For The Win by Cory Doctorow
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Honestly, this book is like "The Jungle" for our times, just it takes place in PC farms in Malaysia, India, and China. Interspaced a few times throughout the story of the characters are a few chapters about the economic principles of an increasingly multi-national world, written in a easy to understand fashion. The chapters that take place in China seem authentic with the current economic conditions there (low-educated workers streaming in from the countryside to be taken advantage of in the city-based factories).

The chapters in China with "Jie" (the pirate-broadcasting girl) — her introduction at all, really — seem a bit contrived, but hey: it’s a story. I’ll forgive it, and it helps move the book along.

I particularly liked the chapters dealing with the MMORPG "headquarters" — I can almost imagine a room like controlling World of Warcraft, subtly changing game mechanics and coefficients to keep players hooked.

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January 8th, 2011 | Life | No comments

The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Seriously — and I hate to say this — it was almost better than the last few books written by Jordan himself. :X

The amount of characters are kept to a minimum — the action is easy to follow, and you don’t feel yourself being overwhelmed by characters being introduced that you may have not read about in years. My only criticism — and it’s small — may be that perhaps some of the character interactions aren’t fleshed out enough… but no, I’m not going to go there. I’m happy with the way it’s written.

Rand, in particular, develops into an incredibly interesting character in this book — I personally thought his development had stagnated just a bit, and The Gathering Storm has certainly made up for that!

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November 22nd, 2010 | Life | No comments