Review: Marvel's Midnight Suns

Marvel's Midnight Suns is Firaxis' turn based card game set in the Marvel Universe. I usually enjoy Firaxis's strategy games, and when there was a steam 3 day trial I tried it and liked it, but not enough to pay list price ($40) for it. I figured I'd pick it up for $20 or so in relatively short order but the price never dropped that low. I noticed that the local library had the PS5 version on its shelves and put a hold on it. The game was long enough that I would play a bit, save, return it to the library after the 3 week loan period, place another hold on it, and then play it again. It would take 3 such periods to finish the game.

Unlike in XCOM or XCOM 2, movement doesn't matter very much. Or rather, you get one move per turn, but during your turn various attacks made by playing cards move the various characters as well, so you have to take that into account while making your plays and moves. You have 3 card plays per turn, and unlike XCOM, those attacks never miss and the damage that you achieve is always squarely provided on the card itself so you don't have to guess. Attacks can also have additional properties (some attacks require heroism to power, while others may grant you an additional card play if you knock out an opponent, while others may cause stun or cause the subject of the attack to be knocked back), and attacks that knock back an opponent into another object may trigger environmental effects. Overall, the game play is fun and since each character introduced into the game has different cards and different play styles each mission is unique and fresh.

The in-between mission/strategy part of the game, however, is annoying. You run around talking to various characters in order to increase friendship level between characters. There are also puzzles to unlock and chests to open, all of which grant you in game currency that you can use to upgrade each character's card decks, or single-use utility items. There's a research tree that's not well constructed, and various side stories. There are also combat side-quests where you can power up your character or unlock more puzzles and side-quests. This bit of the game outstays its welcome in short order, and I found myself short-cutting things by searching for the best gifts to give each character so I could get these side-quests over with.

The story is not bad, and of course, the Avengers characters are fun to play, as is Wolverine, Spider-Man, and the Midnight Suns characters are also fun to play though not well known. Much of the dialogue and voice acting is horrid, but I could overlook that.

I don't usually play a game to completion, having too little free time and too much to do, so for me to even finish a game is rare, which places this into the recommended category.

2023 Bahamas: Nov 18th Prologue

 The thing with planning a trip a year ahead is that by the time you have to execute it you forgot how you ended up booking a place like Marsh Harbor. I think we had 2 boats available, one in Nassau, and one in Marsh Harbor, and Marsh Harbor wasn't just cheaper, but it was a place Arturo hadn't been to before. Prior to the flight, United changed our flights a few times, to the point where while we were supposed to all arrive together at 1:15pm when we booked the flights, we ended up being separated from the rest of the group and being supposed to arrive at 4:15pm. Even that was in question as our plane was delayed in Fort Lauderdale, and the pilot told everyone to hurry up and sit down as he wanted to arrive at Marsh Harbor before 6:00pm when the airport closed!

Nevertheless, we landed at 6:15pm and the airport stayed open for us. We zipped through customs and immigration far more easily than in most other countries I've been to, and it wasn't more than 15 minutes to get our luggage, get into a taxi, and head over to Conch Inn Marina, where we were told that the boat we had booked, Belight, had had generator problems, and we had been given a new boat instead, Katja. The new boat had a watermaker, which was a nice upgrade --- we were planning to have 9 people on the boat, and without a watermaker we'd be putting in at port every couple of days to refill the tank. The generator let us trade diesel for water, which wasn't a bad thing. What was strange was that the Katja flushed freshwater in the toilets --- the reasoning being that salt water would gum up the pipes eventually. Clearly once you have a water maker on the boat you're expected to use it. As it was, we would end the trip using up 42 gallons of diesel, running the generator for 3 hours a night to make enough water for all of us to shower.

Having arrived late, the rest of the crew had thankfully already provisioned the boat, walking to the supermarket 20 minutes away and then hiring a taxi to cart everything back. One thing that we had neglected to do was bring coffee beans and a grinder! I'd brought the aeropress though, so Arturo had bought pre-ground coffee. There was a list of additional items to buy for the next morning, but it wasn't very big, and the folks who weren't involved in sailing the boat proper could do it.

