Redshirts

I’ve been a fan of John Scalzi’s work for a while now, but to this point I’ve only read his Old Man’s War series and random posts on his blog.  Yesterday I was walking around Barnes & Noble and came across his book Redshirts, I’d heard a lot of good things about it and decided to pick it up.

Book StatsRedshirts

314 pages

Science Fiction, Satire

Characters

The main character of the book is Andy Dahl, an ensign in the Universal Union who has just been assigned to the flagship Intrepid.  There was nothing about his character that will really blow you away, and the same is true of the side characters.  In fact, they’re meant to be largely side characters within the “story” of the Intrepid.  But while the characters aren’t especially memorable, they are well written and behave consistently within the world.

Setting

Primarily takes place in the Intrepid, but there are quite a few scenes where the characters are on various planets or space stations and a few scenes on Earth as well.

Plot

Shortly after Dahl is sent to the Intrepid, he realizes that there are a lot of people acting very strangely on the ship.  Before too much longer he is told about a very disconcerting pattern that people on the ship have noticed, which is of course is that on every away mission a low ranking member of the team dies.  Over the course of the rest of the book, they try to figure out exactly what is going on with the ship.

Enjoyment

I’m kind of torn about this book.  On one hand it is a brilliant satire and a perfect way to mock the horrible science that was seen in many science fiction TV shows.  On the other hand, I thought the second half the book was weaker than the first half.  If you’re a bigger fan of Star Trek and other science fiction shows, you’d probably find another 50 jokes that I missed throughout the book.

This book also had one of my biggest pet peeves in writing as a major plot point, time travel.  It’s maybe a little better because it presents it as a kind of alternate universe, but in the end it annoys me more than anything else.

At the end of the book, Scalzi has 3 Codas where he describes the events of some of the people Dahl met on Earth after the story ends.  The third Coda was probably my favorite part of the book.  It’s a very nice touch and works well within the story that was told about all of the characters.

The last thing I have to mention is that Scalzi gets big time bonus points for using the word “defenestration” in the book.  Likewise, you get bonus points if you know what defenestration means without looking it up in google.

Overall Grade

I had some issues with the book, and I’m sure that I missed some of the jokes, but I still had a good time reading it.

6/10

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by Adam on May 19, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by Adam on May 19, 2013

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A Spot of Bother

This was a book I picked up when wandering around Barnes & Noble.  I had read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and I enjoyed it.  The plug on the back of this book was also really interesting, and the idea of reading about a character who is going insane is interesting to me, so I got the book.

Book StatsA Spot of Bother

354 pages

Drama

Characters

The book centers around George Hall and his family, his wife Jean, son Jamie, and daughter Katie.  In some ways they’re a traditional family from a story, but in others they’re slightly different.  They argue about everything, they all have secrets that they unsuccessfully keep from one another, but one thing that Haddon does very well is make them all believable.

Setting

Various cities in England.

Plot

The largest plot thread running through the novel is the planning leading up to Katie’s wedding to Ray.  While this is going on, the rest of the family goes through their own problems.  Starting with Jamie getting dumped by his boyfriend Tony, George discovering that his wife is having an affair, Katie wondering if she should really be marrying Ray, and Jean trying to plan the wedding while pretending that her family is still “normal.”

Enjoyment

I enjoyed this book, and when I first started reading it I thought it was a really original take on a family going through their daily lives.  But as I finished up the novel today, somewhere in the middle of the book I realized that it’s really the same as almost every romantic comedy movie about a wedding that’s been released for the past 20 or so years.  The fact that George things he is going insane mixes the book up a little, but while that was one of the selling points to the book for me, I don’t think it ended up being a big factor in the overall book.  My review doesn’t sound overwhelmingly in favor of the book, but I did enjoy reading it.  The dialogue was good enough in the book to where I think it could easily be turned into a movie, and there were quite a few over the top moments, several of which had me laughing out loud.

Overall Grade

Very reminiscent of your typical romantic comedy movies, but as a book it was a fun and fairly quick read.  Nothing overwhelming but a fun read.

