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A Dark and Hungry God Arises

A Dark and Hungry God Arises

List Price: $7.99
Your Price: $7.19
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best Donaldson Read
Review: In it's category, this gotta be one of the best books ever. I was totally absorbed, and went on to read the rest of the series. I was a little disappointed in the last book of the series, "This Day All Gods Die", but "A Dark and Hungry God Arises" had both extremely exciting plot development and excellent characters. I recommend the whole series to any serious SF reader. It is way better than the books of the Covenant series that I have read. Donaldson tends to be a bit longwinded, but the Gap series is so intense that you _want_ the length. Just superb.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Wow...this series is getting incredible
Review: Like Forbidden Knowledge, A Dark and Hungry God Arises significantly improves upon a series which suffered a rough start. This is an epic of galactic proportions, as a myriad of new characters are introduced, some even more nefarious than Nick and Angus.

Characters include Holt Fasner, basically the CEO of the human race, vying for more power through murder and suppression of a drug that would immunize humanity from the mutagens of the Amnion, Warren Dios, Fasner's mutinous, corrupt yet strangely moral underling, trying to save the human race from the devastation he brought upon it, Min Donner, his morally inclined aide, desperate to know what her boss is up to, and of course the cybernetically enhanced Angus, the ever-unpredictable Nick Succorso, the victim of all victims Morn Hyland, and her force-grown son, Davies.

This is not an easy read for several reasons. One is the gratuitous nature of the book, though it's much more tame than its two predecessors. Additionally, the book is infinitely more complex than the former two books. You never know what's really going on until after it's happened, as the characters feel inclined to betray one another incessantly. All of the UMCP officials and their respective factions are hard to keep straight. These aren't complaints, however--I love a complex read.

I really hope the 4th and 5th books improve upon the series like the 2nd and 3rd books have. If that's the case, the fifth will be near-perfect. The only real problem I have with this book is Donaldson's knack for creating characters that ask themselves the same questions over and over, i.e. what happened in the Amnion Station? That aside, superb book. I can't wait to start the fourth.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The most forbidding and yet the best so far
Review: Nick, the swashbuckling spaceship captain, rescues Morn from Thantos and the creepy aliens. The mood is (again) dark and rancide - isn't there some kind of fun in the futures? Humans are still engaging the aliens but everyone seems to be running around doing their thing.

Angus, the likeable sadist from prior novels, gets his comeuppance. His mind is controlled by a company computer and in particular, by a loathsome representative of that company who has Angus do all sorts of sickening stuff. (This is not for the faint-hearted but remember - it is fiction.) At the end, the secret word is said and Angus is freed to start down yet another fateful path.

My biggest complaint - a common one with Donaldson readers - is that you can't see the forest for the trees. There are too many melodies all at once, the actions overlapping and intertwining, going off in several directinos. A coherent, straight-arrow story was never realized and yet it still remained a great, though not remarkable, work.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: angus rules
Review: Of the books by Donaldson, this series, completed with this installment, served as one of the most engaging bits of reading I've experienced in a great while. I neglected my family, marriage and somehow muddled through work (as a newspaper editor) while contemplating the adventures of Morn, Angus, Davies and Vector. Deep characters. I believe he did better with this than the Thomas Covenant books. The gap rocked.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Darkly Superb
Review: Superb writing, darkly powerful, a stab of adrenaline. A group of unique criminals must oppose the looming enemies of humanity, or die. Third book in one of the most exciting series I have ever read.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best novel in Donaldson's 'Gap' Series
Review: Tension and plotting reach a high point in this third novel (following 'The Real Story' and 'Forbidden Knowledge'). Angus is reunited with the other main characters in a fantastic series of scenes, each outdoing the one before. Political intrigue merges beautifully with the stories of individual strife with a grace Donaldson's contemporaries should take note of.

The continous sequence of characters' schemes outdoing one another left this reader shaking his head in wonder. I may never reread the entire series, but I'll give careful thought to coming back to this one.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Hellishly exciting and action-packed.
Review: The Gap Into Power goes back and forth between the tense and unpredictable political intrigue going on behind the scenes at the UMCP and the slick, razor-sharp action and danger at Billingate Station in Amnion space. The whole tone of the book makes you picture lighting like that in a sewer, if there were any lights at all. Gap into Power is as sleek as an oiled panther. How does Donaldson do it?

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Pay close attention to everything...
Review: This is a great series of books - and I am thouroughly enjoying them, but this 3rd installment is so full of twists and turns, that I often found myself reading and re-reading sentences and paragraphs to figure out exactly how the numerous plot-lines (betrayals) intertwined with each other. What I'm trying to say is that the book can seem as if it was written in fast-forward; you really never have a chance to absorb the story - there's just SO much going on. But I really am enjoying it and will definitely read to next two. I have just newly discovered S.R.D., and he is quickly becoming one of my all-time favorite authors! (At least there's not so many words I've never heard of before, unlike the Thomas Covenant series)

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: One of the best series ever
Review: This series is one of the best ever. The first book is kind of 'Space Pulp' but it is a fun read. The series becomes truly engaging and very entertaining as it continues. This books is probably one of the best in the series.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A Dark and Hungry God Arises : The Gap into Power
Review: Thomas Covenent The Unbeliever series actually led me into the whole Genre of Fantasy writing, eventually to Tolkein himself - prior to that I had been and continue to be a reader of science Fiction so it was with some anticipation that I sat to read the GAP series by Donaldson. I was and am a big Fan of his writing and have re-read the Thomas C series many times, always with enjoyment- BUT - I really dont get all the positive reviews of the GAP series, I found the story slow, dull and confusing, I even re-read each book again as new books were released in the hope that maybe I had not given it a fair chance at the first read but finally found myself in the middle of this book totally uninterested to the point where for the second time in my life I put down a book unfinished and vowed never to read it again. For me the prime problem is that I simply have no interest in, sympathy for or any emotion for the Characters or what should could or might happen to them, My advice to Donaldson fans - leave this series alone and wait for his next!


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