Along with my family and Arturo, Niniane was joining us for the third time, and both Mark and Arturo had their sisters along! We had dinner at Colors, which had good but expensive food served in a casual environment. I noted that because the wind was so strong there were no mosquitoes!

What I would also discover the next morning was that the boat also had a broken gas alarm that kept going off if you ran the stove. Fortunately, Navigare's technicians were competent and fixed it before we left. We were told that the previous charter had removed the fuse to eliminate the annoying noise!

Reread: The Magic Engineer

 The Magic Engineer is the third book in the Recluce series, and now several foreshadowings that were in the first book finally come to be revealed. For instance, in the first book, Lerris leaves home with a black staff. Well, the lead character in this novel, Dorrin, is the person who first invents and designs them. Similarly, much is made of the book, The Basis of Order, which Lerris reads and finds confusing, and again, Dorrin is the person who wrote it. Similarly, there's a mention of steam-driven boats in the first book, and the engineer who invents it is also the protagonist.

As with Lerris, Dorrin is thrown out of Recluce for even thinking about building machines (you'd think the rulers of the island might reconsider throwing out people who think different), and he, along with other exiles, leave home and traverse a war-filled continent. While his companions could expect to return, Dorrin is given instructions not to come home until he knows who he is.

He becomes a smith, then an apprentice healer, and eventually does finally build his machines. The engineering part is of course complete fantasy. Other than the steam engine, nothing Dorrin builds ever seems to need testing --- it almost always works the first time. (Granted, he does spend a bunch of time at the middle parts building models and drawing) And then he builds those weapons of war, but insists on being the person to set them off or install the mines. One would think that an engineer is too valuable to spend in the field when he could be continually churning out new weapons.

We get a bit more insight into the way Recluce magic works --- the order bound folks who can infuse their devices/weapons/fabrications with order literally can't observe the destruction created or they pay for it with physical symptoms up to and including blindness. Dorrin gets the bright idea to write it down in a book, and we finally understand why its so obtuse --- he never actually fought a Chaos wizard with magic, prefering to build rockets and fire them.

The book's an enjoyable read, and now I'm good and hooked and have the rest of the series handy and will keep going.

Reread: The Towers of Sunset

 The Towers of Sunset is the second book in the Recluce series. Unusual for a fantasy series, Modesitt doesn't tell his epic saga in chronological order or in many cases even tell the stories of the same character. This is nice --- each book is its own self-contained story and you don't have to read every book in the series, but if you do read the whole series the setting becomes richer.

In this case, the book details the founding of Recluce, which is referred to in the first book, with just one or two characters mentioned. The book starts with Creslin, who's a consort in a matriarchal society where men are only good for marrying off to seal political alliances. He doesn't like this pre-arranged fate so escapes while he's being carted off to be married off.

It turns out that he was being groomed for much more than being a consort, but that he's a weather wizard, in fact, one of the best of all time. He tries to escape his fate but eventually (because of a soul link) is tied to the woman he's supposed to marry as well, and they fight bitterly before getting together to found the island nation.

I enjoyed the book though I found the political business tied up at the end all too neatly. There's also a scene where a bomb is used on an empire but I again found it a little too pat. One bomb (even one that wipes out the royal family) shouldn't shut a whole nation down, especially if it's army is as top-notch as it's touted to be.

Nevertheless, it's well written, transparent, and the characters feel real.

Long Term Review: Kindle Scribe

 After I showed my kids the kindle scribe, they fought over drawing on it multiple times. So when there was another sale, I traded in their small kindles for more kindle scribes. What a difference a larger screen makes. They went from not ever reading on the Kindle to reading in bed, reading at night, and even writing notes to each other on the scribe. I find myself using it in preference to my smaller kindles except when traveling, backpacking, and even then I always miss not having it with me. I'm astonished at how much I use the darn thing.

Boen read the first Walking Dead Compendium and watched an episode of the show and declared that the book was better! The realization that you can read the book way faster than watching a show is the day a kid becomes an enthusiastic reader. If your kids didn't like the small kindle, try upgrading them to the big one. It made a big difference to mine.

