Between this and 'Blackwater' I want to run a pulp-style RPG in Baghdad circa 2004. The problem is, my players would either become depressed, or they'Between this and 'Blackwater' I want to run a pulp-style RPG in Baghdad circa 2004. The problem is, my players would either become depressed, or they'd never believe me that this stuff actually happened....more
**spoiler alert** This book seemed a bit longer than it needed to be.
Amanda pointed out a huge plot hole that now has my attention whenever I think ab**spoiler alert** This book seemed a bit longer than it needed to be.
Amanda pointed out a huge plot hole that now has my attention whenever I think about it. Why did fake-Moody/Crouch Jr. set up this immensely complicated and low probability plan to get Harry to win the TriWizard Cup and be teleported to Voldemort when he was his trusted teacher the whole school year. He could have just made a pen be a portkey and then dropped it and said "Harry, could you pick that up for me?" Much easier than dealing with dragons, suborning house-elves, and casting outlawed curses.
Of course then we would have no plot, but still...
Addendum - May just finished reading this volume. I read portions to her, but she really read more than half herself.
Amanda and I asked her to pause after reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban because Goblet of Fire is quite a bit darker, more complex and longer. She paused -- for maybe 5 weeks. Whe she pulled-down this book to start we said "May, I thought we had agreed that you were going to wait before reading the next Harry Potter. Maybe until you were a bit older?" Her reply was "I waited 2 whole books! I'm in second grade now!"
This was a gift and I'm trying to get a feel for the real silver-age comics, but this is bad. I know Stan Lee and Jack KirWow, this is some bad stuff.
This was a gift and I'm trying to get a feel for the real silver-age comics, but this is bad. I know Stan Lee and Jack Kirby are comic legends. However, having your villain say how nigh-inviciable he is on EVERY page is not characterization. Kirby seems like he has to get a shot of one of his futuristic weapons or circuitry boards in every issue or he'll be fired.
Maybe I'm just used to more modern stuff...and long-form comics at that....more
OK, so it's a book about zombies, you scoff. It is actually a surprisingly well researched thought experiment. If anything, it gives a little too-muchOK, so it's a book about zombies, you scoff. It is actually a surprisingly well researched thought experiment. If anything, it gives a little too-much credit to humanity's ability to adapt and cope.
The real value of this book is as a metaphor and cautionary tale. Zombies are just a stand-in (slouch-in?) for a myriad of disasters (natural and man-made) that any of us could face, and I believe will face with increasing regularity in the future. To quote the Zombie Squad web page, "...if you are prepared for a scenario where the walking corpses of your family and neighbors are trying to eat you alive, you will be prepared for almost anything." ...more
**spoiler alert** I'm sorry to say, but I think this was the weakest of the Potter books. By the end I found myself shaking my head and saying "what a**spoiler alert** I'm sorry to say, but I think this was the weakest of the Potter books. By the end I found myself shaking my head and saying "what a muddled mess."
My wife was surprised by the body count...but I thought it seemed a bit low at times. "OI, there's a war going on here!" But magic doesn't seem as deadly as if the Death Eaters had assault rifles...OK I'm showing my military history interest here. But really...why was everything broken down into duels? Get behind cover and start picking people off!
The theme of self-sacrifice was a little over-done too...and muddled. Who's on that list? Lily, Dumbledore, Wormtail, Harry, Harry again. (is this Aslan-style Christian imagery? I can't tell) I couldn't keep track of who would die if Voldy killed Harry at various times. Just ran with it.
Amanda has issues with the limited use and roles of women in the whole series; and I can see her point as well....more
**spoiler alert** There are some interesting ideas in here under the poorly written techno-thriller dialogue and boiler-plate complaints about spinele**spoiler alert** There are some interesting ideas in here under the poorly written techno-thriller dialogue and boiler-plate complaints about spineless Washington bureaucrats. If it were purely fiction, I'd say lots of it was stolen from Dale Brown (tactical microsattelite constellations) and Tom Clancy (Anti-sattelite laser/masers new Dushanbe, Tajikistan), but I think these guys are closer to the real programs (or as colse as) Clancy and Brown. From an alternative-history standpoint, I was annoyed at how the perspective rarely wandered out of the military-industrial complex. While we have plenty of POV characters (and switches between them in mid-paragragh), there's no man-on-the-street view and even handling the press is papered over pretty quickly. Maybe I was just spoiled by 'World War Z.'
To my mind, it would have been a better book if it had been a straight-up non-fiction....more
A fun book, if a little unfocused. I feel like I would have enjoyed this more if I had grown up or lived in the Northwest Territories or mid-west in gA fun book, if a little unfocused. I feel like I would have enjoyed this more if I had grown up or lived in the Northwest Territories or mid-west in general. Since I am very much a New Englander, I just don't see the effect of these land survels on my land....more
I'm still not sure if I'm tracking all the 'who is doing what to whom and why,' but sometimes I feel likeFun for all. Best Line: "That's Wagner baby!"
