One Sentence Media Reviews
A straightforward and solid entry in the Vorkosigan series - mostly lighthearted but full of action, builds nicely on the many books before it.
Powerful, engaging drama detailing the setup and coverup around the famous nuclear disaster, well-acted but I wish it had original russian dialogue instead of english with british accents.
Bujold brings back some of the darkness and sadness that so enticed me originally in this recently-written Vorkosigan Saga entry, but marries that darkness to the light comedic stylings that define the majority of the saga, resulting in a quick, fun, exciting, and unique entry.
Tremendous, brilliant masterpiece, but deeply harsh, made harsher by contrast with its many comedic moments.
After this my third watch of the entire David Simon classic, all I can really add is that it really rewards multiple viewings, as the depth and complexity of its characters unfurls like a flower.
I haven’t read a book about a video game in a while, and picked this up more for Watts completionism than anything else, and while I guess he does elevate the material to some degree, it’s pretty boring and two dimensional, consisting mostly of running and explosions and not a ton else.
I just can’t read this much about Iowa.
This entry deep in Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga manages to interleave some extremely piercing insights on self-esteem and love with some very fun romcom hijinks, without ever getting annoyingly cheesy - one of her best works.
It’s gotta be hard to write a history book about a CIA officer, since the available research is so lacking, and it really shows - this history of Robert Ames is overly vague and scantily sourced, and can’t decide if it’s a broad overview of the Lebanese civil war or a biography of this one spy’s life or some weird mix of the two.
the first half of this season tells a rushed but lovely action story similar to (but not quite as brilliant as) season 1, and could have been great as a full season arc, but then instead the second half is entirely a bridge to rogue one and that’s it and it’s less wonderful (altho fun if you liked rogue one).
I’ve tried three times to get through this dumb netflix action thriller but the idiot plot repels me each time, like a magnet, so far I’m only at 45 minutes, but hopefully I stop trying.
Bujold (or “Boujyoung” as I like to call her) is back in full form for this latest entry in my never-ending crawl through the Vorkosigan saga, a quick comedy of manners style detective novel filled with great characters and light-hearted silliness.
Although very stylish and visually clever, Severance is just Lost for PMC mid-wits - red herrings and boring mysteries and clues dribbled out like cheese for rats in a maze.
This later book in the interminable Vorkosigan series is a competent, fun whodunnit novella wrapped in 200 pages of boring on either end.
Third book in this sci-fi apocalypse series is even bleaker and awful-er than the last to the point that it fully tips over into way too much territory, also it has an unsatisfying ending and desperately needed to be cut down to half its size.
Watts’s second entry in the Rifters series doesn’t quite have the same unique magnetic characters of the first (and maybe it has slightly too many characters in general) but what it lacks in story it makes up for in prediction and world - read this to wallow in a truly terrible future dystopia that feels extremely likely.