7/10

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by Adam on May 18, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by Adam on May 18, 2013

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Apparently further than I thought

So last week I wrote a post talking about Jason Collins coming out as a homosexual athlete and I ended the post by saying that I didn’t think we had come terribly far.  But about a week after the announcement I’ve been surprised by the reaction of most people which has been a resounding “meh.”

The media outlets that I’ve seen (primarily ESPN and Sports Illustrated) that dealt with the issue made it seem like something that would be completely Earth-shattering and change all of our lives forever.  Yet a week later, it’s not being talked about at all.  So at this early juncture, I have to say that I’m really quite impressed with the general social outlook.

But there is another aspect to the story that’s begun to bother me more and more.  In reading some of the articles, I’ve seen the names of about 10-15 other former athletes who have been openly gay.  These range from baseball or basketball players in America to European football (soccer) players to a professional bowler.

So why is Jason Collins being lauded as a pioneer in the homosexual community – particularly in sports – when there are so many other people who have come out?  Not even counting athletes, there are quite a few actors and other celebrities who are openly gay.  Another thing that was mentioned in at least one article that I saw was the fact that it’s – expected is the wrong word – more accepted when a female athlete comes out as being gay.

So to sum up my thoughts, we’ve come a lot farther than I originally thought we would, but I’m still a little confused with exactly where we stand as a society on the issue.  I’m still of the opinion that it doesn’t matter and shouldn’t even be an issue that we’re discussing.

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by Adam on May 10, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by Adam on May 10, 2013

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Bearing an Hourglass

So for the better part of the past two weeks I’ve been in the middle of Bearing and Hourglass, the second book in Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality series.  And for every excuse I could give about being busy and not finishing it for that reason, there’s a better reason I was sitting on it for that long.  I just don’t care about it.

This is an odd thing for me to say, because I enjoy many of Piers Anthony’s books, and especially because I enjoyed the first book in the series.  Overall, this book just wasn’t working for me, but being stubborn I kept slogging through it.

So instead of a review, I”ll do a quick post about why I didn’t care for the book, and then I’ll move on to something else.

The final straw that eventually caused me to put the book down was a section where Chronos uses his magic to reverse the flow of time for everyone on Earth, but then is able to have a conversation with someone where his introduction was the last thing he said and – yeah, it just didn’t work for me.  Time travel is something that annoys me in stories.  There is no logical way for time travel to work that doesn’t create an alternate world or a paradox.  When you try to explain it by simply saying that the character is immune to paradox because of his position as an incarnation, well, that doesn’t work either.  The only example I can think of where a book had time travel and still worked for me was the third Harry Potter book, and that had more to do with the other interesting parts of the book (the dementors, Lupin, etc.) than the time travel itself.  That book also had much stronger characters than this book, so that helps as well.  (And looking back on my review of the book, I did knock it for having time travel and said that it was the weakest book of the series to that point, and overall I’d probably consider it the second weakest, book 7 was the weakest.)

The characters in this book weren’t terribly interesting to me either.  As I started to write this out, I had to look at the back of the book to even remember the main character’s name.  I also had a problem with some of the female characters, through no fault of their own, they fall into some of the worst stereotypes from the 60′s or 70′s.  This book came out in 1984, so it was probably written a couple of years beforehand, and Anthony is an older writer anyway, but parts of this book felt extremely dated to me.

The world that Anthony created for these books is very unique, it’s an original combination of Science Fiction and Fantasy, with high levels of magic and technology existing in the world.  Unfortunately, this book just didn’t work for me.  I also own the third book in the series, and maybe I’ll give that one a try eventually.

There is one thing that I would love to be able to take from this book.  I need to realize that if I’m not really into a book, I need to put it down and read something else.  I am a lot busier now between bowling and work, and I don’t have the time to read bad books.

I’m not rating the book, it had some potential, but just didn’t work for me.  If you’re more accepting of time travel as a plot point, you might enjoy the book, if you’re like me and you don’t enjoy time travel, you can avoid this one.

