[QuickTidal]

DARK DISCIPLE by Christie Golden is excellent so far...and the best part is that since it's based on some of the unproduced episodes from THE CLONE WARS Season 7, there is concept art online to base my visuals on for planets..and for stuff like Ventress with actual hair, and a bow.

GREAT Star Wars read, especially for CLONE WARS fans.

[QuickTidal]

Cheesewiz, on 16 January 2017 - 05:55 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 16 January 2017 - 02:13 PM, said:

DARK DISCIPLE by Christie Golden is excellent so far...and the best part is that since it's based on some of the unproduced episodes from THE CLONE WARS Season 7, there is concept art online to base my visuals on for planets..and for stuff like Ventress with actual hair, and a bow.

GREAT Star Wars read, especially for CLONE WARS fans.

I thought she got better with each entry in FOTJ. Shame her Sword of the Jedi trill was shot in 2012. I expected great things from her.

Ed I think it was her last bk that Bazel made his emo stand.

Yeah, her earlier work never impressed me, but her latter SW work was usually good.

This one is even better because it's one of Katie Lucas (George's eldest) CW arcs that she penned for S7 that never got made, so Golden had the core of the tale already set out, and got to get into it and fill out the gaps. Katie wrote the Darth Maul arc and the Order 66 genesis arc in S5 and 6.

[End of Disc One]

I'm a couple of chapters in to the Red Knight by Miles Cameron. I'm intrigued by the nonhuman characters (The Wild) and as a fan of multi-layered epics I think this series has the potential to be excellent.

[Mentalist]

Last part of Seveneves is failing to keep my attention. Descriptions of the Ring, the Eye, etc make my post-work brain go to shutdown, and then I turn on the PC and order a bunch of men to kill other men in Age of Empires 2.

In commute, "Bands of Mourning" is moving along at a fun pace. I'm becoming interested in Sanderson's super-long game, and he's doing pretty wonderful things with a few characters in this one. His Mistborn stuff is excellent, his Stormlight Archive makes me wary, and the other Cosmere things are somewhere in the middle. I can only hope he steps his game up to MoI levels in Stormlight 3.

[Andorion]

So I am about halfway into City of Ice. Good book, nice follow up, things are building up, but the middle is a bit too slow for me.

Also 200 pages into Ivanhoe by Walter Scott. This is one strange book. The titular protagonist turns up 100 pages in, and still hasn't gotten a lot of coverage. The descriptions are exhausting and I have this feeling that a lot of the conversations are pointless

[Maark Abbott]

Mentalist, on 17 January 2017 - 05:20 PM, said:

Last part of Seveneves is failing to keep my attention. Descriptions of the Ring, the Eye, etc make my post-work brain go to shutdown, and then I turn on the PC and order a bunch of men to kill other men in Age of Empires 2.

In commute, "Bands of Mourning" is moving along at a fun pace. I'm becoming interested in Sanderson's super-long game, and he's doing pretty wonderful things with a few characters in this one. His Mistborn stuff is excellent, his Stormlight Archive makes me wary, and the other Cosmere things are somewhere in the middle. I can only hope he steps his game up to MoI levels in Stormlight 3.

I can see that he was trying to go for Erikson's scope with Stormshite, but he doesn't have the chops for it. Alas.

On my part, I'm at Part 3 of Sparhawk & Friends: The Sequel. It's enjoyable enough, if predictable. Nostalgia is a hell of a thing.

[EmperorMagus]

Maark Abbott, on 18 January 2017 - 06:48 AM, said:

I can see that he was trying to go for Erikson's scope with Stormshite, but he doesn't have the chops for it. Alas.

On my part, I'm at Part 3 of Sparhawk & Friends: The Sequel. It's enjoyable enough, if predictable. Nostalgia is a hell of a thing.

I can just imagine a bearded guy with that particular northern England accent (I think of it like a mix between the London accent and the Scottish accent but that's another thing) saying Stormshite in exasperation at people's unnatural fondness for the horrible book, putting the stress on shite while spite shots out of his mouth.

I don't know what the point of this post is, I just wanted to describe the image in my mind for some reason.

Been reading Plato's Republic (for a class) this past week. Gotta admit it has a certain charm to it. Undoubtedly one of the cleverer books I've read. (understatement of the year goes tooooo)

[Andorion]

Cheesewiz, on 18 January 2017 - 06:18 AM, said:

Boom I got it right with my Safehold prediction

Spoiler

Norman oh shit sorta anyway. A VR instead of a PICA

Yep.

