I really want to like this book. I am sympathetic to pirate politics, and I’m impressed with its sudden surge to power in Sweden and elsewhere. I even think many of the ideas in here are compelling and will probably come back to it despite my relatively negative review. The thing, though, is that I struggled through it, so it took me so long to read it that I probably don’t even remember enough to give it a fair review—except that that is itself kind of damning. It feels overly confident in its ideas: I don’t necessarily mind it as a conceptual framework for an organization (hence my willingness to come back to it), but its conclusions feel unmerited and unsupported by anything except some back of the napkin figures and choice anecdotes. Besides, the Pirate Party is doing worse now than it was a decade ago, and that feels damning by association. I don’t think I’m done with the book, but I am disappointed by it.

This volume went back to blah. On one hand, it’s interesting for the way it gives a backstory to a relatively minor character. On the other, it falls into the same trap of wanting to give series villains gruesome backstories as some sort of Freudian excuse.

Truth be told, I preferred the minor character as just that. I don’t know that this backstory was consistent with his original portrayal, and it didn’t help me appreciate him any more.

Like the last volume, this one seems to exaggerate the things I like least about the XIII series while ditching the things I like most (the art and the French, though that’s a function of my reading a translation.

Jones is an interesting character and the authors contextualize her childhood in interesting ways, but there’s something off-putting about (presumably) white French people trying to tell the story of the U.S. black civil rights movement and throwing racial slurs in there for good measure.

This series continues to be interesting, but kind of dumb. I feel like I’m a kid again, reading all the Star Wars books I could find at the library, filling in all the details between the main parts of the story, not always in a quality package.

This volume in particular exaggerates the problems that already exist in the XIII series related to women. In a sort of half-hearted feminism, Irina is portrayed (like other women, including Jones) as capable, action-oriented and violent, but ultimately an objectified sex symbol.

This was… a bizarre book. I’ve read plenty of David Weber’s writing before and the premise of the book seemed pretty close to Harry Turtledove’s Worldwar series, so I thought I might enjoy it.

Te premise of the book is that Earth has been invaded by a species that is clearly superior in the grand scheme of things but comparable to human technology other than space travel, giving humanity somewhat of a fighting chance.