Avocatore

Not bad. Has some nice woodcuts in it. I passed it onto a friend who is a bit more obsessed by pirates than I am.

This ain't bad at all. The author slips in and out of various narrative styles with ease, and the story is both brutal and touching, with flashes of magic and realism.

Some threads aren't really tied up in a satisfactory way, but hey, maybe it's a bit of freeform.

This tried to be too clever. It isn't bad, and does entertain, but the chapters, while knitted (tangled?) together by some repeated themes and subjects (psychology, the Ark, death) are a bit splayed out. And there was something kind of smug about the style of the Noah story that got under my skin.

I read it in three hours. It's a bit grim, and not for younger readers - and perhaps the language is not suitable for older readers either in places, being kind of clumpy.

Still, it isn't bad. You can zip through it, and the action is fairly relentless. Maybe not one of Nix's best but certainly better than many other authors.

Oh, bugger. I'm sure I read somewhere that you find out about her. Bleh.

Bloody brilliant. Mad good. The language used is (sorry Edward) probably the bit I loved the best; it said all that needed to be said.

I also liked that although many of the themes were bleak (death, abuse, broken hearts), the narrative never becomes bogged down or turgid. In fact, I felt pretty un-depressed most of the way through, pulled in by the dark humour and snappy sentences.

Read it. :)

The diary bits become boring once he hits adolescence (less cute, more self indulgent and longer), but the adult retrospective is quite fun. It is nice to have an antidote to all of the horrible 'I had my leg torn off by a rottweiler/was a teenage alcoholic' stories.

An acquaintance of mine described the prose as 'too florid'. I can see what he means, but then that's all very subjective.

I liked the florid prose, and the story was direct enough that I could pick it up and put it down without utterly losing my way.

It's a warning of and celebration of love.

This is okay. Not awful and not brilliant. There are some parts of this that verge on great potential, but for me, the prose was too stark (in a boring rather than arty way) to encourage me to re-read.

I think maybe I would have loved it if I'd been a bit younger.

Still, it has ninjas in it, which is no bad thing.

Bloody lovely. :)