Taken

Rating:
Summary: Tie-in Doesn't Stand On It's Own
Review: It's hard to imagine that any review, positive or negative, will have any impact on the sales of this trite print-version of the Spielberg-branded mini-series. Tsave the time of some Thomas Cook fans, I offer this:

Other reviewers have given plausible explanations for the barely one-dimensional characters and blitzkrieg pacing of the book; there is also an appalling lack intrigue or suspense: presentation of what may be a startling visual in the mini-series of a crash site is delivered without build-up or fanfare, dropped in the reader's lap like an unbuttered piece of toast.

Consistency is painfully weak: what is described as a "treacherous" descent into a gorge is, in a page or two, capable of allowing a "vast array" of investigating staff and heavy equipment to arrive "within minutes"; an object described as larger than a B-29 is, again within a page or two, being carted off by a truck.

There's no examination of any character's internal world; rather, we get bare descriptions of personal transitions: "...he couldn't accept that it was a dream no matter what she told him" is followed a paragraph later with, "He...believed that it was only a dream."

Really, transitions simply don't exist; characters move emotionally from antipathy to gratitude, physically from office to crash site, within the space of a sentence-stopping period. Rambling sentences worthy of the Bulwar Litton contest, but with poorer use of commas, give us our only serious ratiocination as we try to ferret out meaning.

If only I could give it "0 stars"...unless you simply must have the complete Spielberg brand, or the complete X-Files knock-off, or the complete repackaging of encounters library, pass.

Rating:
Summary: Love Cook, but this book is bad
Review: My review is simple. I've read and liked all of Cook's other books. This one is absolute garbage. It's contrived. It's boring. The ending is boring. I disliked it intensely. It was a waste of my time. DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK.

Rating:
Summary: Too much content, not enough words
Review: On television, Taken was a miniseries that lasted for ten nights. Ten one-hour long episode. What writer Thomas Cook failed to realize is that you cannot cram ten hours of material in 350 pages. The book feels over crowded and distant. The characters come and go so quickly that they all become paper-thin cutouts. What must have looked good on television looks horrible on the page.

It's no secret now that Taken is about alien invasions. The story starts at the very beginning, with Roswell, and ends in the present, with the last final invasion. Through this period, we meet two families. Two of these families are abductees, and the last family is the obligatory evil-military guys that are so typical and predictable that they are no fun as villains.

As we move through six decades, we see these families battling with the different invasions and with the fear of being 'taken'.
But in a television drama, you can move fast in time like that. TV is based on dialogue, not prose. But you can't do this with a novel. If you keep moving quickly from one place to another, then the story begins feeling all over the place and quite disjointed. And Cook does nothing to try and link up these scenes with prose. Brief sentences are all that can be found between the overly abundant dialogue.

I did like the plot, but maybe it would have been better had each episode become a book in itself, instead of trying to cram all ten episodes in one book and use only the dialogue, linking them with brief sentences like 'and then they were in the kitchen' or 'and then he was in the houspital'. As a matter of fact, the words 'and then' or 'and so' appear so often that, by the end, you just can't stand it anymore.

Thomas H. Cook is a well-liked mystery author. He should probably stick with his own original material. Taken is a very incompetant attempt at adapting a very good series, one that leaves you completely dissatisfied and boring.

Rating:
Summary: Great movie series, good book.
Review: Taken was way better as the mini series.
Not as effective as the mini series.
The book would be better for people who haven't seen the series yet because it's word for word.

Rating:
Summary: Taken
Review: The book starts very well, the author rush you to all those nice parts, the allien having sex with a woman, and I guess the allien sperm it's superior also, because she got pregnant right away then the baby,etc etc, later the story gets complicated, and generation of human hybrids goes by and more etc. The book lacks originality, we had Hybrids with super powers before, and the end of the book, well you can feel that the author finished it, because he has to go to do something else, or him himself got tired. The end is poor, and expected, and even when I don't read SCI FI very often, I can see that the end of the book was forced, probably the author was running out of time, and he have to take the book to the print shop. I read things by Mr. Cook before, but this one was not his best. The book was fun,lacks originality, and with a poor ending, if you are younger than 20 you will love it. For the rest of the planet,well is like eating a salad when you are on a diet, you keep thinking. Where is the beef? A reader.

Rating:
Summary: Taken
Review: The only thing "taken" was me for handing over my money for this book. I did not watch the TV show and picked up this book at the airport just to have something to read.
Absolutely terrible. Shallow and immature. The book is like an fragmented outline. Do yourself a favor and read something else.

Rating:
Summary: TAKEN IS WORTH IT ,BUT THE ENDING IS NOT WELL
Review: THIS BOOK IS GOOD FOR PEOPLE WHOM HAVE NOT WATCHED THE SERIES YET, JUST LIKE ME. IT WAS A VERY INTERESTING NOVEL INDEED AS IT EXPLAINS ALOT WHERE YOU WOULD NOT PROBABLY UNDERSTAND IN THE SERIES. AT NIGHT, IT TOOK ME A HARD TIME TO STOP READING IT AND GO TO SLEEP (LAUGH) BECAUSE ITS REALLY THAT EXCITING !!! UNFORTUNATELY, THE ENDING IS A BIG DISAPPOINTMENT AS IT WAS NOT EXPLAINED AS TO WHAT HAD HAPPENED TO ALLIE AFTER THE LIGHTS APPEARED, IT JUST SEEMED LIKE THE AUTHOR JUST DIED BEFORE FINISHING THE ENDING. SO, I HAD TO BORROW A VIDEO OF THE FINALE OF TAKEN, AND IT DID END THE STORY VERY WELL.

Rating:
Summary: Impossible task
Review: This book just goes to show that you can't take a 20-hour miniseries and condense it into a 355-page book. I was hoping for more insight on the characters and the motivations than was in the miniseries, but in the book the characters are wooden and shallow; I learned nothing new about them. The plotline also blindly (and poorly) follows the series, and I probably wouldn't have been able to follow it if I hadn't already seen the show. This was probably a book rushed to market to cash in on the broadcast of the miniseries. They should have taken their time and done this right.

Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: This is a good book, a bit short for a 20 hour movie, but still good

Rating:
Summary: Bad Ending, Cardboard Characters
Review: This is a typical Sci-Fi network style story. Long on words, short on story. Essentially, the book is about a group of people who repeatedly are taken by aliens and chased by the evil mean military. This continues, and is repeated for several hundred pages and then ends.

I do mean ends, nothing is resolved and the story just stops. I found myself examining the book to see if there were missing pages; there were not.

I haven't seen the mini-series and now I wouldn't if I had the opportunity.

If you feel like reading it, just read the first and last chapter. What is in between is just more of the same but with different cardboard characters.

Bad.