Wes Baker

One of the best books I've read since [b:The Lies of Locke Lamora 127455 The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastard, #1) Scott Lynch http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320532483s/127455.jpg 2116675]. An excellent story, wonderful character development, and an incredibly captivating world. Well worth a read if not several.

It's funny that a short story can offer things that full novels can't due to the shorter time frame. This one is no exception and Scalzi's writing is as engrossing as ever as he tells us about a future space-traveling theocracy that worships a god who has conquered and trapped other gods to be used as the engine (and other duties) of his fleet of ships. There's an interesting slant to the book: it feels as if Scalzi accepts that there is/are a god/gods, but can't stand the idea of religion because what it makes us do, but maybe that's not the case—so lower your pitchforks. Overall a fun read and worth the short time it takes to read it.

I don't like superheroes, but I love a good story and this book tells a great story full of twists and turns, even if I wasn't the biggest fan of the ending. I really appreciated how fragile and human Batman was through this book, going so far as suffering a life-threatening injury (even if we all knew he'd make it out with only scars). There were also a lot of gray areas with very little white or black, his relationships with his sidekicks, allies, and nemeses being the most obvious.

I don't think this book will strongly change my opinion on superheroes—I'm ambivalent to most superheroes and despise any that don't have a set of rules, limitations, or weaknesses governing them—but I'd be willing to read a few more if someone suggested them to me.

For the most part, I enjoyed the book. I appreciated the philosophy on duty and maybe the more mundane parts of being a solider, something I'll never be. However, there were parts I flat out disagreed with, namely the rant that corporal punishment is good and social workers and child psychologists were wrong. He points toward hitting dogs and rubbing their noses in their accidents as proof that he's right.

There's so much wrong in one small paragraph. Hitting teaches that hitting solves problems, it usually doesn't. Positive reinforcement is generally the best way to train a dog and crazy enough it works great for kids too (maybe not all, but it's worked great for my kid who was deemed spirited by quite a few people). Additionally, social workers and child psychologists can do remarkable things for us as a society and the idea that if we just hit people more is so reductive that I'm kinda flummoxed by it.

All of that said, there were parts of the book I really enjoyed, I'm just not sure I'd go around recommending it to everyone. I think it hits hard with it's idea and philosophy and duty and I can't think of another book that does it nearly as well, but there's a lot of baggage that goes with it.

Our protagonist keeps painting a picture that he doesn't care about humanity or what he does, that he only cares about himself. Yet we see more of his rules being broken and connections being made: his girlfriend is still his girlfriend and he's far more protective, and he finds friends in the godson of a Columbian drug lord and a former cop who has been setup to take a fall. His jobs are also getting increasingly (intentionally) messy. He's needing to make examples of people instead of them dying in a way that looks accidental and the stakes are being raised as a result. What makes matters worse is he seems to be getting closer and closer to the Columbian drug lord, yet another string he'll have to worry about later. This is one of the best comics I've read lately and I'm really looking forward to where the series is going.

I have a weakness for generally applicable programming books because they'll be valuable longer and are a better use of my time than learning a language, framework, or something similar. For example, [b:The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master 4099 The Pragmatic Programmer From Journeyman to Master Andy Hunt https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1401432508s/4099.jpg 7809] is one of my favorites.This book feels like a spiritual successor to The Pragmatic Programmer and I'll recommend it to any experienced developer. There are some oddities (the author recommends goto at one point), but for the most part the recommendations are good and serve as great discussion topics with co-workers and other developers.

I've only read it once so far, but I found myself rereading chapters regularly because 1) the main point of the chapter wasn't neatly condensed into a one-liner (which is neither good nor bad) and 2) the chapters moved so quickly that I felt like I missed something. There's a lot of good ideas in here, but whether you can actually make them happen at your company is a whole other matter. I feel like the advice in this book has several audiences and your use of this book largely depends on whether you're an employee, a manager, or an entrepreneur.

