One Sentence Media Reviews
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.
This kind of old school engineer nerdiness was a lot more common 50s-80s then it is now, but I do recommend this quick read from 50 years ago for a funny and ironic look at why LLMs are not going to save the world.
I’m sad to say that this series is starting to feel a little stale for me; the characters more static, the situations more contrived - this novel was still fun and exciting in the second half, but mostly annoying and stressful in the first.
A worthy entrant in the Vorkosigan saga (even tho there’s hardly a Vorkosigan in it) with plenty of relatable good guys, hate-able bad ones, and interesting genetic hijinks to boot.
As I continue through the interminable Vorkosigan saga I’m still struck by how the tone has been changing, from the original intense and dark tone of the opening books towards something like a James Bond book - fun, a bit silly, full of intrigue, but ultimately not reaching for greatness.
Super fun to see good ole Miles Vorkosigan go on further adventures, further enraging his elders, but I am sad to mention that the darkness and sadness that made the earlier books in this series so special has basically disappeared, by now, which is a real shame.
I dunno why I watched this, the first one was bad, but hey sometimes a little pain is good for the soul, which is definitely what happened here.
exceedingly dumb movie that i think i watched once before but it was so forgettable i’m not even sure