This is the third book in this series (preceded by Daughter of the Empire and Servant of the Empire). I didn’t enjoy this book as much as the other two, and put off reading it for ages. I think the problem is that the book feels padded, and keeps going for too long. I liked…
Tag: politics
Asimov’s Aurora
This is the third and final book in the iBook Asimov Robots spinoff series. The first two were Asimov’s Mirage and Asimov’s Chimera. Like the second one, this is better than the first and has a nice flow to the plot line. The story also is easier to believe than those used in previous spinoffs…
Asimov’s Chimera
This is the second book in the iBooks spinoff series based on Asimov’s robot mysteries and the Robot City and Robots and Aliens series. Overall it fits into the Foundation Series acceptably. This book is a mystery much like Mark’s first Mirage. I think overall this book is better written than Mirage, and is certainly…
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress
This isn’t Heinlein’s best work. The faux Russian grammar of the narrator is pretty annoying, and the story shallow. Its an ok read as entertainment, but I think it could do with more plot and fewer long rants about the dangers of big government. I’d like to know more about the cyborgs which seem to…
Bio of a Space Tyrant: Politician
This is the third book in the Bio of a Space Tyrant series (following Refugee and Mercenary). I picked this series up on a whim when it was cheap in a bookstore sale, and liked the first two books, although the first was quite grim and the second a little odd. This book isn’t as…
Servant of the Empire
This is the sequel to Daughter of the Empire. The book is long at nearly 700 pages, and contains two basic plots, although both are related and use the same characters. They could easily have been separate books — one of the things I like about this book is that it tells more of the…
Daughter of the Empire
This is a really good book. It was a delight to find something so good that it kept me up well past my bed time several nights running. I really enjoyed this one — its set on Kelwan, the planet that invades Midkemia in the Riftwar series, and is written from the perspective of the…
Dublin trip
I occasionally wonder to myself why I don’t blog more these days, and I think the answer is that I’m not convinced that other people would be interested in what happens to me from day to day. For example, when writing the books, all that is really involved is a massive amount of time in…
I am sometimes amazed by the childlike political discourse in the US
It amazes me that the best political argument Ann Coulter can come up with is that John Edwards is a faggot. While it is true that Ann specialises in a particularly vile form of hate politics, I guess she’s sufficiently lame that she can’t even think of good insults any more. It’s a bit like…
Two things
One, wikipedia rocks. Especially for technical topics I previously found hard to research like image encoding formats like YUV. Kudos to those who write pages there. Secondly, is it just me or is the history of television formats fascinating. For example: The adoption of SECAM in Eastern Europe has been attributed to Cold War political…