This book has a lot of good insights in how to think strategically, and I’m not doing too many of them. I’ll try to incorporate it more into my life. However, it does put one of the primary goals that it talks about as money and not happiness, so I’ll change that around.
This is a really good book, that has a wonderful mix of action, cross cultural interaction, and well done scientific explanations. The book’s focus and drive are lovely, especially when there are those wow moments of how old the civilization they contact is, and how new the ship humans are flying is. I want to read more of this series, but they aren’t part of the amazon unlimited whispersync.
This was a fantastic book, but I’ve heard most of the information in other articles and lecture series that I’ve listened to. There were a few nuggets that I hadn’t heard before. The exercising self control seemed to be an interesting concept, and one that I’ll take up soon. The idea is to sit down at the end of the day and more or less meditate. The purpose of the meditation is to do something that requires a lot of self control, like not thinking of a purple elephant. When that is the purpose of the meditation it makes it quite hard to do anything else but think of a purple elephant. Doing this early in the day can make your self control worse throughout the day, so doing it before bed is one of the best ways of going about it.
This book was pretty good at explaining how to go about learning to interact with other cultures. the most interesting part however was the grouping that the lecturer goes through at the end of the book. I found the outliers the most interesting, like Ireland and Israel. Some of the aspects of the groupings surprised me, like the Nordic countries not wanting to stand out, but still being very individualistic.
This book had some really great points, especially those with the Monk and the wizards. I didn’t much care for the sky horses coming in, or the dragons participation. These were so over the top they didn’t make the characters seem real. I also didn’t care for the way the bad guy was becoming a god with little explanation about the system of deity. He seemed to make people afraid and thus became a god, didn’t make much sense. The defeat of him by showing the bones was also anticlimactic. The main character’s death was similarly anticlimactic, and with the deific horses around they should have been able to do something about it.
This was a nicely done book, with all the leaders of the world being overturned. There was a little too much unexplained magic for my taste, particularly the djinn. The dragons are also not well explained, but they seem to fit the world more. The main characters had a lot of both good and bad luck, but not too much was done skillfully. The monk and tiger characters were amazing, but their respective sects didn’t do much in the grand scheme of things. The monk’s being just another army, and the tigers not participating at all. That last part was a bit of a let down, but it made it more realistic.
This book had a lot of interesting aspects, like the skies and the gods. The strangeness of obvious multiple gods, but some accepting only one is an interesting situation. I really like the main wizards, as they work hard for what they need to do even with all the power they have. Most of the other characters have tricks or luck, matched with a little skill. Also the gender neutral status of the wizards is pretty cool, where they are considered gender neutral in political situations but still allowed to be sexual.
I really enjoyed this book, especially the parts around the political situations of the princess and the king. The princess is a very interesting character who has a little bit of badness, but is mostly good. She has an interesting part to play, and it will only become more interesting as the books go on. The understanding of the bad guys towards the end is a little odd still, and not very well explained with the relation to the whole universe. The bad guy being the same one from the fairy tale is odd, especially when what happened to him was so horrific it should have driven him to become as evil as he appears to be. I’m looking forward to more in this series.
This was a really good book, with a really fun premise. I like the religions and the magic system. The nebulous bad guys is a little bothersome at first, but it gets a little clearer in the second book. The seventh order was really cool, albeit strange. The training in the story was really cool and the deaths of the people involved were heartbreaking, but made it seem real.
It's an Exciting World 