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

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

Priscilla wrote: "Rob I’m SO glad you fought for this book so much throughout the years because HOLY CRAP I LOVE IT SO MUCH!! I’m not even halfway there and it’s already becoming one of my favorite books."

Well I'm glad someone has been enjoying it! I'm almost done with my reread and it seems to be holding up pretty well to my memory. I may have to do the next 2 (4) books in the series again at some point this year.

Trike wrote: "When audiences keep oohing and ahhing over garbage, we keep getting garbage.

We had three Star Trek movies before people realized they weren’t any good. Even the cast doesn’t want to be in them an..."

So what? How does the effect you...

Personally, I liked those Star Trek movies. I probably like a lot of movies you don't from the sounds of it. I don't see why it matters so much to you. There is so much content out there now, I can't hope to watch it all. Let people enjoy things you don't...

Hollywood is always going to continue to favor "safe", recycled movies over new and riskier things. That's not a new thing. It's certainly not JJ's fault. Look how many sequels and reboots there are. That isn't new. They've been doing that for as long as I can remember.

A Star it Born is the 3rd (or 4th?) version of that movie. I haven't seen the others, but I really liked the new one. I'm sure people prefer the Judy Garland or Barbra Streisand versions instead. That doesn't mean the new movie was no good because it's a remake.

Copying my post from the other thread here since I locked it:

I'll be curious to how the show ends compared to the books (but it looks like that's going to be a long wait).

I wasn't thrilled about the unrealistic timelines (people being in different distant locations much faster than should be feasible) but I really enjoyed last season and I'm glad they aren't dragging it out anymore than they already did (splitting the final season in two with such a long gap).

Last night's episode was shorter than I was expecting. I thought the first few were all supposed to be an hour and the last few were closer to 80 minutes each.

I liked last night, but it felt like a lot of setup for the rest of the season.

Spoilers for episode 1:
(view spoiler)[So John finally knows who he is, although we don't know yet if he believes Sam.

I was a bit surprised Cersei slept with Euron. The playback was messing up a bit when she (I assume) invited him back to her chambers. I can't really tell if she did it because she wanted to, or because she felt she had to or lose his fleet/support.

While I don't expect Sam to be exactly happy his father and brother are dead, they treated him like shit. Or at least his father did.

I loved the stuff with Arya. Her and the hound, her and Gendry and her and John. It was good to see her standing up for Sansa.

HBO was reairing the end of season 7 before the premiere and the scene where the two of them take down Littlefinger is still one of my favorite moments of the entire series.

I wonder if Brom is really going to try to kill Jamie and/or Tyrion. I'm hoping he just joins them and takes Cersei's money.

The thing I'm most looking forward to for next week is seeing Jamie and Bran (hide spoiler)]

Sorry to those who posted here already, but Dara pointed to the old thread and I think we should just stick with that one.

My fault. I did look for it, but apparently failed badly at finding it somehow..

Please use this: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Hmm. there was a post from last month..so I don't get why I couldn't find it. *sigh*.

I think I'll lock my new thread as a duplicate. We don't really need one for just season 8..

Dara wrote: "I was going to use the old one to post today.."

I looked for it..and couldn't find it. Even with the search function, but maybe it didn't have Game of Thrones in the title somehow?

It's been a pretty long time since season 7 aired, so who know what happened to it..

Yeah, I'm not super bothered by the traveling thing except it impacts the story to a degree. I guess it's just about changing my thinking that there are long periods of time where nothing of note is happening in a certain location while important characters are traveling there?

Trike wrote: "No one is bashing Disney.

I’m bashing JJ, because that’s what I do. The guy makes garbage pictures. "

First off, I get your expressing your opinion on Abrams movies by calling them "garbage"..but personally I think he makes great stuff.

Obviously you just really disdain the guy because you seem to take every opportunity to tell us that. If it was me, I'd just ignore any movie he was working on because your guaranteed not to like it.

I really don't get why you bother with Star Wars movies at all either, since I think you've said you only liked the original movie and don't even like Empire, which most fans seem to agree is the best one. It just seems like a lot of wasted energy to spend on something you don't like.

There is so much stuff out there that probably you do like you could spend all that energy on instead. But to each their own.

And while you may not be bashing Disney their are comments in this thread about how they are treating Star Wars to me indicates on people who are unhappy with them. That seems to be a pretty common complaint on the internet from many of the diehards.

I for one don't agree, and I'm tired of all the negativity. Fandom in general seems to be more negative than positive these days.

It makes me want to pull back from any discussion of anything I like on the internet because it seems as though it's just a bunch of unhappy fans complaining about things they don't like.

I generally only comment on the stuff I like. My reviews for books I don't like are always much shorter than my reviews of books I like. Once I don't like something I want to move onto the next thing that I hope I'll like better.

I'm not a professional critic, or taking a class discussing how to make films/tv/books so I feel like that sort of thing isn't worth my time.

I also don't get bothered if other people love something I don't, because they are welcome to having their own tastes. I just won't participate. I don't think it's worth my time/energy.

But I guess I'm just weird that way.

