Nathalie

The book tells the story about ten different video games and the hurdles they managed to (or not to) overcome during development, all the way to release. I especially liked the stories of Stardew Valley and Star Wars 1313.

It seems like every game's success story boils down to excessive crunch time, which is a bit sad. The stories are interesting (even if you're not familiar with the game being talked about), but man I do not want to work in the video game industry.

Unfortunately, not as interesting as I'd hoped. I really enjoyed the last couple of chapters (I do think the character of Phasma has potential under the right circumstances, and I started to really enjoy The Cardinal as well), but the majority of it is just such a dud.

I love team stories, and I especially love stories about morally ambigious people, as from our point of view, they're straight up evil, but they believe they're the good guys.

Inferno Squad is a team that was assembled after the destruction of the first Death Star (and may be an answer to the Rebels' Twilight Company in a way). The book is also a prequel to the Battlefront II single player campaign, which also features a few of this book's characters, mainly Iden Versio. I didn't closely look at the character list of the game, so I wasn't sure whether all the characters would surive in the end or not, which kept things exciting on that front.

I loved the rest of it too. I wasn't too sure about Iden at first as a character, but I was totally into it by the end. The rest of the team grew on me much easier.

Story wise, most of the time in the book is spent as an undercover mission with a Rebel team that have connections to Saw Gerrera's partisans. In there, there are a few connections to the Clone Wars series and the Rebel Rising book about Jyn's youth. Especially the latter might be good reading before getting to this, because there's a few character crossovers and for simply getting a bit of context when it comes to the state of the Rebels at that point.

Even if I'd just be judging it on whether it made me more excited for Battlefront II or not... Hell yeah!

Interesting at times, but overall just a bit too long for what it is. I found the writing to be very dry and I had trouble reading it for long stretches at a time. There were definitely a few cool chapters in here though.

I am a very self-conscious person. To a fault. I constantly question everything I say or do (usually after they've been said or done) and agonize over it, worrying about what other people think or thought of me. All the time.

In short, I give too many fucks.

This is not a life-changing book. I don't think any book truly is. But sometimes you just need someone to tell you something in a certain way to make you look at things from a different perspective, and that's what this did for me.

In the first few chapters he talks about the general principles of the book. Life is a problem to solve. Failure makes us better. Confrontations are better not to avoid. You are responsible for yourself. Choose good values. Decide what to give a fuck about. Those are some of the things I've already tried putting to use at work. Will I keep being able to do that in other aspects of my life for the foreseeable future? Maybe, maybe not, but this book has planted the seed already, and it's up to me what I do with it.

It's clear that Mark is a very experienced person in life, and I loved some of the stories and anecdotes he told. It was a way of seeing how the tips he talked about could work out in real life. It also never made the book feel boring or hard to get through. Quite the opposite!

On a last note: if you have the option, get the audiobook. The narration by Roger Wayne is absolutely excellent and just made it all the better.

This is a grand, multiple POVs, big world story about war and magic, and I found myself caring very little for it.

Occasional interesting moments, but most of it was very okay. Had a really promising start, and there were a few POV's that I enjoyed reading more than others, but overall it didn't really leave a lasting impression on me and I'm just glad to be done.

2,5 stars ultimately. The start was very good, and a few chapters were definitely more interesting than others, but not enough to make me care about what was going on.

Honestly, the stories in this almost could be a movie. It's very interesting, but also incredibly sad, as well as a bit uplifting. If you like celebrity memoirs in any way (as I do), this is pretty much a must-listen.

I had originally planned for this to be my first read of 2017, but then the end of December 2016 happened and I couldn't quite get myself to start this.

A lot of this book looks back on how Carrie Fisher experienced the first Star Wars movie. Before, during, and after. Inspired by her finding the old journals she wrote during the filming of it.

Carrie was like no other, and this book is at times surprisingly comical, but also really dark. The journals (read by her daughter, Billie Lourd) are touching and beautiful but also sad.
What also takes up a lot of this book is her affair with Harrison Ford, and it's hard to not look critically at it, especially when she was still so young compared to him. But I digress.

This was a great listen, even if she tended to go on rants that seemed to go on and on without really getting to a point. So even with this already being a relatively short book, it wouldn't hurt to have been trimmed down a little or edited a bit more. My only real gripe though, and I'll surely look out for some of her previous books.

