Kyle Erickson
A fine collection of short stories, I didn't like it more than the previous collection but none of them were bad. I just like this series more when in full novel form, I guess. The narrator for this series (first time trying audio) was also awful. I have the next book on audio as well, but after that I'm switching back to paper.
The hype for Murderbot really got me off on the wrong foot with this series. I never disliked it, but after All Systems Red, I was just flabbergasted why it was so popular. My 3 star rating for that one is probably unfair; I will maybe increase it on a re-read. Each novella was amusing and interesting, but never had enough substance to fully get me on board.
This one, by itself, didn't either, although it was better. But this one is easily the best of the four novellas because it incorporates elements of the previous novellas more and it seems like the emotional crux of a four book arc. It's also the only one of the four to make me fully laugh out loud, although the other three all made me smirk and chuckle several times.
Perhaps I just crave more from each installment of Murderbot. If so, I should look no further, because the age of the Novella is over. The time of the Full-Novel has begun!
Nothing about this book is bad, but the book doesn't really justify its existence whatsoever. Cheney is actually a fairly good writer, but all of this material has been poured over by much more thorough and/or engaging individuals, and it doesn't really leave any mark on why it should have been written. The fact that four of our first five Presidents all came from Virginia is interesting, and you can do something with it, but Cheney doesn't.
This is my paraphrased version of this book, summed up in one sentence:
“So then there was good ol' George Washington, who was from VIRGINIA, and he also knew VIRGINIAN Thomas Jefferson-By the way, fellow guy from VIRGINIA, James Madison was friends with Jefferson, and all the way from VIRGINIA, James Monroe was hanging out, too.”
This was an intriguing first look into Daniel Greene's new world.
The idea to start with novellas and work upwards was smart. I can definitely tell it's Greene's first publication, some of the characterizations are cliche (how uncliched can you get in 100 pages, though?) and a few phrases he used felt a bit...amateurish, but overall the writing was engaging on all fronts.
Novellas don't tend to work for me, because they usually don't have the straight up succinctness of a good short story, and they're too brief to really dive into the story. . The ending was really good and I'm looking forward to the next one!
The first half of this book was much slower and less engaging than Never Die, but it more than made up for it with an electrifying second half. The last third, in particular, paid off so much characterization and set up. I didn't want to pick up a sequel for Never Die immediately; that felt like a contained story. But even though I know the third Mortal Technique book will be another pseudo-sequel, I'm very excited to read it.
The one thing I would change about this series is that everyone is CONSTANTLY referred to by their hero name, and it's silly as hell. This is entirely subjective, but I just imagine actual human beings only referring to other human beings as The Art of War, The Ticking Clock, The Laws of Hope (the worst offender, by far), The Roaring Tiger, The Falling Moon...I understand it's a style thing, but for my personal tastes, I think it would be much better if they were only occasionally called those names. Like how Sun Jian was sometimes called The Tiger of Jiang Dong and Sun Ce was sometimes called The Little Conquerer. (I know Three Kingdoms was a big influence on Rob Hayes for this series).
I gave this book five stars because I enjoyed it a lot, but I do have one major criticism of the story itself. Without getting into spoilers, the main character of this book is dealing with the fallout from the previous book (it is still a stand-alone though, all relevant info is relayed quickly) and I absolutely DO NOT buy the consequences from the MC's actions in Never Die leading to where they are and what issues they're dealing with in Pawn's Gambit. I kept trying to just ignore this, but it was brought up so many times, and was critical to the middle sections of this book. No matter how hard I tried, this bothered me. I do not believe the characters in the world would treat this character the way they do. It's nonsensical to me and because of that, the middle section of this book suffered a tad.
All in all, another quick and engaging read for this series. I'll probably hop over to one of Hayes' other series in the meantime and see how they hold up to Mortal Techniques.
I didn't have high expectations for this memoir, because most celebrity memoirs are, “huh, cool, moving on” and that's it. This memoir is a different breed entirely. Gabriel Byrne's writing style is very literary, his prose is gorgeous. He turns mundane ruminations and unnoteworthy events into something thought provoking. Sometimes melancholy, sometimes funny, sometimes inspiring, his Irish background is evident the whole way through and the entire thing feels like he's just sitting down telling you some stories.
