Reviews and Comments

I read this on a plane a few weeks ago, so I'm not going to try to review, but it was fun.

I found the characters and ethical dimensions of the story not too deep (pun not intended, but I'm keeping it), but it does do a nice job of imagining what a civilization that evolved deep underwater might be like.

I was so excited when I first read this book, that I tried to write my German placement essay about it. From this I learned one cannot fool actual German speakers by just writing German words with English grammar.

Less tidbits of New York Jewish and New York Syrian culture than the previous, but more character development. Certainly Sophia is a more interesting person in this episode. The door is left open for a sequel, but the main conflicts are more or less resolved.

Two prominent subcultures within computer science academe and practice are "Free and Open Source Software" and "Startup Culture". This book made me think (uncomfortably) about the connections and commonalities of the two. Some of the most cringe-worthy moments from tech people come from someone thinking that a certain amount of skill at e.g. computer programming makes them an expert in a completely unrelated topic. This is a kind of anti-intellectualism; maybe it is sometimes needed, but it seems more often harmful than helpful.

I don't know if it says more about me or the book, but I found myself skim reading parts of this.

I thought I would go back and re-read the discworld Death books, but now I'm not so sure. Death has some snappy one liners, but there is not enough there to really engage with the character.

The other part of the book is the wizards, and although I have fond memories of the parody-of-academe in the Unseen University, it didn't quite do it for me either in this book.

I'm thinking that maybe the Wizards are not my favourite Discworld characters. It's somewhat telling that the only interesting one here is dead.

I suspect this book won't change anyone's life, but it may distract you for a few hours. The plucky heroine is a "modern Ninja", which seems to be a hypothetical martial-arts discipline with strong aspects of mindfulness and meditation. Her family is a rich Hong Kong business family while she is born and raised in the USA. The writing about Hong Kong culture and politics feels fairly authentic to me, but I'm an outsider. There is some romance, and the heroine deals with some issues of intimacy and trust. I liked the fact that Lily is a skilled fighter, but also realistic about her chances when outnumbered by larger attackers. Probably the most intellectually interesting part for me was when Lilly talks about the ethics of extracting information from someone who is clearly romantically interested in her.

In which our heroine uses her ninja skills to save a dog for the second time, and meets a rival martial arts initiate (with a very gangster-suss tattoo) in combat for the first time.

Taste of Hong Kong culinary culture: check (although no idea how authentic). Complicated family / diaspora dynamics: check. Makeup tips: check. Corporate intrigue: check.

Perfect story to listen to while running the snowblower, I hope.

The world of the Five Gods, with it's interplay of magic an religion and "alternate Mediterranean" feel is an interesting one. One advantage of the novel format is that the author has the space to develop several interesting characters. On the other hand the protagonist is almost too powerful and lucky (luck here has a religious aspect). The outcome was never very much in doubt.

There have been several intervening novellas that I haven't read yet, but there was only one reference that I didn't get.

A bit painful to read about hardware and software problems disrupting classrooms. And not in the techno-utopian sense of disrupt. I've been there where technical problems derail a lesson, and it is no fun.

Nostalgia is a big theme. I think it's a valid critique of the OLPC qua educational project, although nostalgia / retrocomputing / techno-minimalism also seems like a valid response to the more dystopian aspects of modern big tech.