Monday, March 21, 2022

Persepolis rising ch 36 through ch 52

Chapter Thirty-Six: Bobbie

Holden is still alive.
Got a message from Drummer. If they wanna respond it won't be subtle.
They are worried Holden's gonna break so they gotta stop using the hideouts that Holden knows about

ch 37 alex
Naomi's not into the revolution at the moment cause she's super sad about holden 
They get some fun intel on the laconians
Turns out there's a button the govoner can push to turn off all the marine's power suits.

ch 38 singh
Singh is interogating Holden
It's fun that we're in a situation where Holden is the old man when up until now he's always been relatively young
Singh asks about Ilus so Holden tells him the story
Singh tells him about the "bullet" that has shown up on their ship
Holden tells him to find the science lady from Ilus who's name I can't remember.

ch 39 amos
He's talking to Clarrisa and he's thinking a lot of psychotic thoughts about putting her out of her misery
He's thinking a lot of psychotic thoughts about everyone he interacts with
The food is bad but at least it's warm
Bobby comes to talk about Amos's feelings
He's a real dick about it
She punches him in the face
they fight fur reelz
fighting to the death cause Amos isn't willing to talk about his feelings
Bobby doesn't want him to die so she stops kicking him

ch 40 Naomi
A girl they don't know shows up and says Saba said they gotta go 
As they're going Naomi is distracted by a screen where Singh is giving an interview
She feels ok about Saba having scrubbed her identity from the station records
But that doesn't scrub it from people's memories and she's relatively famous
I kinda zoned out here.  But clarissa and Saba are involved and something about bombs.

Ch 41 singh
Singh is writing in his captains log and his internal monilogue has a lot of insecurity.  He's shipping Holden to Laconia. The guy with the big nose that's with those other terrorists tells Singh something big is going down.

Ch 42 Drummer
The big fight with all the ships from EMC against the on Laconian ship is happening.  They're shooting everything they have at the Laconian ship.  They are seeing things impact and they are psyched about it.   They send a nuke and it blows up and they're pretty sure they've won the day.  But the laconian ship is fine.  A direct hit with a Nike and it's fine.

Chapter Forty-Three: Naomi
The plan involves blowing a. Unch of shot up and then escaping on some ships through some ring gates.  Part of the blowing up is sensor stuff so the laconians don't know where they have gone.  The other is to free prisoners.  Down side, they figure out Jim was shipped out two days ago.  Plan will proceed, but saving Jim won't be part of it.



ch 44 bobbie
Katra's there with the bomb
She and Bobbie go outside and set up the bomb
when a group of marines come by, they blow up the bomb
Bobbie grabs one of the dead marines
Oh yeah, the whole plan is for Bobbie to get some power armor
They're gonna try to reverse engineer how the governors shutdown works

ch 45 drummer
The laconian ship is shooting a bunch of missles back.
drummer's ship gets shot by a railgun
She tries to get a connection to whoever's in charge of the remaining EMC ships
There's no response, all the EMC admirals are dead
She gets a message from Admiral Vohn on the Tempest
He asks her to surrender
She does so

ch 46 singh
Things are going well with the congress of worlds
Overstreet briefs Singh on the attack
Singh feels good about it
it's a smaller attack, he feels like the rebels are running out of steam
They chitchat about what they should do with their broken nosed informant
There's an unauthroized launch
It's the rocinante
He calls the storm to fight the rocinante
There's a riot in the detention cells
Singh is escorted to a safe house
But on the way his marines are all frozen
he hides in the closest bathroom

ch 47 bobbie
She and Amos are already on the outside of the storm 
After they get a ways away from Medina, they're gonna breach and take it over
Bobbie is in a lot of pain cause of old injuries and oldness
pain is just pain entering the body
The hull of the storm is healing itself as Amos tries to cut a hole
Amos cuts a hole and he keeps cutting it to keep it open
Amos is worried he's gonna run out of fuel
The ship looks like a martian destroyer but it's made of all this wierd stuff that reminds them of the protomolecule
But there's very few people on the ship so odds are they're gonna take the ship, but they might die trying.

ch 48 clarrisa
This is the part of the plan where they take down Medina stations sensors.  Step 1, put in a thing that makes the sensors repeatedly do diagnostics when they power up.  Step 2, cut the power 🔋 💪 🙌 😎 👌 👏 so that they power off and then have to power back on.  They're going to do the bomb to cut the.power when a bunch of lacojians show up.  It's clarrisa,  Naomi and the big nose traitor.  Clarissa does her super powerful gland thing and kills everyone.   But she got shot a lot so she's probably going to die.


