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

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

you scheduled a meetup for July of 2020? 🤣

Or maybe you meant the August meetup?

Thanks Wayne!

Ruth (tilltab) Ashworth wrote: "This is great! Thanks, Rob."

You're welcome. Thanks for the suggestion. I had actually already done something like this in the FAQ (which of course I forgot about until AFTER recreating it here), but I hadn't given much though about the too many stickied threads issue.

I plan to clean up the FAQ later and simply point it to this thread so I don't have to update the info in mutliple places.

The number of group meetups has dwindled since covid, but a few are still active.

Unfortunately Goodreads has removed the ability to have events. Most of the management of Local Meetups has moved to our discord server (https://discord.gg/e2YUWzz)

I will try to include all local meetups in the monthly newsletter I send via Goodreads, but that has been pretty spotty since they seem to have changed how email notifications work.

Please chime in if I need to correct something.

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• Orange County, California - Typically meet at 3pm on the last Sunday of the month via Zoom.

• San Francisco, California - Typically meet on the last? Monday of the month. Location varies.

• Seattle, Washington - Typically meet at 10-11AM on the first Sunday of the month at Third Place Commons (https://www.thirdplacecommons.org/). Coordinates on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/14995...) instead of Goodreads. They do also cross post information on Discord, but don't have a recurring event.

• Tacoma, Washington - Typically meets on the First Sunday of the month at Ebony & Ivory Coffee (https://www.ebonyandivorycoffee.com/). Coordinates on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/11037...) instead of Goodreads. They do still list events on discord however: https://discord.com/events/5489741493...

• Virtual Meetups - Join the Discord voice channel and chat with other members from all over on 4th Monday of the month 9pm ET (see discord server for details)

Ruth (tilltab) Ashworth wrote: "I find that section on the forum a little irritating, as so many are pinned that nothing new from anyone else shows up on the main page - you have to click into it to see if anyone elsewhere posted anything new, which makes it super easy to miss things.."

Hmm. That's a good point. Maybe I'll unpin them all, and create a single pinned thread that links to the threads for regular meetups.

So now we're about 8 months into the monthly newsletter. I was curious what people thought at this point.

Do you find it useful? Are you reading all of it? Part of it? If so which parts?

Are you an regular poster? A lurker? Something in between?

For any of the people doing the local meetups, has the monthly notification helped get more interest? We've started up a few new groups since the start of the year, and there have been some attempts to start a few others.

Any suggestions on how I can make it better?

Because of the way they are sent, I have no real sense of their value. I may include some questions in the year end survey if I do one again.

Thanks!

Thanks!

Catching up on some reviews:

First I listened to Aftershocks, which I really liked. I had been sort of losing steam on his Frontline books, and I thought this is the best thing he's written to date. - ★★★★☆ - (My Review)

Next I listened to The Wolf's Call. Given my disappointment with Queen of Fire I was a bit apprehensive about this one, but that turned out to be unwarranted. - ★★★★☆ - (My Review)

Finally I read The Poppy War, which I really enjoyed. I found the first part to be my favorite, but I still enjoyed the later parts enough that I plan to continue the series at some point. - ★★★★☆ - (My Review)

Any details for your September meetup? If you'd like me to include them in the September newsletter. Please let me know before August 22nd.

Any details for your September meetup? If you'd like me to include them in the September newsletter please let me know before August 22nd.

I think you guys meet up earlier than the 22nd, but I never saw an announcement about August. I'm putting together the newsletter for September to be sent out on the 22nd.

Let me know if you want me to include details about either your August (possibly too late) or September (likely too early) meetup assuming you guys are planning to have them.

That looks interesting. I haven't heard it before this post. It definitely reminded me Scanner Darkly.

I'm not super familiar with Rosa Salazar, but this is now the second thing I'm seeing her in where her appearance is being modified by animation styling.

Considering how much I enjoyed Alita, and that this has Bob Odenkirk, I'm in.

I liked the first part of the book more than the latter parts, but I still enjoyed the book enough as a whole to continue on with the series. I'm a sucker for the fantasy school trope though, so that's almost to be expected.

With all the warnings I got about this book, I was honestly expecting the violence and atrocities to be far more graphic. It certainly wasn't pleasant, but I thought it was warranted given the context of the war.

Song of Ice and Fire, Malazan book of the Fallen, First Law among others have far more graphic and horrific things in them. Although I'd consider all of those books/series to be better written.

Considering this is her first book, I think it's an unfair comparison. I will be curious to see how she handles this stuff moving forward. Does she come back and address it? Because it was mostly unaddressed in this book.

And here I thought it was this movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN0rM...

I prefer Sanderson style magic systems in my fantasy. I agree this wasn't much of a system. There is almost no explanation of what sort of powers the various gods give you beyond just the phoenix.

I like the idea of god-infused powers though. I just wish we got so more details about it.

I definitely didn't like the characters very much. Normally that hurts my enjoyment of a book, but it wasn't too much of a detriment of this one.

I like Rin at the start, but as the book went on I liked her less and less.

I agree with Ruth about Nezha. It's easy to just write him off as a "Draco Malfoy" at the start, but his character development was a lot different. Maybe because the school is only part of this book instead of the whole series though.

Kitay was my favorite of the students and I agree with John about Irjan. I did like Jiang as well.

It took me awhile, but I finally finished it a few weeks ago. I agree that it was a bit slow at times but I recall feeling something similar about the books.

I think I liked it better than the book. My favorite part was the episode where (view spoiler)[you follow the 2 angels through time learning about their friendship (hide spoiler)]

I'm tentatively excited. I like that they are casting mostly unknowns and going for more diversity in the cast than in the books.

Since at this point of the month most people seem to be posting middle book/end book thoughts I'm going to lock the thread.

Please check out one of the other threads! Or feel free to create your own!

Brandon, please post your final thoughts on a different thread.