Giấc Mơ Táo Bạo tải về miễn phí cuốn sách

Charles Lee leecharles — Fun, bubbly, quick read.

Varga Ilona _ica — I picked up this book because it was suggested to me by whatshouldireadnext.com as a book that was very similar to The Stand by Stephen King, which is one of my all-time favorite books. And yes, the two have a lot in common. Good versus evil? - yep. Outcast nerdy teenage boy who turns to the dark side when someone makes him feel important? – check. Important future-predicting scene with Ouija board/tarot cards? – for sure. Shape-shifting bad guy? – oh yeah. Psycho bad guy sidekick with last name Lawry? – you got it. Dogs? Drugs? Guns? - yes, yes, yes. I could go on. But there are important differences between the two books as well. In Swan Song, the world ends with a world-wide nuclear war rather than the superflu. For me, the superflu scenario of The Stand worked better because it was gradual and more suspenseful, giving the audience time to get more and more horrified. In Swan Song, it was just BANG and pretty much everyone and everything was gone, no time to even get scared. I felt like The Stand had more of a “mythology” behind it, if that makes sense – like it was more of an epic, complicated, multi-layered story. Swan Song was more of a big-budget action film – a riveting plot, lots of drama and battles and blood, but pretty surface-y. I didn’t really feel attached to the characters like I did in The Stand. I didn’t miss them when the book was over. There was one point when a character came upon a dead body and thought, “Noooooo! Not So-and-so!” And I had no idea who So-and-so was. In The Stand, you get inside the heads of the characters sooooooo much more than in Swan Song – you understand their internal conflicts, their backstories, their motivations. The characters have much more depth. I felt like I knew very little about where the characters in Swan Song were coming from. There were some big plot holes in this book (like the seven year leap ahead in time – what?!) and some cheesy predictable things (the whole “everyone has a true face underneath their outer face” deal), and those made me roll my eyes a little bit. But the book was definitely a page-turner. It is almost 900 pages and I finished it in less than a week. I guess my review was doomed from the start to be unfair because it is impossible to not compare it to The Stand. And really, up against that kind of competition, it had no hope. On its own, it might have been a 4 star book; against the competition, it has to be a 3. And a half. Sorry to the author – I feel like I am being unfair. I want to say 4 stars, but it feels like a betrayal to Frannie, Stu, Tom, Nick, Larry, Glen, Ralph, Mother Abagail, and even Harold (my dear friends from The Stand) to rate it any higher. Maybe we just won't tell them about it...

Different Different differentart — A rich and fascinating take on a re-invented American history steeped in Indian lore and filled w/magic.