Alex > Recent Status Updates

DeWar is cool.

He also reformed family law.

Trajan made some reasonable reforms to the justice system, curtailing the use of informers and making the torture of the slaves of those accused of treason illegal (it remained legal when the charge was murder).

I hate his philosophy and I hate his style.

Good survey of the archeological record in Syria, which is consistent with a sudden halt in construction activity around the middle of the sixth century, except concerning churches.

I alternate between finding the prose forced and finding it very pleasant to read. Definitely better than in my last sci-fi novel.

Half his acknowledgements is him complaining that Trump made writing hard. I cannot believe I'm reading this.

"“Everyone fuck off,” Limbar said. “For the next fifteen minutes.”
Everyone fucked off, and Limbar closed the door behind them."
That was witty the first time, but not now.

Also, he used "hemorrhaged out" instead of "bled out" in a sentence. Bad style.

That the Interdependency is unnecessary is rather uninteresting, considering the reader never had reason to suspect it was necessary. Likewise, finding out its ideology or religion (both?) is a lie does not come as a shock as every single character so far has been a cynic and an atheist. The archbishop hardly qualifies as a character to me.

He drops information that should've been in the first quartile of the novel. The world felt lifeless until now, giving me a vivid description of Hub won't change things at this point.

Also, the naming conventions for the spaceships are a soulless knockoff of the Culture-series.

"Kiva went on at length about the Yes, Sir’s entire sojourn at End, loudly and at length, with considerable editorial comment."