An entrepreneur would get the most out of this book, though they have to be willing to hear its advice and try it—it certainly goes against typical practices.

An employee will long for some of the ideas, but will only have so much power to make them happen. Some of the employee-applicable content will feel like common sense, but some of it runs counter to prevailing ideas, in particular the idea of not being constantly available.

A manager is somewhere in between the entrepreneur and the employee depending on their ability to change current practices, but they can be the champions for sane deadlines, trimming down scope, and protecting their employees' time. They can also be a good example for their team(s).

Overall, I enjoyed the book, but I feel like I need to read it again, or at least read over my highlights, in order to get everything out of it. The short chapters lead to the idea moving quickly through my head and I want to better hold some of those ideas because they're worth holding onto.

It has a lot of things going for it:

- A dramatic resolution system where even the smallest die can turn into a big success
- A simple initiative system that makes it easy to know when you go
- A built-in system of hindrances that give players something to roleplay
- The ability to easily move between genres

So why three stars?

While I like the idea of raises, it's division. It's not particularly hard or anything, but reduce complexity wherever you can. Second, there's a lot of hidden complexity in some of the weapons, automatic guns in particular. Last, there are just so many other systems that are as simple that can borrow some of what makes Savage Worlds good: grab a deck of cards for initiative, add some kind of meta currency, and roll for a disadvantage at the start and you've gotten a lot of the good parts with none of the weird parts.

It's also worth mentioning that while I appreciate that they need to make money, most of Pinnacle's Kickstarters heavily push towards $100+ pledge levels with all sorts of bits and bobs. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, it just rubs me the wrong way.

Not necessarily a book I'd pick up to just read, but well worth having around if you plan on sticking with The Legend of Drizzt for the long haul. The maps alone are worth the purchase, they're beautiful and give you a great idea of the scope of Faerun and where different cities sit in relation to the other cities.

Let me get the parts I liked out of the way first: the art is great. The characters are drawn beautifully, a god's action certainly looks like a god did it, the use of panels and multi-page spreads are gorgeous. I liked the gods as characters, with Lucifer being the protagonist and the most interesting.



That being said, the book is about gods reincarnating as people who are in their teens to twenties. They are gods and have the powers that go along with it, but they only get to live for two more years. That part is pretty interesting, but the gods have reincarnated as incredibly narcissistic brats who want nothing more than attention for those remaining two years of existence. I get that gods are typically portrayed as selfish and quick-to-anger, but seeing it modernized as some of the worst traits of my generation just didn't appeal to me. We already have enough of this kind of behavior without mythical superpowers.

I think this book would appeal to someone younger than myself, probably someone more in tune with popular culture, someone who can enjoy the parallels of these gods to rock stars. However, for me, a nerdy programmer, the story just didn't appeal to me.

Well worth reading if what you do requires any sort of creativity. It's more of a kick-in-the-pants kind of book more than anything, but Mr. Pressfield does offer suggestions on how to do this kind of work, mostly in the form of avoiding Resistance, otherwise known as (writers') “block”. If you're waffling back and forth about whether or not to read this book, you might as well, it's incredibly quick—3 hours by my watch.

If I could only read one comic series, I would have to choose Atomic Robo, the wisecracking robot created by Nikola Tesla who crosses time and space to perform science and fight Dr. Dinosaur and other baddies. This volume was weaker than some of the others (I wonder if that has something to do with reading it serially), but I'm happy to devour it all the same.

In this volume, we get to see a lot more of Dr. Dinosaur than usual and that makes me happy as he's absolutely absurd and it makes for great dry humor. Meanwhile Jenkins is back at the base and dealing with a very angry—though misguided—US Department of Defense. Well worth the read, and a re-read.

A caveat: I haven't played this system, but given the sheer number of systems out there, I cant play them all. I'm not sure when I'd use this over another system. It's both simple and complex at the same time. It offers character advancement and progression, but seems flat. I both like and dislike the exploding dice as it's fun, but swingy.

