Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful -- until she betrays it all in the end.
Review: I really enjoyed this book, right up until the end. Kress gives us a world full of great new ideas, very well thought out and believable. I often said to myself, "She really understands!" But the way she wraps up the story inspired me to swear to never read another word of her output as long as I live. Readers should be warned that if they really identify with the views seemingly expressed through the main body of the book, they will feel utterly betrayed by the ending.
Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely Wonderful
Review: Brilliant, thought-provoking stuff from one of my favorite authors. The implications of the creation of a superior branch of mankind is fully realized in a rich, detailed environment. Be prepared to read the rest of the Beggars Trilogy!
Rating: 
Summary: Failing to add interest to ambition
Review: When I read this book, I was impressed by Kress's ambition to tackle a sweeping series that extrapolate the future of human culture, in the grand tradition of classic writers such as Aasimov. Unfortunately, in my eyes she fails. The characters read to me like the typical product of soap opera, and the plot is at least as old as comic books - guilty-feeling people with superpowers and the sullen normal folk who resent them. Can anybody find happiness when they're perfect? Do I care?
Rating: 
Summary: A really interesting idea...
Review: Its a very interesting idea and a really great book. I could see something like that happening if the science was there...all hatred and seperate groups etc. The in the 2nd part of the book where society on Earth is divided into Donkeys (who do the work)and "Livers" (who live a life of leisure) ...descriptions of how the Livers live were really kind of amusing. Overall..I really enjoyed it and it kept me up late. However, as some other people have pointed out, the character of Leisha Camden was a little..well, flat. I really liked her in the first half of the book then at the 2nd half she was just kind of there..and so what. I really liked the character Miri though, cared what happened to her and the descriptions of the supers and how they thought was cool. And it was cool how the tables turned at the end.
Rating:
Summary: Definitely Outstanding.
Review: This superb book created by Nancy Kress begins when a new generation of genetically modified embryos, now requiring no sleep at all, are born. The Sleepless community witness a growing hatred from the Sleepers (regular people) due to sheer envy of their beauty,skill, and super intelligence which inevitably makes them better then Sleepers in all aspects. The main debate throughout the book discusses the obligation a productive society owe or not owe the beggars.
Eventually the blind hatred towards Sleepless brings Jennifer Sharifi to find refuge for her own kind in Sanctuary, first on earth and later on Orbital in space. One of the few Sleepless left behind on earth is Leisha Camden-the main character- who wished to integrate with Sleepers, a wish that never happened. Some label this book as fantasy but as i foresee, the idea here is not that far away from becoming sad reality. This book is a tremendous enjoyable saga and i very very much recommend reading it.
Rating:
Summary: Drivel.
Review: Character development: poor to nil. Plot: Vague and unfocused. There's no reason to care what happens to any of the characters or to their world. Writing style was stilted, uninspired. Give this one a miss.
Rating:
Summary: The new trend in Sci-Fi
Review: I purchased this book in hard-copy a few years ago. This was my first introduction to the genetic/cellular biology Sci-fi. Now, don't get scared off that you need a BioChem degree to follow this - nothing like that! No more than you have to understand warp-field physics to like Startrek. Kress's character development is excellent and the near future setting provides a good grounding in current culture. Enough adventure and excellent plot to keep you on your toes. The rest of the series is also good, but the first book is a must read! I've put this author on my read-everything list with C.J. Cherryh, David Brin, and Neal Stephenson.
Rating:
Summary: Dissapointing
Review: A compelling idea and some interesting sociological exploration fall prey to unlikeable characters, horrible science, and phonetic sp-sp-sp-speach. First off, the easiest: the phonetically written speach of the "super-sleepers", characters who suffer from extreem stuttering problems. Now, on Kress's own website, she lists some "writing basics", wherin she says that when one is writing a character with an odd regional dialect or abnormal speech patters, after the first few lines of speech are presented phonetically, you should switch back to standard english. In this book there is a 75-page chunk where stuttering characters talk alot, and every second word is st-st-stuttered. This is distracting and really quite annoying, and in itself adds nothing to the story. The characters: Jenifer Shafari(?), presented in a third-person limeted POV, occupies many pages, and she is a quite unlikeable character. She is the antagonist, so being unlikable goes with the territory, but Leisha (protagonist), while not being exactly unlikeable, isn't particularly compelling. Sure, she's a three-dimensional character, but she isn't one that I could feel any compassion for, so who cares? And the vast majority of the supporting characters don't hold your attention, and my reactions varied between indefference (Richard, Kevin) to disgust (Sandalos, Eric). The few truly compelling characters were relegated to very little time on the page. As I said before, all because a character is well drawn doesn't mean they are automatically worth spending time with. Then the science. ....Now, this book was primarilly a socialogical extropolation, so I could have swallowed a terse "we can make children who don't have to sleep, and the side effect is that they will be near immortals" without any further exploration. The point of this book wasn't hard-sf, so I could have suspended my disbelief. But Kress tried to explain things halfway with some pretty shaky arguments. She said that sleep used to be an evolutionary advantage, but that it wasn't any more. She didn't explain the why to either part, and this statement, left alone, flies in the face of common sense: Wouldn't a caveman who didn't sleep as much be less likely to get killed by a wild animal at night, thereby passing on his genes more frequently? That would make sleep disadvantageous. And if sleep was once benificial, why isn't it anymore? What changed? And while we sleep is when the body preforms most of its repairs: we need sleep to heal physically. Kress stated that loss of sleep could be made to have no effects on the mind, but then didn't explain why, or the physical reasons for sleep and how they would be handled. Again, common sense: If your body undergoes 50% more wear-and-tear, without periods to recover, shouldn't that shorten your lifespan, not extend it? I have so many problems with the science I'm having trouble putting it down in an organised manner. In short: If you're writing hard-sf, get things right, or at least get them to make sense. If you're writing sociological-sf, don't get bogged down in details with little relavence to the point of the story. All that said, it is a compelling idea, and some of the questions raised are worthwile, but the book falls far short of its hype.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible book
Review: For a combination of bio-engineering and conflict theory, this book is outstanding. I read this while studying social theory, and there are shades of Marx (not the economic Marx) throughout, along with an appeal for a functional aspect of society. An excellent book, well written, great characters, a mature look on social stratification, formation of social groups. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: watered-down ayn rand
Review: Really - this was a very boring book. All exposition. If you want to read about the trials and trevails of beautiful perfect happy people with no interest in the complexities of human culture -- then I recommend it.
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