Customer Reviews:
Death Gate Cycle.......2006-07-09
This is the 6th book in the Death Gate Cycle series. If you haven't read the previous ones, this book does do a good job of catching you up. However, for full understanding you should read them in order. The authors do a great job on character development and plot. I could not put this series down.
Into the Labyrinth.......2006-05-01
Into the Labyrinth
The book Into the Labyrinth by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman was an amazing book. It is the seventh in the Death Gate series. In this book Haplo, Alfred, Marit, and Hugh the Hand are thrown back into the Labyrinth. The Labyrinth is the prison created by the Sartan to hold the Patryn but something went wrong and the magical prison started to use its magic to try to kill any and all who wished to escape. Using evil magic, creatures, and the forces of nature it tries to kill all inside of it. While in the prison the heroes discover a Patryn city inside the Labyrinth, something unheard of for the Patryns because they are constantly moving on hoping to reach freedom. While in the city they make another astonishing discovery -read the book to find out what it is.
The book was incredibly exciting to read because there were a ton of cool battles between good and evil. The battles were so exciting to read because the author made up so many new creatures to fight against, like the Chaodyn, an insect-like creature that if it is not stabbed in the heart and killed instantly any drop of blood shed will make another Chaodyn. You were definitely able to feel like you were in the book because the author brings you into a new world and puts so much detail into everything. You can picture every thing happening because of the amazing descriptions. The main conflict did interest me because it was the classic good vs. evil but with a new twist where good and evil have been given actual beings that try to persuade people to do good or evil. That makes the book a lot more interesting too. Most of the characters seemed realistic, except they had magic powers or weren't human, because they had real emotions and the author was very good at describing them. Instead of saying "they were happy" the author would say "they felt boundless joy." The books' ending was pretty satisfying but it did leave a lot to be answered in the next one.
The author's voice is generally first person except when they might explain some of the history. The author uses a simple vocabulary but mixes in made up words like Sartan and Patryn. Some things that make the authors unique are that they made up an entirely new world, one where there is four worlds not one. They have gone above and beyond to create this world. They made a history of all the races and the actual worlds. They have made up new creatures to inhabit this world, like Wolfen and Snogg, and they even went as far as to not create one history for all for worlds but every world has its own unique story. The author used dialogue to move the story along, explain things, and let you know the characters better. The author was very descriptive of everything be it a person, place, or other. The overall tone of the book was we must save the world. I really like the way the author writes because I love fantasy and they have made a great fantasy series for all those who enjoy reading. It is new, unique, and an original story line.
I would give this book a nine and a half out of ten because I like the way the author was detailed about everything, the battles were amazing, and the story made you not want to put it down but it did leave a bit unanswered. I hope you read it.
Finally, We get to go "Into The Labyrinth".......2006-03-26
Wow! Into The Labyrinth was one heck of a book! An amazing entry into the Death Gate Extravaganza! Its only shortcoming is that it is the penultimate (next to last) book in the series! But that's beside the point...let's get to the plot of this amazing book...
"Labyrinth" starts out with a four chapter prologue of sorts with Xar in Abarrach. Xar is trying to find the secret to Necromancy, the art of raising the dead. He soon finds out about the presence of a Seventh Gate, the place where Samah sundered the world. Just as he finds out this news, he is alerted to the fact that some Patryns have just captured Samah and Zifnab, apparantly also looking for the secret of Necromancy. Xar goes and kills Samah, and then ressurects his body and presses it for information about the Seventh Gate. Unfortunatly, Xar ressurected the body too soon, it still carries some of the stubbornness of Samah to not tell Xar anything, thus the body won't talk. As Xar goes to interrogate Zifnab, Johnathon the Lazar comes and free's Samah's soul from the body, making Samah officially dead. As Xar runs to try to stop this, Zifnab escapes. Xar then appoints Marit (Haplo's former partner and lover in the Labyrinth) to murder Haplo. She leaves immediatly for Arianus.
