Welcome

Welcome to my ever-evolving blog. It started out as a blog on Beachbody workouts and products, mainly when I was a Beachbody coach. I no longer coach, not because I don't believe in Beachbody's programs (I subscribe to Beachbody on Demand and use their workouts every day), I am just not a salesperson and hated that aspect of it. I am more than willing to answer questions about my experiences with their products and the various workouts, and I feel freer to do so without the appearance of giving a biased review of something.

I have also started adding reviews for various things I have purchased like movies, books, CDs, and other products. This was brought about by a fight with Amazon in which all of my reviews were removed over a completely bullshit allegation that I posted a review that violated their terms of service. After going back and forth with the morons in the community-reviews department (even after they admitted that my posts did not violate their guidelines) they restored my account (which took them six months to do), but I have been posting my reviews on my blog to have them preserved in case something like that happens again. And here, I will post uncensored reviews so I will swear from time to time and post reviews that may be longer than Amazon's character limit. Everything I post here on any topic or product is my personal opinion, and I take no compensation for any product reviews I post. I am a member of Amazon's vine program and because I get those products for free, I keep those reviews on Amazon only, but everything I have purchased with my own money, whether from Amazon or some other store/website/outlet, I will post here.  

I also plan to do some longer blog posts on various topics, such as how to learn physics, how to get through calculus, and longer reviews of workout programs as I do them. Basically, whatever strikes me as interesting at the time.  As you can see if you navigate around the blog, I had many years in between postings. During that time I was going back to school to get an engineering degree, and learning material that I avoided my first time through college was a different experience and one that gave me a lot of insight into how to do well in those classes, which I will try to impart here for those who are looking to get a science or engineering degree. 

Tuesday, October 31, 2023

Book Review: Dune: The Battle of Corrin (Dune #3)

 


The Battle of Corrin is the third novel in the Legends of Dune trilogy. The book was written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson and published in 2004. The book's events start approximately 60 years after the events of the prior novel, The Machine Crusade, and conclude the war between humans and machines. There are some time jumps in the book that make keeping track of characters a bit tricky.

The hardcover version of the book is long. It is a little over 600 pages and could have easily been split into two smaller books with a bit tighter storylines. In fact, it is separated in the novel into Book I and Book II, but there are really three stories in the book that kind of interweave. The first is the thinking machines deploying multiple weapons to kill off humans, the Titans working against the thinking machines and the humans, and the humans trying to take out both groups of machines while bickering among themselves. I will not go into the fine details to avoid spoiling the plot, but it is not spoiling anything to say that the humans ultimately win. By the end of the book, it is revealed how the three main "Houses" in Dune came about and why the Atreides and Harkonens are rivals in the original Dune novel. 

The book is good, but it seems like it would have been better had it been split into two books. The actual defeat of the various machines is detailed in the last few chapters and felt a little bit rushed to me. Had the book been split into two novels I do not think the authors would have had to jump from storyline to storyline as much and would have made everything a bit easier to follow. That said, it is still worth the time to read to find out how the events that would set up the original Dune novel played out.

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