Reviews and Comments

An apocalyptic ending to this twenty-five year long series. Wow!

I really like the world the author has developed throughout this book and Witch King. Instead of the usual elves, dwarves, etc., we have wholly new and well-imagined races and a world that is mysterious in that there's not a lot known about the Heirarchs.

Still, there is something missing in these novels. I guess it's character-building. I wouldn't call them two-dimensional, but I want to know more about the internal motivations and conflicts of the characters we follow.

The other challenge for me is the back-and-forth storylines of past vs. present. We switch in each chapter and since both storylines involve a journey and the same four primary characters, I often have to stop and concentrate to remember what's been happening in this specific storyline, which kind of takes me out of the book a bit.

This little book nicely conveys the struggles, roadbumps, distractions, and challenges of writing a novel. Each two pages consists of an illustration on one page and text on the other. I love how deeply the author conveys the scene in just a few words and Gorey's recognizeable art style.

The SF/Fantasy-focused bookstore in #Portland is doing this book as part of one of its book clubs. I've only read Surface Detail from the Culture series, and thought I'd ready this early novel to better understand the universe. It's a really interesting perspective, the beginning of the book laying out the game-playing and Gurgeh's mastery of nearly any game he encounters as a way to tell the story.

The setting is described really well; you definitely want to read this in the cold of the winter, and it's best of you can read it with snow all around. The inspiration for this novel is a book about the dark side of living in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and draw upon it, it does. The descriptions of squalor and adversity go deep, though I'd like to have had more about the local townspeople in Minnesota, whereas the book only goes into detail for people in the cities of St. Louis and Chicago.

I don't fully understand the motivations of the main characters, though I apprecciated the story-telling.

Tucking into this one because @pluralistic@mamot.fr told me I had to. I don't know how nuts it's going to be, but the first couple chapters start out with some truly wild stories.

Promoting because the author is not allowed to.

#bookstodon #greed #facebook #enshittification

This is not a lightsaber-weilding, blaster firing, starfighter chasing Star Wars novel. This is about a steadily clenching fist squeezing the galaxy and the residents are just beginning to notice.

The novel is well-written, using multiple points of view in order to articulate the differing points of view of people as the shroud of empire begins its inexorable stretch across the galaxy, beginning with Coruscant and the core worlds. There is a lot of politics, intrigue, and discussion in this story, with an exciting side-jaunt to an historical world for excitement.

The book isn't short, but it is a slow burn smoldering at the beginnings of what Andor will eventually become, serving as fodder for anyone who enjoyed that series. If this sounds like you, I recommend this book with its background and all the little intrigues and nuances of Imperial politics it provides to the reader. The most important part of this story is a dawning of what the Empire means to the peoples of the galaxy, using Mon Mothma as an originally naive member of the Senate, and through her eyes we begin to see the true meaning of Emperor Palpatine's reach across the galaxy.

I'm about halfway through this guide to running kubernetes. This book is very well done, with lots of examples that walk the reader through not only effecting changes to their #kubernetes environment, but also really educate the reader as to what's going on under the hood. For all that, it moves along at a quick pace, depending on how much you want to explore or execute variations on some of the commands.

I was showing an out-of-town friend around at Powell's and she mentioned that her husband liked mystery novels. This one caught my eye due to the investigative nature it presents to the reader. She surreptitiously bought two and gave one to me.

So now I'm reading it, and it reminds me of E: A Novel that I read many years ago: bookrastinating.com/book/359398/s/e

The pacing of reading a novel through the characters' email interactions is fast and compels you to "read just one more", so this one is turning out to be quite the page-turner so far.

This book is a great resource for learning about and discovering Japanese knives. And to get there, the author provides the reader with a well-rounded history of both Western and Japanese cooking knives, highlighting their differences, the way they've been shaped by historical events, and how they evolve to address the cuisine typical to their region.

One part history, one part technical know-how, one part catalogue of knife types, and one part cookbook, this is an amazing resource.

I picked this up while walking through the library and was intrigued by the premise, even though Shakespearean adaptations and mash ups tend to fall flat. The beginning was a bit slow, but it picks up after Hamlet encounters the ghost of his father, just as in the original! From there, I really enjoyed the pacing and wit of this book, loving how the author was able to convert the events into a slightly-in-the-future major robotics company.

This is a good read for fans of the original looking for a new take or people that don't hold much love for the source material but are looking for a quick cyberpunk read. The skillful adaptation pushes it into five star territory.

Came across this looking for interesting and recent #cyberpunk themed books. It looks like it could be interesting and the reviews I've seen are fairly positive.

The new characters started out slow for me in Dead Lies Dreaming, but it's been picking up speed ever since I started that one. Here we are on the third novel with Wendy, Eve, Imp, and the crew.

40 pages in and I already know this one's going to be a banger!

#LaundryFiles #reading