Tag Archives: Review

Old Man Indeed

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The first time I read “Old Man’s War” was back in 2009. I checked the date on Goodreads… and I suspect I was lucky because I don’t think I started posting books there much earlier than that (although it’s shocking to me that I’ve been posting to Goodreads for 16+ years at this point).

I had a very positive review at the time and it was very focused on the action. I complained about the 150ish pages of set up.

I saw that the latest in that series was published a couple of months ago. It’s the seventh! book in the series – he must be doing something right. I thought I’d dive back into the series and see about cruising through a nice space opera with some action and plenty of fun stuff to read. I picked up a new copy (e-reader this time partly for convenience and partly because I coudln’t find the other one) and dove in.

To carry forward the diving analogy… I dove into the shallow part of the pool and it didn’t end the way I thought it would.

The part I didn’t remember was the basis of these stories is that the military uses old people. The ‘magic/science’ allows all the knowledge and experience to be swapped into a new, supercharged body that is built to fight. That also means the characters in the stories have a ton of life they have lived… and lost.

The book opens with the main character visiting the grave of the woman he’d been married to for decades who died after having a massive stroke.

That just crushed me. I had to stop almost as soon as I started.

When you read a book matters so much. All the other parts, the style, the characters, the plot are the core but the timing is everything. Back in ’09 I gave no thought to what that meant. I wanted to push past all that ‘old man’ part and get to the war part. Well, here we are 16 years later and the ‘old man’ part is intensely difficult to read. I did finish the reread of this one. The book is still good, but it’s not the same excitement driving work that I read earlier in my life.

I still like the book. I’m not nearly as enthusiastic as I was. I struggled with the main character seeing his wife so clearly in others in so many places. I see the found spirit part but I don’t think I believe it. Maybe if I read this again in a decade or so it might be different, but I don’t think I’m going any further with the series right now (or maybe ever). We’ll see how the timing works out in the future.

Book Review Catchup Post

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Keeping up with things lately has not been easy. It was never “easy” but less so in recent months. I hadn’t actually stopped reading, I just haven’t had the emotional space to write down reviews of books I’ve finished. There are a handful that I’d like to track, so I’ve added them to Goodreads. I’m not going to try to link each of them individually here, nor will I have deep reviews for all of them but I did want to land them where I can track them.

Assassin’s Quest (The Farseer Trilogy, #3) by Robin Hobb (3 stars)

I pushed through and finished the series. I can say I ‘liked it’ but I did not love it. It ended, but somehow it just didn’t feel right to me. I’m glad I finished the series.

Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky, #1) by Rebecca Roanhorse (4 stars)

It was really good to see a fantasy work set in something NOT medieval Europe. It’s well done and I will likely pick up the next book in the series.

Fevered Star (Between Earth and Sky, #2) by Rebecca Roanhorse (3 stars)

I continue to like the concept of non-Europe based fantasy. This book was good and the characters continued to be solid, but when I hit the end I just didn’t have the same drive to get to the next book. We’ll see if I wrap it up at some point.

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn (The Library Trilogy, #1) by Mark Lawrence (2 stars)

There was a lot of potential here and I was really drawn in at the start. The longer I read, the more I was hoping for certain things and not getting them… then things just got weird. That’s good – weird is good – it just wasn’t weird that worked for me.

Glory Road by Robert A. Heinlein (1 star)

I realize there are a lot of fans out there that will not like a one star review for this classic. There are some I have spoken to who read this in their youth and remember it fondly. There are some who continue to reread this as a ‘true classic’ that they really enjoy.

I didn’t read this as a youth, and reading it now with a more modern view… didn’t do it any favors. I suspect if I had picked this up when I was 14 I would consider it one of the best ever. Looking at it now? It is dated, male-centric and just not the exciting adventure everyone seems to think it is… at least not to me. I didn’t even make it to the end.

Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk (3 stars)

A wizard private investigator in Chicago on the outs with the official wizarding organization…

I really had to struggle past the direct comparison to Harry Dresden as a starting point. It’s likely not fair, but it’s definitely something people will see right away.

I am not a fan of Supernatural (TV series) but others have told me there is a heavy influence in the book for that as well.

In the end I read the whole thing rather quickly. I struggled with the ending, but then it was as advertised in the title… even though I knew the end.

The Spellshop (Spellshop, #1) by Sarah Beth Durst (4 stars)

This book is exactly the warm, relaxing cup of hot chocolate the author wanted it to be. Charming characters, low stakes (that seem more so) and lots of positive thoughts. If you’re looking for a cozy, I absolutely recommend this.

The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth Durst

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I liked this story as much as I liked the first book. There is an attachment, but not nearly as much as I thought there might be, to the first book but this definitely stands on its own.

I will say that when I finished this, directly on the heels of the first one I may have felt like I’d eaten too many sweets. Even saying that, if you’re looking for a cozy, this is also on the recommended list.



