Descriptions of resources are embodied in the form of Web documents. Descriptions that are intended to be read by humans are often represented as HTML. Descriptions that are intended for consumption by machines are represented as RDF data. Where URIs identify real-world objects, it is essential to not confuse the objects themselves with the Web documents that describe them. It is, therefore, common practice to use different URIs to identify the real-world object and the document that describes it, in order to be unambiguous. This practice allows separate statements to be made about an object and about a document that describes that object.
For example, the creation date of a person may be rather different to the creation date of a document that describes this person. Being able to distinguish the two through use of different URIs is critical to the coherence of the Web of Data. The Web is intended to be an information space that may be used by humans as well as by machines. Both should be able to retrieve representations of resources in a form that meets their needs, such as HTML for humans and RDF for machines. Servers can inspect these headers and select an appropriate response.
There are two different strategies to make URIs that identify real-world objects dereferenceable. Both strategies ensure that objects and the documents that describe them are not confused, and that humans as well as machines can retrieve appropriate representations. The following sections summarize both strategies and illustrate each with an example HTTP session. Real-world objects, like houses or people, can not be transmitted over the wire using the HTTP protocol. Thus, it is also not possible to directly dereference URIs that identify real-world objects.
Therefore, in the URIs strategy, instead of sending the object itself over the network, the server responds to the client with the HTTP response code See Other and the URI of a Web document which describes the real-world object. This is called a redirect. In a second step, the client dereferences this new URI and gets a Web document describing the real-world object. This process can be illustrated with a concrete example. This data should be understandable for humans as well as for machines. The client sends an Accept: The server would answer:.
This is a redirect, which tells the client that a Web document containing a description of the requested resource, in the requested format, can be found at the URI given in the Location: Note that if the Accept: This is indicated by the Vary: Next, the client will try to dereference the URI given in the response from the server. The status code tells the client that the response contains a representation of the requested resource. Only the beginning of this description is shown. The RDF data model, in general, will be described in 2. A widespread criticism of the URI strategy is that it requires two HTTP requests to retrieve a single description of a real-world object.
One option for avoiding these two requests is provided by the hash URI strategy. This special part is called the fragment identifier. This means a URI that includes a hash cannot be retrieved directly and therefore does not necessarily identify a Web document. In this fashion, URIs such as the following are created for the vocabulary terms:. First, the client truncates the URI, removing the fragment identifier e.
Then, it connects to the server at biglynx. This demonstrates that the returned document contains not only a description of the vocabulary term http: The Linked Data-aware client will now inspect the response and find triples that tell it more about the http: If it is not interested in the triples describing the second resource, it can discard them before continuing to process the retrieved data.
So which strategy should be used? Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. The downside of the hash URI approach is that the descriptions of all resources that share the same non-fragment URI part are always returned to the client together, irrespective of whether the client is interested in only one URI or all. If these descriptions consist of a large number of triples, the hash URI approach can lead to large amounts of data being unnecessarily transmitted to the client. There could be one describing document for each resource, or one large document for all of them, or any combination in between.
It is also possible to change the policy later on. As a result of these factors, URIs are often used to serve resource descriptions that are part of very large data sets, such as the description of an individual concept from DBpedia , an RDF-ized version of Wikipedia, consisting of 3. Hash URIs are often used to identify terms within RDF vocabularies, as the definitions of RDF vocabularies are usually rather small, maybe a thousand RDF triples, and as it is also often convenient for client applications to retrieve the complete vocabulary definition at once, instead of having to look up every term separately.
By using URIs that follow a http: RDF provides a data model that is extremely simple on the one hand but strictly tailored towards Web architecture on the other hand. To be published on the Web, RDF data can be serialized in different formats. This section gives an overview of the RDF data model, followed by a comparison of the different RDF serialization formats that are used in the Linked Data context.
RDF aims at being employed as a lingua franca , capable of moderating between other data models that are used on the Web. Below, we give a short overview of the data model. In RDF, a description of a resource is represented as a number of triples. The three parts of each triple are called its subject , predicate , and object. A triple mirrors the basic structure of a simple sentence, such as this one:. The subject of a triple is the URI identifying the described resource. The object can either be a simple literal value , like a string, number, or date; or the URI of another resource that is somehow related to the subject.
The predicate, in the middle, indicates what kind of relation exists between subject and object, e. The predicate is also identified by a URI. These predicate URIs come from vocabularies , collections of URIs that can be used to represent information about a certain domain. Please refer to Section 4. The URIs occurring as subject and object are the nodes in the graph, and each triple is a directed arc that connects the subject and the object.
