This stupid Wi-Fi at school has kept cutting out on me. I think I finally fixed it by screwing around with enough settings.
Update: Haha, nope. The problem hasn't gone away yet. The wireless router at home and the ones at public libraries are fine. But on campus, it's constantly failing.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
The Forge of God and Anvil of Stars
Even though I think I have, at multiple points, claimed I would take a break from Greg Bear stories, I went back on that again. In part, that was because Legacy was good enough to put me at ease after being underwhelmed by the other books I tried. But mostly this happened because I was at the Kent Library and I was in a hurry, so I grabbed Anvil of Stars. Even if it turned out to be worse than anything else of his I'd ever read, it would still be tolerable...
Well, one of the first things I saw when I started reading was something along the lines of "This book is a sequel to The Forge of God. In that book, robots attack Earth and when the book ends, they blow Earth up. Spoiler alert!"
The preferred path would be to read The Forge of God first, but it was too late for that. But once I was done with Anvil of Stars, I did immediately start reading The Forge of God, that is...
...once I finished A Clash of Kings. And that's another topic altogether. Suffice to say, I've failed to follow through on my policy (that I never enforced even for a moment) of only reading books by authors that are dead, but that I am now considering a new policy of only getting my books by putting them on hold first, rather than checking books out by browsing the fiction stacks. Yeah, that'd require me to plan ahead, which seems unlikely.
Anyway, I do recommend both of these. Anvil of Stars uses some of the same techniques for describing characters interacting with super-futuristic technologies that Greg Bear uses in Hull Zero Three, but for Anvil of Stars it actually works. In the science fiction subgenre of "aliens invade Earth" The Forge of God is probably the best I've ever seen. It does leave some questions unanswered until Anvil of the Stars and of course, the sequel raises even more questions. Although The Forge of God is a good book in its own right, it's also definitely setup for Anvil of Stars, which really tells the more fascinating story, although the characters are slightly less well-developed.
Either of these novels could almost act as standalones (accepting the cheesy note at the beginning of Anvil of Stars explaining that Earth was destroyed and the events that took place as that was happening). They have their own plots with their own resolutions. Only one character appears in both. Still, I consider this a two-volume work, rather than two separate books by the same author. Not that this matters much, since I haven't updated my stupid list in years. It's so out-of-date I don't think I've even mentioned it here. You'd have to go to LiveJournal for that! And yeah, don't. Or do. Whatever, I won't stop you. Do whatever you want. You're an adult.
Well, one of the first things I saw when I started reading was something along the lines of "This book is a sequel to The Forge of God. In that book, robots attack Earth and when the book ends, they blow Earth up. Spoiler alert!"
The preferred path would be to read The Forge of God first, but it was too late for that. But once I was done with Anvil of Stars, I did immediately start reading The Forge of God, that is...
...once I finished A Clash of Kings. And that's another topic altogether. Suffice to say, I've failed to follow through on my policy (that I never enforced even for a moment) of only reading books by authors that are dead, but that I am now considering a new policy of only getting my books by putting them on hold first, rather than checking books out by browsing the fiction stacks. Yeah, that'd require me to plan ahead, which seems unlikely.
Anyway, I do recommend both of these. Anvil of Stars uses some of the same techniques for describing characters interacting with super-futuristic technologies that Greg Bear uses in Hull Zero Three, but for Anvil of Stars it actually works. In the science fiction subgenre of "aliens invade Earth" The Forge of God is probably the best I've ever seen. It does leave some questions unanswered until Anvil of the Stars and of course, the sequel raises even more questions. Although The Forge of God is a good book in its own right, it's also definitely setup for Anvil of Stars, which really tells the more fascinating story, although the characters are slightly less well-developed.
Either of these novels could almost act as standalones (accepting the cheesy note at the beginning of Anvil of Stars explaining that Earth was destroyed and the events that took place as that was happening). They have their own plots with their own resolutions. Only one character appears in both. Still, I consider this a two-volume work, rather than two separate books by the same author. Not that this matters much, since I haven't updated my stupid list in years. It's so out-of-date I don't think I've even mentioned it here. You'd have to go to LiveJournal for that! And yeah, don't. Or do. Whatever, I won't stop you. Do whatever you want. You're an adult.
Saturday, April 6, 2013
Ranking the Black Company novels
I'm way behind on using this blog to mindlessly recite all the books I've been reading. In fact, this time I'm so far behind that I'm not going to use just one post to that end. So this post will only cover the remaining Black Company compilations that I read, which were the "Books of Glittering Stone" in the Black Company series. I read these in two compilations, each with two books. For some terrible reason, the KCLS doesn't seem to have the first of those, The Return of the Black Company. So I had to get it on interlibrary loan from Portland. Covington did have the last book, The Many Deaths of the Black Company readily available.
I read this series in four volumes, but really, there are ten books as written and as originally published. For no good reason, I will now rank them from best to worst...
1. Dreams of Steel
2. The White Rose
3. The Black Company
4. Soldiers Live
5. Water Sleeps
6. Shadows Linger
7. Bleak Seasons
8. The Silver Spike
9. She is the Darkness
10. Shadow Games
Well, now I've satisfied my urge to rank those books. It's not particularly useful, since the later ones build off the earlier ones anyway, and all of the ones I ranked lower actually have some really cool aspects, but are just deemed, by me, to be more flawed. I'd comment more on the merits of the series as a whole, but this post just ended.
I read this series in four volumes, but really, there are ten books as written and as originally published. For no good reason, I will now rank them from best to worst...
1. Dreams of Steel
2. The White Rose
3. The Black Company
4. Soldiers Live
5. Water Sleeps
6. Shadows Linger
7. Bleak Seasons
8. The Silver Spike
9. She is the Darkness
10. Shadow Games
Well, now I've satisfied my urge to rank those books. It's not particularly useful, since the later ones build off the earlier ones anyway, and all of the ones I ranked lower actually have some really cool aspects, but are just deemed, by me, to be more flawed. I'd comment more on the merits of the series as a whole, but this post just ended.
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