The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Eleven
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The 11th volume in this much lauded series with incisive and genre-defining stories chosen my...
For the Win
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A provocative and exhilarating tale of teen rebellion against global corporations from the New York...
General Percy Kirke and the Later Stuart Army
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General Percy Kirke (c. 1647-91) is remembered in Somerset as a cruel, vicious thug who deluged the...
Leanne Crabtree (480 KP) rated The Witness in Books
Jan 6, 2021
This is my first Nora Roberts book that wasn't part of a series or paranormal and I have to say I
really enjoyed it!
I was drawn in very quickly to the story with young Elizabeth and her rebellion against her rather clinical mother and her rules. I know it's called The Witness but I didn't think we'd actually see her witness the crime--which sounds stupid, considering, but oh well. She did. She saw the crime and did the right thing.
It quickly moved on and we met Brooks. I have to tell you now that I really liked him from his first page. He's a good cop with an awesome family behind him.
It's twelve years later (though on the back cover of my paperback it says fifteen?) and Elizabeth is now Abigail and a loner. She isn't good around people and finds it hard to trust people. She has a way about her that is so odd but at the same time you can't help but like her.
Enter Brooks and the fun starts.
I really loved their relationship! They make a great couple and I loved reading it happening.
I'm not sure how I feel about the ending. Everything worked out great in the end but I think I'd have liked it to have been fleshed out a little more, considering it had been building since around 100 pages in, but it was still pretty good.
I look forward to reading my other Nora Roberts and J.D.Robb paperback books now :)
Catiline's Conspiracy, the Jugurthine War, Histories
10.0
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Sallust was one of the first classical historians to move beyond a dry recitation of fact to paint...
The Italian Teacher
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Rome, 1955 The artists are gathering together for a photograph. In one of Rome's historic villas,...
She Who Became The Sun
8.5
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Mulan meets The Song of Achilles in Shelley Parker-Chan's She Who Became the Sun, a bold, queer, and...
Manifesto: On Never Giving Up
9.0
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The powerful, urgent manifesto on never giving up from Booker prize-winning trailblazer, Bernardine...
Memoir Non Fiction Feminism Social Justice Race Writing
David McK (3425 KP) rated Thrawn Ascendancy Book II: Greater Good in Books
Sep 4, 2022
Back to the early 90s, when Zahn first introduced the character in Heir to the Empire, and 'kickstarted' the old Star Wars Expanded Universe (EU), now known as Star Wars: Legends.
Thrawn is one of the few characters (so far) mined from said EU and carried over the the Disney era of Star Wars, which is no surprise giving his popularity.
What may be slightly surprising, however, is (IMO) just how 'different' this version of the character feels: not better nor worse, just different. In the case of this novel (part 2 of a trilogy, after Chaos Rising but before Lesser Evil, what is also surprising is just how loosely connected to the rest of the Star Wars sandbox universe this is - I mean this as in there are no Jedi or Sith, no lightsabres, no Old Republic, no Seperatists, no Empire and no Rebellion.
Indeed, as before, the very opening sentence of the novel makes that clear: "A long time ago, beyond a galaxy far far away ..."
The Star Wars 'sandbox', of course, is more than big enough to accommodate such a departure, with those who have read part one of the trilogy knowing more of what to expect: Thrawn's tactical genius but political blindness, a few 'large scale' space battles and individuals in the Chiss family to which Thrawn belongs seeking to undermine him whilst other shadowy figures also have their own design for the Chiss Ascendency ...
David McK (3425 KP) rated Battlefront II: Inferno Squad (Star Wars) in Books
Jan 30, 2019
I don't know whether that because, this time around, the source online shooter game actually (and finally!) has a single-player campaign, meaning the author can actually concentrate on proper chatacters instead of the expendable cannon-fodder of the previous, or if it's because this time aroudn it's told from the point of view of the 'bad guys': that is, from the PoV from dyed-in-the-wool Imperials.
This picks up towards the end of the first Star Wars film (Episode IV, retroactively entitled 'A New Hope'),w ith the attack on the Death Star occuring in the opening pages of the novel and with the central character of Iden Versio actively participating in the defense of the Space Station, before crash-landing on the planet of Yavin IV and making her way back to Imperial Space (that bit told in passing).
This also ties into Rogue One, with an offshoot of Saw Garrera's violent Partisan group - naming themselves The Dreamers - providing the antagonists rather than The Rebellion, allowing the story and the characters to go undercover into that group without breaking with the commonly-held lore - lets face it, since Inferno Squad is meant to be the best of the best it would be hard to place them in Leia / Han's / Luke's path without somehow having to wave the explanation away!