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Solo Game

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Sometimes taking the time to play a game is just the sort of rest and recuperation one needs. Sometimes when you need this, there’s nobody else around, making the game options limited.

At a recent board game day in my local community I picked up a single player game. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I figured I’d take a shot. The creator seemed like a local person and the game looked well put together. The game is called Eleventh Beast. This game is set up as a solo monster hunting game set in London in the mid 1700s. I’d only ever “played” pick your own path style single player games, so I wanted to do this one right.

I grabbed the printable map and tokens from the website. I cut out the tokens, grabbed the required dice and a deck of cards with the jokers taken out. I dug up some mood music to accompany my solo game. Note paper at hand, I cracked open the pamphlet and started in on the rules. I also felt some extra ‘flavor’ was in order so I put on some music as a background. I recommend the soundtrack to the old movie “Gothic” if you can come up with it. Really felt like it fit with the game – and ends with a tune declaring that the devil is an Englishman.

The rules made sense, but there wasn’t any… cushion for first timers I guess is a way to say it. I had to just start and figure it out (play fast, make mistakes – a common refrain among our friends). Having said that, it didn’t take long to figure it out. There are only 15ish pages to the whole thing and it’s pretty straightforward once you get started. Rolling dice, placing tokens and pulling cards I worked my way through my first game. I won by defeating the monster with only one wound on my tab.

It is a neat concept. Random card pulling and dice rolls give the action a little bit of unpredictability. It was easy. I’m afraid that I did something wrong as it seemed both shorter and easier than it was described. Part of that might be my lack of detail in the notes department. I could see where the flavor would really work for somebody who wanted to invest in it, but once I figured out what I needed for each step, my notes became a short hand code. It has a level of replay ability, but now that I know what I’m doing it would be a quick hit whenever I wanted to play a solo game. If there were a rule I would change or add, I think it would be a randomization factor for the monster and the player tokens after an attack is resolved. Basically once I’d collected a handful of rumors that turned out to be true (and therefore tools) I stood on the monster and duked it out until I rolled to win. I think pushing the monster and the hunter to random spaces would add to the challenge and allow for a little more strategy.

It was a fun diversion and I’m really glad I took the chance and picked it up. It’s on the shelf, ready to go (with far less prep) for the next time I feel like a solo game.

Singing

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A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I got this selection picked for my local book group. There was some (gentle) pushback almost immediately. “A book featuring a pandemic? Really?”

I have to say that was the least interesting part of the story. It was a major factor, but the characters were written with such depth and reality it overcame any lingering issues from the actual pandemic (at least for me). There was also a terrorist aspect that gets overlooked because this book was actually written before the pandemic.

I had the opportunity to speak with the author (briefly) at a recent convention. She was great. She pointed out to me the one thing she “missed” in her predictive aspects were masks / facial covers. The rest of things were absolutely worth looking at from a fictional standpoint. I don’t believe “missing” something like that when creating a dystopian future is a bad thing at all. There were all sorts of opportunities to see how the musicians were the engine of this story.

I’m not a musician, nor can I create music in any form really – but this story just spoke to me of the reality of how a creator feels and the need they have to express that creation. I recommend this book – you should go buy one!



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Summer Tree

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The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


There were a number of very interesting parts to the world building here, and a handful of distracting things as well.

Matt the dwarf… was one example of the struggle. There were anachronistic aspects like the naming convention that distracted from just flowing with the story. Given the original copyright for this is from the mid 1980s, there were other things from that time that really showed through in the story. There were at least two instances of very casual misogyny – and possibly more – that stood out when reading this with a modern eye.

Having said those things, this is still of the ‘sword and sorcery’ genre that I loved so much when I was younger. My own sense of nostalgia carried me past a lot of things that might stop other readers.



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Old School Fantasy

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Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This was not the first time I’ve read this book. I picked it up and got it via Kindle for this read through for both convenience and saving my old paperback I plucked off the shelf from back before Y2K.

I remember reading it and being very taken with the story. I related to difficult choices and bad results. The fantasy aspects were a bonus – and it was less ‘action’ oriented than some of the other things I’d read.

On this re-reading I found that I could still relate to difficult choices and bad results, but the political aspects of the story were more clear to me. A friend also pointed out that this story was (vaguely) around the same time / trend as when game of thrones came out.

This is still a really good fantasy story with interesting world building. A little slow for my taste – and it wraps up ‘a’ story, but not the whole story. Traditional fantasy trilogy stuff.

Clearly I liked it to a greater degree than many books I’ve read recently. I went out and got the second one!



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Cold Something

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Cold Water by Dave Hutchinson

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I picked this book up because it was a book club selection (science fiction). It’s a slog. I read the whole thing… but honestly can’t tell you with certainty why some people are calling it science fiction. Beyond one quasi-science fictionesque bit, this could be a current day spy novel. Sure there are ‘alternate’ world aspects here, but there isn’t enough difference to make me believe any of it. The vast majority of the references and cultural world building stuff could just as easily be today.

