Full review on Reader's Dialogue: http://readersdialogue.blogspot.com/2013/09/false-sight.html

The second book definitely starts with a bang! Right away, though the Roses try to have a semi-normal life while they wait for things to start happening, their wait is cut very short as they lose some members to fates possibly worse than death. Hurling them straight into another race for answers, for survival, for the entire world's safety, this new challenge brings the Roses a different sort of struggle as they have to decide whether to kill one of their own.

The first book was full of adventure and action, and the second book somehow ups that even more. But this time, separated again time after time, each of the Roses has to make decisions on their own, and they aren't confined to Cleveland anymore - they travel far far beyond their hometown, out to different worlds. I was a little taken aback at the introduction of new worlds, maybe because the Roses don't seem too taken aback themselves, just taking in stride a shocking development even though there was no indication it was coming. But the hopping from one world to the next added another level of horror and urgency to an already gripping struggle.

And then what Miranda decides to do... and how she does it... I know there has to be an answer, that things can't possibly be left the way they were at the end of this book, and I'm speculating about what could have actually happened, but I guess I'll have to wait for the third book to find out... ( )

Have you ever watched Alien and its sequel, Aliens, back-to-back? I did that this past year, and it was jarring--in part because everything had to be escalated in the sequel. The stakes were raised across the board. In the first movie, Ripley risks her own life to save a cat; in the second one, it's a (really annoying) child. In Alien, one alien attacks a ship full of humans; Aliens pits an entire planet full of families and a team of space marines against overwhelming numbers of the creatures, including the terrifying and gross queen. The two movies almost fall into separate genres--but they're both very, very good.

False Sight, like its predecessor, opens with a crowd of preternaturally drugged, terrified humans stampeding like a herd of wildebeest through a normal suburban environment--in this case, a high school dance. Shit gets real immediately as a beloved character from the first book dies horribly and with little warning, and from there it quickly splits off to be an extremely complicated, completely different science fiction book from False Memory. There are terrifying, nearly indestructible, psychic, flesh-eating humanoid monsters from another world. Earth will be utterly destroyed if Miranda and her dwindling team can't stop the bad guys. It's a lot to take in.

But Miranda hasn't changed. I love Miranda. It's like she was grown from a cutting of my teenage brain that Krokos kept in a little jar on his windowsill for a few months until it blossomed. And then he trained it to use weapons and fight like a badass but made sure it retained its vulnerable, empathetic core. I really love Miranda. I love her, and I love how she interacts with her team. Their dry, intelligent humor is absolutely perfect for the realities of the world they inhabit, and they have the coolest uniforms in the world.

As in False Memory, there's some solid diversity here. There are major characters of a variety of races, and the female characters are just as strong as the male ones. At one point, Miranda is with two male soldiers, and she's the one who drives the car. I know that seems like a little thing, and it probably is, but driving a car is the kind of subtle show of strength that most authors--regardless of gender--automatically toss to a male character.

This series is a proper serial, and the individual novels absolutely cannot stand alone. You may be a little (or a lot) confused if it's been a while since you read the first book, especially when things that seemed to have been resolved by the end of that book--such as Miranda's love triangle--crop back up again. And there's a danger in a story like this, in which all the major players are a very specific type of clone, that the deaths of characters will lose resonance. I could feel that starting to happen for me a bit here.

I love hard science fiction. I devour it like so much rice pudding. So the sciency wiency, super-complicated plot of this book doesn't bother me. I just hope that with False Sight Krokos has finished building the bulk of this world, and that this book will serve as a crazy, expansive bridge between two slightly more stable novels.

This review was also posted at Finding Bliss in Books. ( )

Wow this book is 10 times as crazy as the first one! So many new Sci-Fi and fantasy elements were added in making for a mind bending read. I was a little confused towards the middle and just like "wow what is going on?!", but I just went with it and it was explained more later on. This world is very interesting and complex, but it is lacking some description, although if you don't take the story too seriously it's fine. These books are very entertaining rides that take you on a whirlwind of action, mystery, and plot twists. This series is definitely for the science fiction lovers and introduces you to some things you never would have imagined. ( )

I was drawn in by the book cover for False Sight by Dan Krokos, which I thought meant this was a novel about computers in some futuristic or fantastical way. Well, I quickly found out when I read the publisher’s brief description that it’s not. Still I was also drawn in by the concept, so I decided to give it a whirl. Why not?

This is a sci-fi novel about cloning, parallel worlds, and an alien invasion of sorts. It’s also Book #2 of the False trilogy. Normally I wouldn’t review Book #2 in a trilogy unless I had read and reviewed Book #1, which in this case is False Memory. What can I say; I didn’t do my due diligence on this one and by the time I realized it was the middle of a trilogy, I was hooked. And I wanted you to know about this trilogy, so I decided to review it anyway. Good decision? I don’t know…find out at http://popcornreads.com/?p=6396. ( )

*sighs heavily*

Well, this is one of those times. Ever since I read False Memory, I have been SO READY for the sequel. When I read and enjoyed Krokos' second novel to be released, the middle grade The Planet Thieves, I was even more sure that I would love this book. Would that that were the case. Sadly, False Sight took the series in a wholly different direction, and these changes just did not work for me one bit. Though I would not call False Sight a bad book, I urge those of you who loved False Memory to expect something rather different from the sequel.

False Memory did action really well, but what really rang true for me were the emotions and the voice, made all the more impressive by the fact that Krokos is a male author writing a female heroine. To give props where they are do, I still got a female vibe from the narration. At no point was I thrown out of the story thinking that something was gendered incorrectly. He put a lot of work into the narrative voice and it definitely continues to pay off.

Unfortunately, for me, I'm all about emotions and really getting into the characters heads and motivations. In False Memory, I was especially captivated by the disconnect between Miranda's memories and Miranda's present. The way she struggled with being two different people with different desires all at once was captivating and emotionally resonant. The resulting love triangle, the emotions of the past warring with the current ones, made it on to my mental list of love triangles I actually approve of. Needless to say, I hoped for more of such dynamics, thought-provoking and philosophical. I did not get them.

False Sight is all about twists, action, and world building, in roughly that order, with characterization almost entirely left out to pasture. For the sort of reader that I am, this was a disastrous change, because I didn't have enough emotionally invested after the gap of a year since I read the prior book to be able to care about the crazy twists and deaths. My main reaction to False Sight was one of intense boredom, despite the back to back fight scenes and huge surprises.

Aside from that style just not being my personal preference, I just generally found the sheer amount of it overwhelming. Krokos adds so much to the world building, and, as such, there are a bunch of infodumps. Also, with that many twists, things basically go batshit. I really don't know what to say about everything that happens other than just going "WHUH?" and staring at the book in befuddlement. Basically, when it comes to the large twist, I think you're either going to be really into it or you're going to be frustrated all the way through.

Now, I don't know for certain that this is true, but I gather that Dan Krokos is a Joss Whedon fan, and maybe also a Mira Grant fan. There were some definite shades of Serenity and some of the events from Mira Grant's Newsflesh trilogy in there. This means I should have been all over this, but I was just so disconnected and more bored than I've been in a long time.

Honestly, I'm not sure what else to say about what happened here. Maybe I was just not in the mood. Maybe the direction just was not what I was expecting or what works for me as reader. Either way, I'm bidding adieu to this series. I still really like the first book, but I'm leaving it at that and pretending it stands alone. ( )