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by Adam on May 8, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by Adam on May 8, 2013

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The Hunger Games

I was looking for something to watch on Netflix today, and to my surprise The Hunger Games movie was listed as I was scrolling through all of the available movies, and I enjoyed the books quite a bit, so I figured I’d check out the movie.

Fair warning, I’m going to spoil parts of the movie and quite possibly the second and third books in the series.  But at this point the books have been out for years and the movie has been out long enough for it to be on Netflix, and there is a statute of limitations for spoiling things.  If you don’t want to know anything about the story, then stop here, go read the books, and then come back and read this.  Anyway, on we go.

My first thought as I watched the credits roll was how accurate the movie was to the book.  There were a couple of subtle differences, but overall I think it was quite good.  My second thought is that it was too long for my taste.  The books were incredibly quick reads, I think I finished each of the individual books within a day or so, but the movie just seemed a bit long for me.  As I say that, I don’t really know what you could cut from the movie.  There was a little bit of unnecessary exposition in the beginning, but what was there worked to set up the movie for people who aren’t familiar with the story.  There was also a fair bit of foreshadowing for the remainder of the series, and that’s always good to see.

The next thing to get to of course is the cast.  I thought all of the actors/actresses were quite good.  Jennifer Lawrence was solid as Katniss, and Josh Hutcherson was decent as Peeta.  But overall I think the best acting in the movie was done by the side characters.  Woody Harrelson and Lenny Kravitz were fantastic as Haymitch and Cinna respectively.  But overall I think the most effective of the side characters was President Snow, he had very little screen time, but was able to effectively show just how evil the people from the capital are described as.  I don’t really remember him at all from the first book (granted it’s been 3 years or so since I’ve read the books) but he made the movie for me.

Very quickly I have to talk about the soundtrack, it’s very subtle, but quite good.  One of the best things about the soundtrack is that it stays out of the way.  The entirety of the soundtrack was instrumental, the only time there were words being sung was when the characters within the movie were singing.  There were also some neat things done with the audio in the movie as well.  There is a short point where Katniss is hallucinating, and during this scene they do some fun things with the sound.  There is also a section in the book where Katniss’s hearing is damaged, and for a short time there’s almost no sound as her ears are still ringing.  I don’t know if they did this because I was watching it on my laptop, but it would have been interesting in the theaters if they lowered the volume from the left side speakers for the rest of the movie after that.  (Or whichever side was the ear she lost hearing in, I’m pretty sure it was the left, but again it’s been 3 years.)

So initial thoughts, cast, audio, time for visual.  There were a lot of interesting visual aspects to the movie, most notable was the contrast between District 12 and the Capital, especially with the ways the characters were dressed.  I know that the book described the people in the Capital as being very strangely dressed in all sorts of odd hues, and the movie exceeded my expectations in that sense.  All of the set designs were well done, and it worked out well.

And now for my one major complaint about the movie, the cinematography.  While I haven’t gone to see many movies in theaters in the past several years, I do read about movies fairly often, and one thing that I’ve heard is a trend in a lot of movies these days is the use of shaky cam, or the lack of using a tripod to steady the camera.  In the action scenes in the second half of the movie, it wasn’t too bad, but when they use it early on in the movie it does nothing but take away from the foundation of the movie.  Basically, when you notice the camera, it’s a bad thing, and the shaky cam during the first half of the movie was far too noticeable and annoying.

One part of the story that didn’t quite work for me was Katniss’s side of her relationship with Peeta.  Peeta does a good job of showing that he really cares for Katniss, but without hearing Katniss’s thoughts it was kind of hard to tell that she was playing the part instead of actually falling for Peeta.  It’s a minor quibble in what was overall a solid movie.

Overall Grade

Nothing that blew me away, and there were a few small things that annoyed me, but overall it’s a solid movie that was very faithful to the book.

8/10

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by Adam on May 4, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by Adam on May 4, 2013

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So exactly how far have we come?