This is the first of a possible 8 (I think) books that detail the lives of Hadrian and Royce before the events of the Riyria Revelations series. In this first book, we learn how Hadrian and Royce are brought together and how two people so different become a team—yes, it's the Crown Tower mission and Arcadius puts them up to it. The book starts out focused on Hadrian and his return from Calis. He's making his way to Sheridan, the university, because of a letter from Arcadius about the dying wish of Hadrian's father. After disembarking from his boat into the city of Vernes, Hadrian is quickly introduced to a little man named Pickles who steals his bag, runs away, and then shows back up holding his bag and offering to help him find his way.

Later in the book Hadrian is making his way up to Sheridan and is on a barge with three other merchants, a woman, and a man wearing a hood who keeps to himself and doesn't talk much. The merchants and woman are convinced that the man wearing the hood is a killer from the city of Vernes and conspire to kill him. Hadrian, being the guy he is, implores them not to because they have no proof. After a few days of traveling Hadrian wakes up to find a barge with everyone dead or missing.Assuming it was the man in the hood—since his body is nowhere to be found—he makes his way to the nearby town, Colnora. He only stays for a few days after bringing the sheriff to where the barge with the murdered victims was, but it was missing. The sheriff was a bit suspicious of Hadrian so he had to get out of there quickly. From there he makes it to Sheridan, finds the professor and is sent on his mission to the Crown Tower. The mission goes awry the first time when stealing the book as Royce ditches Hadrian since he's _stupid_ and slow. Hadrian realizes he's been left alone and heads back to Sheridan to find Royce already back in the professor's office with the book they were supposed to steal. The professor, frustrated with Royce, asks them to return the book back to the Crown Tower as the whole point of this mission was to have Royce and Hadrian work as a _team_.Royce is furious at this point, but this is the one thing that will grant Royce his freedom from Arcadius's debt. They practice climbing, but Hadrian just can't get a hang of the hand claws that Royce uses, so in frustration they decide that climbing harnesses might be a better call. After figuring that out they head back to Crown Tower and climb it. During the climb Royce leaves Hadrian in a lot of sticky situations but he keeps getting himself out of them. At the top, Royce's internal alarms are going off and something is _different_ from the last time he was there.Royce sneaks into the hallway and sees one priest sitting there and before he can do anything Hadrian stumbles into the hallway panting. The priest sees them and starts to scream. Royce kills the priest, they put the book back, and run out of the tower—Royce running one way, Hadrian the other. Hadrian makes it back to the rope and harnesses and sees two harnesses. Royce on the other hand, runs into four guards, which is about two too many. Hadrian realizing that Royce—the man who doesn't care for Hadrian whatsoever and who has left Hadrian for dead several times—is in trouble, goes to his aid. It's at this point that Royce finally sees just how good Hadrian is with his swords. Hadrian manages to take down a few guards and Royce runs for the harnesses, but encounters a very strange looking guard in strange looking clothes with a strange looking weapon (even in a spoiler, I won't spoil who this is). Royce has no chance with this guard and takes a rather severe hit and is only saved in time by Hadrian. Hadrian's sword is destroyed by this strange guard's strange weapon, so he's forced to bring out his spadone. Fighting faster that Royce has ever seen, Hadrian is parrying and working the strange weapon and keeping the guard at bay, but he won't be able to keep it up. Royce sees that there's blood by the crenelation that's behind the guard and Hadrian must have noticed it too because Hadrian manages to shove the spadone into the guard's breastplate, not hurting the guard, but pushing him over the side of the tower.They make it down the side of the tower with little fanfare and are forced to jump into the river to stay hidden. All the while, both Hadrian and Royce are injured, with Royce being the more injured of the two. Via the river, they manage to make their way to Iberton—a town they passed through on their way to the Crown Tower—and to the inn where they went