Nickolas Landry

Don't read it, listen to the Audible teleplay

Revisado: 02-23-23

To appreciate this book, you have to first remember that it's based on a comic book series and original character, taken from the Disney-era Darth Vader series. Just like in comic books, the characters are exaggerated, the humor is over the top, the situations are highly cinematic, and the pacing fast and unapologetic.

Second, dont read it. Listen to the audiobook, narrated by a full cast. The book in fact reads like a screenplay, with very little to no descriptions, just scenes and dialogues. Reading the "book" feels flat as you probably won't be able to conjure the right tone for the characters. The voice acting is top notch, especially Emily Woo Zeller in the role of the flamboyant Doctor Aphra.

As for the story, there's interesting elements here, namely connecting the dots from Luke blowing up the Death Star to Vader developing an obsession about this Force-sensitive farm boy who turns out to be his son. It also depicts the struggles Vader faces after his disgrace over the loss of the Death Star. There's some good lore here, and I'm hoping we'll get more (audio)books to bring to life the rest of the Aphra comics.

A 5-star experience if you approach it with the right mindset.

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Great business book first, not just about gaming

Revisado: 01-31-23

Reggie's book is first about business and marketing, and it just so happens that about 70% of it takes place in the gaming industry. If you're just looking for a book about the gaming industry or hoping for a tell-all book about Nintendo, this is not what you'll find. This is NOT "Console Wars: The Reggie Years". The first third of the book is about his early years growing up, his education at Cornell, his time at P&G, Pizza Hut, Panda Express, VH1, and a few more. However, you should still read it. It's very good, it's entertaining, there are good business & life lessons, and a lot to gain from it.

If you've already read a ton of business books, you probably won't get too much out of this one. It's more of a business 101-201 level book, but it also offers a modern take, based on relationship building, practical insights, a willingness to take calculated risks, leading with a healthy mix of business savvy and empathy (not ego), and being data-driven.

From a Nintendo history point of view, there's a lot of focus on Reggie's early years, the Nintendo DS, and the Wii, all major successes. I wish Reggie had shared more about the WiiU and how they could have been so wrong. He does explain some of the mistakes and lessons learned, but it felt a bit dismissive, focusing more on the what went wrong rather than how it happened. How is it that they missed the mark? Which industry trends were missed or downplayed? That sort of lesson would have been educational.

I highly recommend the Audiobook since it's narrated by Reggie himself. The words carry more weight through his delivery, and the pacing is thoughtful, though I'm sure some will find it slow. I think it was just right. There's also a bonus 1h+ interview with Geoff Keighley at the end, and that one is definitely more for the Nintendo fans than the business audience. That was a nice touch.

Overall 5-stars, highly recommended book.

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A grounded, sci-fi story about relationships

Revisado: 01-31-23

Planet of Exile is technically a sci-fi book, but it's mostly about relationships. Relationships between a planet's natives and alien visitors who are stuck there. Relationships about spacefaring humans who lost their spacefaring abilities and related technologies, and the antiquated people ("men") they must coexist with. And a relationship between the daughter of a native leader and the leader of the aliens, a "farborn".

There's a weak plot about a war with some two-dimensional savages, but it's all an excuse to bring these two peoples together. Le Guin's writing is still superb, the characters are certainly more interesting than the odd mix we met in Rocannon's World (which can be read independently), but the world building is much more basic this time. I was expecting a more original society of natives, but they mostly behave like a typical European medieval era society from Earth. We learn a bit more about the League of All Worlds, and these are always my favorite passages.

The Audible narration with the male and female voices reading the male and female perspectives, respectively, is effective and a nice touch. Overall it's a decent book, but it's still a pale shadow of Le Guin's true potential as present in her future books.

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An amazing engineering treatise wrapped in a novel

Revisado: 01-31-23

I love Clarke's writing. He can so eloquently describe and summarize complicated scientific principles, exotic locales, and far-fetched alien ideas with just enough detail to be explicit without boring the reader with long-winded exposition. This book is no exception.

The Fountains of Paradise reads like a modern fiction story with a historical fiction backstory, mixed with some well-founded engineering and scientific knowledge, and capped with just enough Sci-fi to leave us wanting. I wish Clarke had a stronger drive for sequels. The Starholme could very well have been developed on a parallel course to Le Guin's Hainish Cycle.

This book captivated me, entertained me, educated me, and sent my imagination soaring. Of course, as a 2022 reader, I find it hard to believe that such a project as the space elevator could have been accomplished by what seemed to be such a small team. Clarke kinda oversimplified the complexities of large corporation, even by 1970's standards, but it doesn't take anything away from the book. A highly recommended book.

