Profil

I like this series a lot and yet it took me quite a while to finish the second book. It's difficult to go on reading about the trials our heroes have to go through, because I really like them. If you liked the first book, just go on. It's just as good.

I forgot about this series for so long, that there were two new books to read. This one and the seventh installment.

I really enjoy the series. The books are fun to read, a lot happens, some small twists here and there, the characters larger than life and you better not think too hard about whether things could happen the way they do in the books. In this book the large team Sneijder has assembled over the years goes to Norway to solve the murder of the German ambassador and of course a few other crimes. If you've enjoyed the first few book, definitely pick this one up. If you haven't, I recommend to start with the first one.

I really enjoyed this. With it's mix of Name of the Rose-style criminal investigation, epic empire-scale intrigue and a young protagonist it just captured me and I couldn't stop reading it. I will start the next book immediately.

It was fine. The story was quite predictable, the characters felt a bit bland or shallow. But it was nice to read a standalone novel for once and the magic system which used essentially keyboards to program spells sounded like fun. Recommended if you're looking for a light read you'll soon forget.

I was torn between 2 and three stars. It's not a great book and many people might say it's not even a good book. The writing is all over the place, turning reading into a chore. But at its core it was something I enjoyed. It was just annoying to pick out the good parts from the crappy writing. I felt the writing was way too clumsy for an established author. I don't need to be reminded by Raine's internal monologue that she was deeply traumatized and that she wonders what her mama would say every five pages. My god, that was annoying.

I will continue with Traitor of Redwinter, but I cannot really recommend this book and that's why I settled on two stars.

I enjoyed it. It was similar to The Martian, in that someone has to science the shit out of a life-threatening situation, but everything else is very different and the stakes are so much higher. So you do indeed get a new book despite the broad similarities. The characters were fun and I can see how they will translate onto the big screen with the upcoming movie adaptation. Recommended if you enjoyed The Martian or if you enjoy a lot of science facts and their application or if you want to know beforehand what happens so you can focus more on Ryan Gosling.

Unreadable for me. It's just a huge infodump showing off the author's knowledge and research, vaguely disguised by adding dialogue. But then the people talk like no real person I've ever met. DNF on page 17, that's how bad it is.

A nice follow-up to The 6:20 Man. I even liked this one better, because the scale wasn't so ridiculous. Everything happens in a small town in Maine. I see this being turned into an entertaining 8-10 episode show. Baldacci delivers again on a main character who who is just slightly silly in the expanse of his competence. But as someone who picks up the new Jack Reacher novel each year I feel like I should not complain. This book has a detective story with moments of explosive action and a clumsy resolution, neither the best detective book, nor the best action. But still a nice read, if you're into that sort of thing. This book can be picked up without reading The 6:20 Man.

The second book picks up just a short time after the first book. The characters have not progressed between the books. If you think the synopsis sounds interesting, pick up the first book. All the characters are there again and they are being nicer to each other. New problems arise and our team deals with them. I liked that some good things happen to some of the underprivileged characters. Absolutely recommended if you liked the first book and not recommended until you have read the first book.

Well, I liked the first one, but all the teenage angst and internal drama is really grating after a while and I try to just ignore and skip all the parts where Katniss is confused and torn between Peeta and Gale. Very annoying. If anything, I now have even less of an idea why these books became so successful. They are OK at best. I'll still move on to the last one and re-watch the movies, but more out of a sense of duty to finish what I started. The story is not bad enough to drop, but not good enough to enjoy it.

With the new Hunger Games movie out, I realized I only ever watched the movies and that was 10 years or so ago. So I decided to give the first book a try and it was... nice. I don't quite understand why it became such a success, though. The book was fine and I remember the movie being fine as well. Might need to re-watch it too. But this global success? Ah, well. If you haven't read the book and feel even slightly curious, give it a go. It's a quick and easy read and it's fine overall.

DNF, at least for now. This is a grimdark crime novel and I don't feel like that right now. Broken characters everywhere, depressing lives and I just don't need that right now.

This book is like viewing The Last Starfighter and Ender's Game through Ready Player One-tinted glasses. The result is hot garbage. If hot garbage is your jam, then by all means, enjoy this book. I DNFed it about one third in, which took me less than an hour because I was just skimming through the trash to find the nuggets of relevant information. Until I decided that I had enough of this shit. Awful book, avoid.

DNF after only about 50 pages in. What an annoyingly cheap cash grab after the surprising success of the first book. I did enjoy RPO, even though the pop culture references got annoying sometimes. But RPT is a cheap, lifeless copy of something that wasn't quite amazing to begin with. I read the plot synopsis on Wikipedia and have zero desire to dive back into the book. Instead it feels like I dodged a bullet. Not recommended.