THE TERMINAL MAN (Michael Crichton) - March 25/16

Typical Crichton. (Well, lesser Crichton if you wanna get specific.) It's bogged down with overly scientific stuff that didn't interest me one bit, with the hands-off narrative compounded by a lack of fully-defined, wholly compelling characters. A passable read but nothing special. **1/2 out of ****

IRON HOUSE (Jerome Washington) - March 17/16

I've had this one since Carleton so I'm happy to finally have read it. But while there are some interesting tidbits, Washington's annoyingly pompous writing style essentially negates anything positive here. Get over yourself, dude. *1/2 out of ****

THE RISE OF NINE (Pittacus Lore) - March 13/16

So this was pretty rough going in the early stages since I didn't remember much of what happened in the previous two books. It didn't help, either, that the first-person perspective kept shifting between characters without any indication which character was now narrating! (I wonder if this was the fault of my e-book file?) Anyway, I finally began to get into it although there's just so much action in the second half of the book. **1/2 out of ****

CAT AND MOUSE (James Patterson) - March 7/16

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Cat and Mouse is way, way too long, as that seems to be Patterson's modus operandi. But I did enjoy it for the most part, although the jarring shift to a different perspective about halfway through is somewhat tough to take. (I liked the revelation that the agent was, in fact, the killer.) All the Soneji stuff feels like an afterthought and it's clear this could and should have been two separate books. **1/2 out of ****