On Arianus, Hugh the Hand has returned to the Brotherhood to see Chang. Hugh tells Chang that he has a contract to kill Haplo. He asks her advice and she gives him the Accursed Blade. The accursed blade is a magical Sartan weapon that transforms itself into whatever is best for the task it is up against. Hugh takes it and leaves.
On Drevlin, The leaders of each race enter the catacombes of the Factree to start the Kicksey-Winsey. The machine starts, and the islands slowly start to allign...
With all the ingredients of a great novel, the cake at the end is amazing, with twist after twist and shocker after shocker. This is one of the best in the series, and definitly worth getting.
As always..read the appendicies...they're important!
The thin plot really starts to unravel in this book.......2005-07-30
First, I will tell you how to get the most enjoyment out of this series. Start with going to the library and renting all of these books. Do not buy them as they are not worth it. Then read books 1, 3, 4, 6 and 7 without reading the footnotes or the appendixes. You have the option of reading books 2 and 5 if you are really enjoying the series, but they are only filler and do not even need to be skimmed. Finally, accept the fact that Weis and Hickman may only be one hit wonders and move on.
Second, I write reviews for those who seek good fantasy and not for the zealots who hang on every Weis and Hickman word. You would think from some of the reviews of this series that these books were greater than War and Peace and written by Bronte and Conrad. In reality, this series is not very good. I am not trying to trash Weis and Hickman, I found the Dragon Lance series to be extremely enjoyable and would give at least the first two series of that line four stars. This series deserves no more than 2 stars. The books are incomplete thoughts that may have been much better had the authors taken more time to flesh out the story. Beware of fantasy books that contain footnotes and appendixes. Usually, these are the telltale signs of poor writing. Having said that, I did manage to read most of these seven books and here are some thoughts.
Many reviewers have made a lot of the fact that Xar is actually tsar or czar. I fail to see the significance here. Xar is a ruler and a tsar is a ruler. So what? What I found to be much more interesting and ultimately distracting was the use, by the authors, of the word mensch. Mensch is a Hebrew word. It is not close to a Hebrew word, it is a Hebrew word. If you look it up, mensch means a person of integrity and honor. What are the authors trying to say here? That all people without ambition or power are full of integrity and honor. I read all seven books trying to understand the use of this word to no avail.
Not surprising considering the books are filled with errors and inconsistencies. Some of these errors and inconsistencies are no doubt addressed in the footnotes and appendixes, but it would take an additional seven books to address all the problems. I believe that most of these problems occurred because the authors did not take the time to complete their work. Perhaps they were pressured by their publisher.
Most of the characters are thinly veiled shadows of those characters from the Dragon Lance series. Only, these characters are not as interesting or as engaging. Part of the problem is that Weis and Hickman never determine where they want the story to go. They blur the line between good and evil, then they erase the line, then they re-draw the line in bold. In Dragon Lance, it was intriguing to see how the characters dealt with the discovery of the duality of their own nature. In this book it is just confusing.
A true Fantasy Masterpeice.......2005-04-08
This review may be short but I hope it helps. Anyone who loved, liked, or enjoyed Lord Of the Rings or the Dragon Lance books will theroughly enjoy this book. I recommend it. It is full of wonderful characters and some humor even though this seris is mostly dark.
Amazon.com
If Jorge Luis Borges had been a computer scientist, he probably would have invented hypertext and the World Wide Web.
Instead, being a librarian and one of the world's most widely read people, he became the leading practitioner of a densely layered imaginistic writing style that has been imitated throughout this century, but has no peer (although Umberto Eco sometimes comes close, especially in Name of the Rose).
Borges's stories are redolent with an intelligence, wealth of invention, and a tight, almost mathematically formal style that challenge with mysteries and paradoxes revealed only slowly after several readings. Highly recommended to anyone who wants their imagination and intellect to be aswarm with philosophical plots, compelling conundrums, and a wealth of real and imagined literary references derived from an infinitely imaginary library.
