Rating: 
Summary: Totally disapointing - avoid it!
Review: I hate it when authors go back and change around what happened in previous books in later books - and in this book PJF does it in spades, changing both the plot and nature of the characters he introduced in the earlier books. It's unbelievable and uninteresting. Read the first book in the series, and leave it at that.
Rating:
Summary: Going Steadily Downhill
Review: I just finished reading The Dark Design. What a chore. I kept hoping for something like the first book in the series, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, but no luck. It's like the author lost all control of the story. Several times I lost track of who the characters were and which story line they belonged to. The first book of the series was one of the best I'd ever read and I had such hope for the series. I really wanted to find out why the planet was created and humanity transplanted there, and "who done it". But, by the end of this book I'm not sure even the author knows and from the reviews I've read of the fourth book in the series I don't have much hope there either. I made it through the second book and the third (barely) but I think I'll stop there, thank you.
Rating: 
Summary: overwritten, careless
Review: severe and brutal editing would have greatly improved flow and quality. Frankly the Frigate character should have been left out of books 3 and 4- reducing page count, pretentiousness, and improving flow
Rating: 
Summary: Probably the greatest book in the series
Review: The Dark Design was the greatest book of the Riverworld Saga. It is a must have book for anyone who is a Philip Jose Farmer fan or anyone who has read any of the other Riverworld book. The Dark Design is science fiction at its best.
Rating:
Summary: A Fairly Decent But Annoying Read
Review: The part 3 of the Riverwold series. It's nowhere near as good as either of the first 2 books of the series were (To Your Scattered Bodies Go & The Fabulous Riverboat).One of the main faults of the book is that an excessively large number of chapters deal with science fiction writer Peter Jairus Frigate who by chance remarkably resembles the author Philip Jose Farmer. The main purpose of this character seems to be to serve as something of a mouthpice for Farmer to vent his views on humanity, the nature of people, religion and Riverworld....And all the subtly of a seal clubbing. This is worsened by the fact that every time the book really starts to get the reader involved it breaks to a chapter or 4 filled with the musings and incessant ramblings of PJF (you decide which) or filling in the backstory of Frigate WHICH GOES NO WHERE! I dread to think of what this book would have been like BEFORE it was edited.
Rating:
Summary: A Fairly Decent But Annoying Read
Review: The part 3 of the Riverwold series. It's nowhere near as good as either of the first 2 books of the series were (To Your Scattered Bodies Go & The Fabulous Riverboat). One of the main faults of the book is that an excessively large number of chapters deal with science fiction writer Peter Jairus Frigate who by chance remarkably resembles the author Philip Jose Farmer. The main purpose of this character seems to be to serve as something of a mouthpice for Farmer to vent his views on humanity, the nature of people, religion and Riverworld....And all the subtly of a seal clubbing. This is worsened by the fact that every time the book really starts to get the reader involved it breaks to a chapter or 4 filled with the musings and incessant ramblings of PJF (you decide which) or filling in the backstory of Frigate WHICH GOES NO WHERE! I dread to think of what this book would have been like BEFORE it was edited.
Rating: 
Summary: A let down after the first two volumes
Review: The prose is remarkably bad -- remarkably because the first two volumes in this series, while not likely to win an award for style, were written in a solid, brisk and workmanlike way. This installment, produced about five years after the first two, reads like a first-draft. It is bloated with personal histories of even the most minor characters, pages of repetitious arguments and endless measurements of each and every object (come on, do we need to know that a fictious mountain is 9,144ft or simply that it's higher than our characters can climb?). Overall, Riverworld would have made a great trilogy. But one has the impression that the publisher, knowing that the first two books had developed such a following, decided not to whittle down Farmer's original 400,000-word manuscript for this book. That's a shame for readers, even if it meant that the publisher could sell more books.
Rating:
Summary: overwritten, careless
Review: The Riverworld saga continues as various characters attempt the journey to the mysterious tower at the source of the river on whose shores all of humanity has been resurrected. Although this essential quest and the puzzle at the heart of the series still interests, this sprawling, messy novel often tested my patience. Burton and his crew make an appearance at the beginning, but then disappear from the novel altogether. There are numerous unnecessary digressions, including several dull chapters of backstory on Farmer's alterego, the science-fiction writer Peter Jairus Frigate (check out the initials), who is actually a relatively minor character. When Farmer is developing the quest for the truth and the rivalries between characters, the book is fun. However, it really needed quite a bit of editing to whittle out the extraneous material and some shockingly bad writing. I have to admit that the cliffhanger ending does leave me wanting to know what comes next.
Rating:
Summary: Sloppy novel would benefit from heavy editing
Review: The Riverworld saga continues as various characters attempt the journey to the mysterious tower at the source of the river on whose shores all of humanity has been resurrected. Although this essential quest and the puzzle at the heart of the series still interests, this sprawling, messy novel often tested my patience. Burton and his crew make an appearance at the beginning, but then disappear from the novel altogether. There are numerous unnecessary digressions, including several dull chapters of backstory on Farmer's alterego, the science-fiction writer Peter Jairus Frigate (check out the initials), who is actually a relatively minor character. When Farmer is developing the quest for the truth and the rivalries between characters, the book is fun. However, it really needed quite a bit of editing to whittle out the extraneous material and some shockingly bad writing. I have to admit that the cliffhanger ending does leave me wanting to know what comes next.
Rating:
Summary: Adequate Continuation to the Series
Review: This book differs in a couple of ways from the earlier books in the RIVERWORLD series. Instead of focusing on a single character, this book shifts between several points of view. And as previous reviewers have noted, there are lengthy digressions inside the head of Peter J. Frigate, a thinly-disguised version of the series author. As far as plot goes, some of the characters have come up with a much better way to reach the tower at the end of the River--Instead of retracing the twisty path of the River over every inch of the globe, they will just build a dirigible and fly directly there. To make this possible, Farmer had to retroactively lower the mountains of Riverworld--This is rather lamely explained as an error of perspective. We also discover that there is something seriously wrong amongst the secret masters of Riverworld. It's apparent their agents among the resurrectees have lost communication with their bosses, and are desperately trying to re-establish it. Also, the spectre of permanent death has returned once more to humanity. Some of the characters seem a bit retro-70s now. Of course, it can be argued that their personalities ARE from the 1970s! :-) Reading it for the first time in two decades, I enjoyed the book, but it certainly didn't advance the storyline very much.
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