Jason Cox

The main purpose of this book is to introduce the reader to the fact that so many times we give people credit for success, we are doing so in error and they have just been the beneficiary of random luck. It's important to note that we all do this ourselves as well and if we don't recognize the truth, we leave ourselves open to risk that we don't even see because we assume better of ourselves than we really should be.

That was all quite excellent.

I was a bit surprised by Taleb's repeated praising of George Soros throughout the book. It didn't really seem tied in to the main theme very well and really seemed to come out of (far) left field. As I read through the remainder of Incerto, maybe the connection will become clearer to me.

While this isn't the official ending of the Ender saga, I think it serves as a pretty reasonable practical ending.

A couple of years ago, I re-read Ender's Game followed by Speaker for the Dead and then right on to Xenocide, all of which were pretty fantastic. I originally started CotM at that time, but just couldn't get into it, making it about 20% of the way in before setting it aside. This time I got the audiobook (first Ender book I've listened in audio format) and I think that really helped. TBH, I also “cheated” and read the summary on wikipedia. In the previous novels, Peter was always a very hated character for me, so him being featured prominently (though not really!) is what I think kept me from getting into it previously. That's where the summary helped me conceptually, because I was better oriented to what was going on.

That said, this is a pretty good story that resolves the main story line that occurs starting in SftD and continues in Xenocide, ending that book in something of a cliff-hanger

-At the end of Xenocide, the Starways Congress has decided the Descolada virus is such a threat to all of humanity that even quarantine isn't sufficient to mitigate the risk, so they order the star fleet to destroy the planet with the Mini-Doctor device. Simultaneously, they have discovered the existence of Jane and see her not as another sentient species, but as a malicious virus/threat infecting their systems, so they secretly enact a plan to shut down the ansible network upon which she exists as her neural network.This book covers:a. How the xenobiologists on Lusitania create an antidote to the descolada virus, which involves extreme manipulation of space/timeb. That has a side effect of allowing instantaneous interstellar travelc. It has another side effect that ends up in Ender being split into 3 bodies and a few other side effects as well.d. There are several missions relating to 2 major objectives: getting Starways Congress to rescind their order; finding habitable planets to evacuate the species and residents of Lusitaniae. Finally, there's a little side-shoot discussing how Jane might be saved.Personally, I felt it was a satisfying conclusion to this series. I don't feel a great desire to get into the 5th book and reviews on that one aren't stellar (pun-intended). However, I enjoy the series well enough to look into Bean's "Shadow" series, so that will likely be tackled before too long. I understand the 2 series "come together" in the 5th book, so maybe I'll tackle it then.

This was a pretty fun read, which felt a lot like a Jack Reacher novel or something similar. Characters were OK with believable decision-making.
The story premise was interesting: it's the near future and certain genetic engineering has come of age, but has already had unintended consequences, with a gene mod intended to kill mosquitos leading to a worldwide famine and significant human die-off. The gene scientist who designed and released the fateful mod was the protagonist's mother and he bore the brunt of punishment for the incident but now works for an agency fighting against rogue genetic engineering groups to prevent future similar mistakes.

That's the set-up, and from there, it's essentially a thriller that is fun. but not overly deep.

Re-reading this for the first time in 20+ years. It was great! Brin has a fantastic way of weaving anthropology into his science fiction in a way that makes for super interesting characters and situations you just don't see elsewhere.

The Uplift War takes place in the timeframe immediately after Startide Rising and details a conflict between (mostly) the Neo-Chimpanzees (and a few individual humans and Tymbrimi) and the Gubru who have laid siege to the planet Garth, which is a new Chimpanzee lease world with a huge recovery effort necessary to redeem it from previous mismanagement and ecologic disaster.

Enjoyable and pretty fast-moving follow up to the Paper Magician by Holmberg. In this one, the protagonist picks up in her 2nd year of training and again becomes embroiled in a crazy series of events resulting from the aftermath of the previous book (trying to avoid spoilers here!). These two books are close enough that it could have been a single volume, honestly. And that's a good thing. The romantic head-talk is a bit much (for a guy), but honestly, that's the only detractor to this one, and is likely something specific to me. Definitely will be following up with the 3rd in the series before long.