Reviews, Health, and Other Stuff: House of the Dragon

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.

Monday, October 23, 2023

Book Review: The Rise of the Dragon: An Illustrated History of the Targaryen Dynasty, Volume One

Rise of the Dragon is an illustrated and condensed version of the novel Fire & Blood, detailing the history of the Targaryen rule of the 7 kingdoms in the Game of Thrones universe created by George R.R. Martin. It is the primary source material for the Game of Thrones prequel series, House of the Dragon. In fact, if you have watched the first season of House of the Dragon, that story appears about halfway through this book. This book will, in broad strokes, spoil what is likely to be the ending of that series (depending on at what point in the story the showrunners decide to end the series), as it outlines what will come next. Given that the book did not include all of the details that we saw in the first season of the show, it is not likely to spoil everything that will be seen in the show, but you will get an idea of where the story will go. This is probably the first of what will be at least two books, as this one ends before the events of Danyeres' father's rule and his downfall.

The hardcover version of the book is 342 pages, a lot of which are illustrations. As was the case with the book Fire & Blood, it can be hard to keep all of the characters straight, especially since many of the Targareyn characters have similar-sounding names, and names get reused over and over. Having illustrations that show some of the scenes that are being described in the text does help a little bit, but it definitely makes this a slower reading book than it would normally be.

The book is very good, and the illustrations are great. Of course, many of us would prefer that Martin focus his time and energy on actually finishing the final two books of the Game of Thrones story, but the reality is that he is going to jump around from project to project and he seems content to finish GoT in his own good time. One good thing about this story being mostly finished is that the House of Dragon TV series will have a clear guidepost for where it is going whereas the later seasons of GoT did not, which will hopefully allow that series to end in a more satisfying manner.