Linked Data applications operate on top of this giant global graph and retrieve parts of it by dereferencing URIs as required. In order to make it easier for clients to consume data, it is recommended to use only the subset of the RDF data model described above. In particular, the following features should be avoided in a Linked Data context. It is important to remember that RDF is not a data format, but a data model for describing resources in the form of subject, predicate, object triples.
This simply means taking the triples that make up an RDF graph, and using a particular syntax to write these out to a file either in advance for a static data set or on demand if the data set is more dynamic. In addition several other non-standard serialization formats are used to fulfill specific needs. The relative advantages and disadvantages of the different serialization formats are discussed below, along with a code sample showing a simple graph expressed in each serialization. However, the syntax is also viewed as difficult for humans to read and write, and, therefore, consideration should be given to using other serializations in data management and curation workflows that involve human intervention, and to the provision of alternative serializations for consumers who may wish to eyeball the data.
The first one states that there is a thing, identified by the URI http: The second triple state that this thing has the name Dave Smith. RDFa is popular in contexts where data publishers are able to modify HTML templates but have relatively little additional control over the publishing infrastructure. For example, many content management systems will enable publishers to configure the HTML templates used to expose different types of information, but may not be flexible enough to support redirects and HTTP content negotiation.
Turtle is a plain text format for serializing RDF data. Due to its support for namespace prefixes and various other shorthands, Turtle is typically the serialization format of choice for reading RDF triples or writing them by hand. N-Triples is a subset of Turtle, minus features such as namespace prefixes and shorthands. The result is a serialization format with lots of redundancy, as all URIs must be specified in full in each triple.
However, this redundancy is also the primary advantage of N-Triples over other serialization formats, as it enables N-Triples files to be parsed one line at a time, making it ideal for loading large data files that will not fit into main memory. The redundancy also makes N-Triples very amenable to compression, thereby reducing network traffic when exchanging files. These two factors make N-Triples the de facto standard for exchanging large dumps of Linked Data, e. Such external RDF links are fundamental for the Web of Data as they are the glue that connects data islands into a global, interconnected data space and as they enable applications to discover additional data sources in a follow-your-nose fashion.
Dereferencing these URIs yields a description of the linked resource provided by the remote server. This description will usually contain additional RDF links which point to other URIs that, in turn, can also be dereferenced, and so on. This is how individual resource descriptions are woven into the Web of Data.
This is also how the Web of Data can be navigated using a Linked Data browser or crawled by the robot of a search engine. There are three important types of RDF links:. The following section gives examples of all three types of RDF link and discusses their role on the Web of Data. The Web of Data contains information about a multitude of things ranging from people, companies, and places, to films, music, books, genes, and various other types of data. Chapter 3 will give an overview of the data sources that currently make up the Web of Data.
RDF links enable references to be set from within one data set to entities described in another, which may, in turn, have descriptions that refer to entities in a third data set, and so on. Therefore, setting RDF links not only connects one data source to another, but enables connections into a potentially infinite network of data that can be used collectively by client applications.
By following this link, applications can find population counts, postal codes, descriptions in 90 languages, and lists of famous people and bands that are related to Birmingham. The rationale for, and implications of, this can be illustrated with an example of someone who will be known as Jeff who wants to publish data on the Web describing himself. Jeff must first define a URI to identify himself, in a namespace that he owns, or in which the domain name owner has allowed him to create new URIs.
After looking up the URI and receiving the descriptive data, an information consumer knows two things: But what happens if Jeff wants to publish data describing a location or a famous person on the Web? The same procedure applies: Jeff defines URIs identifying the location and the famous person in his namespace and serves the data when somebody looks up these URIs. In an open environment like the Web it is likely that Jeff is not the only one talking about the place or the famous person, but that there are many different information providers who talk about the same entities.
As they all use their own URIs to refer to the person or place, the result is multiple URIs identifying the same entity. In order to still be able to track the different information providers speak about the same entity, Linked Data relies on setting RDF links between URI aliases. By common agreement, Linked Data publishers use the link type http: To use different URIs to refer to the same entity and to use owl: The reasons for this are:.
The last point becomes especially clear when one considers the size of many data sets that are part of the Web of Data. For instance, the Geonames data set provides information about over eight million locations. If in order to start publishing their data on the Web of Data, the Geonames team would need to find out what the commonly accepted URIs for all these places would be, doing so would be so much effort that it would likely prevent Geonames from publishing their dataset as Linked Data at all.