Reread: The Magic of Recluce

 I remember liking The Magic of Recluce alot, but never read the series past 3 books or so. So when Humble Bundle was selling the entire series for $18, I picked it up and downloaded it to my Kindle. L. E. Modesitt has a under-stated style that's transparent and easy to read.

This first book in the series is a coming of age story, but rather than a call to adventure, Lerris is exiled from his home island kingdom of Recluce for being bored with everything he's being taught to do. It turns out that he's the scion of powerful wizards, and the fact of his exile at a very young age was to show that even the rulers of Recluce live by the rules.

The world of Recluce's magic is based on order vs chaos, and as Lerris discovers which side of the fence he's on, he also gets the world explained to him. I enjoyed his self-discovery and by the end of the book Lerris is no longer bored. 

Recommended. You knew that --- I wouldn't have spent good money instead of checking it out from the library otherwise.

2024 Book Reviews Index

2024 Books of the Year were chosen! 

Fiction

• Practical Magic
• Trigger Warning
• Starter Villain
• The Magic of Recluce
• The Towers of Sunset
• The Magic Engineer
• The Order War
• The Death of Chaos
• Machine Vendetta
• The Last Wish
• Days at the Morisaki Bookshop
• Sweet Bean Paste
• Among Others
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
• Sword of Destiny
• The Lost Cause
• A Deepness in the Sky
• Valuable Humans In Transit
• Re-read: Altered Carbon
• Re-read: A Fire Upon The Deep
• Re-read: The Big Sleep
• Janissaries
• The Snow Queen
• Re-read: Jhereg
• Re-read: Yendi
• Kik's Delivery Service

Non-Fiction

• Jobst Brandt Ride Bike!
• The Age of Scientific Wellness
• The Last Politician
• Size
• Number Go Up
• Remember
• The Delusion of Crowds
• Democracy Awakening
• The Curious Human Knee
• Built
• Determined
• The Time Crunched Cyclist
• The Fund
• Narrative Economics
• Ours Was The Shining Future
• The History of Video Games
• 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism
• Material World
• Humble Pi
• The Language of the Night
• Slow Productivity
• Fast After 50
• The Second Shot
• The Rise and Reign of Mammals
• What Makes This Book So Great
• The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs
• The Wildlife of Our Bodies
• Barking Up the Wrong Tree
• Tapped Out
• The End is Always Near
• Bruce Lee - A Life

Comics

• The Walking Dead Compendium One
• The Walking Dead Compendium Two
• The Walking Dead Compendium Three
• The Walking Dead Compendium Four
• Clover

Review: Starter Villain

 Starter Villain is John Scalzi's conspiracy-leading novel about a secret cabal of villains working together to exploit mankind, and getting foiled by an unsuspecting hero protagonist who's thrown into the situation by sheer dumb luck.

Well, not really --- the plot revolves around Charles' uncle dying and then his estate designating him as a successor. The protagonist in the story is a bit clueless, but smart and somewhat sympathetic, though not someone who lets power grow to his head.

The plot has a million plotholes in it, and you're carried along only by the fun reveals here and there (all the cats are spies working for an evil mastermind). It's a perfectly good airplane novel, but there's nothing deep here. That's true of most Scalzi novels, but what redeems the novel is the Scalzi sense of humor, style, and fast pace which ensures that you won't pause too long to think of the plotholes and the elaborate reveal.

Review: Practical Magic

 I don't even remember how Practical Magic ended up in my borrow queue at the library. Once I did check it out, however, I got sucked into the story and found myself finishing it over 5 days.  The book is in the magic realism genre, there's no real system of magic behind it, and things just happen to the characters. A lot of the "magic" is the magic of old wives tales and stories, like throwing salt over your shoulders, avoiding bad luck, things like that.

What makes the story special is the style. Hoffman's style is a series of stream of consciousness explorations of the characters, with beautiful descriptions and summations of people's past history in relatively few words (the book's 290 pages long --- short by modern standards) and twists and turns. The plot revolves around two sisters whose parents died when they were young and as a result they were brought up by a pair of aunts whom everyone in town thinks are witches. The sisters are contrasts, a responsible one, and a wild one, and fate brings them back together years after the responsible has had kids and moved away from their childhood home.