Customer Reviews:
Writings of a great reader.......2007-09-09
In "How To Read a Book" Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren describe the fourth level of reading. Synoptical reading challenges the reader who, having carefully and thoroughly understood several individual works, strives to hear the conversation of their ensemble. "Labyrinths" brings us the dreamlike reflections of Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges's profoundly synoptical reading. Borges heard the conversation of writers across cultures, centuries, languages, genres. Then he came back to outline over and over the one nearly infinite and unattainable truth in these stories, essays, and parables.
Yet Borges's writings remain humble and personal. With the voice of a shy, erudite uncle, Borges recounts magical reveries that came to him deep in the stacks of some dim basement of the library. Throughout the text the reader feels at once the quiet loneliness of the bookworm, the presence of the immortal, and the terrible portents in the twilight rustling of leaves.
Enjoy Borges.......2007-01-10
A nice light book for travel if you do not need all his works in one volume.
The place to start with Borges.......2006-09-18
First, a memory: at the age of 19, I walked into a college elective course on Latin American literature, and was presented with a syllabus which included several works by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, Manuel Puig, Julio Cortazar, and Jorge Luis Borges. We were to begin with Borges, which became a life-changing discovery.
Since then, Borges has come to stand alongside Vladimir Nabokov as my favorite writer; they are two people whose writing I couldn't imagine not knowing. And LABYRINTHS is the place to begin - it's where I started, and once a year or so, it's the collection I most readily return to.
Other reviewers have done an excellent job of summing up his style, so instead of rehashing, I'll zero in on some favorites: "Death And The Compass," which blends Borges' vast knowledge of global histories and religions with his love of pulp and genre conventions; the end results are a metaphysical mystery like no others. Or "The Sect Of The Phoenix," which - in the most simplistic analysis - is a birds-and-bees discourse undertaken with unusual originality, and enhanced with anthropological allegories.
Other high-water marks include "A New Refutation Of Time," "The Garden Of Forking Paths," the brief "Borges And I" and "Pierre Menard, Author Of The Quixote." I would note that there's not a false moment to be found here, and after dozens of re-readings, I still enjoy finding new secrets hidden within these crystalline fictions, parables and essays.
Anyone with a love of literature should get to know Borges.
-David Alston
Timeless literature.......2006-07-29
This is a very fine collection, which in its condensed form manages to distill the essence of Borges' writing. The book contains selected fictions and essays of the great Argentine writer. A brief preface by Andre Maurois serves as a useful introduction to Borges.
In the short fictions and the essays that follow, the reader gets to freely partake in the world of Borges; all of his great themes and motifs are here - labyrinths, mirrors ("mirrors and copulations are abominable, because they increase the number of men"), time distortion (he was intrigued by Zeno's paradox since his childhood days), dreams in which characters are actors in others' dreams, infinite libraries that contain exhaustive sets of linguistic permutations...
Borges' writing style is precise and taut, almost scientific; one does not find extended, florid passages in his prose. The short fictions are not so much about poetic description (though Borges also wrote poetry) - instead the beauty of the writing lies in its ideas and their wonderful intelligence. Every word seems to have its specific function - this is doubly true because toward mid-life Borges lost his eyesight. He composed his wonderful thoughts and stories in his head and then had them dictated. For the average reader this means that to read Borges requires some effort and the full capture of one's attention - these are not writings that you breeze through, read once and then forget about. The enjoyment lies in the contemplation. Borges was a genuine `man of letters', probably one of the most widely read and erudite people in the recent history of literary discourse. He was especially fond of Berkeley and Schopenhauer and the philosophy of idealism is a topic that he found immensely interesting (this is evident in many of his stories). Today, the writings of Borges are not only treasures to lovers of literature - he is also highly regarded among some contemporary philosophers and scientists. Dan Dennett has written that while Borges is not traditionally considered a philosopher (he once defined philosophy as "that organization of the essential perplexities of man") in his brief meditations, he has given to philosophy some of the most fascinating thought-experiments. Dennett makes extensive use of `The Library of Babel' in particular. Oliver Sacks has often quoted from and referred to `Funes the Memorious' in his discussions on mnemonists.