Later, they, or somebody else, may invest effort into finding and publishing owl: Therefore, in contrast to relying on upfront agreement on URIs, the Web of Linked Data relies on solving the identity resolution problem in an evolutionary and distributed fashion: There has been significant uncertainty in recent years about whether owl: Therefore, we recommend to also use owl: The promise of the Web of Data is not only to enable client applications to discover new data sources by following RDF links at run-time but also to help them to integrate data from these sources.
Integrating data requires bridging between the schemata that are used by different data sources to publish their data. The term schema is understood in the Linked Data context as the mixture of distinct terms from different RDF vocabularies that are used by a data source to publish data on the Web. This mixture may include terms from widely used vocabularies see Section 4.
On the one hand side, it tries to avoid heterogeneity by advocating the reuse of terms from widely deployed vocabularies. As discussed in Section 4. Thus, whenever these vocabularies already contain the terms needed to represent a specific data set, they should be used. This helps to avoid heterogeneity by relying on ontological agreement.
On the other hand, the Web of Data tries to deal with heterogeneity by making data as self-descriptive as possible. Technically, this is realized in a twofold manner: Together these techniques enable Linked Data applications to discover the meta-information that they need to integrate data in a follow-your-nose fashion along RDF links. Linked Data publishers should therefore adopt the following workflow: Wherever possible, the publisher should seek wider adoption for the new, proprietary vocabulary from others with related data.
If a looser mapping is desired, then rdfs: The example below illustrates how the proprietary vocabulary term http: The more links that are set between vocabulary terms, the better client applications can integrate data that is represented using different vocabularies. This type of data integration is discussed in more detail in Section 6. This chapter has outlined the basic principles of Linked Data and has described how the principles interplay in order to extend the Web with a global data space.
Similar to the classic document Web, the Web of Data is built on a small set of standards and the idea to use links to connect content from different sources. The extent of its dependence on URIs and HTTP demonstrates that Linked Data is not disjoint from the Web at large, but simply an application of its principles and key components to novel forms of usage. Far from being an additional layer on top of but separate from the Web, Linked Data is just another warp or weft being steadily interwoven with the fabric of the Web.
Structured data is made available on the Web today in forms. Data is published as CSV data dumps, Excel spreadsheets, and in a multitude of domain-specific data formats. Various data providers have started to allow direct access to their databases via Web APIs. So what is the rationale for adopting Linked Data instead of, or in addition to, these well-established publishing techniques?
In summary, Linked Data provides a more generic, more flexible publishing paradigm which makes it easier for data consumers to discover and integrate data from large numbers of data sources.
- The Contours of American History;
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- My First Book of Chinese Words: An ABC Rhyming Book.
In particular, Linked Data provides:. Compared to the other methods of publishing data on the Web, these properties of the Linked Data architecture make it easier for data consumers to discover, access and integrate data. However, it is important to remember that the various publication methods represent a continuum of benefit, from making data available on the Web in any form, to publishing Linked Data according to the principles described in this chapter.
Progressive steps can be taken towards Linked Data publishing, each of which make it easier for third parties to consume and work with the data. These steps include making data available on the Web in any format but under an open license, to using structured, machine-readable formats that are preferably non-proprietary, to adoption of open standards such as RDF, and to inclusion of links to other data sources. Crucially, each rating can be obtained in turn, representing a progressive transition to Linked Data rather than a wholesale adoption in one operation.
The Web of Data can be seen as an additional layer that is tightly interwoven with the classic document Web and has many of the same properties:. The founding aim of the project, which has spawned a vibrant and growing Linked Data community, was to bootstrap the Web of Data by identifying existing data sets available under open licenses, convert them to RDF according to the Linked Data principles, and to publish them on the Web.
As a point of principle, the project has always been open to anyone who publishes data according to the Linked Data principles. This openness is a likely factor in the success of the project in bootstrapping the Web of Data. Each node in the diagram represents a distinct data set published as Linked Data. The arcs indicate the existence of links between items in the two data sets. Heavier arcs correspond to a greater number of links, while bidirectional arcs indicate that outward links to the other exist in each data set.
