“Fortune favors the brave," I told her. It also kills the stupid, but I decided to keep that fact to myself.
Curran is out of town, so of course things are going to go wrong. Taking a lot of what’s been building, between the Pack having troubles with a non-shifter as essentially second in command, the relationship between the Pack and the People, Kate’s trouble with Roland and more particularly with Hugh.
Life, Tavi reflected, seldom makes a gift of what one expects or plans for.
It’s darkest before the dawn.
Kate and gang go to Europe!
The world building in the Kate Daniels universe is really top notch. It’s set in a modern world where magic has returned. So far, not that unusual. But in this world, magic and tech alternate which set of rules dominate. When tech rules, no fireballs, no tracking spells, etc. But when magic dominates, skyscrapers decay and planes fall from the sky. So you’re in a modern world without a lot of the modern conveniences. There are a few issues (like where does the power come from? haven’t the power plants fallen apart? who works there…), but it’s still pretty awesome.
Kate’s no longer a mercenary and needs something to do with her time and skills, so ends up opening a private investigation business. Which of course takes a while to get going, so when she’s hired by Ghastek and the People to track down a runaway vampire… things of course are going to go from bad to worse. That’s quite a thing.
It’s an interesting twist to see the big bads this time around to be more or less vanilla humans that hate magic . It’s been done before, but that doesn’t make it any less worth exploring in a world where magic (sometimes) reigns supreme.
Compared to the previous books, Princeps' Fury changes focus somewhat. For the first time, we’re not actually focussed solely around Alera and the domain and battles of the humans. Instead, we’re going to Canim where unfortunately the Vord have taken over nearly anything . It’s a neat change of focus and a crazy escalation of stakes–although admittedly not unexpected.
The parts with Tavi are pretty wonderful. He’s really likeable and does a great job of overcoming problems by outthinking them, even now that he’s actually coming into powers of his own. It’s almost unbelievable just how good he is at planning, but he’s the protagonist. It works.
A car can be a daunting hacking target. Most cars don’t come with a keyboard and login prompt, but they do come with a possibly unfamiliar array of protocols, CPUs, connectors, and operating systems. This book will demystify the common components in cars and introduce you to readily available tools and information to help get you started. By the time you’ve finished reading the book, you’ll understand that a car is a collection of connected computers—there just happen to be wheels attached. Armed with appropriate tooling and information, you’ll have the confidence to get hacking.
Well. If you want a textbook to reference when you want to break into a car, this could be a good place to start. It’s not really a good high level overview, since it spends most of the book on specific examples. While those are fascinating, they feel too low level and specific to actually read through all of them.
Well. That was a sequel. Published 4 years after The Rook, we have a weird combination of following the events of the first book (Stiletto takes place perhaps a few months later as the Checquy and Grafters are coming together for peace meetings) but with two completely new main characters (a Pawn Felicity and a teenager Grafter Odette, descendant of one of the leaders).
Plotwise, it’s an interesting enough story, with two organizations that have been taught from early ages to hate one another for centuries having to come together and at least pretend to play nicely. Throw in a third (ish) party trying to throw a wrench into the situation? You have a pretty solid core for a plot.
Captain's Fury takes the ‘Alera at war’ feel of Cursor's Fury and really turns it up a notch. Tavi has done the impossible and fought a war against the Canim for two years now, holding them in place and building the trust of his followers to impressive levels. But now a new foe is coming for him–a foe far more terrifying than the Canim, or even than the Vord (who are much less interesting when you don’t see them on screen for a book or two)… politicians.
Characterwise, Tavi remains among the best part of these books:
The Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications is a fairly solid introduction to computer security in the context of web sites/browsers with one fairly major downside: it was published 7 years ago. In the context of the Internet, that’s… quite a while.
Which this book was published, IE had a 40% market share, followed by Firefox with 30%, and Chrome with only 20%. Given that more recent numbers show Chrome with 70%, FF with 10%, and IE + Edge together only at 10%… the Internet has changed. Since it was published, Flash is the next best thing to dead. HSTS and CORS are everywhere now (mentioned as future technologies in the book). Some issues just … aren’t any more, while a whole new kettle of worms is about.