Adam
Here we have an excellent understanding of what Catholic morality should be. The emotional appeal commonly ascribed to the Baptists is utilized with the perspective of level-headed thinkers like Thomas Aquinas. What you get is a too-brief account of how Catholics ought to view morality as a calling, not a duty, and I am all here for it.
Catholicism seems to have slightly forgotten how to absolutely cook on topics like this. This work points out how Aquinas' entire essay on human happiness got discarded by the thinkers who liked the raw logical appeal of his works. Given this, we're presented with a whole new approach to morality (for a Catholic - not sure what the Protestants have going over there; we might be behind them here). I adore this work. We basically get a simultaneous gutting and reconstructing of the typical worldview, all contained within less than 200 pages.
Can't recommend enough. Even for a non-Catholic, here you will find a well-articulated walkthrough of what it means to seek a moral life.
And who knows? You may be drawn to stained glass instead of Jumbotrons.
Not good. Modern art still lacks visual impressiveness, despite how much Mr. Esplund insists it has meaning and story. You just can't have a balloon under a blue light come close in value or worth to something like the Last Supper, or the Birth of Venus. Overall, if there is some intrinsic worth to these “works of art” in terms of their message, it certainly doesn't make them valuable. If message alone made art valuable, and message can be found in a splatter of paint which was dropped on a canvas, then art is the most worthless form of telling a message. It
If I had read this when I got it, I might've gone into architecture. Now, while I can have a clean conscience of giving it away, I don't feel like I was the target audience. The writing style is designed for someone around 5th grade or less, although it packs a good punch in terms of content and length.
Good for kids who like architecture more than LEGOs and Minecraft, not for high schoolers who want to read that book they got a long time ago.
This functions as an excellent “first reader” on the rosary. It is well written. But it's not a terribly deep work. It does a good job organizing the words and thoughts of others about the rosary, and is very helpful at pointing to the purposes of it. But for a Catholic who's familiar with the basics, this is more of a reminder than a revelation of a book. Still good, and I'd suggest at least the first half to anyone who's interested in the idea.
I really wanted to like it, but C. S. Lewis just doesn't land for me in poetry the same way someone like Robert Frost or Tolkien does. However, in the midst of poetry that I didn't care for a ton, a few gems stood out, and hit way too hard after reading A Grief Observed. I'm hoping that, after reading some other Lewis, coming back to Poems will provide a like quality increase.
It is what it says on the box.
This was a highly enjoyable and memorable read that can best be summed up as a “curiosity”. It's very enjoyable to explore the concepts of 2D living, and have that become an exploration of thought on the fourth dimension, but I think the story fails to combine them in a satisfactory manner. Splitting the book into 2 parts makes sense, but the first half is much less interesting (to me at least) than the second. Cohesion is the word which aptly describes what it lacks.
Also, it's very classist and sexist, and I am here for it.
This book started out making an interesting case. By the end, I was convinced that the author should've gone into poetry rather than architecture. I don't get why he insists on injecting the most verbose depictions of tangentially-relevant concepts into what would otherwise be a brief, albeit fascinating essay on the purpose of beauty in design. Still, I cannot begrudge the quality in the meat that is hidden in the potatoes, and so, 3 stars it gets. Cheers.
This mouse has a more compelling and satisfying story than any YA fiction you could show me.
This needs to be merged with book 1.
Writing this after reading the rest of the series, I can confidently say that this and book 1 are complete filler. If they were in one book, it would be excusable, but being 2 is a waste of real estate in an otherwise excellent sequel series. Is there any reason why book 1 needs to be spent re-treading character development on Seth and finding the magical macguffin staff that is never brought up again? No. This book sets up the fetch-quest that's actually relevant to the story, along with the primary players. Book 1 gave us the rock dragon that exists as a replacement for Agad. This finishes the setup for the rest of the series by isolating the grandparents and getting the author out of the inconvenience that is tying his main characters to a magical preserve. He also uses Knox and Tess about the same amount as he did last book - that is, hardly at all.
