Count_Zero

The book is okay. It does a decent job of setting up its characters, and establishing the technologies that will appear in future books in the series. However, always skates on the edge of turning into the Exciting Adventures Of Nothing Happening.

The book significantly underestimates gaming's role in promoting the adoption of computing technologies. I'm to get more into this in depth with my video review.

I'm kind of disappointed in this book. I've got a review of the book going up on my YouTube Channel on the 31st, so I don't want to give away the store, but here's the short version.The presentation of this book hurts this book. It's presented with a fictionalized narrative as opposed to the more distant tone of stuff like [b:Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture 222146 Masters of Doom How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture David Kushner https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1386923206s/222146.jpg 215133]. We have significant events presented as one person describing an event to another person, which puts me, as an amatueur video game historian, in a pickle. Is what's being described hearsay, in which case the veracity of the event being recounted is questionable, because even putting any agenda out of the picture, there is the question of time's impact on memory.The fact that there is no chapter at the end of the book with references to clear some of this up, or an index to make finding particular pieces of information, also reduces the book's utility.It's an okay read. However, as a historical document, it's utility is heavily reduced by the way the material is presented - which is horrible, because had the material been presented better, this would have been the extensive and complete book on the console wars ever written.

Deepsix is certainly an interesting humans-against-nature story, but it's got some real characterization problems. I'll do a full review of this for my web series, and for Bureau42.

Really good book, and definitely one of the cases where, I suspect if I read it again or watched it again, I could spot the clues in hindsight (as opposed to Murder on the Orient Express, where many of them aren't there.

Bruce Sterling's seminal work “The Hacker Crackdown” is a tough act to follow, but Masters of Deception does a pretty good job of doing just that - by discussing the split between the Hacker group The Legion of Doom and The Masters of Deception - with a split over philosophy (among other things) - should Hackers be about elitism - whose Kung Fu is the strongest, or should it be about exploration and sharing knowledge, the original hacker spirit.

This is kind of a slow-paced manga. This volume does a lot of world-building with regards to Terran society and Mu society, as well as our two leads views of their respective societies, Jomy Marcus Shin for the Mu, and Keith Anyan for the Terrans.

(This part may sound spoiler-ish, but it really isn't).

That said, thus far the story does a pretty good job of making the Terran society oppressive enough that you understand why the Mu rebelled, while also making the Terrans sympathetic - their society is oppressive, but it's a society that chose to become oppressive for a specific reason - to make a society that could remain cohesive in spite of humanity's diaspora to the stars, and could also remain united and focused on the task of restoring and repairing the damaged ecosystem of Earth - and would be in agreement on how to prevent it from being despoiled once again, after the planet had been rebuilt. Their greatest sin isn't practicing eugenics, or having a non-traditional family unit (though their attempts to eliminate emotions from society is definitely something I'd consider a bad thing), as much as their greatest sin is treating the Mu, because they're ESPers, and are therefore different, as freaks to be (essentially) dissected and studied, rather than as being human beings like everyone else, and putting humans over their order.

So, I'm definitely interested in reading future books, and seeing how this conflict goes down. This is definitely a situation where both sides are shades of grey, rather than the situation being black-and-white, and I look fore-ward to seeing this play out.

The ending was a little anti-climactic, and the plot for the first half really didn't go anywhere, but otherwise the story was enjoyable.

A really good conclusion to the Thrawn Trilogy. The most recent audiobook is also very well done. I really hope the X-Wing series gets some similar audiobook treatments.

Really fun story, which moves at a brisk pace, and presents a mystery that does not cheat. Should Scalzi write another story in this world, I'd definitely check it out, and should it get optioned for a film, I'd certainly see it in theaters.

which is also available for free from Audible this month, giving all the more reason to check it out now.

A fun fantasy novel that does a good job of bridging the gap between high fantasy and heroic fantasy. I particularly liked the little nods to Wagner's Ring cycle with the series gemstone. My main complaint is that the gemstone doesn't come up soon enough in the book's plot.

I've always found the economy behind spam kind of interesting, and this book does an interesting job at shedding light on how spam works, both in terms of who's doing it and how, and also in terms of who is buying and why.

This is as much a Moebius work as it is a Stan Lee work, and it is fantastic. Anyone who wants to call themselves a fan of Moebius needs to read this. Period.

I read this in the individual issues, as opposed to in the trade.

