Reviews and Comments

I read through Feed, the first of the Newflesh books, and loved it. I read through the subsequent two books in the trilogy, and went "huh." Now, with Parasite, I think I'm done.

Grant makes the same mistakes in every book. Her protagonist is ridiculously well-connected: her father and sister work for USAMRIID and even her loving boyfriend is a parasitologist with his own ridiculous plot twist. She introduces funhouse mary-sue characters two thirds into the plot. She has hitherto reasonable characters throw temper tantrums and threaten people for no reason. She makes absolutely safe places into death traps with some handwaving, and worst of all, she has her protagonist decide to not share vital information for the flimsiest of reasons.

Don't get me wrong, it's good reading. But it's like eating bad Mexican food when you're hungry -- sure, you're happy at the time but you know you're going to regret and be vaguely ashamed for having eaten it afterwards.

This is an excellent book. However, it's not so much about securing modern web applications as it is about describing browser holes. As it should be, since much of it was taken from Google's Browser Security Handbook -- still, it's distracting to see so much space being devoted to the topic of Java applets and frames when the best way to secure a modern web application is to NOT USE JAVA APPLETS OR FRAMES. So I took off a star for that.

It also falls into the common trap of spending more time detailing the exploits than the techniques used to combat them. I realize to some extent this is a function of there being so many options to write a web application, but it'd be nice to see some worked examples.

That said, this is one of the most complete, comprehensive guides to the rathole that is the Web, and I've already got two more books I want to read just from the footnotes provided on the topic. His analysis of parsing HTML and validating browser input is particularly incisive (if trenchant).

The basic premise seems to be that the Arabs and the Turks didn't know anything about Western culture, and weren't interested in learning anything about infidels. They borrowed the weapons after they got their asses handed to them, and then after they still had their arses kicked, they borrowed the Western organization and bureaucracies that came with it. Then they still got their arses kicked, because they didn't do any science themselves and didn't and couldn't keep up with the West (again, because they didn't know enough about Western culture.)
Not only that, the very idea of knowing Western culture was and is inimical to the very idea of Islam (as practiced, anyway). When these guys are by definition unbelievers and inferior, it's a real kick in the teeth to have to have to borrow anything from them. The biggest problem was not that they couldn't borrow the technology or the ideas... it's that the people they sent out to the West to steal the forbidden fruit would come back with ideas that were... not Islamic. In fact, the infected diplomats and emigrants were more of a problem than the West -- the West was out there, but it was a thing apart, and defined as 'enemy'. But any people coming back from the West would be talking heresy from top to bottom, from Women's rights, to the lack of slavery, to the separation of Church and State.