I won't say that the characters are much special --- perhaps they fall too often into the stereotype of the women they're supposed to represent, especially the kind of person for whom everything is dramatic and end-of-the-world type of thing. The book's resolution is kinda abrupt --- the problems are solved so easily (by love, not cleverness), and I'm not sure can work outside of Hollywood.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book and had fun reading it.

Review: Trigger Warning

 Trigger Warning is Neil Gaiman's latest collection of short fiction and poetry.  I bounced off it the first time I tried to read it, and then read it again recently, this time making it through. It wasn't a particularly good read though --- there are some decent stories but nothing that sparkled the way even the introductory story in his previous collections did. I can't really recommend it.

Review: Jobst Brandt Ride Bike!

It's no secret that I'd been a follower of the late Jobst Brandt for many years, and have indeed read all of his trip reports hoping to follow some of his routes and glean his hotel recommendations. When Isola press offered a Kickstarter copy of a book with photos from his various outings to the alps I jumped on it, knowing full well that most of the text would have been stuff I'd read before.

My kickstarter copy was a softcover with high quality perfect bound back. The binding is such that it's not easy for the book to lay flat, so it's best read with both hands on the book. The photographs and drawings are reproduced with high fidelity, including the faded photographs from his youth. The slides of course reproduce well with no hint of color fading. You get to see how much ice there used to be on the Rhone Glacier and on Grosse Scheidegg back in the 70s and 80s, and how the glaciers there are now but pale shadows of their former self. You also get to see how few cyclists there used to be.

I did learn many things in this book, including about his honeymoon drive through the alps, as well as the story of how he got into Stanford (yes, faculty kids do get legacy-style access to top universities).   The old ad copy of him leaning his bike way over on treadless tires reminds me that so many follow-ons (like Jan Heine) are basically frauds in terms of actually understanding the mechanics behind traction. The text is well organized and fun to read, including stories from industry luminaries such as Tom Ritchey and Joe Breeze (who's confusedly abbreviated as JBr in the book!).

The whole book oozes quality, and I reads it cover to cover in a night. You're unlikely to find it at the library but it will look nice on your bookshelf. Recommended.

Review: The Age of Scientific Wellness

 The Age of Scientific Wellness is an attempt to tell the same story as Peter Attia's Outlive. The authors co-founded Arivale, which failed after spending $50m in funding on 5000 members. The book explains the principles between scientific wellness, which is basically individualized medicine, personalized to your genome, and tuned to your lifestyle. One example is to use a continuous glucose monitor to track your blood sugar and tune how you eat. Another example is using genomic knowledge to know what diseases you're particularly susceptible to, and then either use supplements, lifestyle changes, or other modifications to avoid them.

The book's on the long winded side and more than a little self-promoting, which is a bit rich coming from someone who's start failed. On the one hand, I like the idea, and would love to participate (and I already have CPAP machines and smart watches collecting more data about myself than I know what to do with), and on the other hand, I wonder about the costs and effectiveness. It's quite clear to me that only a small percentage of people can live according to the regime such a wellness approach would recommend --- think about the number of people who will drive their kids 2 blocks to school, or who refuse to exercise no matter what their blood pressure is.

I like the ideas behind the book --- I'm just not convinced that the ideas can be implemented at a population scale.

2023 Books of the Year Selection

 This year, I read 42 non-fiction books, 36 novels, 11 graphic novels (actually much more than that since I'm only counting reviews and I frequently clomp a ton of individual volumes into 1 review), watched 3 video lecture series, and audited 6 audio books. That's about 98 different volumes that I felt were worth reviewing and a substantial amount of reading. I even got to the point where sometimes I would shove in reviews on a Wednesday rather than just sticking to my Monday/Thursday posting schedule.

As usual, it was a great year for non-fiction. I really enjoyed The Beginning of Infinity, Chip War, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, The People's Hospital, American Prometheus, and Outlive. But the book that made me the most uncomfortable was Politics is for Power, an indictment of the typical college graduate's approach to politics, which all too often describes what I do, which is liking a Facebook meme instead of taking concrete action. I think it behooves all of us to take concrete action instead of just moaning and groaning about how the far right (which does take concrete action) is taking over the world.