I'm still not sure if I'm tracking all the 'who is doing what to whom and why,' but sometimes I feel like Dresden books are like RPGs with GMs who have spent too much time on intrigue...just go along for the ride and figure that eventually the really bad guys will show up and you'll miraculously have the stats or macguffin you need to take them out....more
I knew something of this conspiracy from Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" but had no clue how close to pulling the trigger they came.
WhetheI knew something of this conspiracy from Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" but had no clue how close to pulling the trigger they came.
Whether the coup would have succeeded is a counter-factual that we can never know. That said, from this book it seems that the conspirators had a better shot at not just killing Hitler but also overthrowing the whole Nazi regime in 1938 than Count Stauffenberg and other later plotters ever had.
Reading about Chamberlain's appeasement policy is always frustrating, especially with Churchill sitting in the wings acting as if he had received a message from the future laying all of WWII out before him. But if you can get your mind into the limited view that these men actually had, you can see the heart-wrenching choices they had to make.
Knowing what WWII would become, the decision is easy. Without that knowledge it is much harded to commit to marching to war or commit to supporting a coup. ...more
I know I'm just piling on, but I was pleasantly surprised at how clear and still detailed this book was. It is bit of a dissappointment that the bookI know I'm just piling on, but I was pleasantly surprised at how clear and still detailed this book was. It is bit of a dissappointment that the book starts only at Operation Torch and therefore feels like it is picking-up in mid-campaign when it comes to the British involvement. But at least the author does not shy away from showing the British and French involvement and points of view.
There is very little from the Axis (or civilian) points of view. Neither of these are all that surprising (an evenly narrated story between the two sides would be a very different work).
I'm taking a break for some fiction fluff, but I'll definitely be back for Book 2....more
Sometimes, I think that the people out running the country and the world are dangerously smart and there are grand plans that make everything work. ThSometimes, I think that the people out running the country and the world are dangerously smart and there are grand plans that make everything work. Then I read a book like this and I relaize, while some people still are dangerously smart, there are no grand plans. The world is just the product of billions of indivual plans that somehow manage to keep us all from dying.
Anyway...a fun (if scary) read. Never undersetimate the power of personal friendships and alliances of convenience in international politics.
And the message that hangs like a dark cloud over the whole thing is to never forget the law of unintended consequences....more
30 foot high super-tanks. U-boats that crawl out of the water on treads. Backpack helicopters. Aircraft carriers made out of ice. Spaceplane bombers Flying30 foot high super-tanks. U-boats that crawl out of the water on treads. Backpack helicopters. Aircraft carriers made out of ice. Spaceplane bombers Flying tanks
They actually built 2 of those in at least prototype form.
Funny stuff, well-organized, and aimed at the fan of WWII as a pulp-adventure. I wish the author had kept going. Yes, I know the Germans had a real knack for the absurd weapons, but he couldn't find anything in the Pacific Theatre? Weren't the Japanese going to bomb the Panama Canal with submarine-launched bombers? Where are they?
Part of my Father's day gift from my wife...mostly because she wanted to read it too.
The genre of hard military sci-fi can be fun, but tends to startPart of my Father's day gift from my wife...mostly because she wanted to read it too.
The genre of hard military sci-fi can be fun, but tends to start falling into a rut in my opinion. I love that Torrin Kerr is an uber-competant Marine without being an Honor-Harrington-level super-being. The technology is cool, and new tech mash-ups are important to solving problems, but it never becomes just a story about the technology.
This book is starting to get into the deeper diplomacy of the world of the Confederation, but it doesn't dominate. Through out this series, we are following a group of Marines. You get the feeling that other groups of Marines are doing the same sorts of things all over the galaxy...the fate of the war doesn't rest on the shoulders of this small elite group. By the same measure, the weight that Gunny Kerr shoulders (responsibility for getting her people through this alive) never feels light.
**spoiler alert** I'm not sure if this is the place for this scree. For a while about a decade ago I was very interested in 'end-of-the-world' novels.**spoiler alert** I'm not sure if this is the place for this scree. For a while about a decade ago I was very interested in 'end-of-the-world' novels. It didn't matter if it was asteroid impact, nuclear war, pandemic disease, alien invasion, or micro-scopic blackholes run-amok -- I read a bunch of these.