Sheila Jean wrote: "Pro Tip: Pretend it's a Marvel movie and listen all the way through the end of the credits."

Haha. I totally missed that the first time! Thanks for the tip!

Wow, so many angry nerds in this thread...

Personally I'm looking forward to it. I'm not thrilled at the title. I'm hoping it not a retread of RotJ, and that the title is mostly to mess with people. However, even it is, I'll still probably enjoy it since I generally like all of Abrams stuff. I must be the anti-Trike or something..

I'm hoping Rei doesn't end up getting retconned into being a Skywalker, but I'll take that over a retread of the Darth Vader redemption story with Kylo.

With regards to the new trilogy, I'm apparently in the minority of this group that enjoyed both of the last two movies. I like Force Awakens better, but I enjoyed Last Jedi too, which seems to be largely hated among most hardcore Star Wars fans I've talked to.

Since this is just a bash Disney thread though, I'll probably stay out of it moving forward. I thought the trailer looked great.

I was surprised to see there wasn't already a thread going.

I'll be curious to how the show ends compared to the books (but it looks like that's going to be a long wait).

I wasn't thrilled about the unrealistic timelines (people being in different distant locations much faster than should be feasible) but I really enjoyed last season and I'm glad they aren't dragging it out anymore than they already did (splitting the final season in two with such a long gap).

Last night's episode was shorter than I was expecting. I thought the first few were all supposed to be an hour and the last few were closer to 80 minutes each.

I liked last night, but it felt like a lot of setup for the rest of the season.

Spoilers for episode 1:
(view spoiler)[So John finally knows who he is, although we don't know yet if he believes Sam.

I was a bit surprised Cersei slept with Euron. The playback was messing up a bit when she (I assume) invited him back to her chambers. I can't really tell if she did it because she wanted to, or because she felt she had to or lose his fleet/support.

While I don't expect Sam to be exactly happy his father and brother are dead, they treated him like shit. Or at least his father did.

I loved the stuff with Arya. Her and the hound, her and Gendry and her and John. It was good to see her standing up for Sansa.

HBO was reairing the end of season 7 before the premiere and the scene where the two of them take down Littlefinger is still one of my favorite moments of the entire series.

I wonder if Brom is really going to try to kill Jamie and/or Tyrion. I'm hoping he just joins them and takes Cersei's money.

The thing I'm most looking forward to for next week is seeing Jamie and Bran (hide spoiler)]

Yeah, I meant issues. I was distracted watching Game of Thrones episodes waiting for the new episode to premiere.

And I'm glad they have a planned arc size. I hate the comics that just go on forever. I'll happily read another 54 issues though.

Saga is coming to an end..but not for awhile.

Last year they took a break at 54 issues, and they plan to do 54 more to end the series at 108.

I for one can't wait for the series to return again..

https://io9.gizmodo.com/saga-is-offic...

The first prequel book to this month's pick The Crown Tower is $3 today: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00A2D7VC...

This book is set 10 years BEFORE Theft of Swords. He tries hard not to spoil the events of the original series, but I still think a few of the reveals in the original series suffer if you read this one first.

It's better written than Theft of Swords though.

I agree this story is pretty average. I haven't read as many of the buddy stories as it sounds like you have. (Or at least hadn't the first time I read this one).

I had debated nominating The Crown Tower or Age of Myth because both are much better written..but I'm a pretty big proponent of publish order. Maybe to Mr. Sullivan's detriment since it seems so many people are unimpressed with Theft of Swords

The scenes you mentioned were a big part of me continuing on and the second story in this omnibus got me interested in reading the next one. That and the humor/banter between Royce and Hadrian. I still particularly love that first scene.

So I'm generally a Marvel fan over DC, except for Batman, but the last few DC movies have nearly ruined that for me as well.

I had basically zero knowledge of Shazam going in and I found the film a lot of fun. It sounds like it wasn't supposed to be fun, but instead be darker/serious like all the last few? I don't know. That hasn't been working well for me. The only other DC movie I've liked in the last few years was Wonder Woman.

That said, I liked Captain Marvel better. Both are origin story movies, but Captain Marvel jumps in where she already has powers and Shazam is the more traditional story where they go from nobody to hero.

I decided to listen to Second Hand Curses, from my backlog while I waited for Tiamat's Wrath to come out and ending up liking it quite a bit - ★★★★☆ - (My Review)

Then I listened to Tiamat's Wrath of course, and that was great and now I'm stuck waiting for the next season of the show and the final book to come out. - ★★★★★ - (My Review)

Rick wrote: "Done. It's the first couple of chapters so I didn't think it was a big deal but better safe etc."

Thanks!

Ruth wrote: "The Fifth Season is coming to TV!
https://deadline.com/2017/08/nk-jemis..."

TNT? I kind of hope that it never happens so someone better can pick it up instead.

John (Taloni) wrote: "Meanwhile the sections with Arista are fairly tedious, representing a by the numbers expository segment."

He gets way better at writing Arista in the later books if you end up sticking with the series. I didn't like her much in this volume, but liked her a lot by the end of the series.

The Raven Tower is $3 today: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07DHJT92Q/