Customer Reviews

Conrad's Quest for Rubber

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Another great book in the Adventures of Conrad Stargard. Don't miss the new prequel! Maybe when the last Star Wars comes out they'll make Conrad into a movie franchise? A must read for engineers and computer nerds while waiting for the next Harry Potter.

I don't know where I was when this book came out but I jus found it and bought it immediately.

I read the other reviews out of curiousity. Most of them point out several severe flaws that I acknowledge. In spite of this, I rate the book fairly highly for the simple reason that it was very enjoyable. It's stimulated my imagination almost as much as the first four. I could read flawed books like this one all the time!

How the mighty have fallen. With this book Frankowski's series has reached a new low. Lord Conrad's Lady was only average and should have been the end of this saga.

This book really isn't worth bothering with. Much of the book is told from the point of view of another character as some of the other reviewers here have indicated. This in and of itself isn't a bad thing as the High-Tech Knight did much the same to great success. Unfortunately, the rehashing of the past novels from this new character's point of view doesn't work nearly as well. In the High-Tech Knight there was one book's events to rehash, in this one there are five!

Frankowski has always displayed a bit of a libidinous side with Conrad having many different conquests in each of the books. I really didn't find that particularly wrong or out of hand. In this book though he goes totally overboard with genetically engineered beings from the future and a bunch of other wacky sexual situations that add nothing to the story. Whatever titilating aspects people derive from all this, are lost on me at this point.

The story overall is something of a disappointment with an awful ending that amounts to pushing a reset button to take away all the nasty aspects of the past hundred pages. Some people may find this way of magically putting us into a happy ending satisfying, but I really felt like I had wasted my time as most of the events of the book ended up having no significance.

The whole point of the series has been lost, that being Conrad's addition of new technology to history and his use of his knowledge of future history to make significant changes. This book just throws most of that out the window in favor of technological contrivances from the future that make everything else insignificant. Very disappointing overall.

I enjoyed this most recent addition to the Conrad series, and hope there will be more coming. I see a fundamental problem for the author in continuing this series however. Life has become too easy for Conrad. By this point in the series he has done it all, he's way ahead of the competition, and it's hard for the author to come up with any more challenges for him. I believe that is why Conrad was relegated to the status of a minor character in this book, i.e. so that the story could focus on the challenges of a "mere mortal" character. Understanding this, didn't make it any more enjoyable though. Conrad is the character I came back to see more of. It was disappointing to only see him in passing.

What was more disappointing though was that the author did create a challenge for Conrad, and he couldn't handle it. In the end he got outside help, which was almost like cheating. I want to see the protagonist rise to the occasion and overcome his own obstacles, not have them solved for him.

I was not offended by the gratuitous sex throughout the book myself, but I can see how some of the other reviewers were. As sex goes, this was really very mild. It is only because this is supposed to be a science fiction/fantasy book and not an erotic novel that it is even noticable. That said, I would like to point out that it is rather repetitious that the girls are always 14 years old, even the ones who have been around for years now. I understand that life expectancy was shorter in the middle ages, and people were old in their 20's and dead in their 30's, but the author could mix it up a bit with some 15 or 16 year old girls, just for variety.

This book is not as good as the other one I have read in this series, "The Cross-Time Engineer," but the so-called"rehash" in the first 50 pages WAS helpful to me...

My main gripe about this book--aside from the gratuitously inserted sex scenes--is that most of it is not told from Conrad's viewpoint...

I zipped through this yarn and enjoyed it, somewhat. It was better than its predecessor, Conrad's Lady. And she only had a brief walk-on cameo in this book. I have followed Conrad since the first printing of CTE ('80s). If one looks at the back cover of that one gets the impression that there were to only be the four. Yes the first 50 pages are rehash; however, in Leo's defense, by providing a new perspective of familiar events you don't have to re-read the prior novels (its both old and new). Writing from a 1st person perspective ain't an easy task either. That is all part of the formula. (As is the wonton and often pedophile sex, which I could do without.) One thing that I have felt is that Leo watched James Burke's Connection series and modified it to push his hero's engineering wonders. Please don't take that as a criticism. Incorporating an idea into good story is still a difficult feat. Still he did rush the end. I hope the next book will feature more engineering and more Conrad. Also, the next text will either explore the sea or aim for space before Conrad passes on. Father Iggy will be pope and Conrad may get canonized before he dies. I do hope there is a new book, I am still a fan-just looking for a stronger story than the past two.

Sadly, this last gasp does not live up to the previous five in the series. Too many pages are spent rehashing what we already know, Conrad himself has been relegated to a back seat, and most disappointing of all is that the author has not outgrown his adolescent compliant-naked-girlie fantasies, but has intensified them to embarrassingly offensive levels. I might give Number Seven a miss if it ever appears.

The beginning of the series starting with "The Cross-Time Engineer" is excellent, but this one has nothing new to offer. In fact it departs strongly from the theme of modern man succeeding based on superior knowledge and instead has him summoning up one deus-ex-machina after another. What's the point in a science fiction story where the hero has access to a magic wand?

The Adventures of Conrad Stargard series is excellent. Frankowski delivered a refreshing take on medieval Poland. A sort of " I wonder what would happen if..." experience. Can't put it down kind of storytelling. The newest addition to the series - 'Quest for Rubber', leaves much to be desired, however it does give the reader enough of a 'fix' to get by. Those of us who waited so long for this addition to the series were not disappointed, but this book does not rise to the level of say Book 3. The four and five star reviews should be reserved for earlier Frankowski tales. He seems to have left his formula behind. Most of the book's action take place outside of Poland. Conrad makes only minimal appearances. The main character, I forget his name (you see what I mean), is a slightly modified Piotr. Not much engineering going on in this book. Only glimpses of the technological advances made my Conrad and his people. I miss Francine, Anna, Henryk, Tadeos, and Vladimir. Mr. Frankowski - take us back to Poland.

As a great fan of Conrad I was really looking forward to another book exploring his alternate time/dimension Poland. Unfortunately the first third of the book is a rehash of parts of the last two books and the last two thirds lack the logic and direction of the series. Conrad plays no great part in this book and the action and characters are less developed and of much less interest. I would buy another in the series and hope it was better but this one is not a winner