Apparently I can't put half stars on here, but I would give this one a 3.5. It's a very ambitious series, the world and the rules and physics and imagination it took to come up with the Realms is astounding, and very, very creative. The one place where I think this novel falls down though is definitely in the characters. They're really more ciphers than people, which I GUESS makes sense given where this all ends up, but I'm not sure if I want to continue reading about the Twins. I mean, they're

Interesting and ambitious ideas betrayed by lazy, sloppy writing and execution.There's a lot I want to like about this book. I am usually a sucker for what I think of as "Alice In Wonderland" type books -- ones where a protagonist is thrust into a world the rules of which they don't comprehend. You know the type -- Gaiman's Neverwhere is the one that springs to mind, but there are scores of examples across all kinds of media. That's what this is. Unfortunately, it's a big letdown.The Crooked Let...

Unfortunately I couldn't give 0 stars, 1 star is too much for this piece. I really did try to enjoy it but the bland, unrefined main characters were just a jumbled mess the whole way through, I think there was a plot? I'm unsure after struggling to get passed the sentences where the author himself forgets which character he's talking about. I wish I was joking when I say that the main characters are basically the same person...because they are. They're so similar, so boring and shallow that Sean...

13 years, I've been reading trying to read this book.Things always came up, in the long long ago it was the library that wanted it back before I finished. Other times it was college or work demands. It stuck in my mind all that time and I kept coming back to it every few years. I like this book, not the best i've ever read but i really vibe with the cosmology.

This is a potentially interesting mythic fantasy that plays with theme of determinism vs free will in a context exploring an alternative explanation for the Fall and the Flood. It's way too long and, regardless whether you're a believer or an atheist like me, I suspect you will find this as anything more than an OK read.http://opionator.wordpress.com/2012/0...

Pyr sent this over to me quite a bit ago and I'm woefully behind in reviewing it. Thankfully this is the second to last title I have left. I liked the way THE CROOKED LETTER sounded with the mirror twins and all the different bits of mythology getting thrown into the book and it piqued my interest. Enter said amount of time later and I finally got around to reading it.Initially I was a little put off by the thickness, mainly because I'm inherently put off by thick books because they're such a ti...

I've read this as part of my great Read Everything I Own but Haven't Read Yet pledge, which I'm hoping to make serious inroads into this year. We'll see...I got this a number of years ago as part of a show bag at a Swancon. I had read some Williams before, but not much. Since then I have read large chunks of his SF, but - until now - none of his fantasy except for the Troubletwisters books with Garth Nix. (It's actually been a while since I read much fantasy at all, which is curious to realise.)...

I checked this book out of the library and read it the first time about a year or so ago. I intended to read the others but I promptly forgot both title and author. I remembered that the plot had something to do with twins causing the end of the world and that the authors last name fell either at the very end or the very beginning of the alphabet. Finally, last week I saw the book on the library shelf. A second read made me realize that it is not quite as exciting as I remembered. The plot is in...

Crooked ClichesLike any good nerd I have stacks of books to get through. I have about a year to get through those stacks before I will have to pack some up and discard the rest. So, there is a bit a pressure to make some headway in the towers of paper that fill an alcove in our bedroom. For the longest time it has been a point of pride for me that I finished every book I started. True, this says a lot about the low standards I have for myself, but I finished even the bad ones. I would always con...

Got about a third of the way in before I accepted that while I was mildly interested in what would happen, I wasn't engaged enough to want to read the next books in the series, which then made it a waste of valuable reading time to persevere with book 1. That doesn't make it a bad book, just not quite to my tastes.

Liked the idea and some of the descriptions were nice but I didn't care about the characters. It took me more than a year to read this book because it was so exhausting.

I wanted to like this book so much. It had an interesting premise, but the only really good characterization came in Hadrian's part early on, when he's clearly in love with a girl that's getting down with his brother in the next room. This never really develops any more, and then one is pelted with a lot of random things that are apparently inspired by real mythology or arcane lore, but are so out there that they don't mean anything to anyone without a religious studies doctorate. That, and Sean...

I wanted to like this book, but couldn't. I felt it wasted too much time and space on trying to impress the reader with just how weird this universe was. On the other hand, I've now found something that reads a little like H.P. Lovecraft ...

One of the best books i have read. Compelling story line all the way through, always leaving me wondering what comes nextAmazing!!

Cannot get through that one. I loved "the change" series and really wanted to like this one too. This book consists of pointless descriptions of another world with some equally pointless action in it. The only interesting bits are from before the world has changed that are intertwined with the... I was going to write "plot" but I don't think there is any....so... Anyway big disappointment. 200 pages in and I don't care about characters at all.

This novel is a tale of twins who are used by an alien god to start an apocalypse. The story takes place in a twisted-from-true version of our world and in a bizarre afterlife, both of which are imaginative and well-fleshed out.Although the prose is good and the ideas in the book are pretty sophisticated and intricate, I didn't find the novel successful in what it was trying to do. The imagery is often very surreal, which could be a great thing, but I usually found I had trouble picturing the wo...

This was unlike any fantasy book I've ever read. I have to say that Williams doesn't shy away from dispatching characters, but doesn't do it as willy nilly or as pointlessly as G.R.R.M.This book is confusing and fascinating. It attempts to describe the indescribable and explain the unexplainable; which at many points leaves the reader as frustrated as the characters. Which isn't necessarily a complaint. This book took me well out of my comfort zone and I appreciated it. I believe it's meant to b...

Okay, this is definitely an intellectuals science fiction. This book is the first in a series about twin brothers. After one is murdered, you follow each brother as they travel through two realms. The one of the living, and the one of the dead. The problem is that these brothers are mirror twins, and when only one dies it causes devistation in each realm, as they try to merge together, into one realm. I was lost through most of this book. The author combined every religion, every mythology, and

I really wanted to love this book because it was so detailed and such an original storyline, but I felt like the author bit off a bit more than he could chew in terms of what he was trying to fit into this book. There were threads I wish were explored more but the book was already nearly 500 pages so I get why they were left. I'm not sure if the books that continue in the season will go into more detail, but I don't think I was drawn in enough to find out.

This uninspired first installment of the Books of Cataclysm series is a jumbled paint-by-numbers type of fantasy novel. The writer had several books under his belt before churning this one out (mostly Star Wars books) but despite the literary "warmup" he still manages to come across as a first-time writer. The book's early reviews were very positive, which was ultimately what led me to the purchase. Despite really, really trying I ended up giving up on it halfway through. The story feels so bloo...