before and were welcomed and protected. Only the owner is there and they come in and start patching up once the owner lets them in. However, after a bit Royce notices that the owner is gone and presumably reporting the incident to the church, so they leave that building and make for the trees.After a bit of rest, Royce sees a pack of men with dogs on their trail so they make for a nearby house. The house happens to belong to a man who served under the noble that Hadrian befriended at the inn in Iberton, the same man who protected them when they were being looked for back then. The home's owner gives them food, while the wife is worried about the repercussions of them helping Hadrian and Royce. The soldiers eventually show up and start beating on the door. In an attempt to protect the family in the house, Royce tells the men outside that if they try to open the door, they'll kill the family—Hadrian leans over and tells them that they won't really do this, that it's just ensuring that they aren't implicated.We're then treated to a final showdown as Tom the Feather (the owner of the house) picks up his bow, Hadrian his swords, and Royce his dagger. They rush out the door, Hadrian handles the soldiers, Royce goes to cut the knight out of his horse, and Tom shoots the soldiers. Royce's job of cutting down the knight works but the horse falls on his leg in the process. The kite shield that Tom gave to Hadrian manages to protect Hadrian from most of the arrows, but he takes one from the last hidden archer, and Tom makes it out just fine killing the archers.Both of them bleeding, Hadrian and Royce seem to have given up, but a cart stumbles it's way over to them as Tom yells for the man. We know this man from the secondary storyline, it's Dixon from Medford. So, about that secondary storyline: Gwen DeLancy is a whore, she didn't realize it at first, but the only place she can get a job, food, and housing is a bar in the Lower Quarter of Medford. She originally thought she'd just be a server, but soon realizes that also means she's whored out to the customers. She tries to escape once, but with no luck. And every time she tries to escape or do something willful, Raynor Grue, the owner, hurts her and tries to keep her under his thumb. After one of the whores is killed by a frequent customer, she's afraid and runs to the sheriff who only asks that the customer pay compensation to Grue. That customer promises to come back once everything is paid off and ask for Gwen. Grue actually refuses the man, but Gwen knows the customer is going to kill one of the whores anyways.Knowing no other ways out, Gwen convinces all of the ladies to leave Grue's bar and go to the abandoned building across the street. They get some blankets and some food for the first night, but it's a cold and miserable night. They manage the night and Gwen shows that she has some gold coins which she then uses to buy the writ to operate the brothel and uses another coin to have some carpentry work on the house to fix it up. After a while, Gwen has built herself something of a place and the artisans are happy to have the work, but Raynor Grue is upset that she's making money off of his whores. He sets her up for failure saying that he'll take over the business and give a cut to the local quarter assessor, the man who can approve or deny Gwen's writ. Gwen finds this out using her _gift_ and makes the same deal Grue made with the assessor, but instead she makes the deal with the magistrate, the man above the assessor.There are two more relevant parts to Gwen in the context of these notes. Her _gift_ is the ability to see the future of people. At one point, the customer who killed one of the whores comes to their place and wants..._service_. Gwen will never let him have one of her ladies, but he's adamant and Dixon, the House's normal protector, isn't around to save them. Gwen looks into his eyes and sees his future, she sees that _he_ (a man her mother told her is in Gwen's future and must be protected at **all** costs) will end up killing this man (the customer who killed the whore) and it will be so horrible that Gwen is apologizing to him. The man is scared and leaves telling them he'll never be back. The other relevant part of her gift is when Gwen looks at Dixon, the man with the cart, and realizes Dixon will end up saving _him_ and that he'll need to take his cart, get a horse, and go to a certain spot where Gwen know's _he'll_ be. Well, if you're this far along, you might realize that _he_ is Royce and that Gwen is meant to protect him. But why?