Much to my annoyance, nearly all of these books started to sink into the supernatural. If everybody dies of disease, some of the survivors suddenly morph into vampires while others develop magical camoflage abilities...The devil begins to walk the earth and gather a band of followers. Even if the supernatural wasn't the main focus, the stories quickly got into haevy spirituality...meaning of life and finding your inner peace with the world.
Come-on! The world is ending, you are scraping by to survive. Do you really have time to decide that you're Western Catholic up-bringing was wrong and your should accept Sufi Islam as your new path? I'd be too busy trying to find something to eat, thank-you-very-much.
"Fifty Below" isn't an end-of-the-world book, quite. The world hasn't been changed too far that Robinson might not still pull out a "it's all back to normal now" or something close to it ending in the thrid book. However, I keep getting annoyed at the long philosophical asides from Frank the woodland-primate. The "you're toddler is a reincarnation of an important lama" storyline is even more annoying since it crosses the line from navel-gazing sprirtuality and superstition to full-on supernatural...all the while trying hard to maintain paper-thin plausible deniability.
The series claims to be about science. Why can't we just stick to the science?...more
All loose ends wrapped up...In my review of Fifty Below I worried that Robinson was going to pull some magic "it'll all work out" bit. The thing is, hAll loose ends wrapped up...In my review of Fifty Below I worried that Robinson was going to pull some magic "it'll all work out" bit. The thing is, he did...and I didn't even see it until it was done. He uses a sort of narrative time-warp to go from pie-in-the-sky brainstorming to 'maybe we can do this' to 'up and running'. What I'd expect to be a ten-year plan suddenly is going in about a year of narrative time. Hell he wraps up with a trple wedding (close-enough).
That said, I enjoyed the book. The Frank/Caroline spy-thriller side feels a bit Crichton-esqe forced at times. My favorite parts is how the world changes and so many people just go forward with the new normal. Odf course we're putting up solar-cells, or course we're home gardening, blackouts are a normal part of winter in DC.
The end of the world screaming is alwaysinteresting and entertaining, but there is no real end. Everything keeps going. The unthinkable becomes history - how could it have happened any differently?...more
If you've never read Stephanie Plum, what the heck are you doing starting with #14? If you have, then you know whIt was OK. It was fast. It was fluff.
If you've never read Stephanie Plum, what the heck are you doing starting with #14? If you have, then you know what you're gonna get.
This one didn't have any really good laugh-out-loud moments; thankfully it also didn't have the 'knights riding to the maiden's rescue' scenes either.
It seems like the author couldn't quite be bothered to learn the details of some of the side bits. Minionfire was obviously Warcraft, but the terms used (especially griefer) seemed to grate on me. I also have trouble getting over the innacuracies with the potato cannon...those a probably just my issues....more
Atkinson gets better in the second installment of his Liberation Trilogy. Yes, this book is hefty, both physically and mentally.
The Italian Campaign wAtkinson gets better in the second installment of his Liberation Trilogy. Yes, this book is hefty, both physically and mentally.
The Italian Campaign was the closest that the Western Allies came to WWI-style attritional warfare. The frustration at the stalemate in front of Cassino and at Anzio is palpable throughout the later half of the book. While covering grand strategy, Atkinson still gives a feel for the individual Dogfaces, Tommies, Kiwis, and Gurkhas stuck in the battle.
I think Day of Battle exceeds the firts volume, Army at Dawn mostly because it does cover the entire campaign. Instead of having Montgomery's 8th Army come onto the stage halfway through the story, we get to see the whole story of the campaign...at least through the capture of Rome. I understand that the shared dates of Rome's capture and D-Day in Normandy allow for an easy transition to the third book and a focus on France and Germany, but after following the trials of 5th and 8th Armies, I almost felt sorry that they the rest of their story in Italy was relgated to a short Epilogue....more
Not bad...not the best in the series. I spent the second half of the book wondering what Turtledove was waiting for to end the book. As it turns out,Not bad...not the best in the series. I spent the second half of the book wondering what Turtledove was waiting for to end the book. As it turns out, not much...it just kind of ends.
Maybe someone else can confirm, but I'm pretty sure that this is the end of the rather massive Timeline 191series. From "How Few Remain" we've had eleven volumes?
The whole series was rather good I thought, but things become more and more forced once Turtledove had committed himself to a Second World War. The parrallels became too forced, a common problem with the alt-history genre in general. Sometimes I get the feeling the author just wanted this series to go away....more
**spoiler alert** I'd been meaning to get around to reading this for at least 15 years. And it wasn't bad at all.
I'm not too deeply steeped in super-h**spoiler alert** I'd been meaning to get around to reading this for at least 15 years. And it wasn't bad at all.
I'm not too deeply steeped in super-hero lore, so maybe I'm missing some of the deep meaning.