Linked: The New Science of Networks - Wikipedia
The graphic shown in this figure is available online at http: Updated versions of the graphic will be published on this website in regular intervals. If you publish a linked data set yourself, please also add it to this catalog so that it will be included into the next version of the cloud diagram. Instructions on how to add data sets to the catalog are found in the ESW wiki This section gives an overview of the topology of the Web of Data as of November Data sets are classified into the following topical domains: The number of RDF links refers to out-going links that are set from data sources within a domain to other data sources.
Some of the first data sets that appeared in the Web of Data are not specific to one topic, but span multiple domains. This cross-domain coverage is crucial for helping to connect domain-specific data sets into a single, interconnected data space, thereby avoiding fragmentation of the Web of Data into isolated, topical data islands. RDF statements that refer to this URI are then generated by extracting information from various parts of the Wikipedia articles, in particular the infoboxes commonly seen on the right hand side of Wikipedia articles.
Because of its breadth of topical coverage, DBpedia has served as a hub within the Web of Data from the early stages of the Linking Open Data project. The wealth of inward and outward links connecting items in DBpedia to items in other data sets is apparent in Figure 3. A second major source of cross-domain Linked Data is Freebase 24 , an editable, openly-licensed database populated through user contributions and data imports from sources such as Wikipedia and Geonames.
Freebase provides RDF descriptions of items in the database, which are linked to items in DBpedia with incoming and outgoing links. These are, in turn, linked with DBpedia, helping to facilitate data integration across a wide range of interlinked sources. Geography is another factor that can often connect information from varied topical domains. This is apparent in the Web of Data, where the Geonames 27 data set frequently serves as a hub for other data sets that have some geographical component. Geonames is an open-license geographical database that publishes Linked Data about 8 million locations.
Wherever possible, locations in Geonames and LinkedGeoData are interlinked with corresponding locations in DBpedia, ensuring there is a core of interlinked data about geographical locations. Linked Data versions of the EuroStat 28 , World Factbook 29 and US Census 30 data sets begin to bridge the worlds of statistics, politics and social geography, while Ordnance Survey the national mapping agency of Great Britain has begun to publish Linked Data describing the administrative areas within the Great Britain 31 , in efforts related to the data.
One of the first large organisations to recognise the potential of Linked Data and adopt the principles and technologies into their publishing and content management workflows has been the British Broadcasting Corporation BBC. Following earlier experiments with publishing their catalogue of programmes as RDF, the BBC released in two large sites that combine publication of Linked Data and conventional Web pages. This music data is interlinked with DBpedia, and it receives incoming links from a range of music-related Linked Data sources.
These cross-data set links allow applications to consume data from all these sources and integrate it to provide rich artist profiles, while the playlist data can be mined to find similarities between artists that may be used to generate recommendations. More recently, the BBC have launched the site Wildlife Finder 34 , which presents itself to users as a conventional Web site with extensive information about animal species, behaviours and habitats.
Outgoing links connect each species, behaviour and habitat to the corresponding resources in the DBpedia data set, and to BBC Programmes that depict these. In this case, the goal of using RDF was not to expose Linked Data for consumption by third parties, but to aid internal content management and data integration in a domain with high levels of connectivity between players, teams, fixtures and stadia. Elsewhere in the media sector, there have also been significant moves towards Linked Data by major players.
The New York Times has published a significant proportion of its internal subject headings as Linked Data 37 under a Creative Commons Attribution license see Section 4. The intention is to use this liberally-licensed data as a map to lead people to the rich archive of content maintained by the New York Times.
- Haiku: Time Passing By (A Haiku Collection Book 2);
- Stephanies Cupcakes Baking Book.
- Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics: Foundations and Applications!
- Brain, Body and Machine: Proceedings of an International Symposium on the Occasion of the 25th Anniversary of McGill University Centre for Intelligent ... (Advances in Intelligent and Soft Computing).
- The Muses.
- Ghostmaker;
Services such as this are particularly significant for their ability to bridge Linked Data and conventional hypertext documents, potentially allowing documents such as blog posts or news articles to be enhanced with relevant pictures or background data. Governmental bodies and public-sector organisations produce a wealth of data, ranging from economic statistics, to registers of companies and land ownership, reports on the performance of schools, crime statistics, and the voting records of elected representatives.
Recent drives to increase government transparency, most notably in countries such as Australia 39 , New Zealand 40 , the U. Making this data easily accessible enables organisations and members of the public to work with the data, analyse it to discover new insights, and build tools that help communicate these findings to others, thereby helping citizens make informed choices and hold public servants to account.