This was an excellent book, one that I'd hardily recommend to someone who's read the Riyria Revelations already. I originally thought that I'd be better off reading the books in chronological order rather than published order, but knowing what you know from Revelations only makes the Chronicles just that much better. It gives you a feeling that you know a secret and you know more about the story then the characters. This book is definitely worth reading, just make sure you read Revelations first.

Very very strange. This is the story of a top secret weapons research project disguised as a top secret weapons research project, with only Franklin D Roosevelt knowing the true nature of it. This takes place during WWII and involves the countries involved in that war, it also includes people truly involved in the original Manhattan Project, but from there, it takes on a heavy science fiction bent.

First off, there's an Oppenheimer, but it's not Robert, it's Joseph who can only be described as Robert's evil identical twin since he killed and ate Robert and took his place in the Manhattan Projects. Einstein is here as well, but he's also not completely who he says he is. Richard Feynman is a brilliant, young, and troubled, man in the program who seems to be the most level headed. Beyond that, there's a cast of other scientists involved, including Harry Dahglian who (in real life) irradiated himself, but (in the book) is (somewhat) alive and is still helpful to the Manhattan Projects. However, he needs to be irradiated and is a floating skull somehow attached to a body. When others are exposed to him, they too are irradiated and die. Mid-way through the story Roosevelt dies, only to be brought back as an artificial intelligence thanks to the scientists of the Manhattan Projects (a very gruesome process). It's at about that point that the bomb is dropped on Hiroshima by General Leslie Groves, the man in charge of the Manhattan Projects.So as you can see, this comic book is clearly bonkers, but there is a bit of a yin-yang to it all. Part of the book is about Einstein's portal of sorts. Before that, we are told the story between Joseph and Robert Oppenheimer. In both there is a duality between our normal world and a much harsher world and those panels are always shown in opposing colors: blue for the normal world and red for the harsher world. For example, Robert Oppenheimer was always shown as blue and Joseph was shown as red. Near the end of the fourth issue, we see Einstein asking for help from Feynman to crack open this "gate" he obsesses over in his private (and previously locked) laboratory. Feynman eventually figures out the key to opening it (pi, not fibonacci) and it's then revealed that we have the "harsh" Einstein (red one) and not the "normal" one.

I'm not sure what's left to say other than the book was very interesting and I'm awaiting the next volume (I can't stand episodic content). The art style is not my cup of tea, but it's consistent and it works. The writing can wrap around itself in a few places, but was rare enough that it wasn't a big deal.

An interesting book, but I think it was marketed incorrectly and still is. Everywhere you see it mentioned, it's all about attention and where you put yours, what you take in and such. From the back of the book:

In The Information Diet, you will:Discover why eminent scholars are worried about our state of attention and general intelligence Examine how today's media—Big Info—give us exactly what we want: content that confirms our beliefs Learn to take steps to develop data literacy, attention fitness, and a healthy sense of humor Become engaged in the economics of information by learning how to reward good information providers Just like a normal, healthy food diet, The Information Diet is not about consuming less—it's about finding a healthy balance that works for you

Let's start with what I didn't like: Dahlia. Dahlia is a hard character to process. She's raw, she's aggressive, and she runs counter to Drizzt, the character who I know and love. She is frustrating because she represents the emotions and impulses that Drizzt fights against in others, yet she flaunts them and enjoys seeing Drizzt squirm.

With that out of the way, how was the rest of the book? In one word: excellent. The entire book is a spring with tension constantly building as Drizzt, Dahlia and Artemis work their way to Gauntlgrym to destroy Charon's Claw, both freeing and killing Artemis from his enslavement to the sword. The whole time everyone knows he's going to die, yet the trudge forward, remaining quiet about Artemis's impending death. If this alone was the story, it would be good, but the way Salvatore then twists in the fates of the dark elves and finally reveals the relationship between Alegni, Dahlia, and Effron, was absolutely fantastic.

If you're a fan of the series, then you've either already read this book or your planning on it. If you haven't read this series, then this is not the best place to start, but know that the series is a long haul and one worth the time.