That said, there were some negatives for me. First is the writing style itself. I'm not sure if the ARC had it formatted strangely or if its authorial intent but the constant paragraph breaks at odd parts took me out of the story he was telling, and I'm personally not a fan of having dialogue in anything besides quotations, call me what you will. Signaling dialogue with a dash just doesn't work for me at all. Tying into this was the nonlinear fashion he wrote this in. Nonlinear writing is fine, but most of the time he would be telling a story from childhood, and then be talk about something 25 years later with almost no context clues. I'm sure he had his reasons, but I want to get lost in his wonderful writing, not spend extra time trying to figure out how this relates to the previous paragraph temporally.
Overall, enjoyable. I think I may pick up the audiobook soon so I can enjoy the incredible turns of phrase and lyrical sensibilities that Byrne has, without having to deal with looking at his style.
Thanks to Net Galley and the Publisher for the free copy in exchange for an honest review!
I really wanted to like this book, but it fell short quite a bit and I honestly wonder why it was turned into a book, because it really feels like a bunch of journal entries.
Firstly, I feel manipulated by the author tying this book so clearly to Lost and getting a bunch of the actors from Lost to promote her book. It was the reason I wanted to check this out, and while I knew it would be a more personal memoir and not Lost-centric, I thought it would atleast have some behind the scenes stuff occasionally. Unfortunately, there is nothing. Instead, she just kept pointing out scenes from Lost that mirrored how she felt. It felt extremely ham-fisted to me.
But on the non-Lost front, I also struggled with this memoir because, while the author is dealing with depression and depression is hard and different for everyone, she does not come across as very likeable at any point (and I say that as someone who was depressed for 10 years) and her reasons for falling into depression-‘I want to be famous and I'm not, instead my husband is'- is just very shallow and her reactions to her kids/husband's behaviors are usually quite rude and self-centered.
The problem is, at the end of the book she reaches some sort of clarity, but it is set 11 years ago. I feel that she could have included some more current insights into why she was acting that way, or how she feels now. Another squandered aspect is that part of her depression is due to the unrealistic criteria put on actresses and the constant doubt and ridicule they are put through, and I think this isn't really dived into but is just briefly mentioned as reasons why she's insecure.
Ultimately, this book was a whole lot of almost interesting. I'd probably have given it 3 stars if it didn't pimp the tenuous Lost connection so hard.
Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I originally gave this book four stars when I first finished it and forgot to review it. That was maybe 7 weeks ago? I liked the book a lot, but felt it was too short, and I enjoy sitting with characters/story a bit more than this book provides. There are a few moments of pause, but mostly, this book is plot fuelled the entire time. So I docked a star because of that.
But since I finished it, I've thought about it a fair amount. I've recommended it to two friends who were looking for a short, great read. There are a few scenes that are still very vividly painted in my mind.
So I'm bumping it up to what it deserves, a 5 star. Perhaps any longer with this story would have been a detraction, who knows. Leave them wanting more and all that. But when I'm reading 20ish books a month, and I'm still thinking about a book I read two months ago with nothing but positivity, it deserves five stars.
The characters in this are great. The action is great. The ending is great. Go read this book!
Me reading this book- “okay, people say this book is pretty dark, but it doesn't seem all that bad to me.”
Me getting halfway through- “Are people just like, making up how dark this is? Or are they wimps? The themes are dark, sure, but the writing itself-“
Hits chapter 21
Oh. Oh god...
I was certainly familiar with WHAT the Rape of Nanjing was, but I had never read any details, despite Iris Chang's book sitting on my shelf. The horrifying nature of what really happened as a backdrop to the situation in the book makes it all the more gruesome- this isn't a Saw movie, where it's gross but you know it's fictional. The things described were commited by real people, at real places (Judge Judy) less than 100 years ago. It really affected me. After reading the chapter, I immediately went and researched the actual event, and spent the rest of the night in a huge funk.
But that's not the whole novel, obviously! Overall, I really enjoyed this book a lot. Rin is a complex character to the point where, at the end of the book, I both totally understand her and completely disagree with her, while rooting for her and also wishing for someone to slap her pretty hard. That is an incredibly difficult balance to pull off. The supporting cast are all good, and I'm looking forward to them being fleshed out more in the sequels.
