The Proving Ground by Michael Connelly, Book Review

~ Veselin ~ 10 Comments

Michael Connelly is one of my all-time most favorite authors. One of the few, whose books mostly got better over the years.

The Proving Ground is his latest creation, rated the absurdly high 4.5 on Goodreads. Unfortunately, although far more interesting than the last one, we’ve seen better it didn’t qualify for 4* on my shelves.

Mickey Haller is tired from criminal cases and moved to the area of civil law. He’s suing an AI company, whose AI-assistant convinced a teenager to commit murder. The settlement offers go up and down, and the ruthless billionaire behind the company will no spare additional efforts to end the case and hide everything behind a NDA.

The topic is deep and the plot is plausible, actually it could be something that has already happened. I have no objections in that area. The reason why the book didn’t click with me is that it was just uninteresting, and some was even meaningless. But while I have significant tolerance for inaccuracies, reaching page 250 or 300 without anything of substance happening was not good for me.

The plot offered many chances that could develop to be interesting. It had a secondary case. Harry Bosch and Renee Ballard got a shout out. But none of that had a meaningful follow-up, it was almost like it had to be included for the sake of being there, proving that the story is from the Harry Bosch universe. The billionaire wasn’t really a good match for the Lincoln Lawyer or some cat walked on the keyboard and we didn’t get far.

Overall, the book left me with a bad taste. I awarded it with an honest 3/5. Felt like it was written by the late John Grisham, whose stories are written to convince the reader that a certain causes are just. If you want to be convinced that AI is biased and can kill, look no further. The tagline could’ve been “garbage in, garbage out”.

Mood

~ Veselin ~ 4 Comments

When walking in Sofia, you’re presented with the opportunity to spot things, according to your mood. If you’re in mood to see cats, you see cats. If you’re in mood to see beauty and happiness, it’s everywhere. If you’re in mood to see ruins, that’s what you see. I think the photos below are a good example.

Palpatine’s Successor

~ Veselin ~ 9 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Emperor Palpatine has announced open elections for a new Emperor — and he’s nominated Darth Vader. You get to nominate one challenger.
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I take the blame (or pride) for this writing prompt. I really wanted some more goofy ones to go out, and seeing one of the worst offenders in the wild forces me to respond.

Here’s the line of thought I have.

  • It can’t be a Jedi. Palpatine and Luke are opposite forces that equalize, you can’t replace one with the other
  • It needs to be either neutral or another sith
  • A successful candidate should be able to defeat Vader in a 1-1 combat
  • A successful candidate can’t be from another universe. In that case, they’d either be too strong and won’t need elections, or will fail for not knowing the game
  • They can’t be a robot

So here are my nominees:

Mitth’raw’nuruodo – just because I recently read a book about him and picked two more this morning. A natural leader, organized, neutral, able to pull the strings from behind

Jabba the Hutt – an underground mastermind with deep connections to both sides

Jar Jar Brinks – a TikTok sensation and a martial arts expert, capable of winning against Vader by luck

Old Store

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment

Communism in Bulgaria self-destructed in 1989. At this time, we already had shortages in pretty much everything. Groceries, for example, were somehow centrally provided using an absurdly small number of stores by modern standards, which were also really tiny compared to what we have. It’s no surprise we had to wait in queues for everything and we’d need to produce our own food and only buy stuff that wasn’t practical to produce ourselves, like milk, sunflower oil, or bread.

One of the first things that capitalism brought to Sofia after 1989 was private groceries. All kinds of holes were turned into shops that would sell 5–10 things, or maybe even just bread. There was a service corridor in the local electrical substation that turned into a bread shop, and I’d go there and buy bread every day for years. I don’t think they sold anything else, it was just two types of bread.

In the photos below is a basement, converted to a shop. Now that we have shops everywhere, it’s difficult to imagine times when we actually had no shops and basements like that were thriving. The sign looks recent but I doubt this business was operational this century.