The potential of Linked Data for easing the access to government data is increasingly understood, with both the data. The approach taken in the two countries differs slightly: Further high-level guidance on "Putting Government Data online" can be found in [18]. In order to provide a forum for coordinating the work on using Linked Data and other Web standards to improve access to government data and increase government transparency, W3C has formed a eGovernment Interest Group With an imperative to support novel means of discovery, and a wealth of experience in producing high-quality structured data, libraries are natural complementors to Linked Data.
This field has seen some significant early developments which aim at integrating library catalogs on a global scale; interlinking the content of multiple library catalogs, for instance, by topic, location, or historical period; interlink library catalogs with third party information picture and video archives, or knowledge bases like DBpedia ; and at making library data easier accessible by relying on Web standards.
Similarly, the OpenLibrary , a collaborative effort to create "one Web page for every book ever published" 50 publishes its catalogue in RDF, with incoming links from data sets such as ProductDB see Section 3. An application that facilitates this scholarly data space is Talis Aspire The application supports educators in the creation and management of literature lists for university courses.
Items are added to these lists through a conventional Web interface; however, behind the scenes, the system stores these records as RDF and makes the lists available as Linked Data. Aspire is used by various universities in the UK, which, in turn, have become Linked Data providers. The Aspire application is explored in more detail in Section 6. High levels of ongoing activity in the library community will no doubt lead to further significant Linked Data deployments in this area.
The adoption of this model by libraries, museums and cultural institutions that participate in Europeana will further accelerate the availability of Linked Data related to publications and cultural heritage artifacts. In order to provide a forum and to coordinate the efforts to increase the global interoperability of library data, W3C has started a Library Linked Data Incubator Group Linked Data has gained significant uptake in the Life Sciences as a technology to connect the various data sets that are used by researchers in this field.
The Book Mashup uses the Simple Commerce Vocabulary 61 to represent and republish data about book offers retrieved from the Amazon. GoodRelations has seen significant uptake from retailers such as Best Buy 63 and Overstock. The adoption of the GoodRelations ontology has even extended to the publication of price lists for courses offered by The Open University The ProductDB Web site and data set 66 aggregates and links data about products for a range of different sources and demonstrates the potential of Linked Data for the area of product data integration.
Some of the earliest data sets in the Web of Data were based on conversions of, or wrappers around, Web 2. This has produced data sets and services such as DBpedia and the FlickrWrappr 67 , a Linked Data wrapper around the Flickr photo-sharing service. These were complemented by user-generated content sites that were built with native support for Linked Data, such as Revyu. There are several hundred publicly accessible Semantic MediaWiki installations 71 that publish their content to the Web of Data.
More recently, Linked Data principles and technologies have been adopted by major players in the user-generated content and social media spheres, the most significant example of which is the development and adoption by Facebook of the Open Graph Protocol This enables Facebook to more easily consume data from sites across the Web, as it is published at source in structured form. Within a few months of its launch, numerous major destination sites on the Web, such as the Internet Movie Database 73 , had adopted the Open Graph Protocol to publish structured data describing items featured on their Web pages.
The primary challenge for the Open Graph Protocol is to enable a greater degree of linking between data sources, within the framework that has already been well established. Another area in which RDFa is enabling the publication of user-generated content as Linked Data is through the Drupal content management system The data sets described in this chapter demonstrate the diversity in the Web of Data.
Recently published data sets, such as Ordnance Survey , legislation. This trend is expected to gather significant momentum, with organisations in other industry sectors publishing their own data according to the Linked Data principles.
Linked Data is made available on the Web using a wide variety of tools and publishing patterns. This chapter will discuss the primary design considerations that must be taken into account when preparing data to be published as Linked Data on the Web, before introducing specific publishing recipes in Chapter 5. These design considerations are not about visual design, but about how one shapes and structures data to fit neatly in the Web.
They break down into three areas, each of which maps onto one or two of the Linked Data principles: The outcome of these design decisions contributes directly to the utility and usability of a set of Linked Data, and therefore ultimately its value to the people and software programs that use it.
As discussed in Chapter 2 , the first principle of Linked Data is that URIs should be used as names for things that feature in your data set. These things might be concrete real-world entities such as a person, a building, your dog, or more abstract notions such as a scientific concept. Each of these things needs a name so that you and others can refer to it. Just as significant care should go into the design of URIs for pages in a conventional Web site, so should careful decisions be made about the design of URIs for a set of Linked Data.
