Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book explores the consequences of the first book’s revelation: Temeriaire is not just a Chinese dragon that was meant to be a gift to the French, he is a Celestial - the breed of the imperial family. Thus, after a bit of British bureaucratic struggle, Laurence and Temeraire are off to China. The plotting of this book is relatively slow outside of the four battle scenes. This is not a negative - I think Ms. Novik uses it to properly convey to a modern audience just how long a boat trip from England to China would take.

Rave Master Vol. 5 by Hiro Mashima

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The story has kicked into manga overdrive. Lots of mysteries all over the place. Hints that Haru Glory’s dad is maybe in Demon Card. Finally some clues about who Elie might be. The former is more likely to be a red herring, the latter seems to pretty strongly be true. This volume is dominated by a fight scene that’s been coming since the first volume. But Mashima also gave the side characters (both protagonist and antagonist) their own battle while the main one was raging on. All of the Demon Card enemies have special powers and one of the goons can shoot glue out of an eyeball-looking thing on his head. Which led to this…

As you know, I had CentOS 7 on the Acer Aspire and it was working fine. After CentOS 8 came out, I went ahead and installed it there. It worked fine, but there aren’t as many packages in EPEL for CentOS and RHEL 8. I went on a journey to try and get the i3 window manager working, but I would have had to recreate way too many packages in order to get it to work. So I tried to go to Ubuntu. I couldn’t find a minimal installer that wasn’t for servers, so I went with the Kubuntu install, intending to use that to install qtile or another tiling manager (the resolution on this thing is just too atrocious for a real Window Manager or Desktop Environment). But Kubuntu was just insanely buggy - probably due to the low specs of the netbook. Also, apparently qtile had been knocked out of the Ubuntu repos. The qtile documentation implied it was still available in Debian, so I put Debian on the netbook using a minimal install where I went ahead and install LXQT just to be on the safe side and have some kind of GUI if things didn’t work out. At first wifi wasn’t working, but eventually I landed on this page which explains all the quirks of installing on the Acer Aspire One. I had to enable the non-free repos and install the broadcom-sta-dkms driver. After a reboot, I finally had wifi. Unfortunately, qtile isn’t in the Debian repos anymore either. So I’m going to give installing from pypi a shot and if not, maybe try Arch?

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 135 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Some COVID-circumstances led to me finishing the second-half of this two months after starting. So I don’t quite remember the themes that piece together this issue, but here are my per-story thoughts:

The Rains on Mars: A delicate story of loss and how running away from loss can have consequences. Very nicely done.

Crossing LaSalle: Complex issues surrounding mortality and self-worth in a world in which people can have their brains loaded into new bodies.

The Princess in Black and the Hungry Bunny Horde by Shannon Hale

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you read the first two books with your kids and then were about to give up, do not do so! When I read the second book, about Princess Magnolia’s birthday, to my four-year-old twins I was disappointed. Just like the first one, the princess has someone snooping around as she runs off to fight monsters. Also, there was no payoff on the Goat Herd Boy wanting to become a super hero. Sure, this book series is for Kindergarten to Second-Graders, but it was just too repetitive.

Rave Master, Vol. 04 by Hiro Mashima

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Part of me wonders - is this just meant to be a comedic manga hero’s journey or is it a straight up parody? I can’t tell from this volume. Story-wise it concludes the story from the previous volume about the town where it always rains. I thought the plot twist for that section was interesting, even if the overall story is kind of lacking in stakes - which is why I wonder if this is meant to be parody. Afterwards we continue the medium-term arc of trying to get a piece of Rave that landed in a mountain. Once again, a few interesting story points, but no real consequences yet.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 138 by Neil Clarke

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An issue in which I enjoyed pretty much every story. I didn’t detect the theme as easily in this issue as I usually do. The novella that anchors this issue, The Persistence of Blood, is really well-written.

Here are my per-story thoughts:

Tool-Using Mimics: The author takes a photo - perhaps a real take or perhaps from a copypasta forum and comes up with a bunch of possible micro-stories that could go along with the photo.

The Princess in Black by Shannon Hale

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you have little girls or little boys who love princesses and a little mischief, this book is a great first chapter book. I read this to my four year old twins and they really loved it and immediately asked for the next book. I’m going to admit that some of the jokes and sarcasm DEFINITELY went over their heads. But if they re-read it when they’re in first grade, I think they’ll be the perfect age to get all the jokes. Additionally, it introduces them to the idea of chapters without the chapters being too long. Overall, I think it’s a great kids book with great illustrations.

Rave Master Vol. 3 by Hiro Mashima

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

All the manga tropes continue piling up. This book has the “pervert who wants to watch the girl in the hot springs” trope. Compared to the last two books this one is just wrapping up the last storyline and then ramping up for the next one. Kind of a weird set of chapters to package together because while the story they tell is necessary, it makes this book on its own kind of dull. The story was originally serealized, so maybe that has a factor in the pacing. I think at this point you’re either into the story of the RAVE MASTER vs DEMON CARD or you’re not, so you’re moving on to Vol 4 or have already quit.

The Bob’s Burgers Burger Book: Real Recipes for Joke Burgers by Loren Bouchard

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There are a lot of crazy burgers in here. What did you expect from a book inspired by a blog inspired by burger puns in a cartoon voiced by H. John Benjamin? And yet… the authors worked with some chefs to massage the blog’s burgers and, while I’m not going to try all of these, I wrote about 2 dozen burgers recipes in my To-Make list. If you like puns and Bob’s Burgers, you’ve basically got reason enough to get this book. But if you don’t mind getting a little adventurous with your burgers (which I do, although I find my smash burgers to be the holy grail of burgers), there is some real value in owning this book. If you’re looking for a more serious one, I’ve done a lot of recipes from Weber’s Big Book of Burgers: The Ultimate Guide to Grilling Backyard Classics and highly recommend it. (Their grilled fries recipe tasted a LOT better than I thought it would)