Ahsoka Tano may very well be one of the most beloved (if not THE most) characters of the new Star Wars Expanded Universe. We already know plenty about her from The Clone Wars and Rebels, but there are still a few huge gaps in her story. This book is the first to try to fill some of those gaps.

And it's great! We find out A LOT! Lots of things that were casually referenced in Rebels or more on certain characters and events from The Clone Wars (even including some interludes with POVs of a few familiar characters). But also more on Kyber Crystals and how Ahsoka ends up in the Rebellion. And just in general Ahsoka reflecting on her life in the Jedi Order and Order 66.

It's a fun read, and I heartily recommend getting the audiobook, narrated by Ahsoka's voice actress Ashley Eckstein. She made the whole book come alive, which really adds to it.

This was quite a fun (yet short) read! Essentially this is a book that combines a bunch of stories about the Norse gods (Odin, Thor, Loki and the like), all leading up to its final chapter/battle: Ragnarok.

The stories are all great and easily accessible, making them a good entry point to more on Norse mythology. All of them are also structured in a way that they'd make for great (albeit slightly cruel) bedtime stories, and of course, as a great inbetween when you want to take a break from another book for a bit.

This book would have made for a really entertaining videogame. A party system with lots of different fighting styles! Side quests! Boss battles! Memorable appearances! A big battle at the end!

It would just be a game that wouldn't be particularly known for its story. That's fine for games as long as the gameplay is fun, but I expect more when it's a book. In a game it's fine if you linger too long someplace even if your quest is very urgent. Here you just wonder why.

It's hard to explain why I wasn't really into this, as it does have some elements I usually love. Camaraderie, banter, emotional beats! Moog's own arc is something I'd usually be all over. But somehow the narration felt very distant? I was literally seeing the words that these people cared about eachother, but I had a hard time actually believing it, if that makes sense? It's not because of the blend of “humor” and emotional beats, as that can be done incredibly well. It's just the shallow way in which it was done. But even on the action front I found the fight scenes to be very dull as well.

It's still quite enjoyable, and what I wrote down might not feel like a downside to you, but for me it's such an important part of any story in any medium that I can't really overlook it.

My “erection joke” tracker ended at four at about 40%. I missed a few big ones but I just wanted to be done, I'm sorry to say :D

If you've seen the movie, and you want to get even more out of the movie, read this.

The novelization is pretty much a written out script of the movie, but it adds so much. In the literal sense, there's a few extra scenes that we weren't shown (nothing big), but some of the extra dialogue and really getting what every character is thinking just deepens everything that happens and it makes some scenes even more beautiful than they already were. Absolutely loved it.

Very enjoyable. Anna Kendrick is a joy to listen to. Some interesting and fun, but also serious stories from various periods of her life.

It's short. It's fun. It's full of pop culture references. It is wonderfully narrated by Adam Baldwin. But above all, it is extremely ridiculous.

It's offered for free on Audible until June 21 and it's definitely worth picking up! :)

Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. The thing I love the most, I think, is that so much time is spent on ending it. One of my complaints about Assassin's Quest (the final book in the previous Fitz trilogy) was that the ending was very rushed, where in this case, the aftermath of the action (and even the aftermath of the aftermath) was very much what this book built up to, and I liked that a lot.
Definitely don't mind that there's more of these characters though!

This was maybe the most entertaining memoir I've read so far. Really good, really interesting, with a variety of topics from Bryan's youth, his relationship with his parents, his love for acting, and some fun behind the scenes stuff of some of his projects. I've really gained a lot of respect for him during this.

I tend to read “celebrity books” as audiobooks by default (except if they're not done by the actual author) and although at times it sort of felt like he was narrating someone else's book, it was still a tremendous joy to listen to. I just really love his voice.

Greg Rucka is one of the coolest Star Wars author to mostly dabble in young adult and junior novels for it. They're honestly a pleasure for either age, so you don't need to be scared off by the “junior” tagged to this one.

This (relatively short) book follows a pre-Rogue One story featuring Chirrut and Baze, and it does a wonderful job of making you care about the secondary characters and give you more character info (as well as on their relationship) between those two.

I wish all of the other members had books like these (though of course I still need to get to the Jyn one) because if they could all be like this, then excellent.