"Labyrinths" is not by any means a complete collection of Borges' work - in fact, some of my favorite Borges pieces are not included here (`The South', `The Other Death'. `The Aleph' to name a few) but it is still an excellent resource. The translations are of high quality and for a reader not familiar with Borges this makes the perfect first book to buy.
Borges was truly a giant of South American and for that matter, world literature. Italo Calvino was right to be thoroughly exasperated that Borges never received the Nobel; he famously said that having given the Nobel to Marquez before Borges was tantamount to giving it to the son before the father. This is timeless literature, by which I mean that it belongs to a rare class of books which do not have an `expiry date' - one can keep returning to them, over and over, throughout life, reading and re-reading and never exhausting. I often imagine Borges as a kind of eternal figure - one thinks of him still inhabiting his beloved libraries, blind to the world and dreaming of labyrinths and mirrors that reflect infinity.
Satisfying estrangement for restless, unsold minds.......2005-10-17
I imagine in my mind what it would be like to have coffee with Luis Borges on a Sunday afternoon. Borges would be wearing a suit and have little cakes on hand, cane leaning on his armrest, as if nothing out of the ordinary were about to occur.
Labyrinths is a useful first book to kick off a lifetime investigation into Borges' writings. Borges is truly original as an author as much for his intent as for his achieving it. Not quite Magic Realist, not quite Existentialist nor Kafkan: no one is Borges' equal in taking established assumptions and turning them into curious, elaborate, eruditely-supported flashing crossroads that defy simplification.
Even the most unassuming essays like "The Fearful Sphere of Pascal," a subtle historical resketching, are characteristically erudite, yet sticky and complicate the subject irresistibly from your first reading onward. The prickly thorns reach out for your existing education on the subject and are designed to flesh out the glaring inconsistencies you will have read on the subject.
The Garden of Forking Paths is an example of prime Borges storytelling at work. The story itself is a ruse. The first reading-through is not the time you are affected most by Borges, but rather only AFTER you have put the book down, when the Borges' physics of Being begin to gnaw at your world of compact, necessary daily conveniences, even in 2005 when we really ought to be intimately familiar with his universe by now. I think ultimately Borges sets tiny mind bombs set to detonate at exactly the time you seek to superimpose a Newtonian universe upon one of his stories, and ultimately, later, when you seek to superimpose order upon your own human experience. The entrance seems the same, but it has clearly moved by the time you exit the story. You become part of the puzzle, and that is the bedazzling signature of Borges, and his unassailable virtue. Everything solid in the universe of daily lived experience becomes compost and peacefully unsettled, as it originally was, before we came along to fix it up like morticians just before the funeral.
Book Description
Here, in one volume, are two remarkable novels by the chief spokesman of the so-called “new novel” which has caused such discussion and aroused such controversy. “Jealousy,” said the New York Times Book Review “is a technical masterpiece, impeccably contrived.” “It is an exhilarating challenge,” said the San Francisco Chronicle.
Customer Reviews:
Almost too original...but no! Just perfect........2005-10-04
This book contains two great books by a great author unafraid to do something completely different--a guy who could write a (good) characterless short story about an escalator, or a murder mystery that never uses the letter E, or...or..."Jealousy." Of the two novels contained in this book, "Jealousy" is by far the best.
When I first read "Jealousy," I had never read anything else like it--because there is nothing else like it.
For starters, the book is written in first person, yet it never uses the words I, me, my, mine, we, our, or us, or any other first person posessives. When it's time for dinner, instead of saying, "And now we sit down to eat," the author says something like "And now it is time for dinner," and he describes there being three plates, and mentions two other people eating.
Also, the book is incredibly precise in its details. It names every tree in a bananna forest, spends pages describing a woman brushing her hair, and meticulously records where every shadow in every corner of every room falls, to the point that if he hasn't yet described a part of a room, you wonder, "Well, what's in THAT corner?"
As a result of this unique perspective, and of the author's close attention to detail, the reader forgets the story is in first person at all, and grows to trust the book as an exact, almost scientific account of everything going on.
