Reviews and Comments

At this point I feel obligated to finish the series, I purchased all of them for Pete's sake, but Butterworth has to be the laziest writer I've ever read. He constantly uses full names and titles like a Jr. High School student trying desperately to reach a minimum word count.

Like the last 8 books in his uncanonical MASH series he spends the first third of the book catching retelling you wish happened in the last book, most of the rest of it coming up with excuses for the ever increasing cast of characters from around the globe to hand to travel to the name sake city, and then in the final chapter we touch on what the back of the book says the story was about.

I liked this book. It was kind of hokey, but if you go in knowing that its fine for what it is. It was supposed to the be first book in a series that never got a sequel, so apparently not too many others liked it. It's the first work I'm aware of DeCandido did of his own, rather than the media-tie-in fiction is more well known. He's one of my favorites Start Trek authors.

The book revolves around the Super city Police Department. The city is so called because they have more superheroes than any one town in the D.C. universe ever did. Unlike Commissioner Gordon, the cops of the SCPD hate the superheroes, or "the costumes" a derogatory term they use. The cops get stuck trying to prove that Super villains are actually guilty of the crime that the superheroes have stopped them from doing, but of course all the evidence has been vaporized, and the heroes refuse to testify as it might damage their brand, or worse yet reveal their secret identify.

On top of that they get stuck uber nerds who think they can become their own superheroes, or super villains, and more often than not get themselves hurt.

The Claw is a serial murder who seems to show up ever 2 years or so and kill many people and then go into hiding. He seems to slice open his victims using a giant eagle talon, and since all the victims have the same DNA it would appear they are not copycat crimes.

A long and winding tale, complete with abusive husbands, cranky neighbors, and the like, we end up learning the criminal is an unlikely member of the community, but looking back on it a few days later, it actually should have been pretty obvious that is who it would have been.

Marvel has done many similar stories over the years of how the courts and insurance and the like deal with the aftermath of superheroes, if you want a previously unlicensed version, this one is for you.

There is 0 break in the story, for whatever story there is, between The Golden Apple and Part 1 The Eye in The Pyramid. I guess that's one reason why since at least the 90s Illuminatus! has only been printed as one single volume containing the whole trilogy.

There is not much I can say about this that I didn't already say in 2022 when I reviewed The eye in the pyramid: The writing style is out there; the character who makes up the first person prose changes with no more than a single paragraph break; I feel it is like what reading an LSD trip would be like. Part of me wondered what it would be like to read while on drugs, but I was not going to start doing drugs just to find out.

Without the description of the black mass, it wasn't quite as offensive as the first. Personally, I could not have read all three books one after the other. My brain just needs time to heal from all this.

In many places, including on the cover itself, this book is classified as Science Fiction, but it's not science fiction at all in any way. Not like a "But Star Wars isn't Science Fiction, it's a Space Opera" way but there is nothing in the plot related to changes or questions about science. I mean sure there is a submarine on the cover, and there is like one scene that take place aboard the submarine "Leif Erickson" but that's it.

I'll finish the Trilogy, but it will probably be another 3 years before I do.

,, i liked armada, but not nearly as good as clients other works that I have read including Ready Player one and Ready Player two. It really put me on a roller coaster of emotion, but not the good kind. At the beginning I had a strong Ready Player One feeling, which just happens to be in my opinion one of the best books ever written which just happens to be in my opinion one of the best books ever written. However is the story progressed I found that I really kind of got lost there the characters pointing out how dumb the antagonists were didn't help much either. Eventually I thought it could be better if the ending was good and then I thought of a way that the ending could have been awesome. The ending ended up being very different from what I thought and I was incredibly disappointed though I'm thought that I had a hold of it and was disappointed that I was wrong.

I Hate You—Don't Leave Me first jumped out at me in the bookstore. I have said that exact phrase to my wife more times than I'd like to admit. Whilst I bought it that day, it was over 10 years later before I actually read it.

I felt the book was written at a very understandable level, unlike many works related to medical issues, without making me feel like the author was speaking down to me, unlike many other medical works. The first half resonated with me very much, whilst they kind of lost me a bit in the second half. Granted its audience appears to primarily be the friends and family of a BPD rather than for the BPD himself. When communicating they recommend using SET (Support, Empathy, Truth) communication. From a high level it makes sense, but my brain couldn't really wrap around most of the examples they used.

It is eerie how much Dr. Kreisman describes me in his writing of Border Line Personality (BPD) disorder. Much of what has been diagnosed by my doctors as Bipolar and Depresion, may actually have been deeper BPD. But I'm pretty sure my ADHD i still ADHD. What really got me was their listing of the medical definition indicating a patient needed to have 5 of 8 given criteria, and I'm pretty sure I got all 8.

This book was written in 1989 so I'm not sure how much of its contents is now out-of-date. One example was linking BPD to homosexuality and sexual deviations. No modern doctor would speak like that, while I wasn't offended, some others may be.

I want to get a copy of the 3rd edition released in 2021 to see what has been updated, though from the reviews I've seen on LibraryThing there still may be gaps for the 21st century.

I'm not sure how much I will be able to adjust my life having this more information; my wife read it too, I don't ever recall reading a book with two bookmarks in it before. 🙂 At the very least if I ever seek professional mental health again I'll bring this copy with me.

If I wasn't already a loyal Discount Tire customer I would be pretty upset that I just spent a week reading a 200 page ad for Discount Tire™. It was still mostly an ad, but I'm not very upset about it.

Bruce Halle probably isn't the absolute saint that his biographer claims, having not raised his voice since his 20s, and always putting his employees first.

I have first hand seen many of the company practices that are mentioned in the book, including free flat repair for everyone and free tires given to folks down on their luck.

At times I found the Stories of his practices of sending money to store employees who had sick family members and of the organizing team member hardship funds incredibly enduring, but then I'd think about it again and thought that if they had a union they wouldn't need hand-outs and could just get paid enough to cover stuff.

15-20 years ago when I thought "true capitalism" was the savior of us all, before capitalism ate me alive, I probably would have absolutely loved this book. Now its all-in-all something I didn't NOT enjoy, but I did see more of the "skill" of the author who frequently would say the same thing he did a chapter or two earlier "Mr. Halle continues to give $1,000 to every employee who gets married" for example.

I've only got like 2 CDs left and it really feels like it is not going anywhere. The ending is going to make or break it.

I really really liked Syrup. I finished in only 3 days, but it wasn't as long as the 294 pages would lead you to believe what with huge margins and so many stylized paragraph headers. Maxx Barry's style of corporate humor started here, and backstabbing, and is it romance is it not, kept it moving. I never thought advertising could be anything but soul crushing. He even did a great job at portraying the nerds in editing, and the artists in film.

After reading Syrup I tried watching the movie but I turned it off not even half-way as it was so bad. Maybe having it not be Coke in the film made that much different? It just seemed weak sauce. So read this one and keep the DVD on the shelf.