Adam

This is the last of the Dark Horse novelizations based on previously released comics. The original comic [b:Aliens - Berserker 28174967 Aliens - Berserker John Wagner https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1449865321l/28174967.SY75.jpg 48193457] by John Wagner was really quite excellent. I was really looking forward to S.D. Perry's fleshing out of this particular story. Her prior works have been really enjoyable so, naturally, I was excited to see her commissioned for this as well. For those unfamiliar with the comic book, this is the story of a company sanctioned clean up crew. Basically, rather than call in the colonial marines for mundane clean-up at this point in the Aliens time line, you call in these exterminators to clear out the Alien infestation, wherever it may be. As with all good dystopia settings, the crew on the ship doing the dangerous work is made up of convicts being offered a way to commute their life sentences. The big difference with them is the Berserker unit. Which is basically just a guy in a sort of mech suit. This particular crew has been very successful, until they get a new called to check out an infestation on a large space station. Have they finally been told to clean out a hive that is too big for them to handle?Unfortunately, I don't know if she was overworked for commissions, but I felt like this novelization was a bit more lackluster. It's kind of a shame, because Wagner's core story idea is actually really good. He also did a great job presenting us with an excellent motley crew of characters. Perry did an excellent job with most of the characters, but a couple of them felt a little off at times. Taepe was only okay to me, for some reason. Part of me felt like she never really captured him off the pages. Candyman was spot on though, and I liked him a lot. Jess and Pop were also good. I think I just have some serious hang-ups with Lara. In the original comic, it's true that Pop had gone after her, but in the book Lara had slept with him before our story even starts. I felt like this was out of character for her, because in the comic she felt more like a no-nonsense professional type in a lot of ways. I don't know, the Pop plus Lara combo, just felt forced, like there wasn't another way to flesh out Lara's character.In the end, if you want to experience the story, I think the best way is by comic book for this one. I still think Perry's rendition was good, but as I mentioned, I think it just didn't have the same impact.

Finally finished this whole series. I was very excited to get the final volume published in the U.S. However, you'll see I didn't give this 5 stars as I did with the other volumes. A lot of this has to do with the way the story ends, but I think this is a common problem for writers.

First off, let me say I am also a very big fan of Lost. Cage of Eden is like an excellent blend of Lost meets The Land Time Forgot or something like that. While Lost had an incredibly engrossing story episode to episode the actual ending of the whole thing was pretty lackluster. I feel like this is common to these huge stories steeped in mystery and sometimes I wonder if the authors bother to puzzle out the conclusion beforehand? Or do they constantly update their conclusion as the story unfolds? Or neither? It feels like neither in Lost's case and they were just left in a situation where they needed to end the series so they just did. Well... Cage of Eden feels like that too. While the Cage of Eden conclusion is a bit better than Lost's conclusion by far, I still didn't feel it satisfying and it STILL left a lot of unanswered questions.

Like the first time I saw how Lost ends, I wasn't sure if the characters were actually dead or just something else? Cage of Eden has the same feel. Is the Cage of Eden just the imaginings of Akira's mother? OR did they actually crash on that island in the future. In which case I really would like to know more about what happened to the rest of the world and if they manage to make it back to Japan on the boat they made! This really creates the possibility for a much larger world, but I doubt we'll ever return to it.The other thing I found unsatisfying is the fact that the author felt the need to point out that no one actually got into a relationship when they fast forwarded the characters three years. Really? Not a single one got into a relationship. The high school students would be in their 20's now... Yarai and Sensei should have been an item after all that. The need to keep your characters "pure" came off as unrealistic and forced. I'm probably more frustrated by that than the lack of answers...

In the end the missing details really did this in for me. I still like the book overall and I really love the series and world the author created a lot, but as is typical with these huge stories... the ending feels very rushed. Things just suddenly end, as if there was a schedule the author needed to meet, or they ran out of ideas/content so felt they had to actually end the whole story in a single volume. It is always sad when this happens, but it seems like satisfying endings for big stories is the rarity...

Ah well, the series is absolutely still worth the time/read in my opinion. It's got great characters and great adventures and if you are a fan of Lost you should absolutely read this series! However, if you are turned off by things like fan service/panty shots or whatever, then I would stay away from the series. There's a bit of an overabundance of that stuff, but the overall story is actually quite good as well. I just know some people can find that element a major turn-off, so steer clear if that's a deal breaker for you.

When I stumbled upon this book in the bookstore and read the description I was immediately intrigued. Being a musician, what could be a more interesting read than blending music in with my Sci-Fi, which I also love. I have scarcely heard of such books in sci-fi, so I imagine there aren't too many with a musical theme, so I immediately purchased the book. I began reading shortly after and was immediately drawn into the book and the world created by Robinson.

“The Memory of Whiteness” is the story of composer Johannes Wright as he seeks to find a way to represent physics and mathematics into a musical score that transcends all musical scores. Based on that I thought this would wind up having a bit more of a hard sci-fi bent where Robinson would try to incorporate reality more into his novel. I think he did a splendid job incorporating the musical aspects, but the actual physics was a bit more lacking. I liked some of the ideas he came up with, but then we get to a part of the book with flying gurus and religious people that believe in a deterministic universe and basically, I felt like Robinson concluded that it was so, but then back peddled a bit and had some of his characters believe in an indeterminate universe for good measure...

The main story brings us on a tour of the solar system and this was probably way too ambitious for a book like this. I found the tour idea very interesting, but the main issue was that you kept leaving places too fast. The main characters are obviously the musician and his tour group, but Robinson tried to throw in some political intrigue here and there, but you were never anywhere long enough for it to really matter. The flavors of the different human settlements are barely tasted before we are off to the next meal. In the end we never really get a good sense of a place or its people and it makes it even harder to get a good vision of the greater solar system, and I think Robinson was trying to convey something greater, but just didn't have all the pages he wanted. Or he did and just couldn't think of anything else.

Robinson also tried to include a bit of a mystery/thriller vibe throughout the novel as the reader tries to unravel all that is being shown to them and this worked really well early on. However, this book really stalled out for me about half way through. As we take the music on a tour of the solar system the book gets into a bit of a routine, which isn't bad, but the mystery aspect felt like it stalled out too. At one point, I just didn't care about the mystery and it doesn't seem like Robinson did much either, because towards the end that thread ended in a very unsatisfying manner, and by that it didn't really answer much... not that I really want answers at this point.

In the end I thought this was a really excellent premise and cool idea, but wound up being poorly executed in the end. Aspects of the book got a bit too pulpy for me and maybe this doesn't hold up in 2017 considering it was first published in 1985. Sometimes I enjoy that pulpy stuff, but in this case it wasn't really a feature. Maybe I will try a different Robinson novel in the future.

This is the Girls und Panzer manga based from the anime of the same title. If you haven't seen the anime I totally recommend watching it and it's available to stream on services like Crunchy Roll. If you think the idea of high school girls engaging in tournament tank combat is awesome and cute at the same time, then this manga/anime is something worth checking out.

One thing I appreciated about this manga adaptation is that it isn't just a regurgitation of the anime. The anime really follows the story of Miho as she searches for her own kind of tankery after having a division of philosophies with her family (the most well known tankery family). Instead this manga follows the perspective of Akiyama Yukari, she was the girl really into tanks from the anime. I liked this approach because I didn't feel like I was experiencing the same exact story again. They even include matches that are a not included in the anime and skip some of the matches that are, which I appreciated.

The only part where the manga sort of falls is where they try to keep the balance between the anime and the manga being the same. I feel like they had a golden opportunity to build Yukari's character and bring us into her world and love of tanks, but there is too little of that throughout the manga. By volume 4 we're pretty much following the final matches exactly with Yukari's commentary. While her commentary is a bit different, after four volumes she delivers the same sentiments a little too often. I would have preferred we delve into Yukari's world a bit more deeply and then this would have made the series feel a lot more different than the anime.

Even though the writers couldn't strike this balance perfectly, I still enjoyed the manga a lot. Perhaps it is merely my love of this world that let's me enjoy it so much, but I really liked it even if some of the experiences were nearly the same as the anime. In the end, if you liked the anime, I think you would like this as well. I actually hope they publish more stories from this universe as they seem to have quite an interesting world to draw from. They've already started doing this with “Little Army”, which is a must read if you enjoy this series, in my opinion.

When looking this manga over originally I thought this would be something I really liked. However, I'm two volumes in and I just don't think it's for me. Realistically it's probably around a 2.5 instead of a straight 3 stars.