But, what's going on isn't science--it's an affair. It's the narrator's wife having an affair with a neighbor, in a hot, foreign, plantation-style setting. As the narrator gets more suspicious and prejudiced, so does the reader. As the narrator gets more distrustful and angry, so do you.
This book is brilliant--it's French experimentalism at its best. It explores themes of love and identity and jealousy and reality (despite its author claiming he wants the reader not to find any intended symbolism in it, but only to observe it as one would real life). It's antilinear and unconventional, and explores several dark motifs, such as a squashed centipede on a wall that seems more and more violent with every mention, and with every moment passed in the narrator's growing rage and paranoia.
The second book in this collection is "In the Labyrinth," and it's good as well, though not as instantly gripping or startlingly original. It tells the story of a wounded soldier wandering through the maze of a wartime city's streets, anxious to deliver an important package. It's not as wonderful or as haunting as "Jealousy" is, but it's a good novel nonetheless, and it'll stay with you.
At times both of these books are hard to read, but they're always worth it, and they're always genius. Especially "Jealousy." Buy it, but it, buy it, buy it. Your mind will never be the same again.
Jealousy.......2005-09-22
"Jealousy" was one of Nabokov's favourite novels. It doesn't matter whether you like Nabokov as a writer or not. Anyone who reads his lectures on European Literature has to admit that he is more than qualified for talking about the quality of a book. He is extremely picky. He dislikes some major writers (Dostoievsky and Cervantes are just two examples), but the ones he does like are always, and I mean always, classics, or will-be classics. Robbe-Grillet's books demand patience. Things move slow, but there's a reason for that. Unlike most novels, you won't be able to understand completely what's going on in "Jealousy" until you have read the last page. But that's the whole point of this novel, and making the trip in darkness is a worthy experience in this case. In the meantime, the book is filled with passages of great concrete poetry. For example: the characters have finished having dinner some time ago, they are outside a house in a plantation in Africa, outside the circle of light in which they are everything is dark. Franck and A... (a woman) are obviously atracted to each other, but both of them are married:
"I think I'll be getting along," Franck says.
"Oh, don't go," A... replies at once, "it's not late at all. It's so pleasant sitting out here."
If Franck wanted to leave, he would have a good excuse: his wife and child who are alone in the house. But he mentions only the hour he must get up the next morning, without making any reference to Christiane. The same shrill, short cry, which sounds closer, now seems to come from the garden, quite near the foot of the veranda on the east side.
As if echoing it, a similar cry follows, coming from the opposite direction. Others answer these, from higher up, toward the road; then still others, from the low ground.
Sometimes the sound is a little lower, or more prolongued. There are probably different kinds of animals. Still, all these cries are alike; not that their common characteristic is easy to decide, but rather their common lack of characteristics: they do not seem to be cries of fright, or pain, or intimidation, or even love. They sound like mechanical cries, uttered without perceptible motive, expressing nothing, indicating only the existence, the position, and the respective movements of each animal, whose trajectory through the night they punctuate.
"All the same," Franck says, "I think I'll be getting along."
[NOTE: It's the rhythm of his writing what makes Robbe-Grillet a very unique writer. So bear in mind that the effect of this fragment is much more powerful when you read it in context. Robbe-Grillet never rushes over things, he makes you feel the weight of the physical world in a way few writers do -Joyce's Ulysses and Lucretius' The Way Things Are, come to mind].
By Robbe-Grillet, I'd recomend "Jealousy", "The Voyeur" and "Repetition". "The Rubbers" is one of his most often talked about novels, but mainly because it was his first, and the one that introduced his style. But after reading these others you realize it was still only incubating.
Jealousy.......2004-05-25
Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jealousy (Grove, 1955)
Alain Robbe-Grillet's first two novels, The Erasers and Voyeur, were the best thing to happen to French literature since Apollinaire. Then came Jealousy. It would seem that a suspected love affair between a man's wife and their neighbor would be the perfect subject for an author who obsessively details scenes, going back over them to change small details and keep the reader off his feet, wouldn't it?
