Date Read: July 17th, 2021 Final Score: 9 / 10 ! | Whelp, I had to do SOMETHING book-related to Shark Week!! This is an excellent intro to the world of legitimate, detailed Shark Science. It's absolutely perfect for kids age 7 to ~14, and honestly it's even pretty for grown ups. Most people really only think of Great White Sharks when thinking of sharks, but they only comprise a tiny fraction of the worlds sharks (and they aren't even responsible for most of the fatalities they get blamed for ((yup, I'm looking at you, Bull Sharks))...). This graphic novel introduction really drags readers into developing a more nuanced understanding of sharks, both their incredible variation and their unique behaviors (including some of my favorites, like Lemons, Black Tip Reefs, Nurses, and Epaulettes). It has a simple story that really does well to work in a startling number of important shark-y factoids. It's a really good bit of exposure to the fact that sharks are Nature's Perfect Hunters without over-doing the scary bits. It does very well with showing that sharks all have individual personalities and are generally pretty shy and anxious creatures. I HIGHLY recommend it for anyone who is at all interested in learning a little bit more about our Oceans' most important Apex Predators!! |
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So, I've got another Star Wars Expanded Universe novel under my belt! I'm trying to keep a good balance going of Legends media to Canon media, so here's another story from the Legends array! I really, deeply enjoyed this one, definitely enough to recommend it with substantial enthusiasm!
The part I was most surprised about in this story was Thrawn's involvement. I think it was well rendered, even if there was a bit of a bait-and-switch about it where the reader really had no chance at figuring out the truth of the matter until Zahn only exposed it.
Though I have to admit I am SUPER confused at the repercussions of Thrawn's declared stance at the end of this one... Honestly, without the little bit right at the very end, like seriously the last 5 pages at most, I think it could be considered fully canon still. While I'm not exactly yet a model of Canon expertise, nothing about this story (at least while reading it without that last little assertion of Thrawn's place as a particularly significant figure in the Outer Rim) contradicts anything I've read/seen that's still considered Canon. I'm not really sure where Zahn was going to go with all that, but since it's now Legends it doesn't exactly matter any more, so I'm not counting that confusing-bit as a negative. What I didn't like about this story was only that it felt like a little exposition and then a GINORMOUS battle sequence. While the battle was epic and interesting, I would have liked just a little more post-battle follow-up. Mara Jade totes deserves to know her Troopers are alive. How exactly Han and Chewie got out of the Golan Battle Station and away without anyone in the rest of the battle even commenting on their presence beyond a brief 'oh, right, they're still up there and stuff', is something I would've liked to see more detail on... Along with exactly what supplies and new toys were successfully acquired by the Rebels in the aftermath. And then most importantly: the whole Nuso Esva schtick needs a bit more explanation (or really, a LOT more explanation)... This is why I mentioned earlier that this novel purportedly ends the Hand of Judgement duology... It doesn't END shit... Nuso Esva comes out of no where, proceeds to be awesomely interesting as he challenges Thrawn to a bout of War Games, and then vanishes into the Black as a problem to be Dealt With Later... Google says he dies 8 years after the Battle of Yavin IV, but then says not much else about him at all. I'm sure there's other media with him somewhere, but it really seems like a waste of a potentially interesting character (and potentially interesting character interactions) to just end. I love Thrawn and I think having some weird, hyper-competent Unknown Regions warlord regularly challenge him would be cool, so I at least HOPE there's more media with the pair of them competing against each other in it. And honestly, having the Hand of Judgement Trooper Crew working sporadically with Thrawn and Mara Jade to train Outer Rim Aliens to fight Nuso Esva? THAT sounds like bestseller material to me... Anywhoo~, the only other thing I disliked was the way Zahn did his chapters / PoV jumps, but as I think that's just a conversion error with the eBook version, I'm not holding that against him. I liked it better than Allegiance and I think it can be read well enough without the first one, so it's definitely becoming a staple-recommendation of mine for the Star Wars EU!
The story has developed complexity to the point of requiring multiple threads of storyline ongoing all at once, and it times out perfectly with the plot-device of teaching the protagonists the nuanced lesson of needing to delegate tasks to keep their heads above water. We're just at the edge of how complicated a book can before it gets too confusing, but perfectly well managed to help young audiences keep all the details straight. It's becoming a REALLY good transition into Young Adult and I absolutely love it!
I will DEFINITELY be picking up the next installment ASAP!
To the point that I've had to turn the power on it down because I'm too cold. And at anything less than half power, it's far quieter than the cicadas. When you can hear it, the noise fades pretty quickly into a low wave of white noise that your brain can just delete if it doesn't want to focus on it.
