Reviews

Bookburners: The Complete Season One by Max Gladstone

Only show reviews with written explanations

trueperception's review against another edition

3.0

Not bad books, but I don't have the desire to continue the series. They just didn't grab my attention.

Received free copy via Goodreads Giveaway.

ashsalt's review against another edition

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4.0

This is a fun read. I really love that four authors are taking turns building the story. It would have been even better to read an episode or so at a time with breaks in between instead of hurrying to read 790 pages and get it back to the library by its due date. Something I should remember for Volume 2.

tmleblanc's review against another edition

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2.0

One part Warehouse 13 and one part Supernatural, Bookburners is one extremely long wild ride in pursuit of books and artifacts bent on destroying the planet. This novel was originally publish in serial format and Saga Press compiled Season 1 into a single book for better or worse.

At the start, Bookburners shined. Episode 1 drew me in with the known (a cop trying to rescue her brother) and the unknown (a secret Vatican agency hunting demons). Each installment or episode was another adventure. Each story was contained with a few short chapters with a bit of backstory about each team member slowly leaked out creating a cohesive story. Sure some of the stories were stronger than others (the story in Scotland about Ashanti’s mentor was a bit of a mess), but I enjoyed them like a binge reading fool. It also helped that there was a bit of dark humor and religious philosophy to keep the mind thinking and mulling over deeper elements hidden between the lines.

But in the end, Bookburners is just too long. It clocks in at over 800 pages, now I’m not afraid of big books, especially since my goal every year is to read 20,000 pages. Right around episode 10, the mood and focus of the book changes. With few hints that the big baddie from episode 1 has returned, suddenly Bookburners wants to become a cohesive novel with a single overarching storyline. By about episode 13, I repeatedly checked my percent progress through the book because the elements I loved about the first 9 episodes were gone.

If Bookburners had remained truly episodic and maintained its lighthearted dark humor nature through all 16 episodes, I would be more likely to explore this serial further. As it stands now, I can’t honestly recommend all 16 episodes of season 1 because of the poor connection between episode 1 and the later episodes in the serial. The attempt to create a novel out of serialization failed in Bookburners and left me upset the tone and direction of that the story changed so dramatically between page one and page 800.
This review was originally posted on Second Run Reviews

franzis_buecher's review against another edition

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I've tried to get into this multiple times but I just don't really care about the characters or anything that's happening:/

veronica87's review against another edition

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4.0

Well, that was fun. This was originally written as a weekly serial and laid out as if it were a television show, albeit written in traditional story format rather than as a script. Four authors undertook to write 16 "episodes" comprised of 5-6 chapters per episode, with each author writing their own episodes. You'd think the result would make for a jarring transition of writing styles when moving from one author's episode to another's but it really didn't. It all flowed rather well.

The story deals with magic, demons, and a secret organization within the Vatican that is tasked with keeping dangerous magic from entering the world. Pledged to this cause is Team Three: a hacker, an archivist, a fighter, a priest, and a newly recruited cop. Much as with a television show, I found myself getting more and more sucked into the misadventures of Team Three, complete with interesting twists and reveals.

Overall this felt like a mix of actual televisions shows, Warehouse 13 and The Librarians - with a bit of Haven thrown in. A second season is already written and available for purchase as individual episodes at Serial Box publishing but I'm torn between diving in right now or waiting for all of season two to be published in a single volume (as they've done with season one). Either way, I'll continue to follow Team Three's adventures.

justiceofkalr's review against another edition

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3.0

Almost four stars, but this took me a while to get really interested in, so not quite there. It's also a huge read, which is kind of intimidating. I almost gave up fairly early on because I wasn't sure I wanted to dedicate as much time to it as the page count necessitated. It pretty much feels like a whole season of a TV show written as one huge tome. I will definitely look at picking up the next book though because once I got sucked in to it, it was a lot of fun.