On the fiction side of the fence, it was also a surprisingly good year, between all the Neil Gaiman books I had been reading to Boen, revisiting old classics like The Mists of Avalon, and discovering R. F. Kuang. I really enjoyed Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, A Half-Built-Garden, Fire & Hemlock, The Way Home, and Babel. But what blew me away was Ra. This is science fantasy/fiction dialed all the way up to 11, and done well with plot twists that you don't see coming as well as grand reveals that would be the centerpiece of a lesser novelist being treated as mere stepping stones to an even bigger reveal that is being setup that really does blow your mind. I really need to stop being cheap and just buy up qnmt's other books and read them.

On the Graphic novel end I was very pleased to discover that new Astro-City volumes had come out and that many of them were just as good as the previous ones. I enjoyed reading HeartStoppers and Logicomix, but the one that surprised me by how good it was was Bea Wolf.

I enjoyed all the great courses video series I watched, but Epic Engineering Failures and the Lessons They Teach was outstanding and well worth your time. If you're an engineer you owe it to yourself to watch this.

For audio books this year I enjoyed The Big Questions of Philosophy, and the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, but the only reason I had an audible subscription at all was for The Sandman Act III. If Amazon wants my money they better make Act IV!

All in all, my book of the year was Ra. I think you should check it out. Here's to another great year of reading for 2024!

Review: The Fourth Turning Is Here

 The Fourth Turning Is Here is a rehash of Neil Howe and William Strauss' classic book of cliodynamics, Generations. Howe & Strauss has one very appealing theory, which is that American History is driven by the four stroke cycles of 4 archetypical generations. The reason for this 4 stroke cycle is that each generation of adults parent in an opposing style from the way they were raised, which drives the dominant personality type of each successive generation.

It's clear that in this book, Howe has refined his thinking and come up with good names for each archetype: Prophet (the Boomers), Nomad (Gen X), Hero (Millenials), and Artist (post-Millenials). He points out that this sort of cycle has been seen over and over in pre-American history as well:

First, the dynasty is born in a crisis moment of invasion or rebellion; second, it grows and strengthens; third, it reaches its zenith of generosity and power (a “midpoint” he compares to a person’s peak functional age); fourth, it weakens and declines; and fifth, it perishes. The early stages of strong social cohesion are marked by coarse (pastoral) manners, simple laws that are obeyed, a thirst for reputation, and modest affluence, equally shared. The late stages of withering ‘asabiyya are marked by refined (urban) manners, complex laws that are evaded, a thirst for money, and great riches, hoarded by a few. (Kindle Loc 1189)

 Howe brings up historical epochs in the past, from the Civil War to the Great Awakening, to The Glorious Revolution and of course the Revolutionary War. These examples are used to illustrate the operating principles behind his theory. The idea is that societies post-crisis go into institutional building mode, successfully providing the basis for material welfare and great works (think about the interstate highway system, rural electrification, and the race to the moon). After material welfare has been satisfied, the next generation focuses on processes and codification, followed by a spiritual generation that ignores material welfare and searches for inner meaning, followed by a generation driven by pragmatism and need to survive, after which a crisis will occur that resets the society, assuming it successfully overcomes the challenge.

There are a few subtle points new to this book:

• Howe argues that the world has converged to a single generational cycle, since World War 2 effectively reset all societies.
• He further argues that while the individual events are unpredictable (there are wars and crisis in every generation), society's reactions to those crisis are not. In retrospect, he says, it was obvious that World War 1 would not resolve satisfactorily because of the generational constellations, while World War 2 was seized upon and built upon to reset society.