Chapter Forty-Nine: Bobbie
They are having a hard time trying to take the storm.  Mostly cause they recognize that the borders are in league with the Roci so the Roci isn't really a threat.  So instead they all get into crash couches and repeatedly accelerate and stop to try to shake off Bobbie and crew.  Through immense will power and patience Bobbie and crew are able to make they way to the ops deck.  There's a lot of talking and the laconians end up surrendering.  

They talk to Naomi and find out Clarrisa is dead.  They talk to Alex and tell him they took the ship.  Bobbie gets all up in Amos's face about his current mental health.

“I’m sad, Babs. I’m angry. But I’m okay. Going down fighting was a good way for her to go too. I can live with it.”



Chapter Fifty: Singh
Singh is going through his past actions and wondering at what point hhe could have done something different to have avoided all of this trouble.  He talks to the incoming big ship.  They want assurances that the ring gate and the slow 🐌 zone are safe before they proceed.  He has a talk with his head of security.  He says they're going to do something he calks a whitelist.  The idea is you identify the people you trust and kill everyone else.  Security guy says he cant do that.  Hes got orders.  If Singh gets too out.of control, kill him.  Being told to murder and bunch of possibly innicentt civilians is out of control.  

Security guy then gives this great speech about how killing more enemies just creates more enemies.  But if you sacrifice one of your own, maybe your enemies still hate you, but their children think you're not so bad.  He is following orders that take a REALLY long term view.  Singh thinks its BS and asks if security guy believes any of this.  He has a really quoteable response.

“I am an officer of the Laconian Empire, Governor Singh. I believe what I’m told to believe.”

51 drummer

She's been given a script to read and been invited to Laconia.   She hates it, but what's she gonna do.  So she goes along with it.

52 Naomi 
Naomi and Alex are on freehold.  The planet at the beginning of the book the union had given a death sentence to by disallowing ring gate traffic.  They've declared loyalty to Laconia so I guess they're not going to starve to death.  Alex is worried about his ex wife and kid.  Naomi is worried about Holden.   

Bobbie and Amos are on the storm further out in the solar system.  They are trying their best to learn how the laconian ship works.

Epilogue duarte
For a totalitarian dictator duarte doesn't seem too bad.  But that's the problem, if he wasn't likeable he wouldn't have been able to get half the martian army to follow him to Laconia. Now they're loyal to him and he can do all the evil 😈 things and he explains it away as being part of the greater good.  He has a very sincere meeting with Singh's wife thanking her for her sacrifice and offering her any assistance she needs.  Her daughter has a spot at the academy if she wants it.  

 I wonder if they have money and if so how expensive would it be if a person who's husband hadn't been sacrificed for the greater good wanted to send their daughter there. 

He goes to meet with Holden and the first thing Holden does is freak out a bit cause he can see he's done protomolecule modifications to his body.

There's more freaking out about the Goth black hole that opened up on the laconian ship and caused a memory gap in everyone in the solar system.  The Goths are out there and they don't like us using the Roman technology.  

Duarte us all, yeah and that's why I need your help.  I wonder if Holden is going to help him.

Monday, March 14, 2022

why zebras don't get ulcers ch 13 to CH 18

Ch 13 stress and depression pg 229
I'm not depressed,  I'm just sad.
https://youtu.be/yNaw9H5l7-Y

Depression is very complicated.  I read this whole chapter and I don't know what the relationship to stress is.


Ch 14 personality,  temperament and their stress related consequences pg 262

If you're a type A person that has a lot of rage your stress response is way worse than a normal person and you are likely to die of a heart attack.

Ch 15 the view from the bottom 287


Ch 16 managing stress pg 309

Wednesday, March 9, 2022

The Outstretched Shadow (the obsidian trilogy book 1) ch 23 through 26 (the end)

Ch 23 allies and enemies pg 533
They meet a half demon girl.  Journeyman wants to kill her.  Unicorn says they keep her.  One of her half demon powers is she can sense demon energy and leads them toward the source of the barrier.