Sadly, in practice, it didn't work that way at all. We are given a nameless narrator, his wife A..., and the neighbor, Franck, and the unnamed narrator's obsessive going over of a few particular incidents (the implication is that one of them is presently happening, while the others are things he's going over in his head). There are also a lot of extraneous details about banana trees that were ridiculed in the French press upon the book's first publication.
What made The Erasers and Voyeur different from Jealousy is that they had plots, if odd, meandering ones that didn't really go anywhere. Jealousy is a hundred forty-page set piece, in which nothing happens and to which there is no resolution. Readers of Robbe-Grillet's previous works will not be surprised at the latter, but the former might come as something of a shock. As a short story, or perhaps a novella, Jealousy could have been a chilling, creepily effective little piece on the mind degenerating over obsession; as it stands, it's rather, well, boring. **
Interesting Experimental Fiction.......2000-04-17
These two novels (the author's third and fourth, respectively) make for a pretty good introduction to the strange world of Alain Robbe-Grillet. I tend to think of his books as post-modern detective stories, in which the mystery to be solved is nothing less than existence itself; that the reader often finds himself in the dark is very much to the point. They should be interesting to anyone looking for an off-the-beaten-path read.
"Jealousy" (the better of the two) deals with a love triangle in a remote African plantation... which may or may not be all in the narrator's mind. It's creepy and enigmatic. "In the Labyrinth" is a vaguely Kafkaesque tale about a soldier attempting to deliver a mysterious package in a vast, unnamed city. Admittedly, Robbe-Grillet is not the most approachable of authors, but these densely composed novels amply pay off the attention required to read them.
Customer Reviews:
Doomslayers Rock!.......1999-08-02
I'm only writing this 'cause that geek below me gave it two stars. Doomslayers gives you all the info one needs to reach the depths labyrinth...and make it out alive. The fiction is great and the meta-plot stuff is pretty kewl 2. I highly recommend this book to anybody who seriously needs to explore the unknown!
Excellent material.......1999-07-29
I found this book to be filled with excellent material. While there is not much new material, the atmosphere and the writing is filled with hooks that one can put stories together about.
Book, or oversized errata?.......1998-12-01
This book is, at heart, a collection of material that should have been found in other Wraith supplements, marketed under the dubious title of "Doomslayers", which lends more mystique to the work than it really deserves. Most players will find this book to be totally worthless unless they own other sourcebooks, namely "Guildbook: Masquers", "Buried Secrets", "Dark Reflections: Spectres", and "The Dark Kingdom of Jade" among others. It does not stand alone, and even if you own all of the prerequisite titles, it is questionable whether such a limited topic as "Spectre Hunting" deserves the 160 pages that it is given. Also: far too much original fiction and other filler. Buy it for the art, or because you are a die-hard Wraith fan, but otherwise stay away.
Average customer rating:
- Quite Good!
- Good but don't expect it to be as good as the first
- Not nearly as good as the first one
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Into the Labyrinth (Sylvie Cycle)
Roderick Townley
Manufacturer: Aladdin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1416913920 |
Book Description
What a relief when the old storybook is republished and the characters who live inside it suddenly discover they have Readers again -- lots of Readers!
Princess Sylvie finds herself rushing to get to her place whenever a new Reader -- whether in Boston or Bangkok -- opens the book. Her mother, the queen, is especially frazzled when the popular story is loaded onto the Web: a weightless, "virtual" world of unforeseen challenges.
To cope with the stress, Sylvie convinces the Writer to add a new
character, who gives yoga instruction to the storybook's cast in those moments when they have time off. But stress proves the least of their problems as strange things start happening -- words get changed, scenes disappear -- and Sylvie and her friends must launch themselves into the labyrinth of cyberspace to confront a twenty-first-century evil that threatens to destroy their world.