I will say that the allergy-busting HEPA filter aspect of it is less noticeably amazing, but part of that I feel is a) there's a limit to what magic can be worked when going outside frequently is a job requirement and I'm allergic to basically all of Outside (so it's somewhat difficult to tell what's native dust to the room and what I bring in) and b) it's likely something that will improve over the course of consistent running. And honestly, the 'it cools my living area' aspect is the one that just blew me out of the water, so that's the part my brain is most fixated on. It IS pricey, but I still HIGHLY recommend it.
I only have 2 complaints, and one is really only half a complaint:
Mainly, there was like zero comprehensive world building. This is the half-complaint because it was part of Gideon's character building. Gideon doesn't frickin care how the world functions. So she didn't really discuss it in her mental monologue. It was great, even as it got a bit annoying/confusing towards the very end. The only other piece of complaint I've got is that the final fight scene was excessive. It was just too long and too over the top to really play well with the pacing of the rest of it. I do understand why the choice to make it that way was made, but I disagree and I dislike the outcome of the final rendering. I would've shortened it by a few pages. Nothing too drastic, but it just got long ... Otherwise, this is probably the best book I've read thus far this year! And it's a GREAT transition for readers in Upper YA who are thinking about jumping into the mixed-bag of adult-SciFi!
While I am still waiting for the hoverboard Back to the Future promised me, I have a much better understanding why such promises seemed plausible back then and yet so impossible now: our future-tech revolution struck the wrong vein of development:
The advent of transistors made power usage slightly more effective, but it changed everything in terms data movement and processing. I'd known that on a logical level, but I hadn't quite realized how focused the previous generation's gaze was on energy-related tech-developments until Kakalios linked aspects of futurist projections to both the cutting edge of 50's science culture, and to the pop-culture creations that came out of each new 50's science revelation. (I always knew it made sense to them, but this IS the generation who flung 3 people at the moon in a gold-covered toaster with less digital processing power than the watch I had in middle school, soooooo... 'sense' has always been something I took with a few hearty grains of salt). Kakalios breaks everything down into understandable, bite-sized pieces, relates those pieces to both a pop-culture event and a scientific development, explains the math that describes the concept, and creates a coherent, over-arching narrative about how these concepts have both literally built and conceptually inspired our modern world. Overall, it's an extremely well done, fantastically well researched, and deeply informative pieces of physics non-fiction that was also delightfully entertaining. Now, I may be biased towards favoring it because I am the super geek that was glued to the History Channel and the Science Channel, watching Michio Kaku and Brian Greene discuss the physics of the impossible and taking viewers on a tour of the universe instead of watching Spongebob (which I STILL don't understand the appeal of) or whatever else was on Nickelodeon, but that doesn't really mean I had too much of a leg up in the science-understanding aspect, here. The thing about Quantum Mechanics, and about math & modern physics in general, is that it's NOT easily observable, relatable stuff. In the same way as being given a random chapter in a book is not really going to illuminate the story for you, even if its a book you've read before, unless you're VERY familiar with the context, you'll need a little help exploring it. While I have read the metaphorical 'Quantum Mechanics book' before, but like only once and way back in high school, so I can be pretty confident in saying that anyone totally unfamiliar with the topic will still get a huge boost of in-depth understanding out of this. I HIGHLY recommend it! Kakalios truly presents a FANTASTIC in-roads to this entire realm of study! (And, of course, I also recommend that everyone explore a little of the Quantum Physics realm, simply because of how critically important it is to the making and maintenance of our modern world!)
