Diana Gabaldon's fifth book in her Outlander series, A Breath of Snow and Ashes, was, for me, a pretty great addition to the series, but there were a few items I took issue with.
First of all the good - even through these books take a lot of time to go through, the view of little day-to-day activities in the mid-1770s America was a huge part of it's charm. Just seeing how issues ranging from marriage, birth, infidelity, and the law worked at the time, through the eyes of time-traveller Claire Fraser is one of the books great strengths. As with the rest of the books in the series, there is a lot of action and intrigue going on as well, but exploring this woman's life is definitely the highlight for me.
My biggest complaint with the book was (sorry for the mild 10-year-old spoiler) all the kidnapping - at this point both Claire and her daughter Brianna have been kidnapped multiple times and I found the fact that yet again, both of them were kidnapped at different points in the novel to be more than a little repetitive.
Will I still keep reading? Oh absolutely, the good far outweighs the bad in these book and I've only got two more to go before I'm all caught up with all the other Outlander fans out there!
One of my favourite super-hero comics these days is Kurt Busiek’s Astro City. If you’ve never read it, you really owe yourself a look. The stories focus on Astro City, which, like Superman’s Metropolis or Batman’s Gotham, has more than its share of heroes and villains, but with Astro City, the stories focus on all sorts of different residents of the city, over the course of decades and seen through the eyes of heroes, villains, and regular folks on the street.
The problem for me is, the series actually started back in 1995, and although it has a relatively small run, the time between each new release is long enough I’m always forced to decide between trusting my memory of comics I read 20 years ago, or re-reading the entire series each time a new volume is released.
I'm currently two volumes behind the current trade (technically three volumes, but I only buy my collections in softcover, rather than the pricier hardcover versions which show up a few months earlier), and so I can either jump in exactly where I left off, or re-read seven other volumes first.
Luckily, the series is pretty excellent, so if I decide to re-read, my punishment is to read an awful lot of good comics and get myself extra excited for the new stuff.
Well look at that, I think I just answered my own question!
So I'm in a bit of a pickle; I've read the first two books of a series and am unsure of whether or not I want to continue.
The first book I read, Brian Lumley's 1986 novel Necroscope, was actually pretty great - Although aware of the series for a long time, I was unnerved by the cover art, and was pleased to find the novel was both exciting and had me intrigued to read the rest of the series.
Then I read the second book in the series, Necroscope II: Wamphyri! and found myself a little underwhelmed; the story didn't quite move fast enough for me and there were some plot holes I couldn't get past.
Now the series overall has a lot of sequels and spin-off titles, but the reviews I've read over the years say it's pretty great, but after being disappointed by the sequel I'm a little hesitant to sign on to such a large series of books, and I'm pretty sure if I read book three I'm going to in it for the long haul.
I'm not actually sure whether to continue or not, anyone out there have any suggestions?
