Throughout the spring and summer of 2021 a few of the times that I mentioned on the Advent of Code subreddit that I was doing the 2015 problem set in all 3 languages, some folks said they’d be interested in a writeup on the experience. Now that I’ve finally finished 2015 (my first set of 50 stars!) it’s time for that writeup. Before I continue, I’d like to thank everyone on the subreddit who has helped me. I have a README.md for each day’s problem and you’ll find my thanks to those who helped me within those READMEs here in my repo.

Crimson Son by Russ Linton

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I got this book from a Story Bundle called “Immerse or Die”. The editor of the bundle had a process that went something like, “I got on the treadmill and started reading. If the book wasn’t pulling me in by the time I finished my 30 minutes, it was eliminated.” I didn’t find it quite that engrossing, but I did enjoy it and by the time the climax arrived, I kept wanting to turn the pages to see what would happen next.

Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is my second read. I have dropped the rating from 4 stars to 3 stars

I love Discworld’s Death. He makes any book better by his presence and so I especially love the books that feature Death. In this book Death is the A story. As we’ve seen throughout the previous 10 books, he’s developed a slightly more human personality. There was even that book a while back (Mort, I believe) where Death became a short order cook for a while. Apparently the auditors of reality don’t like this and Death now has a life timer. He ends up living out the rest of his life in a rural town and has a character growth arc.

The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My enjoyment of this short story (or was it long enough to be a novella?) was only marred by the fact that the story is so famous that I’ve seen it referenced and parodied a million times. Of course, that’s part of what made me want to finally read it.

First, point of clarification, I always thought the “game” in the title was the hunt. But “game” refers to the animal. As in the phrase “an elephant is a game animal”

Final Fantasy VI by Sebastian Deken

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was a kickstarter backer on the campaign for this book

I’ve been waiting for this book for a while. This game, along with Chrono Trigger, was very formative in my early gaming years. The book decides to focus on one of the greatest things about Final Fantasy VI (FF3 in the original US release), the music. I can’t argue with the fact that Uematsu’s music is incredible - I own a bunch of Final Fantasy soundtracks. That said, my preference would have been for a few chapters on the music. Mr. Deken’s work views FF6 entirely through the lens of music. It is definitely a unique lens and one that he is very well situated to opine on. It makes this book special compared to others that would tackle the same subject. It’s also what you get with a Boss Fight Book - a book that is HIGHLY dependent on how the author relates to the subject - for better and for worse.

Ever since a class during my undergrad which mentioned technology that can help make sure the real world is accessible to all folks no matter what their physical limits may be, I’ve been very interested in the topic. It’s led to my interest on web accessibility (although I’m not always perfect when it comes to this blog) as well as in other realms. One of my favorite series from the Game Maker’s Toolkit Youtube channel is his yearly wrap-up on how accessible games were that year. Here is his 2020 video:

Auberon by James S.A. Corey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As the back of the book (so to speak…this is only available as an ebook at the moment) says, this novella is a chance to see what Amos’ old colleague Erich is up to. The novella starts off with a quote about a changing of the guard that mirrors the opening to The Churn. It appears that Erich has learned the lessons of that book and applied them to his current enterprise. At the same time, this novella really isn’t about Erich and his crime empire at all. (Although that probably would have been a pretty great novella in its own right). Instead it’s about Governor Rittenaur and, despite being listed as #8.5 in the series, it might reasonably fit in better as 7.5. The plot takes us back to right when Laconia has taken over and Governor Rittenaur is sent in to be in charge of the most important star system in terms of riches and potential scientific developments. It’s a story about colonizers and colonies that is mature enough to show that neither side is perfect. In a way, who you side with in this story says more about you than it does about anything else. Within that story, it’s also about ideological purity vs the real world. As we’ve already seen in a few novels, Duarte’s leadership style enforces and creates a hierarchy that does not tolerate deviations because they’re so certain that they are on the right side. One can form so many parallels to history in that.

Death Masks by Jim Butcher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If Goodreads had half-stars, I’d definitely give this one 4.5 stars. Butcher has taken everything I like about the Dresden files and eliminated a lot of what was annoying. Dresden has FINALLY earned the trust of Murphy on the SI unit at the Chicago PD. It was getting tiresome having them fight over dumb stuff. By the same token, Dresden is finally not trying to be such a hero that he holds back info from Murphy in a way that both endangers them and causes her not to trust him. Over the last couple books, Dresden and Marcone have reached a level of respect for each other. Sure, Dresden still would prefer to keep Marcone uninvolved, but at least he’s realized he shouldn’t be so childish.

Lightspeed Magazine, April 2014 by John Joseph Adams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a GREAT issue. I don’t think there was one story that wasn’t top-notch. My favorite SF stories were Codename: Delphi and Exhalation. My favorite fantasy was The Only Death in the City. The Afterparty excerpt was great and I added the book to my To Read list. As I normally do with collections or SFF magazines, below are my reviews per story. (They roughly align with my status posts, but sometimes I have to trim the statuses to remain within the character limits)

Generation Xbox: How Videogames Invaded Hollywood by Jamie Russell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Anyone who has followed my book reviews on Good Reads or my blog knows that I have read quite a bit of video game history. Whether it’s a history of video games starting with the miltiary and university campuses, a book like A Mind Forever Voyaging: A History of Storytelling in Video Games or the Boss Fight Books series - I’ve gone through quite a bit of video game history. So when this one started off with Atari and the ET game I was a little wary. By this point anyone my age or older with any bit of knowledge of video game history knows of the crash in the 80s and how it was (at least partially) caused by Atari’s horrible ET game. The Indiana Jones game would have been news to me if I hadn’t seen a long Ars Technica article about it last year. So a slightly boring start for me.