Reviews and Comments

I felt it funny, because this is so like debugging, it's like watching a testing/debugging tutorial.... every story is kind of like some robot issues were found and they were trying to design some tests and find out which part of the laws was making it do that. Later stories have some more about how the Laws are logically preventing misuse. I do feel it may be a bit too optimistic to believe under the three laws there is no way the robot could, as the story where the first law was changed said, hold grudge, believe in its own superiority, start a religion and a revolution. I doubt if human could make the robots that can and will always make better - more morally correct - decisions than humans do, with the laws.

But on the other hand, I suppose in that story, she was just trying to take a chance. She was doing some believing in her part too.

It is good. I'll note down some passages, because it would be very long if I record everything in quote...

Atticus Finch's speech at the court is of course the most important. Then there is the part of rigorous school teaching plan. The part where Miss Maudie said her church people criticise her for spending too much time in the garden and not enough time reading the Bible and saying this is too much pleasure to be a good humble believer. The part where Calpurnia brought the two kids to her black people's church. All the parts with Boo Radley. Dill's running away. I think Ms Alexandra and people's kitchen talk and the hiding of true sad things beneath the trivial chitchat? and the part of minding coming from a good family too much, and all the parts about we are not their kind of people (or folks, as in the southern dialect).

I listened to the audiobook, so it is quite easy to go through all this. I imagine I'd need more patience to read it myself. But it is a lot more fun than what I had thought. Telling from the child's perspective and all the kid things they do make it more fun.

uhhh....well I can certainly feel the grudge the author had when she wanted some more life but was trapped in the little town family shopowner life. It was really a bit too child-ish for the people in story though, they are grownups now and they still live very fairy-tale-like ... or maybe just fairy tale is real as long as you can believe it, I suppose.

Plot is going back in time and changing history to change the person from who he is in this reality, so that this person will not do what he's doing and thus the nuclear war catastrophe will be prevented. well okay, but I personally don't like heavy poem verses and charms and spells in time travelling sci-fi so I don't like it as much as I did the previous books. And possibly because I don't like the changing history by changing one person's ... ancestry. it's the upbringing... the upbringing.... not whose child it is...

I finally finished it! Thank you to audiobook! I really don't think I can make it through the ending which sounds like a whole page of i-love-you shouting by reading it myself. or describing environment, I don't like picturing the backdrop from long descriptions in my mind.... Listening is easier to glide over things I tend to ignore and note what I like... it's sadly true for me.

Well I mean it's still pretty much a children's book, I don't see anything specifically very new, althought it adds into what I already gathered from other book. I suppose it's just a matter of the order of meeting these stories. Themes include 'like and equal are not the same thing', and sight is a restriction that stops you from knowing what things are. I don't particularly see where the to love is to be vulnerable comes from, even though afterwords said it. The travel through wonderful spaces feels a little bit like La Belle Sauvage. I like the two-dimensional planet. It is particularly hilarious that they properly have a young baby telepath called charles and he got controlled by a powerful telepathic brain that controls a planet and in early draft his mother thought he's a mutant and next step in evolution, I mean.

The mind reading/controlling brain thing also reminds me of The 13 1⁄2 Lives of Captain Bluebear, Zamonium. The talking through the red-eyed man reminds me of DW s1 finale, the human-in-the-loop controller.

I didn't realise the parallel/mirroring plotlines when I read it, but now I sit and think of it, there is a parallel between Cosmo Lavish's trying to become Vetinari by looking like him, and Golems obeying Moist because he looked like the Umnian priest who wore golden suits. Cosmo did a very bad job looking like Vetinari, but Moist was good at it, maybe because Moist had a lot of practice being everyone in his con man career... in a way, Moist has more truth/substance in this appearance. Still, I feel the subplotlines are not so closely woven or mirroring this time. Well but I probably shouldn't ask for that, as in real life, things that are not relevant on purpose just happen and become an influence to each other, not the other way round.... well but a story is not a real life diary, innit. Main plotline should be Moist's reformation (is this the word) to change the financial system of A-M, creating paper bank note to substitute coins, to get better circulation of money instead of everyone storing the money in their old socks under bed; and changing the basis of wealth from gold to golem, which represents the creator of wealth, saying 'the hands creating it worths more than the gold'. It's a good thought. Just a bit weak and not very much conflict there, so it's a bit .... boring. But it would make sense in the series, because Moist had gained trust from the public from Going Postal, and A-M is such a street theatre place that people are just curious and gambler enough to try his crazy ideas. Moist plays people, just like Vetinari plays even Moist. btw I see why people guess Vetinari means to cultivate Moist to take his place after he's gone ... it is ... a bit sad to see vetinari being a bit old and thinking of going, but it is inevitable, and he certainly wants what social change he has made on A-M would outlive him. I can't tell what is the point of Gladys plotline and the Glooper line in forming the narrative, but they are a bit fun and quirky on their own. They distract me from the main plot but it's fun to see. Even the dating part with adora belle ... is a bit unrelevant ... the lost one stars is for the unrelevance and distraction I got from fun subplotlines.

Ah. I went to read this because in the whole Heartstopper series, I recognised Tori in her two scenes as a similar person to me. She indeed is, in this story. It reminds me of what I was like when I was in school (and I have been thinking I'm not not normal XD). What Tori thought and felt, I still think and feel. Especially, I share her feeling that everyone has grown up and changed and only I am still at where I was in heart. I am still very much a child. But I like it and I don't wanna change and that is where I start to disagree with the book. The ending is not a real stable solution, if I may use such words to describe it. It left me feeling like sth balanced on a local unstable equilibrium point and that lack-of-solution left me feeling not really satisfied, a bit unconvinced, a bit worried and a bit disappointed. But well, it's written when the author was 18, I can't expect a Granny Weatherwax appearing in Tori's life and holding her hands and guiding. This is maybe enough for 18.

But the self-hatred, isolation, anger and suicidal spiralling are pretty triggering (but sounding true, at least for me), be warned.

It does get a bit repetitive, when I keep on reading the later half of Disc. Sadly (or fortunately), I like these topics. (But really, Pterry, I hope you found some new arguments or you are gonna end up like Moffat or any other writer whom I have seen too much of.)

He's done quite a lot of what it means to be a witch in children language in this one, i.e., living on the edge. And the edge could be anywhere, any time. You have to make the right decision.

It has, as much as I can remember, the first appearance of the Black Desert after Small Gods (I LOVE the black desert), I am happy to see more of that. I felt half mocking and half overwhelmed when I read the part of pouring sand out of boots; mocking because I have seen the same thing he's done for the same meaning in Nation, overwhelmed because it is still beautiful. Repeating beautiful things is okay by me (of course it is, or you'd have left disc series already).

It's a bit of Thief of Time in the sense that this monster has no sense of me but only the sense of us, has no human morality but only other human things like wants and desires and fear. I suppose it is a mirror of a witch, or any other character Pterry has made who fear themselves and watch themselves all the time.

The witch trials in this one must be a different year from the Sea and Little fish. I am amused that Tiffany got so much favoritism from Granny in other witches' eyes but in fact they fought like cats. Well, that's being witch. You admire each other but also fight like cats.