I’ve still got to get back into the rhythm of reading in my free time again, so today I thought I’d talk about something different.  I also think that I need to expand the scope of my blog since I don’t really think I’ll get back to reviewing two or three books every week like I did for the better part of the first two years of my blog.

The basis for this post comes from two separate things I’ve seen recently.  The first is a documentary that I came across last light on Netflix about Lenny Bruce – Looking for Lenny.  I’m a big fan of standup comedy – I know I’ve talked about George Carlin on my blog before – and anytime that you really look into the history of standup comedy, you eventually come across Lenny Bruce’s name.  But while I’ve heard of him before, I wasn’t familiar with any of his material, I was only aware of the impact that he has had on the world of comedy.  After watching the documentary last night, it gave me a lot to think about, to the point where I watched it again tonight.

While he is largely known for being a foul comedian – and he did use more than his fair share of foul language – Lenny was really one of the first people to use comedy as a way to introduce an idea.  When you tell a joke, there is the immediate reaction (hopefully a laugh), but with a quality joke, there should also be a delayed reaction when you think about the joke later.  While Lenny started this, I think that one of the best people to ever do this was George Carlin, specifically with his routine “The Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television.”

But while I think that Carlin’s 7 words routine is a perfect example of using comedy to introduce an idea, I think it shows part of the problem as well.  We’ve been inundated with people cursing to the point where you don’t even notice it anymore.  I know that I swear far more often than I probably should, but the words have no power to me anymore.  The words are overused, but they’re no longer attached to new ideas.

It’s difficult to get people to listen to controversial ideas, even in situations where you think you should be able to.  Even in my college courses, there were plenty of times when I would throw out an off the wall idea, and oftentimes I would get blank stares from other classmates and my professors as well.

So exactly what point have I been getting to?  Simple.  We may have progressed in a lot of areas, but unfortunately not in any of the ones that matter.  We claim to be forward thinking, but most of our society is so afraid of anything new that we mistake an acceptance of cursing for an acceptance of ideas.  And this leads to the second item that served as a prompt for this post.

While I haven’t blogged about it very much, I’m a sports junkie.  And the biggest story in sports for the last couple of weeks is that fact that the NBA player Jason Collins is coming out and admitting that he is gay.  While it is a step towards acceptance, I don’t see why it’s such a big deal.

Depending upon the source that you look at, studies have shown that up to 1% of the population is homosexual (it’s from Wikipedia, but I can easily believe the number, I actually thought it would be a little higher).  Even with a mere 1% of the population being homosexual, the odds are fairly good that you know at least one or two people who are gay.  I knew several people who were gay when in the music department at the University of Akron when I was a music major my first three years out of high school, and several of them were my friends.

So here’s the question that I ask after talking about my recent media viewings and the one news article I’ve seen recently.  Exactly how far have we come?  My answer to the question is that we haven’t come very far at all.  And it’s not just with language or homosexual people.  It’s with anything.  As a society we feel such pressure to show how tolerant we are that we show off the first person who is different far more than we should.  Jason Collins coming out will get far more airtime than something as meaningless as a person’s sexual preference should ever get.

The fact that a professional athlete in comfortable enough in our society to come out as a homosexual shows how far far our society has come.  The fact that it’s a major news story shows that we have so much further to go.

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by Adam on April 30, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by Adam on April 30, 2013

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The Mermaid’s Madness

Well, this post is a little late in coming.  I finished this book a little over a week ago on April 20th, but I’ve been busy since then and haven’t gotten around to writing up a blog post about it.  So what have I been doing?  The usual stuff, work and bowling, but this time my bowling took me out to Reno for the USBC Open Championships.  Some real quick thoughts about my time out in Reno: I bowled much better this year than I did last year in Baton Rouge (which was my first trip to Nationals) but still not nearly as well as I’d like to.  I did learn a lot from one of the other bowlers who came with us, and it showed me just how much I still have to learn about the game.  Secondly, my flight(s) to and from Reno were pretty much uneventful, although I still think the TSA is largely worthless and does nothing more than provide a false sense of security while at the same time wasting government money.  Lastly, my thoughts about Reno itself: the bowling stadium is really cool, the casino/hotel that we stayed at was pretty nice, but my impression of the city as a whole is that it was kind of a dump.  Anyway, there was my trip in a nutshell, on with the review.