This section will explore these issues in detail. This allows these names to be looked up using any client, such as a Web browser, that speaks the HTTP protocol. In practical terms, using http: Therefore, they are free to mint URIs in this namespace to use as names for things they want to talk about. As discussed in Chapter 1 , a primary reason for publishing Linked Data is to add value through creation of incoming and outgoing links.
Therefore, to help inspire confidence in third parties considering linking to a data set, some effort should be expended on minting stable, persistent URIs for entities in that data set. The specifics of the technical hosting environment may introduce some constraints on the precise syntax of these URIs; however, the following simple rules should be followed to help achieve this:. Where a particular Web site is seen as authoritative in a particular domain, and it provides stable URIs for entities in this domain or pages about those entities , it can be very tempting to try and misappropriate these URIs for use in a Linked Data context.
Each is described in a document at an address such as:. It is not unreasonable at first glance to consider augmenting this URI with a fragment identifier to create a URI that identifies the film itself, rather than a document about the film, such as:. However, this approach is problematic as no one other than the owner of the imdb. If IMDb adopted the Linked Data principles it would constitute a highly appropriate target for such linking.
However, this is not the case at the time of writing, and therefore alternatives such as DBpedia and LinkedMDB 76 should be considered. Wherever possible, URIs should not reflect implementation details that may need to change at some point in the future. For example, including server names or other indicators of underlying technical infrastructure in URIs is undesirable.
In the case of Big Lynx , whose site is hosted on a machine called tiger and implemented mostly in PHP, the following is considered uncool as a potential URI for an RDF document containing data about Dave Smith, as it includes both the name of the machine and the. In contrast, the URI below could be considered cool, as it is less likely to break if the site is moved to a different machine or is reimplemented using a different scripting language or framework:. To ensure the uniqueness of URIs it is often useful to base them on some existing primary key, such as a unique product ID in a database table.
In the case of Big Lynx , the company is small enough that a combination of given name and family name can ensure uniqueness of URIs for members of staff, as shown in the examples below. This has the advantage of creating a more human-readable and memorable URI. In a larger organisation, an employee ID number may provide a suitable alternative.
Linked has become a bestseller with more than 70, copies sold after fourteen printings and it was selected as one of the Best Business Books in The main purpose of Linked is to introduce the science of networks to the general audience. It provides an easy and readable introduction to the main models and properties of networks and their applications in many areas of real life, such as the spread of epidemics, fighting against terrorism, handling economic crises or solving social problems of the society. It is about how networks emerge, what they look like, and how they evolve.
It shows you a Web-based view of nature, society, and business, a new framework for understanding issues ranging from democracy on the Web to the vulnerability of the Internet and the spread of deadly viruses. Networks are present everywhere. All we need is an eye for them. Linked contains fifteen chapters named links that introduce different concepts and applications of networks:. They're learning who to and who to not trust, more about the twin and their link together, changing their appearances, and really making the big decisions on where to go from there.
This first half was really upbeat, fast paced, and a little bit stressful in a good way. The second half of the book focuses more on the Sci-fi aspect of the book. Please be warned that this paragraph may be very spoilery. This half of the book focuses on the girls travelling in space to another planet. Here, we get to meet the crew, the captain and the co-captain, witness how the space ship works. And there's lots of action going on in this section of the book.
There's a lot going on with Elissa's twin and people are after them. This means that a bunch of other space ships are attacking them in the middle of space. It's really cool, and it's like no other YA book that I've read before. And the book is really well written, which it makes it that much more fascinating. The only complaint that I have is that their time in space got a little repetitive. I wish that it would have been cut down a little bit. There's not really that much romance in this book.
There is a slight one, but it really doesn't develop until like the last 3 chapters of the book. It was really awkward for me, because the characters basically hated each other throughout the whole book. There was no subtle flirting or touching. It was really just a "I don't like you" kind of thing. And it was really awkward for me to have those two characters latch on and profess their love for each other at the end of the book. Where did that come from? I was fine with their being no romance in the book, and I would have preferred that it stayed that way rather than have that awkwardness.
Some things in the book were a little confusing at times. This didn't happen very often, though. I think what the issue was is that this was a whole different world. Not to mention that there were surrounding planets and moons, AND there was a space ship that we had to learn about. It's really a book that you need to concentrate on or you're going to get lost. One thing that did bug me was that the chapters were verrrry long.