This is only a four star rating to me because it's Kuang's first book and she wrote it as a teenager, and unfortunately it shows in places. Some of the dialogue is clunky, and some plot points seem forced to me. This is nothing immersion breaking, but I did notice it. She also has a tendency to fake out deaths too much. Part of it is meta knowledge because she released short stories about a character that are set after this book and that character is “dead”, so clearly they aren't. There's also another character death where I don't know if that character is actually dead or not, but the conditions of their death make me pretty sure they're not. Maybe the second book will prove me wrong.
Anyway, those are minor concerns. Everyone says the next books are better, which makes sense. Kuang has established a world and her characters, and their conflicts. I can only imagine she will continue to grow as a writer as the trilogy progresses and I look forward to continuing!
Edit: After letting this sit with me for a few days, I've bumped it up to a 5 star. This book impresses me the more I think about it, especially considering the Kuang's age, that it deserves 5 stars even for some minor problems.
This book is well written and a thorough account of a well-lived life. Unfortunately it gets only three stars from me for entirely subjective reasons. Firstly, I found Cicely most unlikeable. Even when I agreed with her, I usually thought she was going about whatever situation in an irritating/stubborn manner, but her life circumstances were just so utterly different from mine that I can't fault her for that, but it affected the narrative.
And the amount of supposed divine intervention knocked this down an entire star for me. Look, some people are religious, and I get it. I've read religious memoirs before. They usually don't bother me. But EVERYTHING is some sort of Godly intervention to keep Cicely on the path of the Good and her supposed psychic powers just continously grated me. I literally rolled my eyes when Miles Davis dies and she leaves a salon and falls in the street and still thinks, 30 years after his death, that Miles's spirit was trying to kill her and that God intervened just in time to stop him. It was just too much. I understand that a woman born in the 1920s is pretty likely to be deeply religious, but I've always found this element of religion to be ridiculously self-righteous. Couldn't you, with 30 years of hindsight, realized that you probably just fell in the street because you were shocked and upset at his death?
All in all, most people will really enjoy this, it is a very in-depth look at her life and some of the social issues of her time. Subjectively though I just could not get into it at times. One last criticism, she has glowing praise for Bill Cosby for this entire book, and never once mentions what happens to him, but mentions way more recent things like Breonna Taylor and George Floyd? This just seems very strange to me; even a brief sentence about Cosby would have been sufficient, no need to dwell.
How could you give this anything besides 5 stars? I expected to be mildly entertained during the few pages I'd dip into every few days. What I got was the entire breadth of the human experience. Sometimes profound, sometimes heartwarming, sometimes funny, sometimes thought provoking, sometimes sad. This book was a labour of love to the human race.
Reread-
This book is fine. It's fine! I don't really get why some people swear by this book. I'm glad for them but most of it was just barely interesting. I'm glad I reread because it did confirm to me that Butcher did not somehow inflict me with Stockholm Syndrome over the course of many books. They really do just get much, much better in every way.
I did enjoy this book more this time, if only because I didn't realize how many important characters, organizations, or concepts are introduced in it the first time. Michael, Thomas, Justine, the red court, Leah...the list goes on. But it's still Butcher-in-Training writing these characters. Michael might be one of my favorite characters in fiction, but in this book he's just a beta version of the real deal.
Also yes this book's male gaze is just insufferable.
I thought Ready Player One was the worst thing I'd ever read.
This book poised an intense philosophical question: what could be worse than the worst thing you could imagine? The answer is to take every bad thing from the original, dial it up to 11, and eliminate any possible element of enjoying the character you're reading about. This book is a war crime, and the battlefield is the brains of young adults. This book is an iceberg floating in the Atlantic and my brain was the Titanic. As I listened to this book, my brain cells were the doomed passengers that resorted to throwing themselves off the edge of the ship, hoping against hope that the freezing cold of the abyss would bring the sweet embrace of death just a few moments quicker.
Here is an actual sentence from this book:
“New applications for ONI continued to reveal themselves. For example, it became fashionable for new mothers to make ONI recordings while they were birthing their child so that in a couple decades, that child would be able to play back that recording and experience what it was like giving birth...to themselves.”