I find it more of an interesting take on what the world was like and expected back in the mid-eighties. It's amazing how quickly I had taken that "we're all gonna die in a nuclear holocaust" fear and shoved in a box in a back closet of my mind -- not forgotten, just not perticularly useful right now and not likely to be used again any time soon. The fears of the early 21st century are different - both more personal and immediate (geez this packed train platform would make a great bomb target -- what did that guy just drop in the garbage can there?) and more heart-freezingly long-term (Will my daughter be able to live a life as affluent as mine - or will energy be too expensive, food too expensive, chunks of New York underwater, and the US handing off world leadership to China by then).
Anyway, the spoiler-rific part that stuck with me revolves around the final moral question of the book. Is killing 3 million New Yorkers worth it if it prevent an inevitable nuclear war?
The answer, of course, is mu (you question is based on false assumptions). From 1985, I can see how Moore thought nuclear war was just a matter of time. Even through the duck-blind of his character Ozymandias and a modified world history, I really do think that the author thought we were all doomed.
He was wrong. Ozymandias was the smartest man in the world and he was wrong. We made it past the end of the Cold War, we made it through the 1990s (when Viedt predicted the world economy and environment would collapse without war). Things aren't all rose-colored, but Moore never said they would be.
The ends rarely justify the means because you can never truly know what the ends will be.
I'm not sailor, though my best friend who gifted this book to me is. I admit to being a little lost at times in the sailing terminology and minutiae.I'm not sailor, though my best friend who gifted this book to me is. I admit to being a little lost at times in the sailing terminology and minutiae. I also wish my Penguin edition had better maps and charts...the text often refers back to the 4 maps at the beginning of he story, but the size and quality is so small at to be nearly useless. Maybe these are the maps included with the original texts, but a clearer (hell I'll take color) version would be appreciated.
As for the story, I knew where it was going before I even picked-up the book. This meant I kept on waiting for the main characters to 'get it.' Realization and suspenseful action doesn't come until late in the book (even then it is much more sedate than what we've come to expect in the intervening 100+ years since this was written).
I do find Childers' concept interesting. Nobody is ever going to know if Imperial Germany could have launched an invasion of Britain with a fleet of tugs and barges. Perhaps Childers' book ensured it would never happen. As to how plausible it was, the German High Command was using basically the same idea for Operation Sealion for a cross-channel invasion in WWII - almost forty years later. Personally I think both plans would have been a slaughter, but it was a less absurd plan than many others proposed (and executed) in the history of war....more
This was a hand-me-down tag-sale purchase from my father. I think he picked it up since he is an aviation buff, and on that score the book comes throuThis was a hand-me-down tag-sale purchase from my father. I think he picked it up since he is an aviation buff, and on that score the book comes through - plenty of loving descriptions of the Clipper and of a Tiger Moth used in an early chapter.
For plot and characterization, I kept feeling like I was more watching a local theatre play or even more like a LARP. A lot of time is spent in an enclosed space (the Clipper) exploring how the different characters interact with several different plot lines interweaving.
They don't interweave all that well. In addition, I felt I saw the few plot twists coming a mile away.
My biggest gripe was with our POV characters. Of the 5 POV characters, three are female. All three female characters are played up for their sexiness and seem to have major problems coming to and sticking to decisions. Nancy Leneham (the oldest of the female characters) starts as very self-assured, but has it all messed up by love and Daddy-issues by the end. The other two women, Diana Lovesey and Margaret Oxenford, show themselves to be indicisive, easily led, and rather incompetant.
Our two male POV characters are manly, decisive, and (especially in the case of Harry Marks) improbably successful. Their only weaknesses? Their love for their respective women.
*sigh*
I know it's pulp. I like pulp. I'll even give historical pulp a pass for reflecting the morals of it's time.
But this felt sometimes like the author was coming off a bad relationship and wanted to punish his ex.
That said, a part of me still wants to rent a hotel ballroom for a weekend, decorate it in Pan-Am colors and stick two-dozen LARPers in there with characters swiped from this book and see how it goes. Assuming I knew how to run a LARP....more
Not a bad little short-story. It feels like it is mostly there to set up a new branch of baddies in Butcher's universe, which I kind-of hope it isn't.Not a bad little short-story. It feels like it is mostly there to set up a new branch of baddies in Butcher's universe, which I kind-of hope it isn't. The Oblivion War is an interesting idea (I wish there'd been some discourse of how much damage H.P. Lovecraft has done on that front -- it's clear from early Dresden books that Butcher was willing to graft Cthulhu Mythos onto his world). But I'd rather not have the Oblivion War be mentioned much again. It's sort of a thought experiment that merits about this much story and then just leave it bubbling in the background with hard-core fans trying to ferret out clues about more of it....more
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