Reading Updates: 4 Book Ratings

Assassin’s Quest, L.A. Noire: The Collected Stories, V for Vendetta, and Old Man’s War

Haven’t felt much like writing reviews recently, but I have read quite a few very good books that I would highly recommend. So here’s my ratings and some “micro” reviews / comments.

Assassins QuestAssassin’s Quest by Robin Hobb
Farseer Trilogy #3
Read 7/13/14 to 7/28/14
My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4 out of 5 Stars
Review: Still a very good book, but did not like this conclusion to the trilogy as much as the previous books.
L.A. Norie: The Collected StoriesL.A. Noire: The Collected Stories by Megan Abbott, Lawrence Block, Joe R. Lansdale, Joyce Carol Oates, Francine Prose, Jonathan Santlofer, Duane Swierczynski, Andrew Vachss
Read 8/20/14 to 8/27/14
My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3 out of 5 stars
Review: Average Rating of the collection above. Some of the individual stories were VERY good, and others… Not so much. My favorite (and the one that most fell into the “noire” category,) was Lawrence Block’s story “See the Woman”. The one I disliked the most was probably Joyce Carol Oates’ “Black Dahlia and White Rose”. That story while fairly well written and interesting, I found very disturbing as it was kind of an alternate history of actual people. But presented as fact the way it was I thought it was unkind to the real people that were its characters.
V for VendettaV For Vendetta by Alan Moore
Read on 8/27/14 to 9/5/14
My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3 out of 5 stars
Review: I’ve always really liked the movie that was based on this comic series. While the graphic novel was good, I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as the movie. The plot wasn’t as tight and I didn’t really like the art. The composition was good, the coloring was poor, and the lettering difficult to read (yeah, I know I’m getting old,) but with a graphic novel as wordy as this one, you want to be able to read it clearly. It could have been due to the printing of the collection and not a part of the individual comics, but I doubt it. I guess I’ve become spoiled by digital comics high contrast color and the ability to zoom in and out.
Old Man's WarOld Man’s War by John Scalzi
Old Man’s War series #1
Read 9/2/14 to 9/6/14
My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4 out of 5 stars
Review: I read one previous novel by Scalzi, namely “Redshirts”. That story had a lot of deus ex machina in it, but that was part of the premise. This completely different story I thought was also a little heavy on the ghost in the machine category but did not have Redshirts “excuse”. That said it was still a really good book. I couldn’t wait to pick it up again and read on, and consumed it in record time. I immediately started the second book in the series which so far is even better.

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