Notably I didn’t call it a ‘spy thriller’. I didn’t find it particularly ‘thrilling’ either. I just kept rolling to confirm what I thought about the plot. I was essentially correct, but the ending (that slammed down very quickly) didn’t seem to fit the rest of the book. The reason behind the mystery wasn’t enough to wow me… or impress me at all really.

I couldn’t really tell you the difference between the main character from Texas and the police officer from… Poland? Estonia? Dunno and don’t really care. The young woman hacker that we got almost no information about was just as interesting (cloth computer?) None of them moved me.

I’ve seen that this is being developed as a television series. I can’t imagine that working, but I’ll be interested to see how they handle the visual aspects of the lone ‘science fiction’ piece of it. I don’t suspect it’s a thing I’ll watch more than one episode of.



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Watch List – Digital Circus

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Animation has always been part of my media world. As far back as I can remember, there has always been some form of ‘cartoon’ that I was watching. They were classified or cataloged or somehow figured as a child’s demographic for a very long time. Then, somewhere along the way a bright person realized they’d never really been for kids, or at least not exclusively so and started to market things as ‘adult animation’.

There have been any number of shows I’ve become a big fan of that are stashed into that category.

Lately, it feels like the creators of animated shows have been abusing that demographic box. Putting in the kind of gore, violence or ludicrous situations that would never make the cut if there were actors that needed to create a physical display of those things.

Then there are things like Digital Circus.

The company behind this animated series says they create animated shows that are fun, colorful with occasional violence and existential breakdowns. What they should have included is a story with some kind of plot line to keep me interested.

Is Digital Circus colorful? Yes, absolutely. It is bright and filled with primary colors almost constantly. Is it fun? That’s debatable. I don’t think so really – and that’s all based on the ‘existential breakdowns’ part.

The main character in the 4 episode series I watched on Netflix is named Pomni. She’s a jester like person who is dropped into an insane place with other oddly compiled characters. None of them know what’s going on. None of them can explain why they’re there. Nobody has any sense of where things are going or why. Not even the person watching the show, and that’s a problem for me. There’s got to be something if you want me to stay interested. Do we know there’s a secret lurking? Is there something in common between all the oddball personalities roaming this circus tent? Anything?

Each of the four episodes had a loose storyline of what the characters did, but it wasn’t compelling. It took me a month to get through these short episodes because I kept nodding off. By the end I was starting to feel a little manic, like Gangle in the Food Masquerade (and that episode isn’t existential, it’s an indictment of the fast food business).

In all, I’m going to put the digital circus down as ‘the bad’ that will be used in comparison to other, better shows. There are better things to watch out there.

Side note: This site has information about the series. There are things they say there that make sense upon reading it, but were in absolutely no way clear by simply watching the show.

The Watch List

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For a while I was writing a monthly review of viewing suggestions and reviews of various science fiction media. I got away from writing that after a number of posts for a couple of reasons. First, writing on a schedule like that, while great for keeping the writing muscles strong was not allowing me to focus on my fiction. Second, the article series felt like it had run its course and Watch The Skies needed something different to keep things fresh.

Lastly, and I think most importantly to me, there was a need to keep things more positive than I was feeling at the time. It’s a much more challenging prospect to find something that’s actually good (in one’s own opinion) and then clearly lay out all the positive aspects of it. It’s important to work on positive things – tearing another person’s work down is easy – finding all the good things to say is the bigger challenge. This actually ties in to the reason I bring all of my genuinely negative reviews of books I read here. If I’m going to be negative about something I’m going to own it. I don’t want to be the troll that just tosses garbage out on whatever site I happen to be on at the time. I understand how difficult it is to create something and send it out to the world. I’ve had negative feedback and I don’t particularly like it, so I try not to be that kind of jerk to others.

Having said all that, here’s where I’m going. I’ve posted one recently (last week’s ‘not a secret’) and I plan to continue to post commentary on the things I’m watching – good, bad or indifferent. As I go forward, I’m just going to put all the thoughts out there. I know that has worked for me for other reviewers in the past… even when I disagreed. If they hated it, I would consider that a solid recommendation.

I hope that my ones of fans will appreciate the honest reviews and use those to fine tune the things on the watch list – even if it means watching the exact opposite of the things I recommend.

Poetry

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Birches by Robert Frost

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


While I am not a fan of poetry in general, Robert Frost has always been a poet I have enjoyed reading. Adding illustrations and creating visuals to go along with the words is excellent.

This book was a gift to me this year and I’m quite glad I took a few minutes to read it. It’s a single poem – it’s not long – but it’s nice. I miss living where birch trees grow.



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