This story also goes into spycraft with excellent accuracy in regards to how it affects the psychologies of everyone involved, as well as looking at how effective / ineffective it can be (and how a lot of how things pan out, whether for better or worse, is usually less to do with intentional action and more to do with relentless effort to keep the story spinning). It really got into the nitty gritty of it with exceptional clarity being given to the moral quandaries that come hand in hand with doing bad things for a good cause. The one thing that DID bother me a little is almost negligible: it was simply how they kept referring to Nikolai as 'Highness'. It's a thing I had noticed in King of Scars, but he was such a new king I felt it was ignorable, but by this point he should be solidly established as a 'Majesty'... Though I have seen it translated as such in some Russian lit, so maybe it's a Russian thing I'm not familiar with (I has simply assumed that the address translated strangely). Idk. Anyway, plot-wise, the story developed with some EXCELLENT twists and turns that I was not expecting and yet fit within the narrative as part of a perfectly natural evolution. This one improved upon King of Scars by validating some of the boring bits in that novel without laboriously lingering over the rationales, it simply employed the results of what happened then into a present moment (with just enough recap to keep a reader up to speed, but not so much that the time it took to read the pervious installment felt wasted). The character development was also top notch. The admissions that anger comes from fear, that guilt is just a need for control, and that love and friendship are not things that can be affected by rationality or attempted decision-making are all wonderful and expose themselves within each and every character individually. Every character has a distinct arc of development that carries them through the motions of the main plot as a slap-dash combination of their individual stories. Zoya's development, in particular, was fantastic. I never really liked her until this one. I stopped disliking her in King of Scars but WOW did she blossom into someone awesome here (I think she's now in my top 3 of character faves for the whole series). Honestly, Zoya's development in this is just so far beyond exceptional that it truly makes this book a marvel. I know that it's a bit unfair to judge books on a comparative basis, but I just have to point out that Zoya's handling in this book is about 50 billion times more elegant and well-crafted than Nesta's handling in A Court of Silver Flames (which is a review I'll have up in full next week). Zoya and Nesta are both extremely angry characters with razor sharp edges and anger issues that bubble up to cover feelings of inadequacy and a soul-deep fear of pain and loss. They're both grieving lives they used to know, and suffering through a crude and unpleasant adjustment to living with trauma. From their similiar circumstances, they require similar methods to help them heal. Nesta's story follows a perfect guideline of How NOT to Handle a Person with PTSD, and is frankly 700 pages of dangerously irresponsible drivel (that doesn't work) and it wraps up in a last 200 pages with a shorthand version of what happened to help Zoya start to heal scrunched up awkwardly at the end like Maas got yelled at by a psychologist. Meanwhile Zoya's journey takes place at an even-keeled pace across the entire (much more succinct novel) and it starts right from the beginning with addressing what is healthy vs unhealthy in terms of coping mechanisms -- all while dealing with protagonists who are younger (and therefore more entitled to handle things poorly). Bargudo does an EXCELLENT job and that fact has certainly catapulted this book into my top 25 of all time! Over all, it was extremely well done. I will say that it was not quite life-changing, which several of Bardugo's books have been, but it was definitely one for the top 25 I've read ever, and top 10 for having read in the last decade (or rather it's the one to kick off the new list for this new decade). I am VERY excited about where this is going to lead the Grisha Verse as the series continues to develop!
Still, I do absolutely LOVE this one and highly recommend it to all audiences!
Only August had any actual problems to deal with but the bulk of the narrative was focused on the two girls who had no real problems whatsoever. And the ending resolved with August's dad swooping into to fix things for him, and his joining the girls in realizing that none of them had any real problems to begin with... The inevitable thing was simply the obvious arrangement that ensured that none of them ever had to deal with any repercussions of a problem that was never really significant anyway.
As a thought experiment, it was kind of neat. As a story? It was pretty lame. I'd only ever recommend it as a low-stakes beach-read / distraction type endeavor with which to while away an afternoon.
Allegiance is classified as Legends, which means it's no longer Canon, which had me wary because it's hard enough to keep track of Canon in a franchise this big even when it's consistent and experienced in the proper order, but I've never been good about Star Wars and proper order... (Like at all, the first Star Wars movie I watched while actually caring enough to know its place in any given rendering of the timeline was Rogue One...). But *shrugs*. Now, I'm diving in with lead weights in my boots, same way I did a few years ago with the DCU.
This one is set about six months after the Death Star blows up at the end of Episode IV, and it aptly has a dash of Luke, & Leia, & Han Solo being involved with the plot. Too much for my tastes, honestly, but I can understand why they're present. The examination of the Stormtrooper's complicated loyalties was AWESOME. I definitely loved it and I deeply enjoyed how their story played out. I would've liked just a little bit more of the wavering and waffling sort of angst that comes with the concept of committing treason to avoid breaking an oath to serve and protect, but there was enough to placate me. Mara Jade's story had the best balance of internal-narrative spent on defining views and current loyalties, but her story was a bit less compelling because nothing in it actually mattered until she actually got involved with the Troopers. Over all, I definitely enjoyed it. The head-hopping style of the narrative felt rather dated, but considering this was written in 2007, and written specifically to fit the feel of other Rebellion Era lit, most of which was published in the 80's & 90's, it wasn't too unbearable (even if it was a bit jarring). I will definitely be picking up the next one in Zahn's Hand of Judgement duology at some point, and I'll certainly be picking up a lot of other Star Wars Expanded Universe media! |
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