I'm a pretty fast reader, but there were a couple chapters in the book that took me about 45 minutes to an hour to read. I'm a person who prefers stopping points in my books, so it was a bit annoying, but not anything major. The ending of the book was really enjoyable. I can't stress to you guys how much I hate cliffhangers. I understand why authors do it, but it's really just annoying. The ending of Linked sets it up really nicely for a second book.
I'm not sure if this will become a series or if it's a standalone. I almost think that Howson has to create a second book with how she set it up, but a bunch of questions that arise in the beginning of the book are answered in the last two chapters. Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It's a really heavy read, though, and made me want to read something very light right after it. It's intense, it kept me on my toes, and it left me craving more. Linked is x better than I thought it would be, and I'm really interested in reading more by Imogen Howson.
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June 11th, Source: ARC provided by the publisher Rating: May 03, BookHookup rated it really liked it. This book was originally reviewed on The Book Hookup. That was crazy and I loved it!! Elissa has been having hallucinations for years as well as bruises that mysteriously appear.
Albert-László Barabási
No treatment has been successful so far so she finally consents to brain surgery. However, Elissa finds out the real reason she has been having the visions…. She has a twin that she never knew existed. And boy oh boy, what a story it is. She goes from a passenger in her life to the driver and I loved it! She went from depression due to her mental issues to a leader. She stepped up to the challenge in so many ways. Lin and Caden were the other major players in this novel. I loved the progression of Lin and the fierce loyalty she had towards Elissa. Caden, oh le sigh. I liked him from the beginning even though he was a little full of himself.
He was a total rule follower, except when he knew it was wrong. I hated her mother and respected her father. Slow, slow, slow burn. When love was professed at the end, I was kind of like, woa, too fast, but then again they thought they would die. I would really love to see more of the romance play out without the serious threat of the government hanging over them. None really, but the entire story was intense. I do enjoy a good double-crossing but that was not the case here.
The Formula
However, there were loads and loads of dirty secrets that were uncovered as the story moved along. Sometimes I felt like some emotions only scratched the surface. I know there was so much to fit in, but a teensy bit longer for the romantic scene would have been great. What can I say, I am a massive sucker for romance. Also, the angriest Caden ever got was to swear under his breath. Honestly, in the situation they were in it would have been ok for a few f-bombs to drop. However, I can respect that the book was clean…I would have just liked to see it all rather than just know he was saying some expletives.
I could slightly sense what might happen but it was better than I imagined it to turn out. I could not turn the pages fast enough. Not a cliff hanger and I assumed this was actually a stand alone novel. Dec 08, Sarah rated it liked it Shelves: I own a copy of this book. Numerous doctors have tried to treat her but accomplished nothing, but now a new doctor wants to try brain surgery. When Elissa has another vision — one that seems real, she leave Source: When Elissa has another vision — one that seems real, she leaves her home and goes off to the place she recognised in her vision, only to find a girl who is her identical doppelganger.
Lin has been raised to believe that she is not even human, but Elissa knows that she is, and she knows that she has to help her. Running away together seems the only way to help Lin, but how long can Elissa and Lin stay on the run? Who can they turn to for help? And is Lin really not human? The storyline in this was okay, but I did feel bored at times.
I found the storyline regarding Lin to be a bit strange. The sudden romance was also a bit unnecessary. Overall; an okay sci-fi story, that was a little unbelievable and boring in places. This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. So viel zum Klappentext, ne. Danach geht es mit der Flucht weiter, die mega easy peasy ist. Und schon stehen den beiden alle Tore offen. Via Raumschiff fliegen die beiden dann durchs Weltall, um zu einem anderen Planeten zu gelangen, auf dem sie sicher sein sollen. Das waren so die Tops meines Ratings Hinterher ist man echt nicht schlauer.
Jun 10, Julia rated it really liked it Shelves: When everything is automated, when everyone is organized, where are the fringes that accomodate those on the run? When Elissa's "illness" is revealed to be something more terrible than she ever imagined, the scope of this story expands from "teenage suburbia" to "the galaxy". Elissa's sheltered perspective made a lot of the mechanics in the opening chapters One of the biggest problems with any thriller set in a futuristic utopia is how the main character will be able to slip through the cracks. Elissa's sheltered perspective made a lot of the mechanics in the opening chapters a bit of a stretch for me, but luckily Howson doesn't spend too much time belaboring the "spy craft" of how Lissa and her twin manage their escape.
