aimiller's Reviews (689)

This was 100% a nostalgia read, but I will say this was really lovely, rapid-paced without feeling like too fast or forced, and was such like a sweet bite of Star Wars knowledge and universe. I loved this series as a kid (it's what got me into reading more Star Wars books) and I still really enjoy it. Would love for this to come out in reprints!

Just a really fun book that can be useful for both your RPG characters and also just like writing exercises to better know and flesh out characters! D'Amato does an amazing job of asking these really, really insightful questions that strike at the heart of knowing more, and strikes the perfect balance of serious and also silly. Probably my favorite exercises in the book include building a familiar/mount/apprentice, where you are forced through the exercise mechanics to build a balanced (and therefore more likely to be fleshed out) character for yours to interact with. Some of the charts I found a little confusing, but otherwise I think this is a really handy book for any writer or roleplayer to keep around!

Wow another great novella! The pacing on this one felt way less messy, and it was really good to see Binti deal with the fallout of things from the first novella. I will say the "twist" at the end wasn't very much of a twist for me, which is saying something, as I'm fairly dense as a reader. But I really think this was a great story, a fast read but still super gripping. Gotta get my hands on the next part!

This was a really excellent read; the pacing for the most part was super on point (more on that in a second though) and I really felt like I absolutely wanted more after that (thank goodness I have the next one all lined up!) The actual story itself was really compelling, and the resolution itself was actually very satisfying.

That being said, the limitations of the novella as an art form were apparent here. The time on the ship before the spoiler was NOT enough; Binti referred to a character later as someone she had "started to love" and I was like "oh what? okay." I don't know that it could be stretched out and improved by making it novel-length, but I would have liked to see like just a little bit more, to really get a sense of those new relationships she was forming.

But this was a really fun, mostly-well paced read, and I'm looking forward to diving into the next one as soon as possible!

Whoo this book is a WILD RIDE y'all. It has a very specific tone which took me back a little bit, but it works so well throughout and just like drives it home again and again. It was rough sometimes to read--not because it was bad but in fact because it was too good and Anakin's journey was so rough to follow emotionally. But I really cannot recommend it highly enough if you like Star Wars; it's really an incredible telling of a movie I know many people didn't like, and I think the insights in it really make so much more of it fall into place.

So this book was really incredible and I would absolutely use it in excerpt for undergrads. It's so good on so many fronts at tracing the intellectual history of racism and I really strongly recommend it. That being said, it has some issues; at one point Kendi starts talking about Black "LGBTs" and I was like "where is this coming from and why did no one catch this in editing?" I think also isolating anti-Black racism in the colonial era from anti-Native racism really limits some of the analysis he's able to do early on, because they're deeply connected. But I still think this is by far the best, most concise and most accessible book on the topic and I strongly recommend it.

Really liked this; Eskteins does a great job of weaving his argument throughout, and his narrative voice and his argumentative voice flow really smoothly together. Obviously good for undergrads--super accessible, while still nuanced enough to be useful. It's also a really interesting read, coming from someone who isn't super interested in World War I.

Just an incredible book. There are definitely critiques to be made (Mark Rifkin has an amazing one in When Did Indians Become Straight? that I strongly recommend,) but I just have such a deep response to this book. It hurts to read, sometimes, but it's so important and powerful, and I'm so glad it exists so I can read it when I need it.

First off, I have to say that I received an ARC of this book through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to read it.

I will also say that I did not read the book that this is the sequel to (insofar as memoirs have like "sequels"...) and so I have no idea if that impacted the way I read it. Also the copy I received was in black and white, which definitely impacted how I read it; I imagine a lot of what is great about Thrash's art is the coloring, and so while I did definitely still enjoy it in black and white, I'm sure it's even better in full color.

The story itself was interesting, and I definitely was intrigued by the mystery aspects, and the ending, without spoiling it, had a really good, solid conclusion that let things come together and also mostly felt satisfying. It did feel a little fast, but that may have been the rate at which I was reading (I'm not very good at reading comics.) Overall I do definitely recommend it!

I mean, does exactly what it says on the tin--it's a very short introduction to WWI, with special focus on the military aspects of the war (aka 'the things I find most boring about history'.) It did I guess have like... a section of a chapter dedicated to "homefront life" so good it on that front? I didn't find it super interesting, but someone who wants that military history crash course would probably like it way better than I did.