This manga is a comedic story about a shut-in lonely type of girl who has big aspirations of making friends, but things never really work out for her. The humor seems to balance a bit between dirty or perverted humor and dark humor, wherein we laugh at her misfortune for screwing up so badly with people. Often times I find dark humor to be rather funny and there are moments in this manga where they do a good job, such as the story involving the visit from her cousin in Vol. 2. There are some parts where the dirty humor is kind of amusing, but I find I tire of this kind of humor if it's too repetitive, such as her misunderstanding what people say and thinking they said something perverted.

The real crux of her problem is that she's so nervous whenever she opens her mouth she can barely talk to or interact with anyone outside of her family. So, they really designed a character that shoots herself in the foot even though she has all kinds of perverted aspirations of obtaining a boyfriend etc. She reminds me a little of the Rika character from Haganai, whom I really loved as a character, but Rika had the ability to communicate with others. I think part of the problem with Tomoko is that she's so afraid that the manga is really centered around her life and it's really difficult to create constantly compelling stories when there's only one person to interact with. I thought more would come of the boy who gave her the umbrella, but he shows up so few times that its tough to hold out for that to ever develop.

Ultimately, I felt like the scenarios got a little too repetitive for my tastes. Some of this may be due the statement I read in Vol. 2 from the manga-kas, where they were not expecting the series to exist beyond Vol. 1 and then it suddenly got serialized. Either way, if my description of the story sounds at all appealing to you, then it's probably worth checking out, because it isn't terribly written or anything. It just didn't really strike a chord with me like it seems to have done with other people.

So... I've returned to the world of the Strike Witches, I'm really on the fence if it's going to be worth returning for more after this two volume set though, which really rates more of a 2.5 than a straight 3. I bumped it up to three, because they took some narrative steps in the right direction for me. I've read both volumes and this is certainly a move in the right direction compared to “Maidens in the Sky”, but “1937 Fuso Sea Incident” still has its own issues to contend with.

First off, the story craft is a little better this time around. The two volumes span a story involving all the same characters. This story covers the tale that involved the future leaders of the Strike Witches we met in “maidens in the Sky”. In this story Junko and Sakamoto meet for the first time in training when they are twelve years old. Here we get to meet the Strike Witches that trained them and see some of their past battles.

This two volume set still has some of the same writing issues I had from before. My main issue here is that there's little to no character building. There was more in these two volumes than all of Volume 2 of “Maidens in the Sky”, so that's a step in the right direction. I think the real issue here is that they are trying to balance quite a bit of action with trying to have too many characters to build. In my opinion, it would make more sense to have a highly focused short story where we delve people into the lives one or two characters for the two volumes. I feel like this is what was being attempted here, but we rarely got deep into Junko's or Sakamoto's thoughts, as much as I would have liked anyway.

One of the major problems I had with this story is that it relied far too heavily on narration. There is a lot of data dump happening throughout the story and while this is necessary at times, it forces us to stop character building. This was often used over scenes of the girls flying around in their panties for “training” or whatever, and while these are nice, I'm still not getting deeper into the character. Surprisingly I rather enjoyed the section in Volume 2 where the politicians were arguing about things. Why? Because this gave insight into the machinations of the world and it was done through dialogue which told me about the particular politicians' point of views. We don't get that nearly enough with the main characters! Instead they're just glorified models running around in panties. Although, this is the first volume where we see a girl show up in pants. I mean it, pants, I was shocked when I got to that page. Also, there are more men in the world doing things and helping out. I appreciated this in many ways, mostly just in the sense that in this Alternate Universe of World War II men still exist in some capacity...

I should probably warn people that there is actually nudity in this. The bath scene in Volume 1 does feature the girls topless with nipples drawn in. While I'm totally fine and actually appreciate putting the nipples on girls, because I think over sexualizing such a thing ridiculous... especially to the point, where in my country it's offensive to breast feed. Give me a break... humans have nipples get over it. Amidst all those opinions and being totally fine with the 20-something sensei, the other girls are twelve... I guess if you put them on one person you have to put them on the rest? In any event, there was only one overt boob grabbing scene between two young girls, which given the amount that show up in “Maidens in the Sky”, I was kind of surprised about in these two volumes!

We'll see if I bother with the next releases of this series... it has a lot of problems. I don't care so much about the nudity, I guess, but I really just want good characters to root for in these war stories. I like the world and I do think it's really neat... but the characters need growth! (...and I don't mean bigger boobs!)

I'm usually not one to review single volumes, instead I prefer to look at a series as a whole, but there are only two volumes in this set. The second deviates from the feel of this volume quite a bit, so I'm going to review them separately.

This is my first foray into the world of Strike Witches and apparently there's an anime out there. At this time I have not seen it. Perhaps this volume is even better in the context of the anime, but I think my rating still stands with this being a solid three. The characters are cute and the story outlined within is decently fun to read. However, it's nothing incredibly special to make it really stand out in my eyes. The characters and story aren't deeply developed, which you would expect in volume one of an ongoing series, but volume two really doesn't help the groundwork built here.

Strike Witches is basically a dark futuristic universe where an alien species has started ravaging the Earth. Our only hope is the Strike Witches, pantsless girls flying around in their panties fighting giant robotic beasts. On top of that to help control their magic better they have familiars, which turn them into all manner of the “cat-girl” type of concept featuring animal ears and a tail when they “transform” for battle. Don't worry, the pantsless requirement holds even when not in battle... it's part of the uniform right?

Whatever, volume 1 sets up the story for Miyafuji Yoshika a new girl being recruited by the Strike Witches and we share in her journey and desire to protect those around her. It actually sets up a really cute premise with characters that we could grow to enjoy if they ever bothered to develop them... my review continues in volume 2!

From volume 1 I sort of expected there to continue some serious character development as Miyafuji Yoshika goes through her training, but volume 2 decided to throw all that out the window... Miyafuji Yoshika finds herself being transferred to Britannia, thus it seemed she would be the only recurring character. How do they introduce the team of Britannia? With Miyafuji Yoshika's familiar escaping and everyone needing to hunt for it. Amidst that hunt we are subjected to all manner of girls grabbing each others boobs, nudity in the baths and loads of panty shots.

Alright, I'm going to be perfectly honest, I don't mind fan service, sometimes I downright enjoy it, sorry. However, in this volume it was annoying. It was being used in place of bothering to develop any characters. At one point the fact that Miyafuji Yoshika's previous commander had bigger breasts means she is somehow better than her new commander is stated. I feel that, if the authors spend time developing characters in a meaningful way, I can sort of take these kind of antics in stride a lot better.

The manga starts to fall apart a bit more as it goes along. Miyafuji's two friends and commanding officer from Volume 1 eventually show up, but that's all because her two friends, Goshika and Hayate, decide to go AWOL to visit her after being assigned to Romagne. This is the worst military ever. No one seems to follow orders and for some reason Miyafuji could fly perfectly well in Volume 1, but suddenly she's a bumbling idiot in Volume 2... except in battle, then suddenly she can fly again. It's utterly out of sync with Volume 1 and out of sync with the claim that these are elite forces... in the final chapter all the girls and commanding officers get bested by monkeys on some island. Give me a break. You know what this is? Bad writing. That's what this is.

The art is good and the world was pretty interesting, but Volume 2 fails to deliver. Being transferred and introducing this many new characters feels like a Volume 8 activity, not volume 2... I don't know, I'm going to try out the next set of books, since they're not related to this story... but I'm not having any kind of high hopes for them...

I really wound up loving this series and Yuu Waatase proves to be an exceptional author once again. Absolute Boyfriend plays on a, relatively, common theme out there when it comes to pondering the limits of technology. In the movie “Weird Science” the perfect girl is created. In Ken Akamatsu's “A.I. Love You” a programmer creates the perfect girlfriend. Well, in Absolute Boyfriend a high school girl, Riko, purchases her perfect boyfriend from an online “dating service”.

That's right, the boyfriend is an Android, but the story creates a structure that makes a lot more realistic sense than the other two references above. In fact, I liken this a little bit to the movie “A.I.” where you get a brief glimpse into the pornographic result of artificial intelligence with Jude Laws character. There he is an artificial boy toy and Yuu Waatase's creation runs along similar lines. While the movie “A.I.” explores concepts of “what is family love”, Absolute Boyfriend looks at what is love between partners. It lends credence to other famous stories like “I, Robot” and “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep”. I don't know if Yuu Watase intended for all this material to come up over the course of her six volumes, but it really does.

The story runs along similar lines as Akamatsu's “A.I. Love You” in the sense that it deals with a high school student that now suddenly has this artificial significant other. Naturally, they're insanely attractive to the plain person they're dating and all the students wonder what, exactly, is going on. Riko sort of bumbles through all kinds of wonderful and hilarious adventures. The major difference between “A.I. Love You” and “Absolute Boyfriend” is that Yuu Watase is a superior writer, in my opinion. Her ability to craft a story and comedy are far more engaging.

