Will Sargent rated Going dark: 3 stars

Going dark by Linda Nagata (Red trilogy -- book 3)
As a soldier of the Red who pursues covert missions designed to nudge history away from existential threats, James Shelley …
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As a soldier of the Red who pursues covert missions designed to nudge history away from existential threats, James Shelley …

"Lieutenant James Shelley and his squad of US Army soldiers were on a quest for justice when they carried out …

Global unrest spreads through the world, lies set off shockwaves of anger, rippling from mind to mind. Riot police battle …

Presents the Sandman's origin story from the birth of a galaxy to the moment that Morpheus is captured.
I wanted to like this book a lot more than I actually did.
I didn't like the protagonist. I didn't like the manic pixie dream girl love interest. I didn't like portentous Uncle Harry. I didn't like the false dichotomy. I didn't like the superpowers. I didn't like the intrigues of the art world. I didn't like the ending.
There's a statement about books that I like from lithub.com/men-explain-lolita-to-me/
"Paying attention is the foundational act of empathy, of listening, of seeing, of imagining experiences other than one’s own, of getting out of the boundaries of one’s own experience. There’s a currently popular argument that books help us feel empathy, but if they do so they do it by helping us imagine that we are people we are not. Or to go deeper within ourselves, to be more aware of what it means to be heartbroken, or ill, or …
I wanted to like this book a lot more than I actually did.
I didn't like the protagonist. I didn't like the manic pixie dream girl love interest. I didn't like portentous Uncle Harry. I didn't like the false dichotomy. I didn't like the superpowers. I didn't like the intrigues of the art world. I didn't like the ending.
There's a statement about books that I like from lithub.com/men-explain-lolita-to-me/
"Paying attention is the foundational act of empathy, of listening, of seeing, of imagining experiences other than one’s own, of getting out of the boundaries of one’s own experience. There’s a currently popular argument that books help us feel empathy, but if they do so they do it by helping us imagine that we are people we are not. Or to go deeper within ourselves, to be more aware of what it means to be heartbroken, or ill, or six, or ninety-six, or completely lost. Not just versions of our self rendered awesome and eternally justified and always right, living in a world in which other people only exist to help reinforce our magnificence, though those kinds of books and comic books and movies exist in abundance and cater to the male imagination."
The Sculptor is about an artist rendered awesome. He doesn't listen. He doesn't grow. He doesn't see. He doesn't imagine experiences outside his own. Instead, he suffers dramas, and creates Great Art. It's an artist's self-indulgent wish fulfillment.
Apart from that, it was okay.

"From the moment Kamala put on her costume, she's been challenged. But nothing has prepared her for this: the last …
Neat, in the places where Harry Potter is realistically a 12 year old boy, especially his interactions with Hermione (who, all things considered, still could have done with more agency.)
In the places where Harry Potter talks about defeating death, it reads as a bullshit extropian transhumanist tract. Death isn't a touchstone for Harry. He doesn't remember his biological parents. He wasn't touched by death as a child, unless you consider his pet rock. I understand that there's some plot magic, but it just doesn't ring true.
I know I should like this book. But I don't.
I get tired of the talk of breakfast and tea. The voyeurism of private conversation and personal heartbreak. The totally unprofessional military officers. And I can't believe the AI are that stupid. It just doesn't work for me. It's like The Culture crossed with Downton Abbey.