I considered the last few Safehold books to have better sea parts than land parts. Your opinion BK?

[Andorion]

EmperorMagus, on 18 January 2017 - 07:57 AM, said:

Maark Abbott, on 18 January 2017 - 06:48 AM, said:

I can see that he was trying to go for Erikson's scope with Stormshite, but he doesn't have the chops for it. Alas.

On my part, I'm at Part 3 of Sparhawk & Friends: The Sequel. It's enjoyable enough, if predictable. Nostalgia is a hell of a thing.

I can just imagine a bearded guy with that particular northern England accent (I think of it like a mix between the London accent and the Scottish accent but that's another thing) saying Stormshite in exasperation at people's unnatural fondness for the horrible book, putting the stress on shite while spite shots out of his mouth.

I don't know what the point of this post is, I just wanted to describe the image in my mind for some reason.

Been reading Plato's Republic (for a class) this past week. Gotta admit it has a certain charm to it. Undoubtedly one of the cleverer books I've read. (understatement of the year goes tooooo)

And now I can't stop laughing!

BTW Plato? You take philosophy?

[EmperorMagus]

Andorion, on 18 January 2017 - 08:10 AM, said:

And now I can't stop laughing!

BTW Plato? You take philosophy?

You're going to laugh at me, but this is an elective I'm taking for fun. It's a political philosophy course with Plato,Hobbes,Machiavelli, and Nietzsche in the syllabus.

[Andorion]

EmperorMagus, on 18 January 2017 - 08:12 AM, said:

Andorion, on 18 January 2017 - 08:10 AM, said:

And now I can't stop laughing!

BTW Plato? You take philosophy?

You're going to laugh at me, but this is an elective I'm taking for fun. It's a political philosophy course with Plato,Hobbes,Machiavelli, and Nietzsche in the syllabus.

Oh wow that is an interesting course pattern. Hobbes is very interesting. Machiavelli is far more nuanced than what is assumed in popular media, try and read Prince if you can, Nietzsche is very heavy and complex, but if you can get him, its great fun.

I have not read Plato, but of the remaining three, I would consider Hobbes to be the easiest to get, and Nietzche the hardest.

BTW history of political thought is something everyone should know IMO. I would consider Locke to be even more relevant than Hobbes, his theories of Land, Property and Waste are directly applicable to modern capitalism and environmental pollution.

Good on you for taking this course!

[EmperorMagus]

Andorion, on 18 January 2017 - 08:17 AM, said:

EmperorMagus, on 18 January 2017 - 08:12 AM, said:

Andorion, on 18 January 2017 - 08:10 AM, said:

And now I can't stop laughing!

BTW Plato? You take philosophy?

You're going to laugh at me, but this is an elective I'm taking for fun. It's a political philosophy course with Plato,Hobbes,Machiavelli, and Nietzsche in the syllabus.

Oh wow that is an interesting course pattern. Hobbes is very interesting. Machiavelli is far more nuanced than what is assumed in popular media, try and read Prince if you can, Nietzsche is very heavy and complex, but if you can get him, its great fun.

I have not read Plato, but of the remaining three, I would consider Hobbes to be the easiest to get, and Nietzche the hardest.

BTW history of political thought is something everyone should know IMO. I would consider Locke to be even more relevant than Hobbes, his theories of Land, Property and Waste are directly applicable to modern capitalism and environmental pollution.

Good on you for taking this course!

The Prince is already an assigned reading. About half of Leviathan, all of The Republic, and On the Genealogy of Morality are the other readings.

The course is great, but the instructor has some Straussian tendencies which can be annoying at times. He is one of those people who read significance into the most irrelevant of details and quite obnoxious about the "significant details" he finds. To top it all off, I have a TA who basically disagrees with everything the professor is saying and is approaching all the content from an eastern perspective (She is Pakistani and doing her Ph.D in eastern political thought). Great fun overall.

[Andorion]

EmperorMagus, on 18 January 2017 - 08:29 AM, said:

Andorion, on 18 January 2017 - 08:17 AM, said:

EmperorMagus, on 18 January 2017 - 08:12 AM, said:

Andorion, on 18 January 2017 - 08:10 AM, said:

And now I can't stop laughing!

BTW Plato? You take philosophy?

You're going to laugh at me, but this is an elective I'm taking for fun. It's a political philosophy course with Plato,Hobbes,Machiavelli, and Nietzsche in the syllabus.