This book isn't bad. Neither is book 1. But neither are they good. They are necessary tools to get to the actual meat of this series. If they were put into one, the concepts in the later books could actually get explored.
Edit: I forgot that this book spends the second act derping around with talking animals and a stingbulb version of Patton. This is truly a waste of time, and one of the key reasons this and book 1 need to be one book. Just for that, this gets -1 star from what I originally gave it.
This series finally gets good.
There's honestly not much to say. Gone are the books that seem like a kitchen sink's worth of backstories, locations, and characters or items that are a one-and-done. Plots and quests actually have purpose, and there is energy behind what happens. Events here are much more likely to have relevance than the ones in previous books.
Yeah. It's short and sweet, in terms of a review. Solid. Nothing extraordinary, but good work. Brandon Mull has somewhat redeemed his atrocious treatment of Seth in Book 1 by giving him an actual character moment at the end of this book. I have slight frustration at how little his amnesia was actually a plot point until now, but at least he has to face a hard decision.
This book has to be one of the best pieces of literature I've ever read. You think it's over after Book 9, and then Augustine goes crazy with Books 10-13.
Read it for yourself.
Also hehe Catholic Hegemony.
I think this shaped what the ideal vacation became to me. Other vacations are nice, but something about the beach (and Maine) is very perfect in mind.
Now I can't ever vacation there because if it isn't up to snuff I'll be a little frustrated.
I like the reviews of this that complain about the racism of having a Cowboys and Indians foosball table. Reading them makes me feel smart about history, it makes me feel good that our society is so honesty about history, and it serves as a melancholy reminder that the real message of these children's novels is a complex statement about the pseudo-racist undertones of white American culture and their surreptitious integration into the post-modern philosophies which inebriate children's literature. I'm glad that I have the proper humility to understand these books when I read them, and to be ashamed of how bigoted my people are.
These books are great, and this is where it starts. I want a foosball table like that.
Critiques about this books plot, or characters, or writing are completely legitimate. Looking for things to trigger you in a kids book is a silly pastime. If you must, there's many better places to look. Sorry that a foosball table hurts your feelings.
But not really.
Too much suggestive content to honestly recommend, a few odd breaks in consistency of voice, but a very solid ending and theme.
Two stars not due to the writing quality, but because I think Rousseau is a bit of a goober.
This book is epic. It fully represents what I wanted math to be, and has made me quite excited.
If the author didn't use so much darn vulgar terminology sporadically, this would be in my top 20 books. As it stands, still a “banger” as the kids say.
Remember that non-fiction doesn't require you to read cover to cover like fiction.
With that in mind, about 60% of this book is cool, and most of it is ignored by the people online making content about this topic. The primary advice discarded by these internet individuals is that the Second Brain is a habit, not one specific app. If you're going to build a Second Brain, design it as a system. It should branch multiple apps. It's a structure, not one app.
I finished it in an afternoon. That speaks to its length, not my ambition.
It's what it looks like on the box, and it does it pretty darn well. It just doesn't do much more than that. It could easily be a YouTube video, and feels like it was written to avoid competition. Kudos to the author, it worked... I ain't complaining. It's just not a highly intellectual deep dive into Obsidian note taking. It's intellectual, and it explores zettelkasten in Obsidian very well, but at the end of the day, that's what it does. Having seen enough YouTube videos on the same topic, it didn't provide much new. It only made me think deeper into the ideas presented. Books have a magical ability to do that. Respect.
Finally. It's as if the author had read my past reviews.
This book is long. It ties up a lot of what I expected to be loose ends. And it has a climax that feels more hopeless than the one in the previous series. I chalk that up to the fact that much of this series has focused on developing the world, rules, and expectations of what magic can and cannot do. We've now gotten to the actual roots of the world, and now we can build up from there.
And yet... it feels as if this book, for all its good aspects, isn't focused.
Why does Kendra focus so much on getting the Dragon Slayers? Not sure, since 1 functionally dies, 1 I forget what she did, and the other 2 do some minor combat before also functionally dying.