Only after these enemies surrendered unconditionally did America relent. And not only relent. America used its newfound global authority to reconstruct these nations as liberal democracies—a successful exercise in “nation building” that later generations would dismiss as hopelessly beyond their power....In fact, long-term solutions to big issues happen only when the nation reinvents itself. And that happens not on a sunny summer day—but on a dark winter day when citizens’ backs are against the wall and every available option points to sacrifice and danger. Paradoxically, the nation makes its most serious commitments to its long-term future precisely when its near-term existence seems most in doubt. These are the moments when everyone comprehends, as Benjamin Franklin allegedly quipped just after adding his signature to the Declaration of Independence, that “we must all hang together or most assuredly we will all hang separately.” (kindle loc 5304-5342)

Assuming you buy Howe's premise, how does Howe use his theory to predict the future. He claims that we're in the midst of a generational crisis now (Prophets in elderly age and Heroes in their youth) that will resolve in a climax somewhere around 2032. He gives no specifics but predicts that the most likely scenario is a war. 

During the Millennial Crisis climax, acting out of necessity, America’s political leaders will have overhauled major parts of the economy that are today encumbered with decades of dysfunctional subsidies, NIMBY regulations, and barriers to competition that favor incumbents. These large “social” sectors—including education, health care, communications, finance, and construction—today amount to roughly half of GDP. They constitute a major roadblock to rising living standards because they currently experience negative productivity growth during a typical year, which means that their prices rise faster than average workers’ income. All this will change in the next First Turning. From banking, colleges, and home building to hospitals, big pharma, and social media, countless industries will be jolted back to life during the years of emergency. With a fresh policy framework in place, take-home wages will jump, public budgets will find welcome relief, and a vast economic frontier will again be open to innovation...By the 2040s, measures of wealth and income inequality will have declined from the historically exceptional levels of the late 2010s. This decline in inequality will likely happen in two stages. The first stage will be sudden and will accompany the inflation, mobilization, and economic regimentation triggered by the Crisis climax. The second, more gradual stage will be set in motion by the First Turning’s transformed economic and policy environment. Full employment with rapid earnings growth, augmented by a higher minimum wage, will expand workers’ share of national income. Immigration rates will remain well below what they were before the Crisis era began in 2008—and reduced immigration will effectively bid up low-skilled wages. Comprehensive taxation of capital income and bequests will lighten the middle-class tax burden. Social welfare programs will become relatively less generous for the nonpoor elderly and relatively more generous for young working families. (kindle loc 7427-7447)

The one thing that I respect most about Howe & Strauss has been that they have not flinched at using their theory to make predictions. So far, their prediction of a generational crisis made in their  1991 has come true. If what they wrote about the global cycle it also means that there's no way to escape the coming crisis --- no place on the planet will be exempt. May we all live to see whether or not his predictions post 2033 will be true!

Review: How We Learn

 How We Learn is a book about how the human brain works as far as learning is concerned. You've probably know of the results from previous readings, but the book puts them all together into one place and is written in a clearly accessible manner. Here's my summary of the main poitns:

• Cramming works, but doesn't result in long lasting memory or learning
• Learning facts, vocabulary, or other feats of memorization is best done using a system of spaced repetition. There are many spaced repetition apps such as SuperMemo that can help you with this so you can have the optimal learning in the least time
• Interleaving problems is important for learning which tools to use when (STEM field classwork is mostly about learning tools, and STEM exams are about applying those tools to solve problems). That means whenever you're doing exercises you should not just do exercises on the current tool you're learning to use, but tools that you learned previously as well. By the way, this is an indictment of the way US schools teach Math, by separating it into subtopics like Algebra, Geometry, etc. The British system where Math is just Math and all the subtopics are interleaved is more effective.
• Distractions, far from being the disaster that many people assume they are, can be used as a tool to let your learning systems percolate what it's learn over time. A little distraction every hour or so is not a bad thing.
• When doing big projects, getting started is the hard part. Once you've started, a partially completed task actually sticks better in your memory!

I guess you don't actually have to read the book since I could summarize it so easily, but I enjoyed it anyway.

Review: Elder Race

 Elder Race is Adrian Tchaikovsky's fantasy/science fiction novel set in a colony of Earth that has lost contact with the home planet. It starts with what looks like a typical fantasy quest, the fourth daughter of a queen embarking to seek the help of a wizard for an insoluble problem, and then switches the perspective to that of the wizard, who turns out to be a junior Anthropologist abandoned on the planet he was supposed to study.