Book StatsThe Mermaid's Madness

339 pages

Fantasy, Satire

Second book in the series (sequel to The Stepsister Scheme)

Characters

It’s been a while since I read The Stepsister Scheme, but I found no problem getting back into the world with this book and it’s because the characters work very well.  One of the things that I enjoyed about this book is that it focused more on Snow as it told the story.  Most of the characters in the story are similar to how they were in the first book, but they’re still varied and work well together.  The new characters in this book, particularly the villains, are interesting as well and are all familiar twists on the stories that we think we know.

Setting

The book takes place in the same world as The Stepsister Scheme, but instead of taking place on the island nation of Lorindar, it takes place largely in and on the oceans around the country.

Plot

Danielle goes with Queen Beatrice to visit the mermaids as they return from their annual migration.  But what they expect to be a peaceful meeting turns violent when they find that Lirea has killed her father and taken control of the tribe of mermaids.  Lirea attacks the human ship and wounds Queen Beatrice with an enchanted dagger.  Thus sets off a quest to help Queen Bea and to help the mermaids deal with Lirea’s madness.

Enjoyment

One of the first things that I noticed about this book is that Hines uses multiple viewpoints throughout the story, which I don’t remember him doing in the first book.  While I think it gets off to a bit of a rough start because of it, ultimately it works out well throughout the book as it gives us a chance to learn more about Snow and her magic.

The story within the book is a fairly standard fantasy story, if you’re well read in the genre nothing in the story will surprise you, although it is well done throughout the story.  The biggest success of the story is playing off the story of The Little Mermaid which Hines twists as he tells this story.  If you aren’t familiar with the Disney movie, this book might fall a little flat for you, but if you’ve seen the story it’s a wonderful twist on the story.

Overall Grade

A solid story that plays upon your expectations from the story that you think you know, an enjoyable book.

7/10

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by Adam on April 28, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by Adam on April 28, 2013

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Dave Barry’s History of the Millennium (So Far)

So about a week ago I finished reading Dave Barry’s History of the Millenium (So Far) and I quite enjoyed it.  But I was busy bowling 7 of the past 8 days, including a trip out of town for the Ohio State Bowling Tournament, so I haven’t gotten around to writing up my thoughts for it yet, so here we go.

Book StatsHistory of the Millennium

236 pages

Satire

Enjoyment

The book covers the years from 2000 to 2007 with the exception of 2001.  I gave my thoughts about skipping 2001 because of the events of 9/11 in my last post, so I won’t repeat myself and talk about it again.

I like Barry’s writing, and his way of looking back on the events of the years he covers is uniquely his own.  But the best part of this book is reading about all of the stupid things that we all thought were immensely important at the time.  Some of the things that he talked about include:

  • The presidential election of 2000 with all of the nonsense of the hanging chad’s and the constant recounting of the votes in Florida.
  • Elian Gonzalez, the 6 year old cuban kid who was the source of a constant custody battle that somehow caught the attention of the country (and annoyed me even then).
  • Martha Stewart getting in trouble with the SEC (not the college conference) and ultimately going to jail.
  • The rise of “reality” TV shows, which are very popular despite the fact that no one admitted to watching them.
  • Ron Artest running into the stands during a Pacers/Pistons game and getting suspended for the year.
  • The start of the steroid questions in baseball, including the huge senate hearing with several major leaguers who all most likely cheated.
  • Hurricane Katrina and all of the ineptitude that followed the early days of the recovery.
  • Dick Cheney shooting the attorney that he was hunting with.
  • Steve Irwin – better known as the Crocodile Hunter – dying while recording his show.