Customer Reviews:
Quite Good!.......2007-05-12
Although the first book, The Great Good Thing, may have been better in some ways, this was still quite a good book! All the same characters from the first book are here plus new people. The usual characters continue in their roles in this book and do more and more. In Into the Labyrinth, the Writer puts Sylvie's story on the Internet. That's when their story gets a virus.
Just as they start getting used to climbing down the page, instead of across as in a book, they find that for some strange reason letters go missing, and words get mixed up. When Sylvie learns what a virus is from a friend and finds a way outside of the story, she becomes determined to solve the problem.
Into the Labyrinth is a creative, imaginative book!
Good but don't expect it to be as good as the first.......2007-03-22
First I must say Roderick Townley is a writing genius. However this is not his best work. In the first one he still doesn't make it completly understandable. In this one I think he isn't quite staying in the same place first one. I think he lose's topic a bit too much and tries to make it better than the first one. He fails in the attempt. I would recommend the book just don't expect a movie anytime soon.
Not nearly as good as the first one.......2002-11-23
After reading and loving "A Great Good Thing," I was hoping for this sequel to be as well-written and charming. I was disappointed. It features the same wonderful characters, princess Sylvie and the "girl with the dark blue eyes," as well as the king and queen and all the other characters, but the plot doesn't hold together nearly as well. The author inserts a new character -- a yoga instructor named Rosetta-- into "the story" as an assistant shepherdess, and all the talk of energy projection lines and finding one's center is way above the heads of its 9-12 audience.
Instead of books and their readers, it tackles the problem of the Internet and its viewers -- that is, "the story" is published online. Instead of a little brother who is a pyromaniac and destroys the book in "A Great Good Thing," it seems to deal with a boy who spreads computer viruses -- but this part isn't very clear.
The story borders more on the zany type of puns and Alice-in Wonderland type plot, -- than than the clever, funny and fantastic but logical and believeable plot devices of the original. Characters from other stories wander into the text. Internet "cookies" look like lemon cookies, but are tasteless. Someone steals the "d's" in one paragraph. Entire lines of dialouge disappear, arrows become roses. Persumably all these thing happen due to a computer virus -- but there is no clear character behind or logical reason for the problems. The book suggests a little boy is to blame, but unlike the clear difficulties in the first book -- escaping a burning book and not being forgotten upon the death of the reader -- the villian is murky and there is not a logical direction to the problems. The mysterious villian is defeated eventually -- but you never do learn how or why the virus happened. And by the end of the book, you don't particulary care.
Book Description
Part travelogue, part spiritual memoir, the author tells the story of packing his family into their car and heading out for a four month tour of Europe's rich and diverse labyrinths.
Books:
- Ironside: A Modern Faery's Tale
- It's Called a Breakup Because It's Broken: The Smart Girl's Break-Up Buddy
- JBoss at Work: A Practical Guide
- Jemima J: A Novel About Ugly Ducklings and Swans
- King of Foxes (Conclave of Shadows, Book 2)
- Knife of Dreams (The Wheel of Time, Book 11)
- Lance Armstrong's War: One Man's Battle Against Fate, Fame, Love, Death, Scandal, and a Few Other Rivals on the Road to the Tour de France
- Lineman and Cableman's Handbook (Lineman's & Cableman's Handbook)
- Listening for the Heartbeat of God: A Celtic Spirituality
- Micah (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Book 13)
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Forms, Folds, and Sizes: All the Details Graphic Designers Need to Know but Can Never Find
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- A Field Guide to Stars and Planets
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- Telling Pieces: Art As Literacy in Middle School Classes
- The Governor's Stake: The Parallel Lives of Two Texas Governors : Richard Coke and Lawrence Sullivan
The Seventh Gate: A Death Gate Novel, Volume 7 (Death Gate Cycle)
The Hand of Chaos: A Death Gate Novel, Volume 5 (Death Gate Cycle (Paperback))
Serpent Mage (The Death Gate Cycle, Vol 4)
Fire Sea: The Death Gate Cycle, Volume 3 (Death Gate Cycle)
Elven Star: The Death Gate Cycle, Volume 2 (Death Gate Cycle)
