Rob’s Comments (group member since Jul 06, 2012)

Rob’s comments from the The Sword and Laser group.

New year, so time for a new thread. If you posted anything in late December that you'd like for consideration for the next podcast you should re-post it here.

Im about halfway through The Boys. It started a bit slow, but I've been enjoying it more as it's gone on except The Boys, Volume 8: Highland Laddie which was kind of slow again.

Things look to pick up again in the next volume though.

For whatever reason I didn't create a new comics thread in 2018 or 2019, but I figure we should have a new one with the new decade.

So what comics are you guys enjoying?

Thanks. Happy New Year to you as well

As we've reached the end of the year, last call for survey entries! I'll probably turn off the responses sometime tomorrow.

We've had 245 people respond already, so thanks again to everyone who took time to fill it out.

Depending on how motivated I am tomorrow after doing all the end of month/year upkeep I'll probably post some stats from the responses for anyone who might be interested.

I thought it was fine. My least favorite of the three sequels, but I still liked all 3 a lot better than the prequels (low bar for success I know).

I've never been a fanatic about Star Wars. As someone else said you can pick apart any of the Star Wars films, not just this one. I just don't bother.

It kept me entertained for its duration. I'll watch it again at some point or another.

I would have liked to see 1 person overseeing all 3 movies though. I liked Last Jedi and this film basically undid much of that. I think if 1 person had just done all 3 it would have been better, but considering the way they did it I'm surprised I enjoyed all 3 as much as I did.

Personally though my favorite Star Wars remains the TV prequels. Give me my Ashoka Tano/Sabine TV show!

I'm a bit worried a live action show/movie would be bad so I hope for another cartoon on Disney+ once the new season of Clone Wars is out.

I think one of the reasons the shows were so good was Fionili wasn't so tied to canonnocial characers (certainly not in Rebels anyways, and the best stuff in Clone Wars had little to do with the characters from the movies).

I had expected them to do something similar since they were killing off the old characters in this and therefore had room to tell new stories with new characters, but that wasn't what happened.

Rebels is excellent and I don't think has the need for an abridged guide. There may be a few you can skip, but nowhere near the level of Clone Wars.

I think overall Rebels is the better series because it's a tighter story, but Clone Wars is still my favorite be Ahsoka Tano is my favorite Star Wars character.

With the new season coming up next year (I believe Feb 2020) I was thinking of rewatching an abridged version of Clone Wars before then.

I found this thread on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/com...

But it was pretty unreadable so I turned it into a spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

It's 66 episodes in total. I'll probably rewatch it while playing WoW or something.

Anyone else planning a re-watch?

That's my favorite of the 3, even though it won't be complete for awhile. Really looking forward to the 4th book next year.

I hope you enjoy it!

Welcome Dhesan.

If you like epic fantasy, I'd check out:

Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight series (3/10 books published with the 4th out next year) starting with The Way of Kings)

If you want something more dark and dense try Malazan Book of the Fallen (10 books all published) starting with Gardens of the Moon.


If you want something more in the vein of Tolkien that's complete you could do Robert Jordan's Wheel of time (14 books, all published, the final 3 written by Brandon Sanderson) starting with The Eye of the World. I will say though as much as I love this series the middle books get a bit slow and the 10th book is downright glacial.

There are plenty of other shorter series to check out as well.

I enjoyed the finale. It was one of the better episodes of the season, although it felt a little bit crammed full of the plot development that's been largely missing from most of the episodes this season.

I think it would have been better served to have had some of that come out throughout the season.

I'm scratching my head a bit trying to remember about:

(view spoiler)[the darksabre. I think we last saw it in Rebels when Sabine gave it up to another Mandalorian. But I'm bad about the details and the timelines. It may have appeared later in the timeline and I'm just not remembering anymore.

Thankfully Polygon has a pretty good overview: https://www.polygon.com/star-wars/201... (hide spoiler)]

Mark wrote: "I missed something. What was the medallion the kid was wearing? Mando said he didn't expect to see it again."

(view spoiler)[It was the same medallion he gave to Gina when he thought he was dying. He told her to show it to the Mandalorians and give his name and say he swore to protect the kid. (hide spoiler)]

yup. We'll have at least the 2 main challenges again. I may set up the other 2 and simply ignore them. Neither have had a ton of participation, but enough that it's easy enough for me to create them for those who want to participate.

Jen wrote: "Hello ! So I know Brandon Sanderson is a popular SFF author but I have yet to read any of his books. It looks like he has multiple series that may or may not be related to each other? Not sure. Whi..."

I usually recommend people start with The Final Empire, although it's the first of a trilogy. If you want something more stand alone you can do the novella The Emperor's Soul

Many of his books are part of a larger cosmere universe, some tie to each other more than others. Both I recommended are cosmere books, and both are decent entry points in my opinion.

Trike wrote: "Top 5:

Rob - 5949
Trike - 5782
Tamahome - 5245
Terpkristin - 3817
John (Taloni) - 3100
"

I kind of wish you could sort by average post rate. I was behind Tamahome for years but my post rate was higher, especially the last few years when he has hardly been around at all.

I generally mix in some non-fiction, mysteries and the occasional thrillers. I don't go out of my way to read a particular genre, just typically whatever strikes my interest, which is often SFF.

Misti wrote: "Theft of Swords was my absolute favorite. I listened to it on Audible and I just had to listen to the rest of the series."

This makes me happy!

Stephen wrote: "May I suggest that the reason 2017 is popular is because Sword and Laser made it onto Hugo nomination list?"

Ah yeah, that would make sense

I read 11/12 this year (first time in several years I've skipped a pick) since I'm not ready to read Hogfather yet. I suspect that it will have a place on my top list whenever I do get to it.

Of the remaining 11 I had read 5 of those. And my 3 top picks all come from there:

The Calculating Stars
Theft of Swords (which should surprise no one)
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Of the remaining 6 I hadn't read my top pick would be:

The Poppy War

Deborah wrote: "Rob wrote: "you can see what date you joined on the member page if you look yourself up.

Depending on how unique your name is, it may be harder to find the page you're on in the search results.

I..."

The year isn't that important. I was just curious to get a rough idea of who was responding to the survey. The main purpose for me is to get numbers on the group book challenges.

All the other questions are just for my own curiosity. I'm already planning to make 1 small change to the monthly newsletter based on feedback (adding the book description).

There have been some other good suggestions that I'll probably pass along to Tom & Veronica to review.