Luyện Thi TOEIC Cấp Tốc (Kèm 1 VCD) tải về miễn phí cuốn sách

александр митенков _opoket — The simple writing style and book length made this a very easy read about the serious subject of sexual slavery in Cambodia. The author did a great job setting the scenes of the story and also explaining the mentality of the people around her. Due to my own very limited knowledge of Cambodia and its people, I especially enjoyed the bits of history and cultural lessons from the author.

Andrew Callado acallado — I like the funny writing style, but this book is little more than a rant against meat eaters. The goal of the authors is to convince readers to become vegan, and most of the chapters are dedicated to that purpose. That was not at all what I read this book for, and I was very disappointed.

евгений мигутин _ohn_uzz — I wanted to like this, in fact, even after putting it aside for more interesting reads I came back to it in an effort to finish it. Why was it so bad? Firstly... tropes - no, cliches. Unfortunately it was riddled with them. Both of the main characters are orphans... and one is even named Oliver. If this was a "hat tip" to Charles Dickens than it was much too obvious. The book starts (a long) journey for the orphans to - you guessed it, save the world. And the apocalyptic consequences are "dropped" onto the reader very suddenly a little over halfway through the book. The writing style itself changes from young adult and adult, which would be fine if this was done stylistically... say, switch to an orphan when its more young adult (which would have aided in the character development perhaps), but the writing style doesn't exhibit a methodology of this sort. The names of things are rather comic-bookish as well (which is fine if it stuck to this approach, but it doesn't), names and terms can play a major part in a fantasy/science fiction novel. It was if the author was just trying to cram as many "cool sounding" things he could, despite the majority of them being of no consequence and never getting a full description for even the ones that mattered. The country the characters start in is Jackals, so the citizens are all Jackalinians or something like that. Some of the ideas in the book are likewise veteran tropes that didn't even get a good new glossing. Such as the political system of Jackals, its now a Republic apparently, and they have a tradition of a public ceremony/coronation where once the prince in the royal line becomes a king, they chop off his arms (but kept alive after that, for ridicule... though he lives in a palace... yeah, go figure, why would the people bother paying taxes for all of that if - you get the picture). So in effect, it shows that the aristocracy (called 'aristos') are powerless. Another one which I found laughable, was the underworld/city (called 'Grimhope'), a communist government has come to power - but its called a Commonshare, the people are communityists, and instead of calling each other comrades they say compatriots (which always makes me simply think of patriots). They have gatherings where - in the fervor of the political ideology, they offer to 'equal' themselves for the communal whole. For instance, if a woman is considered pretty she will openly be scarred, or if a man seems to be stronger than average they offer to have themselves crippled. Not a whole lot of sense... though nothing new, many SF works use extreme parodies of political ideologies (Limbo comes to mind - but there are hundreds). Unfortunately, The Court of Air is doing such an old tact long, long after these political statements are "newsworthy". And the machinery/mechanisms in the novel are... well they're senseless. The intelligent automatons are never explained as to how they became A.I., and that they're A.I.s doesn't serve a purpose. The action in the book is badly described, and the characters (including the orphans) are all see-through, cardboard cutouts. The things that are suppose to be frightening in the book did not inspire interest, and the dialogue attempts a Victorian/Dickens style that I found contrived when not confusing (not in a cool way either, where you can figure things out from context). The plot is all over the place, and there are attempts to make clever intrigue that just comes out as convoluted subplots... main characters get powers to suddenly get them out of tight spots, there are no adequate descriptions - and the pacing of this novel is snail slow, the plot just doesn't advance. Unfortunately, I was given the second of the series after someone noticed me reading this one... I'm going to try it, give the author the benefit of the doubt (since writing this I've found out it was his first novel). Stephen Hunt has done some great things for the speculative fiction genres with his SF website, and he is a nice guy (I did have the pleasure of meeting him at the London sci-fi film festival). Here's hoping the second book can repair the damage...