demonxore's reviews
107 reviews

Later this week I'll write up a review detailing why I've rated this 3 stars. In the meantime, know that this book concerns an important piece of history and is a decent introductory work about the massacres in Nanking. Definitely worth reading. 

This novel uses a bit of real occult history as a backdrop and alludes to the stranger-than-fiction life of American rocketeer Jack Parsons. Silver Nitrate doesn't focus on Parsons at all, but it's super crazy and coincidental that I keep seeing his story everywhere, along with the uncanny connections to figures like Aleister Crowley, L. Ron Hubbard, and golden-era Hollywooders. What a weird world!! 

Silver Nitrate is probably considered contemporary pulp, but it is very entertaining and hella well researched. I really love the true occult history details Moreno-Garcia uses as worldbuiling enrichment. 

This started out really strong with great voice, and then it sort of got scattered. It felt like a horror grab-bag from around the 60%-80% mark: cosmic, gothic, occult, you name it. But the ending surprised me and I actually really liked it

even though the family curse turned out to be unbreakable. Somehow I like hopeless endings 🤷🏼‍♀️.

Good job, Gus Moreno. I'll be following you as closely as I do Stephen Graham Jones. 

It's cute, but not the most poignant book about books. Also, the cat wasn't a big enough character to warrant the title 😞

Waif really tries for artistic misandry horror but falls short, maybe because of how short it is. This novella took several hard turns in a very small amount of time and I ended up not really digging it. 

Up until the last chapter, I was planning to rate Algorithms to Live By at three out of five stars. The book is filled with poignant descriptions of algorithmic devices that we (mostly unknowingly) use in everyday life, and the explanations are simple enough to be understood by any layperson. Unfortunately the first half of the book put a bad taste in my mouth with its "by male redditors, for male redditors" tone, but the last 50ish pages on game theory, mechanism design (i.e. "reverse game theory" ), information cascades, Vickrey auctions, and the revelation principle really blew me away. The well-developed conclusion claims that even though we all want to escape the brutal rat race wherein folks take advantage of others at every turn, there is still hope. We can still change many aspects of the game to transform the dominant strategy into one that is based on honesty. I'm super glad I didn't throw this in the DNF pile. 

This is the first-hand account of a badass muthafucka who somehow had a good luck fairy sitting on his shoulder throughout the whole of WWI from start to finish. I don't think it mattered to this guy which side he was on, he was just good at fighting and was always up to his responsibility. But don't mistake this as a reflection on a pleasure cruise - there are plenty of descriptions of the horrors of war in this memoir. 

I don't remember crying when I read this in 11th grade 20 years ago (😱), but I definitely shed some tears this time around. Recommended re-reading for adults who might've forgotten how powerful this WWI novel is. 

In my personal rating system, I would give The Kill Chain 3 stars because of how repetitive it is, but since this is an outward-facing venue I'll give it a 4 star review. It is important for folks to read this book and understand the current state of affairs in the defense world. 

The Kill Chain by Christian Brose details the ways in which the American defense system has stagnated over the past 30 years while other countries (namely China) have been investing their efforts into technological integration of traditional warfare platforms. This book highlights that while the US continues to spend money on defense, that spending goes toward slight upgrades of the same platforms over and over again rather than creating new and innovative solutions that will change the game. There is an alarming lack of creativity in defense development, and this complacency could lead to the US eventually lose a major conflict with power players.

While the repetition of Brose's thesis was a bit irritating to me, I think it could be useful to help persuade those who are resistant to changing the current defense system that the US really needs increased innovation in the DoD space, along with greater commercial partnerships. Neo-luddites who believe that the best way defense systems should operate is by hoardes of warfighters hand-jamming data into outmoded computers really need to read this book.