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Slow start, builds up to a great Star Wars story

Revisado: 01-31-23

Having read a lot of classic Star Wars books (now referred to as "Star Wars Legends"), I wasn't sure what to expect of this one. This was my very first Star Wars read under the "New Disney Canon" after all. I'm still partly disappointed by the "Disney reset" but at least I can appreciate how all new books are now part of the Star Wars canon, which had not been the case before, given the lack of oversight (much like the long line of Star Trek books). The first thing I'll say about A New Dawn is that I was pleasantly surprised.

Be warned, the book starts slow. There's a lot of world building about the planet Gorse and its moon Cynda, there's a flashback to young Caleb Dume's Jedi training, and then back to his life as a freighter pilot carrying baradium bisulfate for Moonglow Polychemical between Gorse and Cynda. Thankfully, all the character building pays off over the course of the book. Things pickup over the chapters and the story, action, intrigue, and twists all add-up to a great Star Wars story with a cinematic feel worthy of the franchise.

I also greatly recommend the audiobook. Between the occasional music track, sound effects, altered voices, and such, it makes for a really enjoyable Star Wars experience. The narration by Marc Thompson was excellent and the overall production values truly added to the experience. If this is how all new canon books will be produced, I need to read more of them.

Given how enjoyable this book has been, I'm disappointed that we did not get more novels leading up to the beginning of the Star Wars Rebels story. There's bits of stories and lore dropped in some comic books, but I would prefer continuity through actual novels. Now that we know how Kanan and Hera met, it would be good to know how they eventually picked up Zeb and Sabine along the way. At least A New Dawn gives us a great start, and if you have not seen Star Wars Rebels yet, then do yourself a favor and go binge that series now.

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Fascinating story drenched in "has-been" flavor

Revisado: 12-24-22

This book could have used an editor. Ken's style is very conversational and the entire thing feels like a collection of long blog posts. There's a lack of structure, repeats, rambling, grammatical errors, lots of filler, random opinions, and such. The writing is 2-3 stars at best. Having just read Sid Meier's Memoir, which is well written, humble, enlightening, and concise, this book about Sierra felt very disjointed.

Like many reviewers here, I was attracted to this book because I love gaming industry/history books, and I grew up with Sierra adventure games. I had not realized that Sierra had gotten so big, or that they had gone through so many pains and issues. I had assumed they had been acquired and absorbed by a larger publisher like so many others. This whole story is fascinating and I devoured the book quickly to find out what happened next, despite the amateurish writing. That's my main motivation for my 4-star rating.

Then there's the material itself. This is a story about Sierra the company, not a deep dive into the design of the games. There's decent coverage of the early adventure games like Mystery House and such, since Ken himself did the engine and tools programming to support Robert's designs, but it's obvious that Ken grew quite disconnected from the programming teams as the company grew, so most of the book is focused on Ken's role as owner/CEO of Sierra.

While Sid's book enhanced my admiration for this great game designer, this book made it clear to me that Ken certainly isn't a great leader or manager. He was successful to a certain extent, but his conservative management style and approach to business stink of abusive practices that have long been abandoned by modern, forward-looking CEOs. Williams is a relic of the past. Cracking the whip, mandatory unpaid overtime, celebrating crunch, micro-management, Kingmaker attitude, inability to delegate, lack of trust, egocentric need to approve everything, etc. This book is full of it, and at least I commend Williams for admitting to many of his flaws, even though he feels most of them were just fine and justified. The whole "this is how winners think and act" attitude just plain stinks of antiquated, alpha male self-agrandizing.

The so-called interludes were hit & miss. This is where an editor could have tightened things. As a software engineer and product manager, reading the chapter on software development practices was cringy, especially when coming from someone who has been retired from software in over 20 years, and who hasn't coded in over 30. These interludes were definitely more appendix material, but the rambling was on overdrive. It's also obvious that Williams wanted to show off how he rubbed elbows with industry greats like Gates, Bezos, Wozniak, and others, and didn't have a cohesive way to always inject these interactions into the story. I truly wish Roberta had been more involved with the book. I bet she would have improved the quality and discourse a lot more.

Lastly, this book often reeks of a "has-been" stench. Williams is obviously filled with many regrets and it shows in this book. He often talks about early Sierra products and then laments on how awesome they could have evolved had Sierra survived. There's easily a dozen occasions where Williams tries to use a minor success of the past with a Sierra game to show how great things could have been by using a megahit that came later. Like comparing the little Pro Flight simulator to the latest innovation in Microsoft Flight Simulator in 2020. Or how The Sierra Network was so ahead of its time, and yet Williams completely omits to compare it to Compuserve and other pre-Internet private networks who did it better.

Sierra was all over the place, even pre-acquisition, and the core areas that got them to a decent degree of success pre-acquisition, especially adventure games, were already in decline. It's doubtful the company would have survived anyways. They were not equipped to properly leverage the Internet wave. The designers-first model was good for early games, but it's obvious they lacked the strong engineering acumen to adapt to modern trends and online gaming. That's why ID software succeeded, and Sierra did not. Read 'Masters of Doom' by David Kushner if you're interested in that story, it's a great book.

