Rating: 
Summary: Not too bad!
Review: This book was nice change of pace for me. It wasn't too long and the characters were fairly entertaining. Wasn't engrossing or thought provoking just an entertaining short novel.
Rating:
Summary: Not too bad!
Review: This book was nice change of pace for me. It wasn't too long and the characters were fairly entertaining. Wasn't engrossing or thought provoking just an entertaining short novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Grinning over eggs for breakfast has never been so grim
Review: This is a pretty novel but not at all to my liking. It is so slow and unengaging at the start and seemed to be just an extension of the hang gliding experience. I did become more involved towards the end - but to what purpose? Even as a yarn it was far from convincing, and lacked inner logic. It is also basically soft despite some unpleasant characters (but they are so childish), and incidents. There are too many breakfasts, too many eggs for breakfast, too many hugs and remote relationships - it's the reader that is kept at a distance, not the characters from each other.
Rating: 
Summary: interesting story, well written
Review: This is an interesting little story. I enjoyed the plot very much. I thought the socio/political dimension (wings vrs landbound) was very unique. The central conflict, the fact that we can never really tell what the consequences of our actions may be, way handled very well. I particularly liked the fact that each section took place many years later. This really allowed for a sense of believable change, nothing happens overnight. The character were average. I did not particularly find any one of them to be memorable, but this is a novel that is carried by its plot and setting anyways, so it does not really stand on its characters.
Overall this is a good novel. Worth your time and money. (Just do not expect this to be the Fire and Ice series, it is NOT.)
Rating:
Summary: Doesn't hang together
Review: Windhaven is an ocean world: there's very little land and it's widely scattered. Sea travel is exceedingly dangerous due to weather and hostile native fauna. Fortunately for communications, low gravity and high air density make it possible for humans to fly, using what are essentially strap-on glider wings made of irreplaceable metallic cloth of some kind. Possession of wings is hereditary and this unsurprisingly defines the planet's aristocracy. The book is a series of short narratives about periods in the life of a woman who changed the world. Unfortunately, apart from the setting, and the fact they're ostensibly about the same person, there's little or nothing that ties the narratives together into a whole: each narrative is self-contained and they don't build on each other well. Worse, the plots of each of the individual narratives are simpleminded. You don't make sweeping changes in a sociopolitical system by standing up in front of everyone and saying "This is unjust." Even if everyone were to agree -- and they don't, even in the book -- it's just not that simple. The characterizations are weak as well: apart from the heroine, everyone is either a bit part, a one-dimensional caricature, or in one case a cheerful nonentity meant to serve as someone else's foil. Meanwhile, the heroine totally fails to engage, or at least totally fails to engage me; by the end of the first narrative I had completely stopped caring what happened. It's hard to say precisely why, but I think it's because she's too passive. Finally, while the setting is an interesting idea, the execution leaves something to be desired. The details as described are aerodynamically unlikely; fine, this isn't so important -- I don't demand that SF be "hard". But it's disappointing. The premise that the wings are irreplaceable seems dubiously justified as well. More significantly, however, the social structure of the flyers and landbound doesn't seem to quite make sense and it doesn't react convincingly to change. I don't know a great deal about Lisa Tuttle, but George R.R. Martin can and has done better (and not just "A Song of Ice and Fire", either.) Overall: *** (poor)
Rating:
Summary: Just an okay story
Review: Windhaven is the story a one person's life in a fantasy setting. It is not a bad story, just not a great one.
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