Ch 24 a pause before the storm pg 557
They climb up a mountain to the source of the barrier.   They end up at the tip of a plateau with a giant obelisk.   Kellen takes off his armor and heads to the obelisk to do what needs to be done.  He knows a giant horde is coming to fight them.  He's pretty sure his friends are gonna die trying to protect him.  At least he can do what he was sent here for and probably die himself. 

Ch 25 battle at the cairn pg 574

It's a horde of goblins. The most interesting thing about goblins is they spit poison.  That tension lasts about a second cause half demon girl is immune to poison and unicorn can instantly cure poison.  So NBD.  Somewhere in the midst of all this journeyman decides half demon girl is ok.i think this is meant to be a big emotional moment.  But I just met half demon girl and I'm not sure how much I care about journeyman so I didn't really have any feelings about this.

Kellen goes to plug the USB into the server to disable the firewall to allow the clouds to to make their way to the elves.  There is strong wind blowing at him and then there's sand and pebbles and rocks.  So he's pretty beat up when he gets there.  He's all ready to do the thing and then there's another him there.  The other him tries to talk him out of this.  His pitch is basically,  join the demons.  Kellen isn't buying it.  Turns out the other him was the demon queen in disguise.  He plugs in the USB.  As he's doing the thing he has a realization that he's gonna die doing this thing.  


Ch 26 storm wind and silver feather pg 587
They live happily ever after.  

Kellen is still alive even though he thought his death was the price of his plugging in the USB.  Idaho thought the same thing about her weather spell but she's also fine.  Journeyman,  unicorn and demongirl thought the goblins were gonna kill them but the goblins ran away as soon as the weather barrier fell.

The demons are all pissed off.


The end 604

Saturday, March 5, 2022

The Outstretched Shadow (the obsidian trilogy book 1) ch 19 through 22

Ch 19 the fruit of the tree of night 424

The demons are very pleased with themselves.   They inspired the big city to extend its boundaries and push all the folk living in the west hills (I will buy you a new life) to flee further west and the demons had traps there to catch them.  Now they have lots of new folk to turn into slaves.  The queen has her slaves oil her wings daily so they're nice and shiny.  Adding insult to injury,  they tell the newly captured that almost immediately after expanding west, big city pulled their borders back to their walls.   So if they had just waited a little they would be safe in their own homes right now.  Their suffering is delicious. 

Idalia has figured out the spell they need to do to bring down the weather wall the demons put up to stop the 🌧 rain and it's complicated and expensive.   All the elves  will have to pay a price.   Also, the have to do the spell there and load it onto a USB drive and then have Kellen deliver it to the weather wall to deploy it. They think this might be dangerous so he and unicorn are getting fitted for armor and Kellen is getting  a sword.  This is all supposed to happen tomorrow and it's amazing that the elves can put together a suit of armor in one day.


Ch 20 a circle of silver fire 445
Idaho and the elves do the spell to charge up the USB drive.  They give him a special towel to wrap it up and keep it safe from blue tooth or nft or whatever.  He heads out in his new fancy armor and unicorn has fancy armor and a saddle.  Their elf companion is the guy in love with Idaho.  I'm gonna call him journeyman.  Journeyman isn't just there for fun.  He's there to teach Kellen how to fight.  Turns out kellen is a knight mage and has fighting superpowers. I'm calling those code time.  When he's defending code time let's him see what his enemy is going to do before they do it so he can defend super good.  Not perfectly by any stretch of the imagination.  Journeyman may not have code time but he had hundreds if years of fighting experience and he's much stronger and faster than Kellen so kellen has a lot of bruises that Journeyman has to heal with herb salve and tea.  On offense code time shows Kellen where to strike.  It works super good.

Ch 21 beyond elven lands 486
The scary mountains suck.  They get attacked a few times and journeyman and the mule are almost killed.  Journeyman tells Kellen about demons and the great war and points out more remnants 9f the war as they get closer to demon mountain.


Ch 22 visions of the past. 526
Kellen has a dream where he sees another guy named kellen riding a dragon.  Turns out he's on the side of the demons.   It makes Kellen super worried he's gonna turn evil.