Review

Too many trees, not enough forest.

Fun to read, but after thinking about the story, the plot just doesn’t hang together. The more I think about it the more disappointed I am.

** The Prior ** Before reading this book, I thought there was a 70% chance I would rate this book 3 stars or higher. ** The Signal ** Silver’s chapter on Poker was interesting both from the perspective of statistics, but also about poker tactics and the metagame. I wish this were the core of the book. Also, the explanation of Bayes’ theorem was solid, as was the chapter on stocks. ...

2.5 stars. The Amazon series is better. I didn’t like any of the characters, the mysticism seemed pointless, and didn’t like pkd’s style of writing. Still grateful he came up with the premise so that the show could exist!

Kinda just ruined my childhood, but that’s ok, still a fun read.

The first half starts off well. Golden Son has a tactical writing style averaging one betrayal per chapter, which is impressive for a 51 chapter book. But the plot feels derivative. Now that Bean (err Darrow!) has graduated from the institute, it’s time to fight wars against classmates in the real political world. Katniss (ahem Darrow!) must band together with rivals from the game in order to lead a rebellion against the oppressive elite. Of course Tris (Darrow!) feels guilty about about a conflicted past, and Mr. Potter (mr. Darrow!) will work with his allies from Hogwarts, and realize that Snape is on his side, then a traitor, but then the betrayal was a ruse! At times it even felt like a literary version of Jupiter Ascending – not a compliment. ...

Solid. Enjoyed the subject matter more than the authors commentary, but thankfully the latter was minimal.

A dishonest book in every way, but not bad.

After spending a year in Baghdad, one of the most common subjects that comes up with other political analysts is that the closer you get to the issue, the more you know that you don’t know anything. This book is about how one can take some simple numeric shortcuts to arrive at the same conclusion, and make predictions vastly more accurate than typical individuals, aggregated individuals, or even us analysts. ...

Tactics weren’t convincing, politics weren’t convincing. but I was already sucked into the universe. I felt like an AI given a command to finish out the series, unable to not obey the command, but not necessarily happy about it.