Bracken escapes Ronodin because the plot needs him to, but without explanation. He just... shows up.
Ronodin makes Kendra swear to return to him, and if she doesn't, she looses her fairykind status. Does he use this at a critical moment in combat, potentially leading to her giving up her powers to save those she loves? Or does she give in to this, which results in something with actual stakes happening? No. It never gets brought up or used ever again.
Knox gets a giant crown. The giant crown corrupts him. After 2 chapters, Knox gives up the crown and the corruption is gone. The stakes here are as monotonous as they sound. Why did this happen? Couldn't some giants, or maybe darker forces, have realized this, and made Knox into a puppet ruler, who would then be an actual force at the end of the story that cannot be dealt with by using a magical sword? No, he can't. Instead, this serves as... what? An illustration of power? It really just serves to put stakes on Seth retrieving the piece of the magical light rock.
Why does the Sphinx have the translocater? Someone must've realized it's missing. They said he was causing trouble in Book 1, but someone should've kept a better eye on him. This is the guy that nearly ended the world, and I'm supposed to accept that a few sentences about him disappearing in Book 1 justifies him showing up with the most useful device to hurry the plot along? Come on.
This book just has too much travel in it. Series 1 stayed rather grounded until Book 5, which made 5 feel like an event that had actual weight and rush. This book is just hard to keep track of. It also frustrates me the number of magical transportation methods that it uses as “clever threads” to justify traveling.
Kendra is informed that she has access to the literal source of light at this point in the story. In book 10 of 10, she is told she can use more powers. She then agrees to get some scant training that “is too rushed to be ideal,” but this never causes an issue. And Ronodin intentionally puts her in a place to receive this training because he wants her to use it against the dragons... why? We still don't have this man's motivation. Plus, if he's so wily and smart, why can't he realize that he can't control the crown well?
Plus, Kendra's powers are just super powerful light. For all the stuff that Seth gets to do, and the associated character development, Kendra is really boring. She's still a well-written character, who has to make hard choices. But Seth spends this book with two of the most powerful swords known to mankind, hunting eldritch beings in order to cleave the not-infinity-stones out of their crowns. To do this, he pays with his memories, then gets them back by cutting the best dragon weapon they had, then helps fight the main archvillian of the series, before making a deal with an actual demon, and then fighting a wound that might make him undead. Kendra, on the other hand, deals with her boyfriend being captured, looking for some dragon slayers that are good 1v1 but don't do much else, and then using a flashlight beam from her hand to blind some dragons in the end fight. The end fight where Seth uses a burning sword that radiates justice, because he already discarded the sword that deals permanent wounds. Kendra just doesn't get the cool plot here.
Also, Eve. Remember her? She did a couple cool things in Book 2? She gets name-dropped during the aftermath of the end fight, and nothing else.
Knox and Tess do nothing aside from playing into their archetypes. Tess has her innocence-immunity, and Knox does dumb stuff with magic. They don't do anything else.
This book does a really good job of fan service, if you can call it that. It has a satisfying conclusion, and does a really good job of making things relevant. But, honestly, it's not the same as the first series. Ronodin serves as a nuisance most of this series, probably because Celebrant becomes more of a force of nature than a character after Book 2. But Ronodin is just a Sphinx minus the nuance, and he sits on the sidelines most of this book. His plot really needed to be fleshed out into its own series, or deleted entirely. He basically serves to capture Bracken, and then Bracken escapes in Book 3, and then he's captured again in Book 4, and then he escapes halfway through this one. The escape in 3 was justified. Kendra did stuff for that. The escape here is completely random.
All in all, this book is good, but it's nothing close to the original series. Plus, it's far too long.
Edit: Also, why does Muriel Taggart get involved? And then why does she choose to stay in the demon realm? To “learn”? Learn what? She won't be able to leave! This is silly. In addition, we already know the Sphinx had the Translocator. I don't remember where it went, but you just gave the man who tried to open the prison before the item that teleports you to places you've been, and the gift of now having been to the realm of said demons he tried to release. This is dumb. -1 star for this.