Member Since: May 17, 2008
stano
Books
This member has not published any books.Smashwords book reviews by stano
- Lethe
on Sep. 09, 2010
(no rating)
Thoroughly recommended. The book begins with the death of young man Daniel, the main hero of the book. From here the book looks backward, a little bit, but mainly it looks forward, to her (no, "her" is not a typo ;-) ) adventures on Lethe. Lethe is the place where [some?] souls end up [temporarily?] when they die. Except that Daniel is not a soul. Jet. To me, Lethe had a lot in common with the underworld from the Greek mythology. And yet, the book has a very contemporary feel. I found the conclusion of the book very ... satisfying. I can't be more specific, because I do not want to spoil the book for you.
- Turing Evolved
on April 02, 2011
A few days ago there was lively discussion on Slashdot about an author that refused half a million bucks from a publisher and choose to publish his book as an indie e-book. I have noticed a post by a fellow Slashdotter David Kitson, saying that he too has self-published an e-book, so I followed the link to have a look. I loaded up the book to my ebook reader and opened it to check a few pages to see if I would put it on my ToBeRead list. Several pages later I was hooked, and my ToBeRead queue was entirely bypassed. That night I went to sleep much later that I planned. On the very first page you are dumped straight into the action and you have to figure out what is going on. The situation is explained gradually and while author brings you up to speed it might seem that the book is going to progress peacefully, describing an interesting future. Do not be fooled. There are quite a few unexpected turns, lots of action, a bit of romance and quite a few nicely done combat scenes. The book is very well written, the pace of action is just right. Author has lots of explaining to do, to describe his vision of future, but he doesn't let that interrupt the flow of book. There aren't many characters, but to me they look realistic. Turing Evolved reminds me of "The Otherland" by Tad Williams combined with Matrix and hard-core SF featuring railguns, Arfifficial Intelligence, anthropomorphic fighting machines, advanced immersible Virtual Reality and lots of kick-ass acronyms. Technically the book was OK, I haven't noticed any formatting problems. To my untrained eye it looks like the book is well proof-read and edited, but English is not my mother language. I have read well over a thousand books in English, but still ... This is one of best books I have read recently.