Anyways, I still recommend this book if you're really interested in Sierra nostalgia, but don't expect to learn much that you can apply to a career in business or gaming. This is a trip down memory lane, not a professional development book.

There's interesting photography and illustrations in the book that audiobook listeners will sadly miss on.

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Interesting history of Rogue and other roguelikes

Revisado: 12-20-22

There's good research in this book, though the chapters feel inconsistent. I often felt like I was reading filler, and other areas felt underdeveloped. When Craddock got good anecdotes from his interviews with the original developers, he included them. The rest of the time, he filled the pages with descriptions of how the games played. Some of it was interesting, other parts felt unnecessary.

I would have loved to read more about what became of these developers. Where did they work after that? Did their formative years working on Rogue, Hack, NetHack, Moria, Angband, and such have much influence on their professional careers? I think the book could have explored more of the modern Roguelike games beyond ADOM, not from listing games after games, but how Rogue and its successors influenced more titles beyond just Diablo or FTL.

Overall I still enjoyed the book. It's an interesting account of a niche segment of computer and gamedev history and definitely a recommended read for anyone involved in RPG or Roguelike/lite game development.

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5-star writing and worldbuilding, plot is lacking

Revisado: 11-22-22

“Most of my stories,” Le Guin writes in her own introduction to City of Illusions, “are excuses for a journey. I never did care much about plots, all I want is to go from A to B—or, more often, from A to A—by the most difficult and circuitous route.”

Rocannon's World is a perfect example of this philosophy. The world building is awesome, so much depth and care is poured into the many species and customs of Fomalhaut II, but I truly longed for a more engaging plot. The writing is superb, even in this first novel, but having read The Left Hand of Darkness, I probably spoiled Le Guin's earlier books in the process. I simply had to see where the Hainish cycle started.

Regardless, I still recommend it, and it's a quick enough read.

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Simple story, this is mostly about relationships

Revisado: 10-09-22

It should be obvious by now that Murderbot is not necessarily about the story itself, it's about the relationships, the interactions with humans and bots, and "Eden's" (dunno if the name will stick) coming of age as a free member of society. This book was mostly about Murderbot and Art's odd friendship. Art is an interesting "character" but it was very convenient, too much in fact, that it was such an advanced starship, and it made everything seem too easy.

This series feels like it follows the episodic format of a Sci-fi TV series. The problem is it still wants to charge you for the full price of a movie when all you get is a TV episode. Thankfully this was severely discounted for me thanks to Audible sales. As for the lack of world building I called out in my previous review of 'All Systems Red', we're getting a slow trickle of additional details, but this universe still feels very shallow.

It's still worth reading, and I'm curious to see where things go next, as to whether it'll offer something fresh or just more of the same.

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Easy read, not much depth, but engaging character

Revisado: 10-06-22

I liked this novella, but I'm also annoyed by it. Yes, the Murderbot character is fascinating and you want to keep reading/listening. Yes, it's super easy reading because there's no long-winded descriptions that slow the pace. Wells basically provides just enough information to move the story forward, the bare minimum. You have no idea what the various human characters look like, you're basically supposed to imagine anything you want.

The same goes for the Sci-fi tech and habitat and ships and such. You're told what it is, the minimum needed to understand what it does, but there's no sense of immersion, you're not told enough to picture the place, so every reader will picture something different. It almost reads like a screenplay, lots of dialogue, moving the action forward, but with very weak world building.

This is what probably annoys me the most. Wells assumes you've already read a lot of Sci-fi, so you can figure out how Hoppers, feeds, and HubSystems work. You should already know this. She caters to Sci-fi fans but isn't welcoming to new audiences. Pair that with a brooding half-flesh robot full of sarcasm who narrates the novella in the first-person, and you can draw a quick parallel to Scalzi's half-robot grumpy old dude supersoldier from Old Man's War. I think she tries to emulate Sclazi, but with even less world building.

Then there's the novella-priced-like-a-full-novel racket. That also bugs me, a lot. I waited until this was on sale because I refused to pay full price for it. It's a gimmick and I really hope the trend doesn't catch on. It's a good book, but it's not worth the full price of a novel. Anyways, I'll still read/listen to the rest of the series, or at least the next one. The audiobooks are available on my Scribd subscription, so at least I'm not overpaying.

The narration was good, it fit the character well, though between the lack of descriptions for the humans in the book and the minimal voice changes by the narrator, which human was saying what really got lost often. They all feel so generic and you're forced to only care about Murderbot. It's a good and quick read, just don't expect too much beyond pop-corn Sci-fi writing.

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