Category: Random

Defiant by Brandon Sanderson, Book Review

~ Veselin ~ 8 Comments

Defiant is the final book 4 from the Skyward series. The series has other works, written in cooperation with Janci Patterson, that can continue indefinitely but Defiant ends the whole thing. It’s reasonably translated as “Towards The End” in Bulgarian.

Skyward is about Spensa Nightshade, a teenage girl who wants to become a fighter pilot on a world that suffers a constant attack by alien drones. She has some special skills that develop over time, and she becomes one of the best pilots humans have ever seen. Her growth makes the first 3 books very interesting, although she gets nerfed from time when she faces new and more skillful opponents. I rated the first 3 parts with clear 5/5s and they were very enjoyable.

Book 4 is an exception and doesn’t get the full score.

You get all the wonderful world building, which is signature by Brandon Sanderson, his great storytelling and then you glue it with super-heroism and random nerfs to get this beautiful hardwood hardcover book spoiled. Spensa, who started the series as an underdog with a dream, is now comparable to strength to the Infinity Gauntlet Thanos. She practices instant no-energy teleportation and instant telekinesis of objects with unrestricted mass, can read minds, project herself elsewhere, and is likely immortal through respawning like a demon from Julie Kagawa’s Shadow of the Fox series. There are objectively no reasons for the book to last longer than 5 pages – Spensa can teleport the heads of her enemies 50 centimeters to the right and it would just end without her leaving her room. As if that was not enough, she’s in constant contact with two immortal, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient AIs.

What are all those overpowered characters fighting for in 460 pages? Their enemies deserve the highest honors for lasting that long by using trickery and deception. The TL;DR is that they fight with boxes.

I think the Skyward world is exhausted and do not expect a continuation but Brandon Sanderson is a genius and can come up with a problem difficult enough for his demigod characters to resolve.

I gave this book 5*/5 on Goodreads but it’s probably closer to 3.5*/5 due to the lack of balance in the force.

Something for the soul

~ Veselin ~ 20 Comments

So, the little one watched a TV ad about guitar toys and asked for one. I gave him a chance to change his mind but he didn’t and persisted over a few days. “Oh, buddy, you’re unleashing a Kraken here. I’m not getting you a guitar toy, I’m getting you a real guitar appropriate for your height.” The result was that I ordered this lovely baby-size Yamaha. Plays beautifully. Now the big question is if the kid will sustain the interest for longer than 1 day. He’s excited today.

I don’t know about him but I was quite happy buying it and trying to play sounds I’ve not attempted in many years.

Kukeri

~ Veselin ~ 10 Comments

I only saw one of the gatherings this year and the folks were without their uniforms. But they were as noisy as always. I’m sure the evil spirits ran away.

Small Cats & Not So Small Cats

~ Veselin ~ 6 Comments

Last summer we saw a litter of kitten in a hard to reach place. There was no mother cat nearby.

It might be hard to spot them, but 4 voids.

The 4th one is a sniper and hides well.

We visited the same area around Christmas and I asked my wife “Remember the kitten? I wonder if they made it” and then 5 seconds later saw this:

So momma cat successfully protected her kitten from adoption. The 4th void is a sniper again.

Do you play in your daily life?

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
Do you play in your daily life? What says “playtime” to you?
View all responses

I do some football with the kids in warm months. I also play some bullet chess. I used to play more but kind of gave up my favorite 5-minute blitz games after my second kid was born in 2018. Don’t miss it, TBH. 1-minute chess is sufficiently good and the game ends before it becomes boring. I have no defined time but I sometimes alternate chess with reading after everyone is in bed.

I avoid playing addictive video games. I’ve been addicted to mobile or computer games several times in my life and do not enjoy it. For example, I got addicted to the Bulgarian MMORPG Imperia Online around 2005. Woke up at 4am every night to manage my armies. This pissed off my wife so much that she gave me the talk. I stopped immediately and it was empowering, gave me the tools to interrupt emerging game addictions on demand, which I used a couple of times in the later years.

In 2011, at a company meetup, I met two of the authors of Triple Town, a highly addictive mobile game. They explained how gamification works and how the drops are optimized for producing small amounts of dopamine in your brain to hook you up. I didn’t believe at first and tried their game. Surprise, surprise. I got addicted to it and had to use my painful tooling to stop it. So, whenever I feel the need to play a new game, I try to find puzzle-like games rather than games where you collect items, merge groups of items, or raise stats.

The last game I tried to play was Puzzle Star Battle. It is very difficult, though, I couldn’t solve a single 10x10x2 puzzle.