Soothsayer

Rating:
Summary: Grand space opera!
Review: I had never heard of Mr. Resnick until I found five of his books in a library sale. Now he is one of my favorite authors. Penelope Bailey is one of the most intriguing characters I have encountered in all of fiction. I loved the colorful characters: The Forever Kid, the Iceman, the Mock Turtle, etc. The only problem with the book , is it is to short, and the characters could have stayed around longer.

Rating:
Summary: Resnick creates living words.
Review: I was a fan of Mick Resnick well before I picked up Soothsayer, but this was one I just couldn't put down. His style reminds me very much or Heinlein because neither the topics, nor the situations are forced. Even as far fetched as sci-fi is by it's nature Resnick paints such a vivid scene with every word that I found myself falling into the plot.

Rating:
Summary: Resnick creates living words.
Review: I was a fan of Mick Resnick well before I picked up Soothsayer, but this was one I just couldn't put down. His style reminds me very much or Heinlein because neither the topics, nor the situations are forced. Even as far fetched as sci-fi is by it's nature Resnick paints such a vivid scene with every word that I found myself falling into the plot.

Rating:
Summary: Terrific Story
Review: Keerdin obviously doesn't know the difference between first person and third person. The book is written almost entirely from the third person point of view. I have some minor quibbles with the plot, and an over usage of the word "sardonic", but overall this is an very good book.

Rating:
Summary: sorry, didn't work
Review: The story itself didn't work for me.

Yes, the characterization was pretty good.

Yes, the precog element was well thought through.

No, that's not enough.

The story was told from the Mouse's viewpoint the whole way through -- right up to the very end, and then there was an abrupt switch. It added, I suppose, to the surprise, but I thought it was a fundamentally dishonest way to deal with the reader. Come on, play fair! Anyone can think through precog and throw around intriguing characters. It's not enough. Bring it together and make it work.
Thumbs down.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: This is a wonderful book, it's a shame that the ratings on this site suffered because someone gave it one star because he couldn't read the book due to some technical problem. Hello? We are reviewing _the book_, not the media / software / hardware, or whatever!

I thought the characterizations in this book is terrific, there are so many interesting characters here, like Mouse, the Iceman, The Forever Kid etc. There's a bit of western mixed in to all the SF stuff, which is fun if done right, and Mike Resnick did a brilliant job. The book has everything, interesting plot, action, adventure, romance (only a little bit), betrayal, tragedy. The main character's very unusual form of precognition makes her more interesting than any other fictional psychics I have read about, she can see a lot of alternative futures and take action so a desired one come to pass, that means she can practically make her own universe!

It's a crime that the publishers ever let this book go out of print (in paper format).

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't work
Review: Whilst indicating it works on a Pocket PC, I have a HP Jornada 45 on which it fails to display anthing other than the cover page

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't work
Review: Whilst indicating it works on a Pocket PC, I have a HP Jornada 45 on which it fails to display anthing other than the cover page