As the New Avengers entered into the Heroic Age with a magical story, so the Secret Avengers started out with a Cosmic story, and a well written one. Brubaker is very good at writing Steve Rogers, and I was pleased with how well he handled Beast and Valkyrie as well (though it would have been nice if he'd gotten an “Oh my Stars” or two). I'd have preferred Scott Lang as Ant Man over Eric O'Grady, but he still works out well.

Basically, I started reading this because 1) I remember how big Sailor Moon was when I was a kid, and 2) I needed a palate cleanser after reading volume 1 of Uzumaki (so I probably have this read date and start date wrong).

The manga was okay, but I know that I'm not the target audience. It's melodramatic and silly all at the same time - which is kind of what I needed after Vol. 1 of Uzumaki.

I think this book is fantastic.

This is a story that probably couldn't have been done on television, if only for reasons of budget and content. The story is interesting and well written.

I'm a little disappointed that SpoilerDoctor Voodoo was killed off before having much time to be the Sorcerer Supreme. However, the story itself is very well written, and Bendis does an excellent job of making the reformation of the New Avengers interesting and fun, with all of these characters having chemistry to them. I look forward to reading of the future adventures of this team.

Note - Technically, I read this trade as individual issues.

This is an interesting Doctor Who adventure. The book certainly has it's flaws, but there are elements of the story that I really liked, especially the elements relating to the Second Doctor attempting to pass a message along to the Seventh.

This story also shows a lot of what they can do now that they're freed from the constraints of BBC standards and practices. The first book in the series amped up the sexuality somewhat to something more frank than pretty much anything that the original series had discussed.

The semi-love triangle between Ace, Raphael and that other girl whose name I can't remember, feels rather forced.

On the minus side, the semi-love triangle between Ace, Raphael and that other girl whose name I can't remember, feels rather forced. Similarly, most of the Panjistri and the Kirithons aren't particularly fleshed out, and the ones who do get some serious development are also the ones who get to be killed off.

Still, fans of Doctor Who - especially fans of the Seventh Doctor, should get something out of this book.

The (admittedly incredibly good) flashback arc has concluded, and now we return to the White Base - first as they come into port at Belfast, before moving to Gibraltar and the Mediterranean as part of the final push to drive Zeon forces from Earth, with Operation Odessa.

As with the earlier volumes, Yasuhiko's art is incredibly good, and while he's still working from Yoshiyuki Tomino's original framework, with the TV series, he builds on it in ways which do in incredible job of expanding of some of the characters. In particular, M'quve gets some considerable character growth. Miharu also gets some additional screen time, as opposed to basically being a one-episode wonder in the show.

However, after Miharu's arc, the focus of this volume is particularly on action, and the action sequences here are played out brilliantly. We have a tense cat-and-mouse duel in Gibraltar leading up to the fourth battle between Char and Amuro - along with the various parts of Operation Odessa. Yasuhiko does an excellent job basically doing a montage in sequential art. Where the original series budgetary limitations restrained the scope of this larger war, Yasuhiko is able to use the implied gaps in time between panels to let our mind fill in the pieces.

Unfortunately, with the conclusion of combat on Earth, and the next volume likely taking us back to space, this does mean that we won't get my favorite episode of Mobile Suit Gundam - the episode where a Zeon Patrol blunders across The White Base, in the forests of Northern Europe, and hopes that the Feddies will be just as caught off guard as they are, and they attempt a sneak attack. The plan doesn't work - but in the episode the Zeon troops survive, and no one on White Base is killed, so the incident serves as a nice psychological rest break, focusing on the idea that sometimes in war, a lot hinges on luck, not everything goes according to plan, and occasionally you legitimately get moments where you can end up saying “Someday, when all this is over, we'll look back on this moment and laugh.”

This volume is absolutely fantastic. This is the best volume of the series thus far, and probably one of the best volumes of a SF Comic I've read in quite some time.

Really good book. I like how thought out the magic rules are for the setting, making them familiar to fans of, for example, the Harry Dresden novels, while still being their own thing. The mystery itself is also very well written, and incredibly enjoyable, with interesting characters and well done prose.

I'm probably going to review this for Bureau42 or for a video (or both), but long story short, I enjoyed the book. Kate, the book's protagonist, is an interesting hardboiled urban fantasy detective. However, the way magic works in the setting, and how the cosmology of it works falls into some of the Magic Vs. Technology nonsense that I'm not particularly a fan of.

This, currently, is my favorite of this year's Hugo Award nominees.

Very well done post-apocalyptic Fantasy novel. Hawkmoon is a much better, and much more likable protagonist then Elric of Melnibone is.