A Veil of Spears by Bradley P. Beaulieu (15)

Each of these has been better than the previous one.  I have minor gripes with some details (where do we get all this wood in the desert?), but nothing to ruin my enjoyment.  Beaulieu continues to shift the stakes, I keep thinking I know what kind of conflict/climax he's building to, but new players and insight keeps me on my toes.  This third book kept mainly to the previously established pov.  There is a new one added in, but only had a handful of chapters.  We also got some very brief povs from a couple different kings.  Thoroughly enjoyable, I look forward to the final three, but maybe a couple short books before I dive back in.

Yes, a robot remembering he was human reminds me of David Bowen in 2010 Space Odyssey and more remote to the Frank Miller's comic Hard Boiled. A robot confused with it's consciousness, like how can this be if I'm not human. It adds to the terror of the thing, like if you had no control of your body, but you consciously experienced everything your body was doing against your will. Out of nowhere, you're slaughtering your family and friends, you're seeing it, living it, but not willing it.

TaoHorror - you make me think that Mog might try to kill Esmi specifically -- perhaps in some mangled fashion similar to a Nonman trying to recover himself via memory/murder

Yes, a robot remembering he was human reminds me of David Bowen in 2010 Space Odyssey and more remote to the Frank Miller's comic Hard Boiled. A robot confused with it's consciousness, like how can this be if I'm not human. It adds to the terror of the thing, like if you had no control of your body, but you consciously experienced everything your body was doing against your will. Out of nowhere, you're slaughtering your family and friends, you're seeing it, living it, but not willing it.

I find it unlikely that the No-God only repeats the same phrase unendingly.  I think it more likely that Bakker narrowed his lines down thus far for effect.  So, what else might Mog say?  Probably more self-agony stuff.

I'm betting there's at least one scene with Esmi speakin with her son(s), a bakkeresque subversion of those scenes where a character gets a robot to recall that they were once human kind of thing.

Start Trek: Picard and Discovery

I'm not much of a Trekkie - I liked the original show ok growing up, I liked some of the movies, but not enough to care of it's recent resurrection. Long story short, a friend of mine convinced me to watch Picard and Discovery. If you can forgive the inane sci-fi tech, they've done well with the latest installments of the franchise. Picard was excellent, imo - very good writing, nice directing jerking the viewer back and forth, good stuff. Discovery makes me giggle, it's like Tarantino was consulted, LOL! It's a bloody mess, so I like it . But again, you have to forgive the stupid tech and overacting, but I guess I give it props for not deviating from it's persistent theme of morality to the point of absurdity ( sometimes blowing some fucker out the airlock is the best/obvious decision - in this case, they beam you out into space, LOL! ). Anyways, Discovery has a touch of horror-show, high body count, so that brings the franchise into modern sensibilities somewhat at least. It's almost comical to see the show ride between gritty-dark and over-acted moral decisiveness. Between the 2, Picard does a better job of managing the two, but Discovery has more surprise to it, which is cool.

Anyways, I like it, I'm up to Discovery Season 1, Episode 14 and yes, too saturated with ridiculous made-up tech, but that's a consistent feature of Star Trek, so I guess I can't beat up on the show too much for that. It's certainly better written than it's predecessors. Those who've criticized Picard for not having enough action can get fucked, it's the fact that it was grounded that makes it so much better - there are movies for those who want action with stupid writing, they're called Star Wars episodes 1 - 3. But, I'm not a true Trekkie, so I guess the producers should take the feedback from those who care about it more.