Read that sentence one more time. That is in a published book. I want you to really imagine the journey that sentence had to go on in order to make it from Ernest Cline's thoughts to your eyes. First he had to think that sentence was worth writing. Then he had to not cut it during whatever rudimentary editing process this man has (none??). Then he had to show this book to, at the very least, several people- his agent, his publisher, his editor (his editor is a fictional character, I've decided, because evidence indicates they couldn't actually exist, but bare with me). Then all of these people had to read this sentence and go, “Yep, that deserves to assault the eyes and ears of unsuspecting good Samaritans across the globe”. Then this book had to go out to advance reviewers. And these guys are the true heroes, because they weren't even contractually obligated to read this pile of crap. Upon reading this sentence, they should have returned their copies with a nice sticky note that said, “Nope, nope, nope”. But alas, they didn't and so now here we are. I truly don't understand. Does Cline not have a mother? A friend? Could he not have wondered to himself, “Is this something I would want? That anybody would want?”.
I digress. I'm picking on this sentence because it was so revoltingly strange that I wrote it down. I normally don't do that for audiobooks, because it involves having to backtrack several times. That's how bad it was. I was determined to make sure I captured the suffering accurately. But this level of criticism could be applied to almost any sentence in the book, they're all dumb. The amount of references in this book is seemingly doubled from the dizzying amount of references in the first one. The sheer unlikeably and creepiness of the main character is so questionable, I would have assumed it was intentional and that Cline was going to do a redemption arc, but I couldn't wait around to see. I DNF this book, much to my chagrin. Understand that I made it 46 minutes into the movie Cats, so I have quite the tolerance for pain. But this book was not even fun to hate. Anyway, I checked, and nope, no redemption arc, everyone just loves Wade even though he is LITERALLY the villain of this story. Take this quote:
“Now that my avatar worn the robes of Anarak, I was both Omnipotent and invulnerable, so there was literally nothing anybody could do to stop me. I gleefully zeroed out hundreds of trolls in this fashion. If someone talked shit about me, I found them and killed their avatar. If someone posted something hateful about Artemis, I found them and killed their avatar. If someone posted a racist meme about H or a video attacking Shoto's work, I found them and killed their avatar. Usually right after asking them the rhetorical question, ‘who run Bartertown?'”
You know in Titanic, when the ship is about to break in half, and that Evil Butler is standing in the middle and then the ship cracks open and he falls in? That was the neuron that was forcing me to continue reading this book, and he fell into the ruined carapace of my dying brain as I read this sentence. That is our HERO, folks. He never repents. He never compensates. He never faces consequences. He is our Ernest Cline insertion character, and he is infallible.
Skip this book, unless you like pain.
This book was okay...I was a little put off by the title not being at all what the book was about, but I got over it. It's basically a short history of the Beatles, intercut with Lennon's killer and why he did what he did. Somewhat engaging but I imagine if you're already passing familiar with the Beatles history, you can skip this.
The style of this book was more engaging than I thought it would be going into it. I've never read a novel that was told exclusively through journals and letters. The characters and their slow unravelling of exactly what was happening to them was very well done. Stephen King's Salem's Lot was one of my all time favorite books growing up, and made me fall in love with the horror genre. It's nice to see the original inspiration and the various parallels between the two stories. Definitely the best of the “classic” horror books I've read.
I absolutely adored this entire collection. I was already a huge fan of Liu because of The Grace of Kings, but this collection has made me a fan for life.
The first story is the only one that failed to really resonate with me; I appreciated the abstract nature and creativity of it, but it didn't do anything for me.
But everything else...man. Buckle up. Ken Liu is so wildly inventive and thought provoking. He enables you to consider deep concepts or relatively unknown pieces of history or culture. One of the major recurring themes are memories and storytelling and how these shape us into who we are and who we want to be.
Some of my favorite stories were “State Change”, about a girl whose soul is an ice cube; “Good Hunting”, a cyberpunk inspired story about magic fading and changing in a tech world; “The Literomacer”, about a young American girl whose family moved to Taiwan; “All The Favors”, a story about Chinese immigrants in Idaho and retelling the (mythological version)story of Guan Yu and his sworn brothers; “The Paper Menagerie”, a true masterpiece of short fiction about a second generation Chinese boy whose mother brings toy animals to life; and the final story, “The End of History”, which is completely harrowing and incredible. The End of History is the first time a short story made me pause half way through because it was just so intense. But it's worth it, and it brings the story of Unit 731 into more awareness.
I'm gushing about this short story collection even now. I had thought that I had stopped loving short stories, but it turns out that I just needed to find some more than engaged me. Excited to read Liu's other short stories after this!
