Kavinay

Renault has this great knack for casually skewering Theseus with his own presumptions of kingly privilege and judgement that you consistently feel sorry for those in his orbit, rather than fall into what a lesser author would render as a straight up heroic power fantasy.

Hands down, the best The Authority book.

Is it perfect? No. But is it a sincere attempt at telling a story the moves the characters and franchise forward? Yes. Unlike what Abrams and Terrio eventually cobbled together, there are some real moments of genuine thought and emotion in this script that would have been a fitting end to the trilogy.

Best take on Pokemon ever.

Anxiety as a habit.

Outstanding. You don't really know you needed a mix of Ultraman + Kaiju + Oz (the prison show), but once you do get into it, Cannon's storytelling is just captivating. Case in point, Zonn's quiet psychopathic prison stare genuinely freaks me out more than any Kaiju rampaging through a city.

Just a note, it's not a how to book. There's really not a lot of good coping advice here besides commiserating over how many other sports are plagued with the same problems.

It was ever thus.

Banner's job is actually quite difficult, make a simple case that political rhetoric about the use of history is completely antithetical to the actual practice of reassessing the past against new sources and frames of reference. His examples though of common controversies about revisionism are well chosen and each expose a new wrinkle about how a static view of the past doesn't just miss the point but also loses clarity in pursuit of absolute truth.

Attention as a commodity. Even if you've never created online ad buys, Hwang points out the key reasons why a financialized approach to the business model of the internet is wide open to exploitation and crash. If you have run internet campaigns, oh boy are all your misgivings well-founded.

Builds up to an unbelievable climax on the throneworld that... you don't get to see because you're supposed to buy a sourcebook too.

You don't expect actors to write with such delightful nuance and nerdiness at the same time.

Those covers are fantastic.

He got better!

Cruyff > Guardiola >Messi. Despite Kuper's attempt to build up Barcelona as more than a club before it's recent fall, it's a bit rose-tinted and misses the context of how every other big club also transformed with the influx of mega TV and IP revenue streams since the 80's. It's actually not even just football, but most professional sports that have seen the rise of player power and boardroom's enslaved to marketing-driven agendas. Sure Barcelona's essence might be unique in the terms of Cruyff-ian legacy the Kuper extolls, but it was always just a club even if that 2008 - 2009 side played the greatest football we'll ever see.

A delight. Also, ideas.

Honestly, Schreier is too kind. Any professional developer looking at his case studies sees the sort of epic failure of management that would render even a genius into pariah in most competent industries. Game dev culture is built on a house of cards where the incompetence of leaders normalizes the inevitable crunch that results. Such a waste.

Remains the most definitive work ever written on the game of cricket.

That took a weird turn in the end...

Valentine's special is great. Everything else is just so slow and drawn out.

Starts out really promising–like a Ringworld satire–but loses steam.

Evil space Freddie Mercury is the best!

Murderbot and ART are the best cybernetic odd couple.

It's like what Droids should be.

Abnett's books don't need to be set in 40k, but Warhammer is better off for his tight integration of lore into his series.

It would have been nice for the book to have more blood bowl in it.