Children

Infinitely better than the movie.

Hits like a hammer, but jumps the shark on the 3rd generation.

** Incomplete Selves Across Time ** My read of Amber Spyglass 20 years ago was less a story and more an involuntary life timestamp. I remember where I was when I finished it: a long, uninterrupted binge read, the kind of marathon read that leaves you emptied out and unsure what to name the feeling. The book left a residue of longing—emotional but not easily mapped to words. In deference to Pullman’s ability, The Rose Field is story I considered taking vacation to finish, but the ambient velocity of the AI world makes such indulgence unrealistic. Pullman writes about metamorphosis through loss; The image of torn rose fields lingers because it mirrors something real: the sense that progress often shears away pieces you meant to keep. Pullman’s trilogy is nominally about worlds in collision, but its deeper target is identity across discontinuities. Reading it brings the question: who was I, and who am I now? ...

Daring to be Different Completed: March 19, 2025 Last edited time: February 9, 2026 1:39 PM Status: OBE Type: Book

** 1st Book of 2025: Entirely Forgettable. ** Read through this in one sleepless post-surgery night, and it just felt like a draft of a side-plot from a Stormlight Archives. There’s not much new in the premise of trying to escape dawn, and many other authors have tried to take on stories of mobile cities with much more success. The references to the rest of Stormlight Archive are vague enough that without wikipedia or a recent reread, you’re going to be hard pressed to link this to anything meaningful. Apparently I even reading the entire main series of Stormlight Archive isn’t enough, I should have read Dawnshard as well. ...

Last week was at my college alma mater, and I was surprised at the memories that came back to me. The campus was permeated with fear and self criticism, bad memories of asking for a loan, opening a bank account with a $50 paycheck, or thinking about how to spend the last $4. What I forgot was the wild ambitions, of foundj a club, gettingperfectgrades, the compulsive gap to live in a fantasy world since incremental progress was itself depressing. Of mice and men nails this reality of being poor. Thinly sirprisj g part is how hard it is to see the reality when you are in it. ...

Fantasy Heist genre with characters interesting enough to keep turning the pages. Read it out of order, but the characters were interesting enough to encourage me to go back and finish it. 3.5 stars.

Sanderson fantasy is what Audible 3.5x was invented for. 3.5 stars.

Certainly a page turner, although the parallels to to Stormlight Archives are clear. It’s like Sanderson has found a set of chords that will attract readers and he’s going to keep riffing on that theme as long as the readers keep coming. ** 3.5 stars **

Kinda disappointed by the 1 star reviews here. The sparse words and for some reason strange illustrations have made this my son’s favorite book, despite the fact that he is far more comfortable with Chinese than English. Indeed, this is the first book that he’s learned to request by name (ca go fa!) and he requests it every night. We’re at least 50 readings in and there’s enough happening in the illustrations to do something new every time.