heroine that, by the end of the book, is one of my new favorites. I love the fact that the MC looks at her situation so dead-on accurately and is realistic about the perils that a woman alone in that era faced.

Off to read the next Sarah Tolerance novel, though I may parse it, knowing I shall likely have to wait a while for another.

A little slow, and a couple of definite duds, but Nevada Barr’s “GDMFSOB” makes up for the failings of other stories with a deliciously clever (pun intended) little murder.

“She would have looked terrific in any hairstyle, but the short layers of her ash-blond hair worn in that sexy, tousled do suited her particularly well.”

Need I say more?

It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t particularly good, either. My “wishy-washy” button won’t work, and it was less good than bad :-S The world she has created is interesting, but the characters are a bit flat.

A light, frothy read that follows the exact same formula as “Angels & Demons” and “The Da Vinci Code”.

Rugged, yet highly intellectual hero/ine is called in to consult something mysterious that quickly spirals out of control into violence and mayhem and usually threatens a major catastrophe at the end (not this time, though, unless you count political downfalls as a major catastrophe-which I do not).

The biggest disappointment in “DP” was how flat the ultimate villain was. Not the controller, who was 1 1/2 dimensional, the politico; very few stories are willing to paint such a bleak picture of a villain, but this man quite literally had NO redeeming qualities. Of course, it did make it a lot of fun when he got his in the end…

The science is, as always, intriguing, but, frankly, for that kind of stuff I’d rather read Crichton or Clancy, they incorporate the descriptions better—Brown always comes across as a lecturing school teacher when describing technology he thinks may be unfamiliar to his readers.

I read it, and I did so quickly, in about 2 days, but it was a lot like walking by an ice cream parlor—you shouldn’t, you know it’s bad for you, but, dangit, you just walk in anyway.

I enjoy the fluffy lightness that it a Dan Brown novel no matter how predictable the formula, but I will always get them from the library (or borrow them from my dad, lol).

Not really Not Worth Consuming, but lately my “wishy-washy” setting hasn’t been working and its closer to not worth it than to worth it. Starts with a bang, but peters out toward the end…too many shallow peripheral characters, too much coyness with point of view, and a disappointingly tidy ending.

I hadn’t read this in years and enjoyed the heck out of introducing my daughter to Narnia and the wonders therein. She’s not quite six, so the illustrated edition really helped since this was her first longer book, one where pages in a row would be without illustrations, so the pictures were a real treat when we got to them.

(we actually read an older illustrated volume from the 80s, but I was too lazy to Amazon it and I’m fairly sure it’s out of print anyway…)

It won’t let me say wishy-washy for some reason…

The thing I noticed the most about this book, sadly, was the sloppy copyediting. A character in chapter 1 changed names in the text, a point was made of another character being flown somewhere & later the same character was said to have taken a boat to her destination – the pilot thing was obviously the correct one for the story since it came up more often, but no one caught these errors, which is a shame since they completely pulled me out of the story.