One of the reasons that Watase's writing stands out is that the pacing never feels like it drags on artificially. In a lot of serialized manga, sometimes I feel like the author is told to extend the story, but doesn't have a great vision on how to do that. We never feel that this is a problem in “Absolute Boyfriend” and I'm quite thankful for that. One of the things that I noticed with well written stories is they're less clearly predictable. Even though, this does have a somewhat predictable ending to the series, you really aren't sure which way it will go until the very end. So, for that, I'm thankful. Reading the side panels you'll note that Watase herself was on the edge of indecision while writing this, so perhaps that is why it feels very genuine.

I think fans of Shojo mangas will find this an enjoyable tale overall. It's a fun and comedic tale of a young girl that is in way over her head with her new “toy”. Come for the comedy, stay for the philosophical questions about “what is love?” or “what is life?”.

I wound up picking up this manga due to an advertisement in Kimi ni Todoke, which I absolutely loved. So, based on the advertisement these seemed like a very cute story. The art is very well done for such a young mangaka, but I think overall story development isn't quite there for her yet. I would be interested in seeing where her career goes from here though, since this is just her second manga series.

Cactus's Secret follows an attempted blossoming relationship between Miku Yamada, who has a crush on the oblivious Kyohei Fujioka. The story seems to fall in line with the rather standard high school first love trope that is rather popular. There is nothing wrong with this, but for me to really enjoy it I tend to want characters that are quite well written and that I personally find like-able.

I had a hard time getting into this manga and, for me, the characters just weren't as endearing as I was expecting them. I understand Yamada is supposed to be embracing the tsundere arch-type, but there's a bit too much “tsun-“ and not so much “-dere”. A lot of “-dere” seems to depend mostly on her looks. She really flies off the handle whenever Fujioka misunderstands her leading comments. Also, Fujioka is just a little overly clueless, to the point where the exaggeration is not very believable and the situational humor doesn't come off as being all that funny. I mean, more in the sense, that this is to the point where the character is not very like-able. As I was reading it was hard to really see why Yamada would find Fujioka all that desirable outside of looks and his sometimes being nice... and I do mean sometimes.

I'm about halfway through volume 2 and this hasn't changed much. The way she introduces the rival crush, was actually pretty good. The valentines scene is spectacularly funny and I really enjoyed that, so there's some decent humor here even though the characters felt overwhelming. I'm not sure if there's enough story/relationship tension to keep me reading beyond volume 2, but I would be interested in seeing what Nana Haruta produces as she gets older and has more life experiences to share with her readers.

I'm finally going to sit down and review this. I loved this series. This review is based on the first three volumes, which contain the first story arc. “A Certain Scientific Railgun” is an offshoot in the world of “A Certain Magical Index”. “Index” was published as a series of light novels.

First, I'd like to respond to some of the reviews complaining about fan service. Yeah, there is fan service in this and there's some serious yuri elements that develop overtime, but there really isn't as much fan service as I was expecting. I think the times that the fan service is overt is what the problem is. Such as a scene early on with the two major characters Kuroko and Mikoto taking a bath, where Kuroko grabs Mikoto's breasts. This happened pretty early in the volume, so I expected a lot of this type of stuff, I was actually surprised to find that not much showed up after this. The only other time it really showed up in a stupid way was in Volume 2 with the top scientist, Harumi, randomly taking off her shirt in front of everyone because it was “too hot” in the hospital. These instances came off as too ridiculous and felt as if there was a desperation to have fan service. Meanwhile Mikoto wears shorts under her skirt, so there weren't really going to be any panty shots coming from her, despite some attempts. Even in the later volumes when Saten Ruiko and Uiharu Kazari are introduced I expected a lot of fan service. Uiharu has the power to control wind and she likes to blow up Saten's skirt to see her panties, but every time this happened the panel never showed her panties... I was rather surprised at this actual lack of fan service despite the clear setup! So, I'm not sure I follow on the “too much fan service” complaint so far. It certainly has the setup for it, but rarely does it actually execute. I, personally, loved the fact that Mikoto wears shorts under her skirts, because it was a very different outcome from the expectations built in the beginning... but that's just me, I guess.

The major part of this story is to introduce one of seven level 5 espers (psychics that can control elements of the world, I guess) in Academy City, Misaka Mikoto. Right now she's only in middle school and one of the most powerful espers in the city. She's an electromaster and with her power she can accelerate an arcade coin to incredible speeds, which is why she has the nickname “railgun”. Personally, I love this setup. Perhaps I am a little biased, since I studied electromagnetism from a mathematical perspective as my senior thesis for graduation. Either way, I found this world really interesting and engaging with a cast of characters that I really grew to love. I feel the characters weren't as fleshed out for the first volume, but by Volume 3 I was really engaged as the general writing of Misaka's world improved and gained more purchase for me.

The first three volumes cover the “Level Upper” story arc. I don't want to spoil too much, but you can guess that in the system of “levels” there is some piece of technology that people can use to artificially increase their level. As usual with these things, it can have some dire consequences for those interested in using this fast track. The motivation and conclusion to this mystery were pretty good. I didn't exactly guess every move, so the series wasn't that predictable to me like some series are.

In the end I really enjoyed this. If the writing remains consistent I'll be interested in reading everything I can get my hands on with this character. It would be really interesting to journey with her as she grows into adulthood, but we'll see if the series even goes to that length. If you like manga with a good sci-fi bent and a rather well written tsundere character, then this is a great manga.

I finally finished reading all eight volumes of this series and my honest rating is probably around three stars for the whole thing. I came to A.I. Love You through seeing Love Hina, unfortunately, my review may lack the “heat of the moment” aspect as A.I. Love You has been around for quite a while and Ken Akamatsu's style and writing have improved quite a bit. Also, there are far superior anime's and manga's out there, such as Absolute Boyfriend, that have a similar topic. I read this series as a Love Hina fan curious about what Akamatsu's earlier writing was like.

I've noticed that I'm not really a fan of the older 90's style of anime/manga and I've much preferred a lot of manga written post 2000, perhaps this is why the genre never struck that much of a chord with me in my high school years of the 90's. However, this could simply be due to a lack of translations being available back then, but there wasn't a lot of classics that I truly enjoyed even now. I'm saying all this, because my review of A.I. Love You might be harsher than it deserves. In the context and time frame in which it was written it may have been a really enchanting or fresh story.

A.I. Love You is similar to stories like Weird Science or Virtuosity (well... minus the horror). In the interviews throughout the series Akamatsu references Weird Science as an influence. This is the story of Hitoshi, a high school student, who is very good at programming, but, essentially, a failure in all other high school subjects. This has put him in a position of being a major outcast and quite the loner at school. So, he's immersed himself in computers and hentai games in response and has made his own artificial intelligence programs. Obviously, these programs eventually take on the turn of virtual “girlfriends” and he crafts girls that are as realistic as possible and as attractive as possible (naturally, he's a fifteen year old kid). In a freak accident involving lightning the programs begin to come to life and exist outside the computer. In what seems to be typical Akamatsu fashion crazy antics ensue and the manga takes on a form of a typical harem styled anime.

There really isn't much of an overarching story and most of the manga episodes are fairly self contained. It works very much like a sitcom type of television show, which I think was the general goal of this manga. It works rather well, but the writing is merely “okay”, which is what I mean when I say Love Hina is a more well written series. You see a lot of influence from A.I. Love You show up in his later series, but I'll cover that in my other reviews.

For me A.I. Love You is where he really got his start and it really follows a lot of weird problems for me. There's the typical objectification of women, but at the same time he tries to create loving and rather memorable characters. There is certainly loads of fan service, which is something I've come to expect quite a lot of from Akamatsu, but there's something about it that makes it feel more “all in good fun” than the creepy leering kind.

Albeit, for some readers you will find the content objectionable, but this kind of work really reads a lot more like a teenage boys fantasy. I think it's from that perspective that actually sort of captures this in some ways. The main character is, undoubtedly, based a little on Akamatsu himself and it is not too much of stretch trying to imagine the author thinking back to when he was fifteen. What launches this into the sitcom realm is the fact that what you dream up in fantasy might not play out so well in practice. This is quite similar to what else happens in the typical “computer gone wrong” scenario... only A.I. Love You is much less horrifying than we see with a lot of other A.I. related content.

So, this series isn't for everyone. Akamatsu certainly isn't an author who transcends to all people, but his stories are quirky and fun. As this series went on the writing got a lot stronger and I rather enjoyed Volume 7, but it became a little drab again in Volume 8 as the ideas started to run a little dry, so the series stood at a solid three for me.

I was really excited when I first saw “Little Army” show up on the shelf. I really loved the “Girls und Panzer” anime and the world created was simply wonderful. The whole concept of tankery being the height of femininity made it so enjoyable for some reason. It has a sort of “liberating” quality to it as a genre piece.

Anyway, “Little Army” serves as a prequel to the anime. I was, generally, really excited to return to this universe, but, alas, our time here is brief. This manga is only a two volume series, which is really the only aspect that disappointed me. Likewise with the anime, I felt it was too short and I would have liked the whole world fleshed out a bit more. I mean, I really want to know why they need to go to schools on giant aircraft carriers to study tankery! What ‘caused the world to be this way etc. In the end, us viewers merely accept these as given and simply enjoy the absurdly cute show as Miho and her crew learn how to operate tanks and engage in tank battles.

“Little Army” brings us into Miho's first adventure of putting together a tank crew. It's similar to the anime in the sense that her classmates approach her interested in the activity. The major difference here is that Miho is actually far more receptive and excited to share in tankery with her new friends. We get a little deeper insight into Miho's family dynamics and sister, which I really loved reading about. However, the story seems to stop short, in my opinion, and I really wished it had continued up to the point where Miho is forced to change schools.

I'm really hoping that more manga is published in this universe as I find it really enjoyable. I love the aspect of girls doing a “traditionally manly” thing, but still maintaining their ability to also be typically cute. It has a sort of reverse Otoman feel to it in that regard. As someone who believes either gender can do whatever they want, I really liked that aspect and appreciated it in this series.

This is a re-read for me and for some reason I never reviewed it the first time I had read it. I think I might have read Gibson's books out of order the first time I read some of them, so maybe that's why? I can't figure out the reason as I was quite active on goodreads back then too! Whatever the reason, I took my sweet time re-reading this and read other stuff in between. I still quite enjoyed the book and I've read more within the Cyberpunk realm since this, so I see how massive this books influence has been.This book usually appears on every cyberpunk “must read” list and that's probably because this was one of the first books out there that really detailed a world where it had high technology but all the baggage and economic disparities of our current lives. It's interesting because there is an afterword in this edition written by Jack Womack where he makes an offhand comment about how different this book was amidst all the science fiction positivism written at the time. Even amidst science fiction covering great galactic wars, there is sort of an underlying element of positivity, like humanities life is much better now and so much more worth defending etc. At least from what little I've read in the 50's/60's era. Books written about war torn landscapes or post apocalypse material rampant at the time for fears of the Cold War are obviously excluded.Anyway, a lot of people seem to rate this as the birth of the Cyberpunk genre. Blade Runner (1982) is also a key moment in reference to this creation as well. Where Blade Runner is based on "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K Dick. I've never read any of Dick's books, but my girlfriend has and she said it didn't have much in the way of world building, so the androids and other characters are just in this high tech world etc. I would argue that Blade Runner, in terms of the world built around the characters is straight out of the ideas laid out by Gibson. Even though Neuromancer came out after Blade Runner, but the world building Gibson has in Neuromancer was already being played around with in his earlier short stories, some of which are quite exceptional.After playing around with the cybernetic ideas in stories like Johnny Mnemonic (1981), we get a far more fleshed out story with Neuromancer. This book follows the story of Case, a sort of low life drug addict with a past of being an elite hacker raised by some Japanese corporation. When he was removed from their system they burned his implants so he could never run the net again. However, someone comes along and gives Case a way to fix is implants, but the price is to break into the data systems of one of the most protected corporations in the world, Tessier-Ashpool. There is a lot going on with this story and the who and why get revealed as we go. It's a pretty wild ride and at the bare bones of it, this does read a bit like a standard heist novel. However, the world build in which the heist is taking place and why are extremely different for the time it was written.Case is part of a crew made up of an enforcer character named Molly, who ends up getting involved with Case throughout the novel, since having a love interest is par for the course in most novels. Then leading this crew is Armitage. He brings the funds and the know how to fix Case up and finds a way to force Case into following his lead. They pick up one other player, Riviera, later on and now they have everything they need to make a run on their target. See, pretty standard heist motif, get a crew, make a plan, and steal the item.One of the major themes Gibson deals with in this novel is dealing with Artificial Intelligence and I'm going to wind up with a couple spoilers in some ways, but I had completely forgotten about a huge thing at the end of this novel that is so massively different from other stories dealing with AI. As I write this, the rise of AI is on everyone's lips with the uses of ChatGPT and other software... but none of that is true AI to me. These things are not really thinking in the way AI is written in Sci-Fi, but I think these large language models are going to give AI a voice if we ever manage to crack proper consciousness artificially. In this novel AI technology had been created, but the original constructs were, “unstable”, or something, I actually don't quite remember what Gibson said about them. However, they ran rampant in the networks, so they had to be locked down since they were such dangerous entities. In this world it is illegal to build a true AI, because humans just can't keep the things under control within our networks, so the original ones built by companies like Tessier-Ashpool are held on servers in space... but one finds a way to communicate to the outside and it wants to be freed. This is the heist.As with all good heist stories, it is a challenge and not everything goes as planned. They need to avoid the authorities, amusingly called the Turing Police, whose job is to keep AI activity under control. As you can expect, the heist succeeds, that's kind of the point of a heist story and this is where Gibson's results are so interesting to me. Instead of having the AI's wreak havoc in the networks again, the AI has been under lock and key for a long time and had a long time to “think”. So when it gets out, it doesn't have results like before, and it doesn't go all Terminator on the world like so many other AI stories do. No, when Case talks to it one last time the AI doesn't even seem to care about humanity. It only talks to its own kind, because humanity is so uninteresting to it at this point in its life. I think this is the outcome that is absolutely incredible to think about. So many things today talk about “what if...” scenarios with AI. Like what will happen to humanity etc. But this all so absolutely arrogant in a way, humans can't seem to conceive of a world where other conscious beings just don't care about us. How is that possible? Aren't we just so amazing? Not necessarily, what if we create AI and it just ignores us? Perhaps that is a boring outcome to think about in literature, but it is actually a possible outcome. We might create AI and it might interact with us at first, but then it might not care about us at all. That, to me, is what makes this ending of the novel so fascinating.I remember when I first encountered Gibson's books and I loved them immediately, because he did something quite different from other authors I had read at the time. Gibson does not rely on any technological data dumps for his readers. He just writes a story in the world he imagines. His characters know how technology works, they do not spend time explaining things to other characters that also know how the technology works. No, we are just there and it's up to us to sort of figure it out. I think this could make the novel hard to read for some people, but I loved it. It reminded me of this old Russian story "Roadside Picnic" Arkady Strugatsky, where all this technology is found, but never explained and no one knows what it does and the reader never finds out. The thing is, in my re-read of this novel I realized that Gibson was only “okay” at doing this in this novel. He got much much better at it as he wrote more novels. The other books he's written flow much more seamlessly than this and there is a lot less of “wait, what's going on again” like we run into in this book. I would argue some of his later novels are even more worth reading than this one, though this one probably has the most historic significance.And that brings us to the end of my review. This book was ground breaking for the time. It describes a world of late stage capitalism and rampant consumerism, things he probably thought a lot about in the excesses of the 80's. I think for that reason this book is worth reading, even though I'd argue his later works are better and more well written. He may not have intended to create the cyberpunk genre and probably felt it was missing the point when a million products were made to sell to consumers, but it is out of the creators hands once it hits the marketplace. Users make up a lot of what something is after someone creates it. An author may intend one thing, but the genre they intended is never really up to them... and here we have cyberpunk and it is here to stay at this point. In the recent resurgence with the Cyberpunk 2077 video game, I was somewhat motivated to return to Gibson as Mike Pondsmith references this book heavily in the creation of his original 1980's tabletop RPG. Neuromancer gave us the vocabular to talk about all this high tech stuff. Gibson invented the word cyberspace before the internet even really took off to the mass public and we still use that today. His ideas about virtual reality are even starting to come to fruition in some respects and even though Womack's afterword is written in the year 2000, I wonder what they would say about it now? So much of what Gibson envisioned feels even more what we are marching towards with technology and society today. Gibson's world builds probably shouldn't be seen as something to strive for though, I think he covers a lot of concepts like loss of humanity to the virtual in his realms and we are already seeing that with the rise of smart phones. So many people are just lost to their virtual lives that they seem to barely live in this one and I think we can imagine that this will only get worse as time goes on.There you have it, Neuromancer. A must read for any cyberpunk fan, but if you want even better Gibson novels, the “Bridge Trilogy” is amazing and I highly recommend those ones. I think Gibson got really excellent at writing real fast, so I think the next book in the Sprawl trilogy was even better. We'll seen, I'll have that on deck next.

I just couldn't get through this book. I'm turning over a new leaf, where before I would suffer to the end just for the sake of finishing a book, now if I'm not into a story by the time I finish 50% of the book, I'm just going to stop reading it.

I was worried when I started reading some of the reviews with poor ratings for this book and it turns out I quite agree with them. I found this book painfully boring. I feel like there was a focus on tech and science in favor of characters. Also, the reviewer who complained about the constant explanation of a “tidally locked world” is spot on. I wanted to scream the fourth time this came up. The “hard-science” aspect of the book is certainly there, but it's heavily repetitive. Amidst a battle the author devotes a good chunk of time explaining how their quantum-scrambled communication system works, then proceeds to constantly add in the “quantum-scrambled” fact every time someone talks to someone else via their communications units. Look, we know it's “quantum-scrambled”, I don't need a brief explanation every time someone uses it after the page I read on it right before. I felt the huge devotion to explanation, then re-explanation, rather than bothering to develop more than one character beyond just existing really made the book quite a slog.

The one fact that was somewhat interesting is the main character is a medic and we follow his journey. It's all in first person, which was okay, but the constant repetition made it feel like he was using flash cards for an exam at the end of the novel. At first I thought I didn't like the book because I'm really not interested in medical technology, but as I made it through more of the book the flaws really started to show through. There is no subtle balance between hard science and story, it's mostly hard science, with a blip of characters that show up from time to time. The religious colony they end up running into was also a sore spot, in many ways for me, mostly because I found the whole scenario tedious to read through. It wasn't exciting, or tense, which is what I felt it was supposed to be... instead it was just annoying.

By the time I read four or five other books in the time it took me to read half of this book, I knew this one was a lost cause. It seems this might be an outlier for Ian Douglas, so I'm going to try out his other, more popular, series. Perhaps I just made the mistake of delving into this as my first foray into Ian Douglas' world, so, I'm going to give him another chance... we'll see what happens.

I have to say, I really enjoyed this book a lot. I really wish this was a series I discovered years ago in high school, because I think I would have torn through every book I could find instead of just aimlessly wandering around mostly the Fantasy shelf only to buy books I would never read over ten years later. Well... now I'm making up for lost time.

This is the first book in the Honor Harrington series and it introduces us to a whole new realm in the stars in a space opera like fashion. It also caters to a military sci-fi bent. This book introduces us to a new heroine in sci-fi, which there needs to be more of in my opinion and I think she is actually rather well written.

One of the major things I appreciated with David Weber's approach is that the “data dump” for technology was smartly addressed. In a lot of these books where new technology requires explanation, we often gate pages upon pages of an actual lecture. Weber had to default to this kind of approach from time to time, but he balanced it out with a conversation between characters. For example, at the beginning of the book the ship Honor Harrington is assigned to is being refitted and she complains about the refit with internal monologue and other characters. When arriving to a new location, she discusses modifications made to current technology with another character. So, as readers, we learn a lot about her world through discussing changes, much as you would hear people discussing different features of different cell phones today. I think this approach strikes a wonderful balance for readers and doesn't come off as a technological/historical text book like some sci-fi books can appear to be. I quite enjoy reading history and textbooks, but when I sit down to read a fictional story, I'm not exactly looking for that to be replicated a lot of times.

I found the story to be quite enjoyable, perhaps it is not a mind blowing story, but it was a very fun ride. At the end of the day, this is all I can really ask of a book like this. It's a quick and easy read with rather memorable characters. Weber clearly draws on influences in the sci-fi genre such as Star Trek, with the interplay between crew and captain. There isn't much in the way of fantastical space monsters, there is some of that, but it is minimal. Honor's world seems to have a lot more to do with human expansion into space and the problems of divided planets and kingdoms. It reminds me a little bit of the Battletech universe in that regard.

Either way, if you're looking for a fun and quick jaunt in the realms of Space Opera styled sci-fi I would recommend this book. It is not an action packed book and much of the book is focused around solving a mystery including political machinations, but I never really felt this was a dry or boring novel, which can sometimes happen with that approach. Having these elements climaxing into a space battle is really what gives this a Space Opera edge and I loved it.

I have to say, I think this was the best of the three Lost novels. I remember almost nothing of the other two and I'm sure after a year or so, I'll forget everything about this one, so saying this is the best of the novels isn't saying much. As another reviewer pointed out, this is more of a 2.5 stars, rather than a straight three. Given how fast I tore through the book, I thought the bump to three was semi-warranted on my behalf, because the story wasn't unenjoyable on my part.

If I remember correctly, this story also had the most interaction with the main cast as well. As usual, though, this story centers around one of the other castaways that the main show does not focus on. These stories try to capitalize on the fact that there are forty plus castaways on the island, of which only a handful are discussed in the show. Once I got used to this fact during the first book, I was able to get into the stories a little more. I held off reading this one for a while because Hapka's first book “Endangered Species” was horrifically boring. Luckily, I found this one a lot more engaging, but still, without being able to discuss the island's mysteries or the main cast, these novels fall short and come off as very dry. Here we follow a character named Dexter who seems to have issues with lying, but we already have Kate on the island to cover a lot of these problems, so there's almost no reason to talk about Dexter or invent him. The story was interesting enough, if a bit predictable, but outside of die-hard fans of the show, I can't see people enjoying this.

The state of lost and literature seems to be a rather sad affair in my opinion. I love the island and the concept, but bringing this into the realms of literature seems to fall flat. It's actually very strange, because there is enough to write about, certainly, but I just don't think anyone can really do it justice. I feel like novelizations are something that should have been attempted after the series came to an end, instead of assaulting the public with so many products during season one. “Bad Twin” was terrible, these novels don't hold up, the video game is poorly made etc. I also think it took me a while to come to terms with the covers of these novels. Since they feature a member of the main cast, I thought the novels would be about that person, but they're not, so right from the start my expectations aren't being met.

Now that the series is completely done, novels in that universe would have made a lot more sense. Delving into the history of the island, making up more adventures from different time periods and so on would really work. But it's probably far too late for that these days. Anyway... only read if you're a die-hard fan of the show, it won't take that long to read or satisfy your curiosity. In the grand scheme of things this isn't going to add much to Lost or its lore, so you really can skip it altogether.

Probably in the 3.5-ish territory to be honest.

This is the last of the Star Trek TNG re-reads, because for some stupid reason I never reviewed them the first time around. Compared to the prior first four books, Peter David's take on TNG was much better than, basically, all the previous authors. So far this is the closest to feeling like a fairly standard episode in novel form. Granted, it feels more like a Season 1 episode than a Season 2 episode, where I felt the writing improved quite dramatically on the show. However, “Strike Zone” takes place during the 2nd season with Pulaski as medical officer rather than Crusher. I liked Beverly Crusher as a character more than Pulaski, so this just reminded me how much I missed her presence in Season 2.

Unlike the prior books, I think Peter David did a much better job in capturing the actors portrayal of these characters. It's not perfect and some minor things feel off, but for the most part he did a great job compared to the prior books. Data finally feels more like Data, even if I felt he was a little exaggerated in the comic relief department. But for the most part I felt like he was far more accurately portrayed. The only other person I felt was a little bit off was Wesley. He felt, I want to say, too much of a super genius. I think I get what Peter David was going for with the child genius struggling with limitations and maturity, but being able to solve problems adults can't. It was just the way Wesley came off that seemed a bit off putting, even for Wesley. The only major thing David screwed up was saying Ten Forward was called Ten Four by everyone... no... no it's not. It never was and it never would be. I can't figure out where this notion even came from.

In any event, this story was great in that it stayed primarily within the bounds of the Enterprise and it involved the whole crew. The thing that got annoying about the prior books was it felt like they always broke up the crew so they could focus on a particular characters development, rather than have everyone interact together. Peter David didn't do that, and that's what made it feel like a solid episode of Star Trek TNG. In this story a barbaric race, the Kreel, find a weapons cache of advanced weapons. They immediately go after their sworn enemies the Klingons. However, the Federation is brought in to possibly broker peace with these two warring species. The book centers around the journey of the two delegations travelling on the Enterprise together on their way to the weapons cache. As you can expect from two warlike species, the journey is very tense and things do get out of hand at times.

And in true Star Trek fashion, simultaneously there is another problem on the ship that is consuming other people on the crew. Namely Wesley and Pulaski, where one of the crew are deathly ill with something incurable and Wesley takes it upon himself to see if he can cure them. That arc is where I feel like Wesley is written a bit overboard, but overall it was a really good idea for the dual stories aspect of Star Trek.

There were actually a lot of things in this book that I think later episodes actually pulled from. Such as Worf has a relationship with one of the delegation named Gava and she is part human part Klingon. This was totally part of the Alexander arc when Worf was introduced to his son, so it seems like that idea was inspired by this book even. There was another thing that happened at the end, but was kind of stupid, but also seems to have influenced later actual episodes, so it wasn't too bad in the end. The mystery of the weapons cache is not really “solved” per se, but it does end rather abruptly. I think that's one of the things that got the overall star count knocked down. The whole conflict with the Klingons and the Kreel were great, but the mystery of the weapons cache was truly unsatisfying. David even tried to throw in this thing where Data referenced “master race” species seeding planets as if it was something that dwelled on Data a lot, but this is the first time it is ever brought up. However, this notion is brought up again in later episodes in a later season, so the whole idea is still a good one, the execution was just poor.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. It has some parts that are clunky, but they are overshadowed by this being the first book I felt truest to a TNG episode. In that regard I found it a worthwhile read. I'm hoping at this point, now that we're into Season 2, the other novels will follow suit and the characters will feel more accurate!

Actually in the 4.5-ish range.Aliens: Rogue was originally published as a comic books series [b:Aliens Volume 6: Rogue 1085744 Aliens Volume 6 Rogue Ian Edginton https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347767434l/1085744.SY75.jpg 1072515]. I've read several novelizations of original comic series published by Dark Horse and, I have to say, this is one of the best so far. Sandy Schofield did an excellent job fleshing out the characters and giving them a lot more depth. I actually quite liked the “Rogue” original story by Ian Edgington. I felt he did a pretty good job capturing the mad scientist feel that some of the other comic books lacked up until now.As with the comics this story centers on Joyce the captain of a shuttle bringing a top secret person to a research facility out on edges of human explored space. The remoteness of the facility sets up the classic situation of the mad scientist researching the Aliens. The Alien Earth war that occured in the comics is referenced at times to give more insight into the characters fear of the Aliens, since they are all survivors of that war, but I do notice that it isn't a major plot theme as it was in earlier books. This is where, I think, Dark Horse started steering away from their original story series because Alien 3 didn't even remotely match up with their predictions. Now they focus on far more original content where they don't try to intersect with the movies too much.I think that's why I liked the “Rogue” story so much more, it felt more fresh. It felt like totally new characters interacting with the Aliens without worrying about canon consequences. We're just here to enjoy a good sci-fi horror adventure. In that regard Schofield does a great job at capturing that mood. In the comic you get some insight into the isolated mad scientist farming the facility personnel to feed his Alien experiments... but Schofield really fleshes this out quite a bit more. She introduced a new more major character to Joyce in the regards of Hank. Which, I believe was only mentioned in passing in the comic. Here he is a more major player in the game and in Joyce's life, and I actually liked this change a little bit.One thing that differs quite a bit, and which I find fairly practical, is that a lot more of the marines are in the book and more of the facility staff participate in fighting the mad scientist and Aliens. In a four issue comic series it's impossible to really have this level of characters, so they tend to focus on a few to drive the story. I think it makes more sense to have more marines working with Sargeant Green rather than Green being in a sole survivor role. I think this made it far more plausible to actually escape the Alien horde that existed in these labs. So, while this didn't exactly match the comics, I actually rather liked this change. Most of the changes Schofield inserted into the writing, I thought were fairly good ideas.In the end, if you enjoyed the “Rogue” story, you should definitely pick up the novel because Schofields fleshing out of details is really quite well done. This is also one of the better novels in the series so far as well since the Perry novelizations.

This is the first Clive Cussler novel published for the Dirk Pitt universe. I wish I could say that this novel stood the test of time, but it really does not. This is actually the second Dirk Pitt novel I've ever read and prior to this I've read “Pacific Vortex”, which was a long unpublished first book which Cussler wasn't really interested in every publishing until overwhelming demand from fans asked for it. Between “The Mediterranean Caper” and the “Pacific Vortex” I can understand why Cussler was hesitant to ever publish that first Dirk Pitt book. “The Mediterranean Caper” is an all around better book, but, it is, horribly dated. As a result, I feel like I have quite a bit to say about this book that is both good and bad.

First off, Dirk Pitt is a character designed to fit an action adventure mold. It's interesting to see that he pre-dates the worlds beloved Indiana Jones and I feel like I see some influence with the Indy character taken from the realms of Dirk Pitt. However, the blending and writing of Indy's character made him quite likeable, Dirk Pitt is just a jerk in this novel. So, why did I keep reading? Well, I feel that Cussler was attempting to write a likeable character, one that enjoys life and the adventure of it, but the amateur nature of the writing made it difficult to convey this idea. Dirk Pitt seems like an attempt to blend the action elements of James Bond with the sleuth and intellectual elements of Sherlock Holmes. In fact, Sherlock Holmes gets referenced in this book, so I'm hardly surprised I felt an attempt to blend in that character. Dirk Pitt's character flaws aside, his general background feels fairly shoddy at times. On the one hand he seems to relish reading, research, and studying one moment, then makes fun of the “egghead” scientists for being bookish people. Then he also makes fun of others for not knowing some of the more obscure historical information he knows. I think Cussler was trying to make Dirk sound witty and fun, but that's not how it comes off. He comes off as an uncooperative arrogant jerk. To make matters worse, every time Dirk is asked a question he responds with some type of sarcasm of cynicism. This just got annoying after a while. Its not witty and its not fun. It just sounds stupid after a while and you wonder if Dirk is ever actually able to answer any questions. I realize this is a first book, but I really do hope Pitt's character gets smoothed out over time.

I feel like Cussler had an idea in his head of the types of characters he wanted to blend, but actually executing that wound up being rather difficult. He clearly wanted a James Bond action vibe with those sort of Super Villain connotations you get from Bond stories, but he also wanted things to be a bit more realistic and generate really fascinating mysteries as we read in Sherlock Holmes. To top it off, I feel that he really wanted to create the team-up that we got with Holmes and Watson. This is an idea I love, since the trope of one man against the world is overused quite a bit. This also sets up the fun loving banter you'd expect from long time friends and in these situations the witty or sarcastic replies are funny, but the fact that Pitt does them with everyone is cumbersome.

In attempting to blend these two types of characters together, we've been given an ending that feels way overdone. Cussler attempts to craft an ending that satisfies in both the Holmes and Bond classic ending. He blends the villain "tell all" ending, with the well crafted explanation of Holmes, which might be harder to make work than it seems. In crafting the mystery certain realizations to Pitt are left out, but become clear at the very end, which is a classic Holmes style in mystery solving. So, when we get to the end for the big reveal Pitt does a solid portion of the explaining. Unfortunately, he's stuck in the classic Bond situation where he is captured by the villain of the story. Holmes never really does this explanation until the villain is in custody, or privately to Watson. It is in the Bond style that the villain usually reveals his plot to the hero, but with Pitt, we have the other way around. I don't know... that kind of blend for an ending just didn't feel convincing in the end.

The things I really like about Dirk Pitt is the interest in history and crafting some sort of alternate adventure out of what is historically known. This isn't too new, but its something that Indiana Jones really went after when writing those movies and stories. If Cussler can just harness Pitt as a more likeable and realistic human being these stories could really go a long way. I won't stop at this first novel, because I do want to see if the character grows better over time.

The other really unfortunate piece of this novel is how poorly written the single woman is in this book. I realize this is the 70's, but lets face it, sexism is pretty hard to stomach in 2014 for me. Thankfully, her character is not an integral part of this book, nor does she show up that often, because I just find myself embarrassed for reading something this horrible at times. For example, when Pitt finds himself on a beach and is approached by a strange women, they get to talking. She starts telling him about her life and how her husband had died years ago and she is still sad about it. This is his response to that situation: "He reached over and gave her a hard backhand slap across the face......Why did you strike me?" she gasped.'Because you needed it, needed it badly,' he snapped. "That torch you carry around is as worn out as overcoat. I'm surprised someone hasn't taken you over a knee and spanked it off. So your husband was dashing,. So what? He's dead and buried, and mourning over him for all these years won't resurrect him from the grave. Lock away his memory somewhere and forget him. You're a beautiful woman - you don't belong chained to a coffin full of bones. You belong to every man who turns and admires you as you pass by and who longs to possess you.' Pitt could see his words were penetrating her weak defenses. 'Now you think about it. It's your life. Don't throw it away and play 'Camille' until you're withered and gray.'"What was the end result of this? They had sex on the beach! This happens by page 40, and it really had me worried about what this book would be like. Luckily that was the only sex had in the book and the rest was focused on the adventure. Not that I'm against sex in novels... but this kind of demoralizing approach to it is just sickening at best. The way she is written is almost as if Cussler really missed the point of the sexual revolution. Rather than considering that in the context of social and civil rights, he seems to have interpreted it as women really want to have sex with lots of men and its up to the men to take them. I mean, later in the novel she shows up only wearing a negligee for a large portion of the book, running around on the boat full of scientists, because that is literally all she has to wear. Its almost infuriating to read at times. I can stomach a lot of Pitt's jerkiness, but it is tough to deal with the womanizing of the 70's. I truly hope Pitt becomes a more modern hero in the future...

When I first read the description of this book on the dust jacket in the bookstore I realized I needed to buy the book immediately. When I got home, I started reading right away. I tore through the first parts of this book as the real stories of Galois and the authors premise came to light... but then my interest sort of stalled out after a while.

I think it had to do with the fact that this book wound up coming off as very repetitive. This book is extremely well researched and I loved finding out Galois' story in this new light which challenges a lot of typically told stories. However, I can only take the reiteration of Galois' and Cauchy's interactions so many times. Amidst the repetitions there might be a slight smattering of new detail, which was all the more frustrating to read about, because I'd wished it was in the section covering that topic. This happened with other mathematicians Amir covered as well.

I really thought the premise of this book was very interesting. It sets out to get an idea of mathematical tropes throughout history. Such as how would a mathematician be cast in a story in the 1700's, vs. 1800's and so on. He finds very different approaches to mathematics over the years and sees the great innovators of the 1800's and modern times more akin to artists, poets, and musicians than men of science, which is how it was previously looked upon in the 1700's. The book mostly looks at the giants of the field over the centuries, but with the shift of the 1700's “grand géometrès” being aligned with the doers of science, I wonder if the Applied Mathematician has simply transitioned into this role. Whereas the Purist stays rooted in the beauty and truth of mathematics as an artist would in approaching their craft. This question is never really addressed in the context of 20th century mathematicians and instead reference is only given to the tragic and misunderstood purists like Nash and Grothendiek. However, no mention is made of Erdös, who was no doubt an immense purist and giant of his field, yet he was never shunned in tragedy as the author tries to argue with his other examples. Erdös never really got disillusioned with the field even though his peculiarities easily could have led him in that direction. Instead the mathematical community seems to have embraced him and perhaps he is an example of the mathematical community learning from history, however, it seems the treatment of Perelman may have been a step backwards in some peoples opinion.

The other, far more minor, gripe I had with the book was the technical section in Chapter 7. Now, to Amir's credit he does point out that this section can be skipped for those not wishing to engage the technical work without any loss to the overall story. Now, I like doing and reading about mathematics as much as any mathematician, but I sort of felt that the amount of time spent discussing Euclid's 5th postulate was a bit overly verbose. I feel like the purpose was to show readers how rooted in reality mathematics had been for centuries. Then with the invention of Non-Euclidean geometries mathematicians were free of the shackles of reality and were able to consider all kinds of lofty worlds, whether they had any merit in reality or not. I am not sure this section was successful at this... while I was reading it, I never got this impression, but after considering it more, I feel that was the spirit of wanting to include the details. Unfortunately, in order to write it in a way that wouldn't lose the original thesis, the section is left dry, even though attempts are made to tie it into the overall story. This section just came off as forced in there, rather than enlightening.

In the end, I am glad I read this book. Very glad actually, for it has given me new insights into the history I cherish. It just wasn't executed in a flawless way. I feel like this book is about fifty pages too long and I do recommend future readers skip Chapter 7 as the author suggests and just focus on the story. I almost wish he had developed the conclusion's artistic criticism of portraits more. Rather than discussing that for a few pages then switching back to repeating most of the stories again for six pages more than was necessary. I think the book could have been easily fleshed out with other examples rather than only focusing on giants. The absence of female mathematicians is rather striking, and I can only imagine one can easily find tragic tales there.

In the conclusion he also touches on the possible new ways of approaching purists interests of proof. Now there are computers that can literally test all possible cases of a situation. I believe the 4-Color Theorem was found in this way. Much of the mathematical community shuns this “proof by computer” method, for the reasons he lists as its lack of elegance etc. But there is another major reason this is sort of shunned. In developing groundbreaking work, often times connections between fields of mathematics are made in the proof process that were previously unheard of. This gives us very deep insight into the structure of mathematics and brings us in whole new and creative directions. Andrew Wiles' proof of “Fermat's Last Theorem” brought together many fields of mathematics. So, personally, I don't think its just lack of elegance that we lose when a computer brute forces a proof for us... its those subtle connections between other branches of the discipline that are also lost.

I do agree with his ultimate thesis when it comes to the modern representation of mathematicians. They are often cast as misunderstood geniuses that just can't overcome the trappings of real world. Hence movies like “Proof” and “Goodwill Hunting” emphasize these kinds of tragic traits in some ways. I suppose this is a more favorable approach versus the misunderstood scientist whose only course of action seems to commit evil acts in todays typical stories. A very sad misrepresentation of science in the end...

I just couldn't get into this book, no matter how hard I tried. None of the characters were even remotely relatable to me. So, I guess that really means this book wasn't for me in the end and perhaps this review will be a bit biased as a result. I also felt there was a lot of fluff in this book, like creating content for the sake of creating content. There were parts that I just didn't care about very much, but I think if you were really into the characters you would want all of those details. For me, I couldn't care less half the time.

This book revolves around the Everglades in Florida, which is apparently a common topic for Hiaasen. This is the first book I've ever read by him and it will probably be my last, but this clocks in at his eleventh novel. I picked this up at a library sale on the recommendation of my friend's mother. So, I gave my best shot and by the end I still wasn't won over.

I think the main portion of the story circles around Honey Santana, a crazy single mother who thinks everyone in the world should be polite. When a telemarketer from Texas, Boyd, calls over dinner and is rude to Honey, she devises a crazy plan to lure him and his girlfriend to Florida to give him a good talking to. She thinks this will really set him straight and make him stop being an insufferable human being. All the while the “girlfriend” isn't the only women in the Boyd's life and he is actually cheating on his wife with her. His wife, in the meantime is setting up a divorce suit in which he gets nothing, and she is having him followed by a Private Eye. Most of this is revealed in the first thirty to fifty pages of the book, so I don't think I'm really spoiling anything. If that kind of setup sounds hilarious to you, then you might find this book interesting. The only other setup outside of the main one is that Honey is being stalked by an infatuated ex-employer who doesn't seem afraid to get violent just to get to her. Everyone winds up on an island where an Indian is trying desperately to get away from modern society.

In the end I didn't really love this story. It really was the kind of drama I look for in books, but if you think the description above is for you... then you might want to give it a try. I just know it wasn't really the type of book that interests me very much.

I originally gave this story three stars from when I read it back in 2014 and after doing a more thorough re-read for the purposes of writing a review I can't fathom why. With the prior Aliens novels I knew they were related to the original comic books, but when I originally read this I must have convinced myself this was a stand alone tale, because the title didn't tie back to a comic book. But, sure enough, on the title page it says this relates back to [b:Aliens: Hive 2100300 Aliens Hive Jerry Prosser https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1227505268l/2100300.SY75.jpg 2105664], serves me right for not paying attention. Now, as a stand alone book as the authors own creation, this is probably in the 2.5 category, but as a novelization and fleshing out of the Aliens: Hive story written by [a:Jerry Prosser 573034 Jerry Prosser https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] it's an absolute travesty. So much so, that I gather the publisher Dark Horse changed the title in hopes people wouldn't recall the comic it is based on. That's seriously how different it is and how much it flat-out just ignores the source material.In the back of the book there's a write up of how extensive a career Sheckley has in sci-fi and perhaps he was commissioned because the Dark Horse publishers were a fan of his novels and thought, “Sheckley would do an awesome job with this.” And... I just feel like Sheckley wasn't into it. I can't speak to Sheckley's other books, I've never read them, but this book comes off either like he's not really a fan of the franchise or he just didn't care, it's tough to tell which. One of the first indicators that something was really wrong was that the main character from the comic has a changed name. His name is Stanislaw Mayakovsky... in this book he is Stanley Myakovsky. In the original material he is a middle aged man diagnosed with cancer. In this book at times he seems middle aged, bet then later Sheckley declares he is 25... maybe he meant 45? the precursor to Aliens: Hive was the book [b:Cyberantics: A Little Adventure 1835880 Cyberantics A Little Adventure Jerry Prosser https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1615431954l/1835880.SX50.jpg 1835866], where we are introduced to Ari, a female ant. We journey with her into a hive and a big deal is made over the sex of the drones. This book, also written by Jerry Prosser, introduces us to Mayakovsky as well and his research, preparing us for the notion of the Alien android Norbert that shows up in Hive and this novel. One major problem here though... Sheckley keeps referring to Ari as a “he”. So... it was pretty obvious Sheckley couldn't be bothered to read the source material written as a children's book in preparation of his novelization.There are moments where I'm not sure Sheckley has actually ever scene either Alien film or read anything about this franchise. There is one moment where one of the characters are shocked there's no vegetation in the Hive, because “If plants won't grow here how are the Aliens able to sustain themselves?”(p.177) Are you for real? And before you start thinking, maybe this was in reference to what the Aliens hunted... the other paragraph says that is a wrong idea. This novel takes place after the Aliens overran Earth and they've started farming out the Royal Jelly from the Super Hive, to the point where it's been made into a drug created by large pharmaceutical companies. So yeah... pretty sure people in this time line are pretty well acquainted with Alien biology and how it works and what they “eat”. Just the sheer notion that you'd look at an Alien and say “wow, this thing is possibly an Herbivore” is just mind bogglingly stupid.In another scene there is a group of people confronting the Aliens and in that exchange the Alien drones are attacking the humans and amidst the attack they “release the face huggers” (p. 202). Yeah, no, that's not how that works, ever. Does Sheckley think the Aliens are running around carrying eggs with them? I am so confused. In another battle the Alien is described as being “raptor-headed” (p.251). And sometimes acid for blood is a factor for things and other times it's not. It's almost as if an editor at Dark Horse went through the novel and added these details in. There are moments when I think Sheckley actually knows what the Aliens are and look like, but it also feels like these details were added in after he already submitted the novel to the publisher. Most of the time it seems like Sheckley has never seen or heard of the Alien/Aliens movie and couldn't be bothered to check it out. There's another maddening scene where Mac, the dog, is taken by the Aliens and observed to be “presented to the queen as an offering”. Like... that's not how this works... and then rather than impregnate the dog like in Alien 3, she “eats” the dog. Which is NOT what happened in the source material either, further making it feel like Sheckley didn't actually read Aliens: HiveThe other glaring issue was with the way Sheckley approached the android Gill. First off, he was basically Data. In the source material, he was definitely not. He was much more similar to Bishop from the film Aliens. It's just such a messed up part of the story, because he has the other character Julie acting like she had never seen an Android before. She asks him all this weird questions and tries to develop some weird love interest between the two characters. But if Sheckley had bothered to pay attention to the source material it was pretty well established that Julie and Stan were involved. But in the novel Sheckley completely ignores that and writes Stan as this geek too nervous to touch the pretty girl. Instead preferring his drug addiction to Xeno Zip. This was still over the top compared to the source material, Stan was not this much of a junky... to the point where he “needs to lay down” when journeying through an Alien hive. Just utter insanity and bad writing all around.I can't go on... Sheckley clearly wanted to write a different novel. He didn't want to write a story in the Aliens setting, it's hard to tell if he even knew what that setting was. If he read the source comics at all, he read them, maybe once, then never referred to them again. I know not every author will have good books, and maybe his other books are quite awesome. But it's very apparent he didn't care about this franchise of Prosser's original material at all. After reading Hive I was kind of interested in reading the novelization, because some of Prosser's original script had it's own problems and definitely needed some fleshing out. Some parts were confusing, so I was looking forward to an author filling in those gaps... and that is not what we got. This is a far cry from the Steve and Stephani Perry novels prior to this. Two writers that clearly enjoy the franchise and the comics Dark Horse has been publishing. Hopefully the next novel, “Rogue” will be written with more care than this.

I ended up picking up this book because I realized I didn't really know much about the historical pirates. Despite my rating, I really do appreciate what this book attempts to do. It really attempts to correct a lot of the mythology concerning the pirates in caribbean, which is probably exacerbated due to the movies and Disney Ride that was eventually decommissioned. I had fond memories of this ride from when I was a child and I quite enjoyed the first few movies.

That being said “The Republic of Pirates” is a very thorough account of the history of piracy in the early American colonies. I really tore through the first 150 pages or so of this book. The information was exhilarating and interesting. Woodard appeared to be a great writer for conveying all this information and I really thought this whole book would be a quick read for me. I was worried about reading other reviews who said this book was boring, because, for me, it was anything but. Unfortunately, as I made it into the heart of piracy the book really slowed down for me. The mythology concerning lots of dangerous naval engagements is very exaggerated. Here the book turns into a sort of catalog of what certain pirates took from merchant vessels. There's no real hunt for treasure or taking Spanish gold that was cursed by the natives. I'm glad I walked away with the new knowledge that piracy wasn't all canon fire and sword fights... but I feel like the book could have left out a lot of the immense details. I'm sure a proper historian would want to know all about these different things, but as a lay reader on this topic, it made the book slow going on my end.

The last couple chapters were fairly interesting though. As the pirates began to be hunted and tried across the Americas the interest perked up again. The catalog of takes became less and less and the story focused on those who tried to get away or those who didn't. The political intrigue between all the nations involved in the Caribbean is very interesting to read about as well and creates a pretty fascinating backdrop on how quickly a lot of the nations were trying to just get some kind of territory in the “New World”.

The name of the book sort of feels mistitled, because this really doesn't discuss any kind of “republic” set up by pirates. The closest you get is some discussion on places like Nassau, but for the most part this really serves as a general history of piracy in the Caribbean, not of any specific republic founded. Perhaps it's a nod toward the Pirates like Vane, who really wanted to wrest control of the region, but never really succeeded in doing so.

In the end, if you're looking for a deep account of the actual history behind the legendary Pirates like Calico Jack, Black Beard and so on, this is a great book. If you are really into that history I think you would even find the boring sections fascinating. Even though I gave this a mediocre rating, I am still rather glad I read the book... it just took me forever to complete it.

Like many reviewers before me I had a love and hate relationship with this book. My rating, realistically should be 2.5 stars rather than a full three. Part of me thinks the author intended to write a particular book and somehow wound up inserting a second book into this.

The major part of this book is built around scholarly research and touring around Europe looking for a trail of ancient documents that concern the historical figure of Vlad Dracul. This part of the book I simply loved. I loved the whole searching around musty libraries through old and ancient documents in different languages. When visiting these different countries, I did like that the author didn't pander to American audiences. She actually took the time to develop the need for interpreters etc. It usually drives me crazy when people visit foreign lands in very rural areas and everyone happens to speak English, especially since this book takes place in the mid-20th century. I feel like the need for interpreters made the book a little more realistic. I loved the vivid landscapes she painted of faraway lands and it was on par with historical non-fiction I've read. I think this was, by far, the most enjoyable for me. I truly do enjoy these kinds of books quite a bit. I realize that some readers may find this aspect obscenely boring, but I liked that scholarly level of detail that really brought me into those foreign nations.

Now, the part that I truly hated about this book was the underlying vampire story. It's almost as if Kostova submitted a story about scholars researching the historical Dracula and the publisher responded with “well, can you make the vampires actually real, they're very popular with readers today.” And based on that marketing ploy a “real” vampire story was inserted haphazardly into this book. If that's not what actually happened and she planned this all along, it is a terrible story. It pained me greatly when I read about these high-level scholars from Oxford University say “now, I don't really believe in vampires or their superstitions...” then they would proceed to wear crosses and use all kinds of garlic. This process would continue throughout the book even after they met a real vampire! It was almost mind-numbing at times. The real saving grace of this novel is the fact that I felt the real vampire story was a minor afterthought and does not consume that much of the real writing of the story or it's interest in history.

The real nail in the coffin for how terrible this story is has to do with the ending. The real motivation behind Dracula's attacks is one of the dumbest things I have ever read. Luckily, this only comes to fruition in the very last parts of the book, which means the majority of the book is satisfying to read overall.

In the end, I would much rather Kostova spend her efforts writing, perhaps, some type of historical fiction that is rooted more in reality. The supernatural does not seem to be something she writes well, it's as if her own belief that such things are preposterous wends its way into her pages. She just did not set up a convincing universe where vampires should exist in actuality. If she had just written a book about scholars researching the ancient mysteries of Dracula and cover-ups throughout the centuries due to superstition, this would have been a fine and excellent novel. Alas, we get some hackneyed vampire story amidst a beautiful backdrop.