This is a harrowing, thorough book. I would have given it 5 stars, except at parts I felt that the HBO series that used this book as inspiration did a better job of getting across just how much of a disaster this was on an emotional level. I can't fault for the book for this, obviously, but since I watched the show first, it impacted my read.
The main take-aways I got from this book is how ineptitude spreads from the top down, and how people scrambling to cover their own asses can result in horrible things for the rest of us. One thing this book did very well was document how the survivors carried on, as well as how impossible the clean-up process was and how all of this effected the psychology of the U.S.S.R. and the citizens themselves.
This was my first in the series as I got the middle few books at a second hand shop, but not the beginning few books. So I was dropped in head first.
And I really liked it! So much of the ancient Rome books focus on military history, I like that this series focuses more on the politics and city life and the concerns of the ordinary citizens. I really liked Gordianus and his adopted son Eco. I enjoyed how the series takes real events that happened in history (in this book's case, the death of Clodius) and uses that to interweave a compelling story. I enjoyed the depictions of Cicero and Tiro, as well. There are a few historical figures that pop up that you can probably guess, but I won't mention them.
The only downside of the book I felt was the pacing. If it had been 30-50 pages shorter, it would have been much tighter. I imagine Saylor was trying to get across just how hectic the civil unrest of Rome at this period felt like, but parts of the middle dragged a bit.
I'm excited to continue with this series, and see what happens with Gordianus and Eco!
I like Atul Gawande, and so I probably gave this one more leeway than I would have otherwise. I think Gawande has a good premise and he did a good job convincing me of that hypothesis, I just don't know that the book justified itself overall. But Gawande is a decent writer and did make me think about some things and bring awareness to just how easy it is for people to forget asinine or everyday things. I'll definitely consider using checklists more often, although thankfully there are no lives on the line if I don't do so.
Man, I really thought I would enjoy this story. But every single thing about it bored me; I could not find a single route into it that would make me interested. I recognize it's a product of its time and that it influenced a lot of sci-fi, but I guess my tastes in the sci-fi genre have moved past this story. I wouldn't dismiss anybody for enjoying this novella more than I did, but definitely did not work for me.
DNF. Drivel. I enjoy Pressfield's fiction writing, and am willing to give his other non fiction a chance after some distance from this one, but this one seems like he had a book deadline and hadn't written anything, so he took some Adderall and cranked this bad boy out in one night, and then never looked back. The book can be summed up with, “hey, get your shit done, because I said so.”
This book was hard to rate. It is not without its value; there are many white people who would read this and not be familiar with some of the things addressed and there are many of us that NEED our bullshit to be called on. I'm sure I do, too. But based on my arbitrary rating method- “two stars=I struggled to finish/wouldn't recommend”...two stars it is.
The author uses ALOT of ancedotal evidence, which while isn't ideal, could still illustrate her point, but most of her ancedotal evidence involves her detailing a white person screaming/crying at her for calling them on their racism, and always has an air of “I am one of the GOOD whites” smugness about it. Then she generalizes that experience into how all white people react to any criticism. White people: incapable of handling criticism. A tad ironic. She also doesn't seem to understand how human psychology works-it seems she tries to purposefully get the white person (and indeed, the white audience) on the defensive because being defensive makes one “question their beliefs”. It can, sure. But often it just makes them reinforce whatever belief they're holding, because it makes you “the enemy” and “the enemy” can't be “right”. It's faulty logic, but people are faulty, and so it's much more effective to engage them while understanding that. It's a hard line to walk, though. White people have been operating on such an ignorant brainwave for so long that we need and deserve to be wrenched out of our comfort zones. So I don't know where the line is between hindering your cause or educating the masses that have refused to see how their actions effect others. But her examples didn't strike me as particularly productive.
And on any subject, dismissing any criticism against what you're saying as “but then you're ___” is a disengenous way of engaging. I'm sure there are a vast amount of ways in which the default answers that white people give about why they are not racist is inadequate or facilitating the systems that hold racism in place. But dismissing literally any person that tries to discuss with you as “ah, but that's racist” is just a poor way of going about your business. But I guess that makes me racist. Le sigh.
I will say that I appreciate the hard position the author has to walk with this book. Trying to educate without seeming like virtue signaling. Trying to relay the black experience while being white, trying not to be labeled a “white savior” while also trying to engage in what I hope was good faith.