Oh wow that is an interesting course pattern. Hobbes is very interesting. Machiavelli is far more nuanced than what is assumed in popular media, try and read Prince if you can, Nietzsche is very heavy and complex, but if you can get him, its great fun.

I have not read Plato, but of the remaining three, I would consider Hobbes to be the easiest to get, and Nietzche the hardest.

BTW history of political thought is something everyone should know IMO. I would consider Locke to be even more relevant than Hobbes, his theories of Land, Property and Waste are directly applicable to modern capitalism and environmental pollution.

Good on you for taking this course!

The Prince is already an assigned reading. About half of Leviathan, all of The Republic, and On the Genealogy of Morality are the other readings.

The course is great, but the instructor has some Straussian tendencies which can be annoying at times. He is one of those people who read significance into the most irrelevant of details and quite obnoxious about the "significant details" he finds. To top it all off, I have a TA who basically disagrees with everything the professor is saying and is approaching all the content from an eastern perspective (She is Pakistani and doing her Ph.D in eastern political thought). Great fun overall.

Leviathan is hard going, IIRC. I hope they are historically contextualizing Machiavelli and Hobbes, neither make sense without the historical stage they were playing on.

Eastern Political Philosophy? Is she using Islamic political thought? That's an area I don't know a lot about, but it should be a pretty rich area.

[acesn8s]

3/4 of the way through Kushiel's Dart and my earlier impression remains, it a good story, the world is well developed, but there are other books in my queue that I want to read over continuing this series.

[amphibian]

acesn8s, on 18 January 2017 - 03:43 PM, said:

3/4 of the way through Kushiel's Dart and my earlier impression remains, it a good story, the world is well developed, but there are other books in my queue that I want to read over continuing this series.

The whole series is worth the time and the effort. Trust me, keep going. Unless you have a burning desire to read the others first.

[QuickTidal]

Finished STAR WARS: DARK DISCIPLE by Christie Golden.

It was pretty fantastic actually...but also...

Major spoilers

Spoiler

HEARTBREAKING. I think I always assumed that since we never saw the end of Asajj Ventress on TCW that she survived the series. Nope. This was her curtain call. Though I'm glad she was pardoned for all her prior crimes by the Jedi Council, and that Obi-Wan and Quinlan Vos buried her at home on Dathomir near her old village. That scene was hard to read. I never realized how full circle Ventress came in the end, and how much Obi-Wan actually respected her even though she was an enemy for most of her life.

Going to start Michael J. Sullivan's AGE OF MYTH now.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 18 January 2017 - 06:54 PM

[Chance]

Finished the Three-Body Problem and it was a pretty poor book. If it had been the first three or four chapters setting up a conflict for the rest of a book it could have been very good however. So I'm going to give the next one a chance one day...

Something else will have to jump ahead...my tbr pile is getting out of hand so perhaps some quick reads to get a handle on it The Fair Rebel is what I want to read but it is in dead tree

This post has been edited by Chance: 18 January 2017 - 08:42 PM

[Mentalist]

Wrapped up Bands of Mourning

You know what, Sanderson is really getting better at this. Or maybe it's just the Mistborn is a really solid setting.

I don't think The Lost Metal will be an insta-buy. But I'm getting real hopeful that "Oathbreaker might convince me that Stormlight is actually great, not just decent.

Meanwhile I think I'll throw "The Liar's Key" in the bag as my next commute book.

[Andorion]

Cheesewiz, on 19 January 2017 - 02:23 AM, said:

Mentalist, on 19 January 2017 - 02:17 AM, said:

Wrapped up Bands of Mourning

You know what, Sanderson is really getting better at this. Or maybe it's just the Mistborn is a really solid setting.

I don't think The Lost Metal will be an insta-buy. But I'm getting real hopeful that "Oathbreaker might convince me that Stormlight is actually great, not just decent.

Meanwhile I think I'll throw "The Liar's Key" in the bag as my next commute book.

The Mistborn stuff Arcanum was really good! So was Edgedancer if you didn't have a problem with Lift in Words. I personally can't fucking wait till she becomes a main in SLA. I hope Kaladins bitch ass dies in Oath so she can take center stage I love her so much.

I don't think either Kaladin or Shallan are going to die. Dalinar on the other hand is a prime candidate.

Yeah Sanderson is improving, he is even less uptight about sex. But there is so much to remember in his books about the magic system it makes following the series very hard.

[End of Disc One]

Kaladin is awesome, and all the best Stormlight moments are centered around him.