Some hurried assistace from Lissa's father, helpful obliviousness on the part of a friend, and then the story blasts off. For some reason "space opera" is more believable than "futuristic, teen caper", and my interest in LINKED took a marked uptick. And up and up and up I did not expect the revelation that explains Lin's horrible past, nor did I expect the positive future it made possible for the sisters.
LINKED is completely satisfying as a stand alone, but I would love the chance to see more of these characters and their world. Apr 10, Michelle Mags rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: Picked up this book last night at midnight, finished it at midnight the following day - this is an intense page turner book. A book that the author, Imogen Howson, has creatively woven an original, enticing, spell-binding world that got me hooked from start to finish.
The story is so beautifully written that I just want more more more of this richly crafted sci-fi world. June is far from now, and if you know what's right for you or wish to know what's good for you, then I truly recommend you write a reminder down your calendar to purchase a copy of this book - especially if you're a reader that needs a perfect getaway that has the perfect amount of everything: Review by Sarah - Year 8 This is by far the best book I have ever read.
The genre of this book is thriller with elements of sci-fi and romance. We follow the story of a teenage girl who is suffering extreme nightmares and bears scars from them. We find out how these affect her life and how she resolves the terrible position she is in. What first attracted me to this book were the intriguing front cover. Elissa wakes each morning, having suffers terrible nightmares which she is physically scarred fr Review by Sarah - Year 8 This is by far the best book I have ever read.
Elissa wakes each morning, having suffers terrible nightmares which she is physically scarred from and finds herself on a mission to find out why this is happening to her. This book thoroughly intrigued me, the tense moments in the story gripped me and kept me on the edge of my seat. Elissa was unaware of this until her nightmares worsened. Her twin is being tortured for experiments in a space programme. The hint of romance in this story kept me intrigued. Jan 18, Demitria Lunetta rated it it was amazing. Recommended for fans of: The world-building was fantastic, I loved the back-story that Howson wove throughout.
The pacing was great, propelling you through the pages. The plot twists and turns will keep you hooked. I also like the bigger issues the boo Recommended for fans of: I also like the bigger issues the book addresses. It will get you thinking about personal freedom and individual duty.
Oct 15, Karl rated it liked it. The story itself was fine. I wasn't blown away by its inventiveness, originality, or any such thing, but it was OK. I did appreciate the authors attention to small details. How futuristic technology would translate into day to day lives. I thought that created a much more believable world, and as such, the story was better than it could have been.
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Oct 28, C. Flood rated it it was amazing. Such an exciting book. I was hooked from start to finish. Since putting it down, I have really missed Elissa and the world she inhabits. Desperate to read the sequel! Jan 15, Emma Pass rated it it was amazing. The worldbuilding is exquisite, and I was totally gripped throughout.
Linked Data: Evolving the Web into a Global Data Space
And the climactic scene… OMG! Can't wait for the sequel. Dec 28, DMS rated it really liked it Shelves: Linked I thought I knew what Linked was about before I started. I have ideas about Bourne and political thrillers, I thought the two main characters would be slumming it and trying to bring down a corrupt and mean government. I have seen it before and it is a format I like do I was looking forward to reading Linked. The moral of the story is not to assume you know what is going on before you do because this book took me somewhere I was not expecting to go. It took me to space…literally.
I have to admit that I had issues with this one, issues that I will get to in a moment but overall I was pretty impressed with it. All I want from a book is to be entertained and to be dragged head first into another world. A book does not have to be perfect it has to engage me and that is exactly what Linked did. I thought the idea was really ambitions and I thought it worked really well.
Another thing that really made this book work was the developing relationship between Elissa and her twin Lin. It really goes the distance starting with disbelief and distrust and tending in respect and true sisterly love. There is a romance here and it was rather brilliantly underplayed which allowed the sister relationship to really shine through but still provided me with a smidge of romance which I am a sucker for.
It did what it needed to do and then moved on without feeling sparse or rushed. The main bulk of the book takes place in space which was a really good move because that was where the book got really interesting. Despite all the things I loved about this there were things I disliked just as much. If we needed to know what she was thinking all the time then maybe she should have told the story from her point of view. I just found the italics really distracting and felt they always seemed to happen at the wrong time. I had to be shoved out of a book and that is what happened here. Frankly, she can be horrible and some of her selfish and thoughts about her sister were disgusting, especially considering all Lin whom I much preferred even though she was a bit primal had been through.
It showed that Elissa was immature and bitchy and it made me dislike her. Read this and other reviews on my blog: