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Journey to Hart's Halo

2012-09-25 00:00

Cover for Journey to Hart's Halo

Review:

Got this as part of the Sto­ry Bun­dle.

It starts in­trigu­ing­ly, and stays that way for about two thirds of the book. Then it all goes to hell in a hand­bas­ket and the end makes no sense what­so­ev­er. Feels like the au­thor felt not enough was hap­pen­ing, or de­cid­ed to do "a twist" or... I don't know, but the whole end of the book af­ter the "reap­pear­ance" (if you read it you know what I mean) ru­ined it for me.

I liked the be­gin­ning though, so I will try to read some­thing else by the au­thor.

Al­so: the face in the book cov­er is dis­con­cert­ing­ly sim­i­lar to Shel­don Coop­er from The Big Bang the­o­ry.

Heretic (Templar Chronicles, #1)

2012-09-21 00:00

Cover for Heretic (Templar Chronicles, #1)

Review:

Not my cup of tea. Ba­si­cal­ly the pro­tag­o­nist is a su­per sol­dier tem­plar knight with mag­i­cal pow­ers fight­ing for a catholic se­cret army.

The sole idea of such a thing makes me sick, so hav­ing him as the "hero" in a book is not my idea of fun.

Lots of ac­tion, and not bad­ly writ­ten, so I am sure some peo­ple will like it.

Missing Signals (The Diaspora Trilogy, #2)

2012-09-19 00:00

Cover for Missing Signals (The Diaspora Trilogy, #2)

Review:

Got this as part of the Sto­ry Bun­dle.

This is a se­quel to John Gone. While I found that first book dis­con­cert­ing­ly ni­hilis­tic, this one is dis­con­cert­ing­ly amus­ing. Strange things hap­pen for no rea­son, and it takes place in some sort of par­al­lel di­men­sion where teenagers can go to Vladi­vos­tok by train with­out pass­port­s.

Al­so, the rules that con­trol the tele­por­ta­tion de­vice seem to change ev­ery once in a while, and some things are just nev­er ex­plained. Fi­nal­ly, the au­thor seems to have no idea what­so­ev­er about how com­put­er net­works work (the thing with the sig­nals is ba­si­cal­ly Star Trek: Voy­ager lev­el tech­nob­a­b­ble, ex­cept it's about tech­nol­o­gy that's 50 years old al­ready).

In any case, liked it bet­ter than John Gone, I would give it maybe 2.5 stars.

While I am not re­al­ly a big fan of these book­s, I de­cid­ed to buy the 3rd, "Com­pa­ny Men" be­cause I want to see what hap­pens nex­t.

John Gone (The Diaspora Trilogy, #1)

2012-09-17 00:00

Cover for John Gone (The Diaspora Trilogy, #1)

Review:

Got this as part of the sto­ry bun­dle. It was an in­ter­est­ing book. I found its at­ti­tude to­wards some of the things that hap­pen some­what both­er­some.

Some peo­ple have de­scribed it as a YA nov­el, but while the pro­tag­o­nist is a teenager, the things he's in­volved in are a bit too dark, and the at­ti­tude a bit too ni­hilis­tic that I would not be com­fort­able giv­ing it to a young teen.

I liked the se­quel bet­ter.

Cuando Sea Grande

2012-09-13 16:34

Este sába­do cump­lo 41 (no, no ha­go fi­es­ta, no es que no te in­vité), y creo que llegó el mo­men­to de de­cidir que voy a ser cuan­do sea grande.

Mi prob­le­ma prin­ci­pal para de­cidir un tema tan cru­cial antes de hoy es que me in­tere­san muchas cosas. Y las que no me in­tere­san... sospe­cho que si le pusiera un poco de ganas me in­tere­sarían.

Pero pe­or, ten­go esa con­vic­ción in­ter­na, to­tal­mente in­jus­ti­fi­ca­da de que si me pon­go, puedo más o menos hac­er casi cualquier cosa que no in­volu­cre una ap­ti­tud físi­ca es­pecí­fi­ca.

O sea, no, nun­ca voy a ser pow­er for­ward en la NBA, ni tri­at­lonista, ni equi­lib­ris­ta, ni nin­ja. Per­o... sospe­cho que po­dría ser un gui­tar­rista mediocre, o un po­eta medio pelo, un es­critor ade­cuado, o un ra­zon­able pelu­quero, por no de­cir un com­pe­tente pa­le­on­tól­o­go, un in­tere­sante di­rec­tor de cine, un ac­tor prome­dio, un in­tere­sante anal­ista políti­co, o un buen taxista.

Esa sospecha es in­fun­da­da da­do mi desin­terés en la políti­ca, poesía, de­talles de có­mo se to­ca la gui­tar­ra, y no saber mane­jar, en­tre otras cosas.

Así que du­rante los próx­i­mos diez años, mien­tras me voy ha­cien­do grande, me voy a con­cen­trar en cosas que ya sé hac­er, co­mo... epa. Lo char­lam­os el año que viene.

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