Overall, I think the book offers a starting point but there are a plethora of books from POC authors that have much more value.
Okay, here goes:
I read this book last year and gave it two stars. One star for the book, and one star for Will Wheaton managing to make it sound semi-interesting on audio. Then recently I stumbled across a podcast called “372 Pages I'll Never Get Back”, where the hosts read this book chapter by chapter and discuss all the nonsense. It made me realize the book is actually a zero and Wil Wheaton's narration bumps it up to one. It also inspired me to write a review, because the rating on this book is staggering.
This is the worst book I've ever read. I struggle to comprehend a book that could be worse. The characters suck, the story sucks, the background of the world makes no sense, it's...you know what? Just assume everything is negative. The thing that grated me the absolutely most though is this 17 year old kid that is evidently some sort of unspoken time-lord that, every few pages, has entire lists of things he has memorized, watched every episode of 50 times, read the entire bibliography of an author multiple times, memorized every word of a band's discography, all while playing video games “16 hours a day” and, later, “working ten hours a day”. Even the most lazy, haphazard math would render all this impossible. I can accept stupid- I've liked greater than zero Transformers movies. But some things are just too stupid.
And lots of people like this book, and fine, I don't get it, but people are allowed to like whatever they want. But you really shouldn't. This book seems to be written for nerdy gamer kids, and yet as a nerdy gamer who was once a kid, I find the whole thing outrageous. It's almost offensive to gamers, nerds, maybe even to kids. It's like a 13 year old just wrote some shit in two days and immediately published it. Where was an editor for this book? What could an editor possibly have taken out of this book to improve it? I would really like to know.
I don't mean to be a hater. I specifically didn't write a review of this book originally because I knew I would foam at the mouth just thinking of all the “classic” references to “classic” nerd stuff and how fucking cool this book is. So gnarly. So classic.
But this book is just too well received to remain silent. If you liked it, great, all the better for you. I only wish I could be right there with you, that the idea of this book didn't send me on an immediate Google search for ways to self-lobotomize. I'd like to meet Ernest Cline and just ask him a bunch of questions, starting with “How dare you?” And ending with “This is a big joke, right?”. Then I'd give him a big handshake for somehow gaming the system and making millions off this and his love for video games. Because no matter how bad I think this book is, no matter how much I want to bathe my eyeballs (ears?) in gasoline and strike up a match, Ernest Cline is an inspiration to us all that your dreams really can come true.
The other books in this series I have really enjoyed. However, this book was written many years later and it shows. The continuation of the story presented in the first four books is non-existent, save for the historical basis. The timeline makes no sense and is jarring if you've read the books close together. For example, Octavian is 20 years old- yet he's been with Caesar's armies since the third book, in Gaul. Not possible, but okay, I can accept a crunched timeline. But this book specifically mentions the Gaul campaign took place decades ago-at one point, Mark Antony mentions that the soldiers who fought in that war had become old.
Secondly, all supporting characters from the series have been dropped, besides Mark Antony, Suetonius, and weirdly, Biblius who was a very minor character in the second book. Domitius, Ciro, and Regulus- Caesar's generals since the second book, are completely gone. They've demostrated their loyalty to Caesar dozens of times. One of Caesar's oldest advisors dies to save Domitius. Octavian had a relationship with all of them, especially Domitius, and Brutus had a very layered relationship with Domitius as well, and yet none of these characters are even mentioned. Alexandra, who had a complex history with both Caesar and Brutus for four books, and helped raised Octavian, is never mentioned. Octavian's mother Atia is never mentioned.
Cicero is not mentioned. Cicero's death-being added to the list of people to die by Mark Antony- is not mentioned, despite the historical conversation where Octavian argued with Antony for TWO DAYS over Cicero being included in the list happening in this novel. Cicero has been a character in the series since the very beginning, the conversation where the two lead characters decide if he should live or die happens, and yet the character is not mentioned. I couldn't believe this.
Besides all this, the book just felt rushed. A lot of buildup to settle the disputes very quickly. Brutus and Octavian both feel like different characters from the novels previous. This might have been a 3-3.5 star book if it had been a standalone, but as a continuation of a series, it was garbage. Igguldenson, whom I love otherwise, seemed ready to breeze through this one.
