Reviews and Comments

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cwg1231

cwg1231@bookwyrm.social

Joined 2 days, 17 hours ago

Favorite Book Series: Inheritance Cycle Just Finished: Dark Profit Saga (Orconomics, Son of a Liche, Dragonfired) Currently Reading: Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-speculation

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reviewed Dragonfired by J. Zachary Pike (The Dark Profit Saga, #3)

J. Zachary Pike: Dragonfired

The monarch wants him dead. A dragon’s torching the realm. Is his heroic gig about …

Extremely thoughtful social and economic commentary on both the DnD setting and real life

This series has been a fantastic journey from what I thought was a silly tropey DnD story into a touching and emotional journey with sincere commentary on the DnD setting. Dragonfired fires a lot of the Chekhov's guns that have been on the table since Orconomics. While doing this, it pulls absolutely zero punches in critiquing both the racist assumptions implicit in the DnD settings and the very real methods by which systemic racism is perpetuated in real life. After all that, it demonstrates what a few good people in positions of power can do to start overturning a corrupt system.

reviewed Orconomics by J. Zachary Pike

J. Zachary Pike: Orconomics (Paperback, 2014, Gnomish Press LLC)

A disgraced Dwarven hero. A band of deadbeat adventurers. His last shot at redemption could …

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An entertaining read. A little too tropey for my taste, especially if you're familiar with DnD 5e. I thought it was a bit weird that the book lampshades the fantasy racism and then the narrator immediately makes a comment treating the racism as if it was based on fact, but that really only happens once. The story takes a while to really pick up, but I enjoyed the ending. Won't say more to avoid spoilers :)

reviewed Introduction to Analysis with Complex Numbers by Irena Swanson

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Irena Swanson: Introduction to Analysis with Complex Numbers (2021, World Scientific Publishing Co Pte Ltd)

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This book was my textbook for Math 112, Intro to Analysis, at Reed College. It does a decent job of fulfilling its purpose, but the author forgets that this is meant to be an introduction to speaking math. There are many terms or methods of description in this book that are unfamiliar and confusing to those not already fluent in the language of math. As one attempting to learn the language of math, I found that many of the explanations were difficult to understand for beginners.

I think it would be a good textbook were it not aimed at being an introduction to the subject it covers.