Kavinay

I don't read much straight-up fantasy as authors tend to ape Tolkien or self-indulgence like Martin. But Brust's writing is refreshingly different and a happy discovery.

Outstanding

It's a Wonderful Life [under Fascism]

A bit clunky at points but the setting is great. Star Wars would benefit greatly from broader perspectives and alternative universes.

Delightfully weird and playful take on fantasy tropes.

I've always heard people rave about le Carré. They were right.

It reads like Jimmy James' book of wisdom from Newsradio.

For Rome to be great, Carthage had to be a legendary villain. Excellent and engaging look at the Punic Wars with Miles paying special attention to the propaganda war constantly being waged by all parties. The cult of Heracles as well as the issuing and debasement of coinage are unique touchstones throughout that drive home the long game both empires played for material power as well as historiographical sympathy.

Better than Calth atleast

Robinson's a good writer, so it would be nice to believe the jingoism, racism and imperialism, etc. that permeates the book is the author rendering true 80's era military swank. And then you get a chapter where he extemporaneously goes off on the gloriousness of the Koch brother empire and you realize he's not rendering depth and flaws of his protagonists. Rather Robinson and his ilk of techno-thriller fanboys are too blinkered by American exceptionalism and the like to realize how stuff like this comes across as Team American World Police without being in on the joke.

“Part of me was hoping racism would work in my favour for once.”

Outstanding.

Great idea and the individual pieces are good, but there's a lot of overlap throughout. Some of it is testament to how brilliant “Jeremy Bearimy” is for teaching moral philosophy, but it feels like this could have been an even better collection if each contributor had a more constrained focus.

Best ever cameo of Boris Johnson to boot

Starts really strong but there's not much going on in the back half.

War as a distinction between the realms of pure and applied math is quite provocative.

A typical spelunker turns into Frasier and then AvP.

Just a gorgeous book.

The art and colour is just amazing.

Damn, that was traumatizing.

It's fine, though still runs into the problem of not really being able to square the spectacular cartoon villain stupidity of the Mongol doctrine.

+1 for emo-Space Wolves swearing

Only disappointment is that it had to end so soon.

Such an underwhelming run. More happened in the Beast Wars series that was 1/4 the length of Ruckley's plodding narrative.

Overall a good primer on Spinoza, but it strikes me as an odd choice to not go into Spinoza's metaphysics and how the resulting pantheism confounds and distinguishes him from his early modern peers.
Put another way: Spinoza was delightfully weird and contextualizing that would go a long way towards making his his work further accessible and appreciated.

oof