The book switches perspective between the two protagonists, and we get both the technical views of the situations as well as the raw fantasy view. The anthropologist communicates through a translator, and there's a fantastic section where he explains the origins of the colony and the translator translate it into a high fantasy explanation in parallel. The book shows both texts side by side and it makes for great reading.

The book is short and doesn't outstay its welcome. It covers common other themes such as the prime directive as well as developing the characters and providing plausible explanations of stereotypical wizard behavior. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Recommended.

Review: The World of JRR Tolkien

 The World of JRR Tolkein is a series of 8 lectures on Tolkein. Rather than just the Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit and the Silmarillion were also covered, with various references to Tolkien's life and the history of his creation of the languages. One interesting titbit that I learned from the lecture series that I didn't learn elsewhere was that Tolkien intentionally tried to create a mythology of England, since unlike the other countries comprising the United Kingdom, he didn't feel that England had its own mythology.

The lecture series goes deeply into languages, gender, and race, but skimps quite a bit on Tolkien's work on Beowulf, and doesn't get into his relationship with his children at all. I bought it on sale, and it was quite short. I don't feel that it's nearly as good as Tolkein and the West, which I think is a much deeper lecture series.

Review: Books that Matter - The Prince

 I've heard of The Prince but never read it, but I did use one of my audible credits to pick up the great courses lecture series about The Prince. I'm glad I did. I learned the following:

• Niccolo Machiavelli was an atheist. I had no idea that it was possible to be an Atheist during that time period, but Landon explained how he came to that conclusion, and it's convincing. Along the way I got to an understanding of what Greek philosophers came to light during that time that supported Machiavelli's position.
• Machiavelli wrote the book as an attempt to get back into the good graces of the ruling family of Florence after being exiled when the Medici took back Florence after a period of Florence being a republic in which Machiavelli was a prime mover. The book didn't work to get Machiavelli back in.
• In many ways Machiavelli wasn't able to take the same advice he gave in the book. That's how he ended up in the situation where he had to write an advice book. The book itself wasn't widely read during his lifetime as it was meant to have an audience of one person.
• Italy didn't have a national identity during that period --- the country was divided into city states, each of which experimented with differing types of governments at different times.

All in all, every chapter of the book was discussed in detail, along with the background necessary in order to understand it. It was well worth my time.

Review: The Poppy War

 The Poppy War is R. F. Kuang's fantasy retelling of the Rape of Nanking. The book starts off like a typical fantasy novel set in an East Asian analog with western trappings --- there's an exam where the hero protagonist passes and qualifies to go to a military school. The class sizes are astonishingly small for being in China (the author went to a small East Coast private college), and there's one mysterious, weird teacher whose craziness is legendary.

The magic system is completely un-worked out and deliberately designed so that the author can do whatever she likes, but the writing is transparent and enjoyable, even if the whole setup is entire cliched. (It might not be so clichéd if you didn't grow up reading Jin Yong or Gu Long).

Once the novel gets to the war between the Japanese-analogue and the Chinese-analogue, the story drags, and none of the setup she put into place in the first third of the novel has a fulfilling ending. This happened because the world-building was incomplete, so the characters ended up being dragged along by the plot rather than leading to a natural conclusion that was part of the setup.

I can see why the book was popular and won awards. But I borrowed the second book of the trilogy from the library and didn't get very far before I understood that the fundamental world building flaws in the book meant that it wasn't compelling --- the need to retell the rape of Nanking simply over-rode all other considerations and it shows.

Reread: House of Suns

 I found myself re-reading House of Suns again recently, and it strikes me as the perfect Alastair Reynolds novel. I found myself once again enjoying the story of the shatterlings, the relativistic travel and how a society could organize itself, and also the various reveals in the story --- the Absence, the interaction with multiple post-human civilizations, as well as the intrigue surrounding the eponymous title. 

The main characters in the book are fairly well fleshed out, and very relatable. I could easily read more novels set in this universe, though I don't believe Reynolds has returned to this universe in recent years (though he has some short stories where the two do show up). Recommended.