texaswolfman's review against another edition
5.0
Cliffhanger!!! Still an excellent read!! This series is blaring towards a confrontation with the Nightside!!!
jeremybost's review against another edition
3.0
Been a while since I've read any of the Drood books and I'd almost forgotten all their faults, but this book brought them all back to mind. This series is best enjoyed with your brain turned off and simply taking in all the weird scenes Green describes to you, but if you ever let your brain wake up a bit, you may notice problems:
* Extreme overuse of expository dialogue. Almost all the characters will just announce things out loud that they would already know and often a regular series reader would know as well. "Oh hello, you are so-and-so, rumored to have gained your powers by doing this-and-that, and everyone is scared of you! How are you?" That sort of thing.
* Eddie's armor and Molly's powers don't seem to work in a consistent way, but work or fail as it supports the plot.
* Eddie is supposed to be a great spy, right? But his approach to every problem is go to the bar, socialize as "Shaman Bond" who by all rights everyone should know is a Drood by at least 5 books ago, then go to the one lead he got, armor up when any resistance is encountered, beat people up, if armor fails then one of the Armourer's tools should work conveniently, interrogate, then go to next thing. This is basically every book.
* Green has always been bad with handling power creep. Everything is strong so it's just a crapshoot what will beat what. Usually Drood armor wins except for a few times where it is convenient for it to be suppressed, often by random things that it seems like it shouldn't be suppressed by.
But you know? I'm 10 books deep and there's only 2 left, so I'll probably finish them anyway and hope for some interesting variation.
* Extreme overuse of expository dialogue. Almost all the characters will just announce things out loud that they would already know and often a regular series reader would know as well. "Oh hello, you are so-and-so, rumored to have gained your powers by doing this-and-that, and everyone is scared of you! How are you?" That sort of thing.
* Eddie's armor and Molly's powers don't seem to work in a consistent way, but work or fail as it supports the plot.
* Eddie is supposed to be a great spy, right? But his approach to every problem is go to the bar, socialize as "Shaman Bond" who by all rights everyone should know is a Drood by at least 5 books ago, then go to the one lead he got, armor up when any resistance is encountered, beat people up, if armor fails then one of the Armourer's tools should work conveniently, interrogate, then go to next thing. This is basically every book.
* Green has always been bad with handling power creep. Everything is strong so it's just a crapshoot what will beat what. Usually Drood armor wins except for a few times where it is convenient for it to be suppressed, often by random things that it seems like it shouldn't be suppressed by.
But you know? I'm 10 books deep and there's only 2 left, so I'll probably finish them anyway and hope for some interesting variation.
myfrogmonster's review against another edition
5.0
The Secret Histories series gets better and better with every book. Based on some things mentioned in this book I wonder if a new series is headed our way.
cavetoad's review against another edition
3.0
A quick beach read. Light on plot, high on action sequences.
More...