Malazan Empire: worry - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

I don't really know what the president (meaning any president)'s powers are when it comes to outright firing any member of the military, and I don't know if it's been tested. It's not really something I've ever thought about with any other president, except I guess Truman 'firing' MacArthur. I imagine a president can pull rank over anyone, in terms of commands, orders, assignments, etc. -- but a 'firing' is actually more like forced retirement for high ranking officers they want to get rid of. Like even MacArthur was officially "relieved of duty", not fired in the way we would think of in the civilian world.

To be clear, the facial hair thing isn't some weird Mr. Burns "trim those sideburns" thing, it's a reversal of a specific decades-long accommodation. The goal of this change is to push (mostly) Black people out of the military: https://www.motherjo...r-black-troops/

The majority of Hegseth's speech -- and the policy changes that will follow -- are about making the military more straight, male, and (most importantly) white....for certain purposes that don't bode well historically.

A thousand pages?!?! That's basically a million pages!

I don't know if it's for the same reason, but I did feel something like that about Book 2 until about halfway in. I don't want to get too into it, but part of what's "wrong" with Rin is the way she persistently stagnates and outsources her agency -- it does affect the story Kuang is telling because Rin's the sole POV, even if I consider it a deliberate character flaw of Rin rather than the writing. I am expecting the first half of Book 3 to be another doldrums, but I am curious enough as to how it all shakes out. Plus I bought them as a boxed set, so I am gonna sunken-cost-fallacy them regardless. (Not that I hate the series, but they are 3-stars books to me so far).

Finished: Poppy War 2 -- The Dragon Republic. I have to say, the protagonist of these books (Rin) is a real dumbass. Which isn't an insult to the writing or R.F. Kuang. The character as written is a dumbass. It's kinda refreshing and frustrating at the same time. Nearly every single choice she makes is dumb as hell, but is true to character (and I guess true to life, as far as that goes), and it's not like there aren't consequences. Can't wait to see what the finale has in store. --That said, I am waiting, cuz I'm reading other books in between.

Horrorstör -- A gimmicky horror novel from Grady Hendrix set in a fictional equivalent (and rival of) Ikea. The book itself is even stylized like a catalog. I was surprised to find that the protagonist of this book is also a young woman who is a dumbass. But like Rin, she has chutzpah, so that combo drives the story as she and some co-workers stay overnight in the store to suss out a mystery. Spoiler: it turns out to be some supernatural and hostile goings-on. It was okay. Not very scary, but it makes good use of the setting, which is most of the point of this one.

Peace Talks & Battle Ground (of the Dresden Files) -- I don't know why, but I just never read these when they came out, so I figured I should change that with the announcement of the new one. I didn't love either of them, tbh. The first one is supposed to be place-setting with the second one a big climax, and that's how it shook out I guess, but at the same time even the second one ultimately felt like place-setting. I dunno -- big stuff definitely happened, and both were still very readable, so I don't mean to sound too negative, but something about Battle Ground still felt like a middle chapter to me.