This audiobook was provided by the author, narrator, or publisher at no cost in exchange for an unbiased review courtesy of AudiobookBoom dot com.

Ayden Dracre grows up in a family of great sorcerers, which would normally be fine, but in this world, sorcerers are known for only doing evil magic, while wizards are known for only doing light magic. Ayden is a disappointment to his family, since he quite frankly sucks at being evil. So he decides to go on a quest to prove himself (or not?), and on the way meets some surprising, and pretty fun, allies. (My favorites being the pirates!)

It was nice to get into some family friendly fantasy again, since a lot of what I've been reading lately has been pretty dark. It wasn't at all boring and at times pretty funny, and pretty much the right length. I didn't get as invested in it as I hoped I would, but I liked it and it made my car rides a little more interesting.

I read this in one sitting, and I thoroughly enjoyed it (and I imagine it very much comes to life if/when you see the actual play), but a part of me can't help but see it as glorified fanfiction and so that's how I'm looking at it in my head. Which might change if it ever actually becomes a fleshed-out novel or something.
I don't really like it overall as an official part of the Harry Potter story, but seeing it separately I actually really liked it and enjoyed it. Mostly it just makes me want to reread all the books again.

As someone who didn't expect too much from this book, I was really pleasantly surprised. A lot of the stories here were really great, and managed to make me care for certain background characters in a really short amount of time.

Talking about characters - ever wanted to know the stories of the Mos Eisley Cantina Band? Captain Antilles? Biggs? The stormtroopers who were told “These aren't the droids you're looking for”? Hell, even Qui-Gon Jinn and Yoda? You get all of that and more!
Some of the stories do end up being a bit eh, but everything else more than makes up for it.

One of my complaints about Theft Of Swords was that the story and the characters sometimes felt a bit shallow, and I wish we had gone deeper into what they felt or thought or just in general. I do not have that complaint about Rise Of Empire.

This book builds upon the previous one (in worldbuilding, characters, even writing) and is a direct continuation. Royce and Hadrian are as wonderful as ever, but we also get tons more on Arista and Thrace and a few new characters. As always, these books just scream “Fun!” while still maintaining a serious story.

Unlike Theft Of Swords, I listened to this one as an audiobook (I did finish the short stories inbetween some of the novels as audiobooks as well) and I think that's my preferred way of reading this series. Tim Gerard Reynolds really brings these guys to life. I had to get a bit used to Hadrian speaking in a sort of “posh” way, but now I can't even imagine him sounding different. A lot of the humor also comes from the delivery of the dialogue, and he absolutely excelled at that. He makes the entire thing just feel like “hanging out with Royce and Hadrian for a while”, and it's so worth it.

A re-read because it's been ages! It's amazing how much story is packed in such a short book (less than 250 pages!). Makes for a great audiobook too!

Once again, I am pleasantly surprised by the Padmé novel. While not a necessary read, it does give some interesting insights into Padmé, her handmaidens, Naboo, and expands a bit upon The Phantom Menace. Just from the movies, that wouldn't really interest me at all, but this duology succeeds in giving it more insight, and makes me view her character and role in a new light.

From the way it was written at the start, I thought this was just going to be an entertaining and fun story. But man, things got dark real fast.

This story and its main character grab you from the get-go. She's likeable, and you instantly kind of get her as a character. The rest of the characters work really well too, but a lot of these character either have a ~twist attached to them or aren't going to last long.

Events do happen super fast in this. I sometimes had to go back a bit because apparently someone had died and I had apparently missed the sentence in which that happened. It also tends to go from one emotion to another on the complete opposite side of the spectrum, which can kinda throw you for a loop, as it feels like what just happened simply cannot be real (and sometimes it wasn't even real). But don't get me wrong, this book does mess with your emotions quite successfully at times. (Grant :().

Though I am very unfamiliar with a lot of history, a very worthy read. Might get onto the sequel soon.

It was marginally better than the first book, but I still felt a bit disconnected from the original main characters (except for Sinjir, that lovable fellow). The Norra/Temmin drama feels played out, Jas is kind of stereotypical and Jom is just kind of there. But I absolutely loved the interludes and I loved Sloane and her chapters and I liked the extra information we got concerning Jakku and the state of the galaxy.