Helm

Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully Different and Imaginative!
Review: "Helm" is one of the better stories I have read in a long time. It is well written, the story line is fresh, new and well thought out. The characters, other than the principal two or three are not so exhaustively deep as to boar or to slow down the work. The principals are well developed, certainly well enough for this story. This is a single self-contained story, no series, no trilogy, a great rarity these days and a welcome one I might add.

It has everything, a little action, a little romance, a little intrigue. There are parts where martial arts practice are describe in some detail and that can drag just a little, but these parts are fairly short and presented well enough to be interesting to most.

I liked this book. I liked it enough to make it part of my permanent collection and that doesn't happen every often anymore. I have found myself rereading it at least half a dozen times.

Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully Different and Imaginative!
Review: "Helm" is one of the better stories I have read in a long time. It is well written, the story line is fresh, new and well thought out. The characters, other than the principal two or three are not so exhaustively deep as to boar or to slow down the work. The principals are well developed, certainly well enough for this story. This is a single self-contained story, no series, no trilogy, a great rarity these days and a welcome one I might add.

It has everything, a little action, a little romance, a little intrigue. There are parts where martial arts practice are describe in some detail and that can drag just a little, but these parts are fairly short and presented well enough to be interesting to most.

I liked this book. I liked it enough to make it part of my permanent collection and that doesn't happen every often anymore. I have found myself rereading it at least half a dozen times.

Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully Different and Imaginative!
Review: "Helm" is one of the better stories I have read in a long time. It is well written, the story line is fresh, new and well thought out. The characters, other than the principal two or three are not so exhaustively deep as to boar or to slow down the work. The principals are well developed, certainly well enough for this story. This is a single self-contained story, no series, no trilogy, a great rarity these days and a welcome one I might add.

It has everything, a little action, a little romance, a little intrigue. There are parts where martial arts practice are describe in some detail and that can drag just a little, but these parts are fairly short and presented well enough to be interesting to most.

I liked this book. I liked it enough to make it part of my permanent collection and that doesn't happen every often anymore. I have found myself rereading it at least half a dozen times.

Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Great book -- difficult to put down!
Review: After reading 2 of the author's previous books, Jumper and Wildside, and really enjoying them, I had high expectations for Helm -- and fortunately I was not disappointed. Gould drives the plot relentlessly throughout the book. The martial arts parts are highly readable and very entertaining. My only criticisms with the book are 1) as a previous reviewer mentioned, a few of the characters were difficult to delineate from one another early on, but not overly so, and 2) the ending is good, but seems to be lackluster compared to the incredible first 90% of the book. Overall, Helm is a great and fairly quick read.

Rating:
Summary: Great book -- difficult to put down!
Review: After reading 2 of the author's previous books, Jumper and Wildside, and really enjoying them, I had high expectations for Helm -- and fortunately I was not disappointed. Gould drives the plot relentlessly throughout the book. The martial arts parts are highly readable and very entertaining. My only criticisms with the book are 1) as a previous reviewer mentioned, a few of the characters were difficult to delineate from one another early on, but not overly so, and 2) the ending is good, but seems to be lackluster compared to the incredible first 90% of the book. Overall, Helm is a great and fairly quick read.

Rating:
Summary: dissapointing
Review: After reading Gould's first two books, "Jumper" and "Wildside," I couldn't wait to read his third, "Helm." However, I was sorely disappointed with this book. Unlike his first two books, this one was quite boring and just seemed to drag on and on. More of a military strategy novel than science-fiction, the story opens strong and then just develops into a long-winded tale about a young man's "journey" into manhood. Not until the very end of the book does it really get interesting again. If you can hold out that long, the end holds a pretty interesting plot twist.

The premise of the story is as follows: in the future, earth has been decimated to the point that it can no longer sustain life. Therefore, a group of scientists set out to colonize a new planet. Along with the colonists, the send along glass helms that contain the knowledge that living centuries on earth have provided them. However, there are specific dangers to those that wear the helms. Some colonists set out to destroy the helms and proceed to set up colonies that are essentially anti-technology. Only one helm remains in a specific village on top of the tallest mountain in the region.

Fast forward to many more years in the future. Earth is just a legend now. Many colonies have been set up on the new planet and wars break out every so often between the colonies for land occupation and control. The last helm is still on the mountain, but it's been forbidden for anyone to wear it. However, one boy defies the order and sets out to conquer the mountain and wear the helm. This throws into motion a series of events that wil forever change the boys life. Centuries of knowledge are suddenly implanted into his mind and now he must learn how to control it before it controls him.

This sounds like a great premise for a story. However, it quickly becomes "bogged" down in a boring tale that makes it quite hard to even want to finish the novel.

Rating:
Summary: i liked it
Review: first off i don't know the slightest thing about martial arts so many of the detailed discriptions of the moves were lost on me, but it was my fault and not that of the author. i however found ths book to be very entertaining. even though the idea of a person being able to gain all the klowledge of history has been toyed with for longer than any one person can recall i have read few stories that handled with the fragile psyche of a person who has just gone through such an ordreal so well. i think that in itself makes this book a good read.

Rating:
Summary: This book was problematic.
Review: Gould spends entirely too much time and effort describing Aikido moves. They become the focus of the work and draw attention away from the plot and characters. The Aikido terms are not well explained, nor are the moves(although excessively described)--this leaves these parts of the novel available only to people who have a working knowledge of the discipline. Many of the plot developments were facile at best, and the conclusion was not believable. Not a keeper!

Rating:
Summary: Engaging and full of surprises
Review: Helm was an easy purchase decision, thanks to "Jumper" and "Wildside", both of which I felt were comparable to some of Heinlein's best "juveniles". The novel contains strongly-written and conflicted characters, an ultimate form of mind-control which has a morbidly amusing twist (reminds me of a scene in the James Crumley mystery Bordersnakes and a muddled realization of an interesting society. Yeah, sure, you can say it's not as "good" a novel as his others and it probably isn't - they were outstanding!Still, I felt the believable and varied characters, the well written Aikido scenes, and the sustained pacing placed this novel in my own personal "Top 20%".

Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: I first met up with Gould's writing in Jumper, and loved it. I then read Wildside, and fell in love with the book. Later, I bought both books, found Helm in the library, read it, loved it, and an hour after I finished the book, I bought it.

What I love about Helm, is that I have to keep telling myself that this is NOT medieval times, but about a millenium in the future. I loved the aikido scenes, and the twisting plot. Out of all of Gould's books, this has to be the most vivid and gigantic in terms of the world that Gould has to explain and forsee. I recommend anyone who even liked Helm, to read Jumper, Wildside, and Blind Waves. I myself now have three out of these books, and am thinking of buying Blind Waves.

Good luck to all, and, Mr.Gould, keep on writing!