It was interesting to see what was in our minds over the course of the first 7 years of the new Millennium, I actually wouldn’t mind seeing a newer collection with the years since 2007, so I’ll keep an eye out for it.

Overall Grade

A funny book and a very interesting look back at the early 2000′s.

7/10

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by Adam on April 15, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by Adam on April 15, 2013

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Too Soon?

Looking through my stack of books, I decided that I wanted to read something light after my Wheel of Time adventure.  Taking a quick glance through everything, I picked up Dave Barry’s History of the Millennium (So Far).  I’ve enjoyed all of Barry’s writing that I’ve seen in the past, and after reading the first two sections of this book, I was going to call it a night.  That was until I flipped to the next page and saw what Barry wrote about 2001.

Basically, he wrote nothing.  He didn’t do a review for 2001 because he would have had to write it a couple of weeks after 9/11, and he didn’t want to try to make light of the situation.  Nor did he want to joke about the rest of the year and then get serious when talking about 9/11.  Under most circumstances, I wouldn’t argue with that.  But I’m a fan of George Carlin, and I immediately thought of his opening routine from his special “Complaints and Grievances” which was filmed shortly after 9/11.  Carlin recorded the special in New York City and he knew that there was no way to avoid talking about what happened, so he went right after the single most taboo thing he could have talked about.  As much as I love all of George Carlin’s comedy, this is arguably one of his funniest and most profound bits of comedy.

Comedy is one of the most powerful things we can experience.  When it’s done well, it makes you laugh.  But the really good comedians (led by Carlin) also made you think.  And that’s what Carlin’s bit is doing for me right now, even after having watched it dozens of times to the point where I’ve memorized most of the special, Carlin’s words still make me think.

So I finally get to the title of the post.  When is it too soon to joke about a subject?  When is something too serious to ever be joked about?

I don’t think there is anything that is so serious that it can’t be joked about.  I’m willing to joke about pretty much anything.  I do realize that from time to time my jokes miss for other people, but I don’t think I’ve ever gotten shy about letting them fly.  There have been plenty of times where I’m the only one laughing at my jokes, but they help me get through the day when I’m tired or angry or sad.

For the earlier question, if it’s a good enough joke, it can’t come too soon.  Laughter is a way of helping us get back to normal.  In the examples I talked about earlier, Carlin was able to get back to normal faster than Barry.  Laughter is one of the most important things in my life, it’s why I watch a lot of stand up comedy, it’s why I’m always looking for a good joke, it’s why I look for anything I can find that’s funny in a situation.

As always, no matter what the topic is, someone else has already said it better than I possibly could have, so I leave you with another clip.  This one is a condensed section of a History Channel special from several years ago.  The History of the Joke.  There are a lot of funny jokes throughout the 10 minutes, but the parts that I would like to direct you to start at the 7:24 mark, where George Carlin and Shelley Berman talk about the nature of jokes and laughter.  It was easily the high point of the two hour special.

Thoughts?  Comments?  Jokes?  (5 bonus points to anyone who has a joke that makes me laugh out loud when I read it in the comments.)

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by Adam on April 2, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by Adam on April 2, 2013

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Legion

Legion is another novella by Brandon Sanderson, after reading The Emperor’s Soul yesterday I read Legion today, and I don’t really know which one I would say is better, but they’re both short and a lot of fun so I would highly suggest you check them both out.

Book StatsLegion

86 pages

Science Fiction/Fantasy – It’s kind of weird to fit into a specific genre, but it contains elements of both of those

Stand alone novella

Characters

This book has a very small cast of characters, yet at the same time one of the more expansive ones I’ve seen in a short story.  Stephen Leeds is a man who has schizophrenia, but he doesn’t have any problems because of it, in fact, he has learned to use his hallucinations in a variety of ways.  All of his hallucinations – or aspects as he calls them – specialize in their own field.  As a result he is potentially one of the smartest people in the world, able to learn any subject quickly by studying it and then creating a new aspect.  Watching him argue with himself as he goes through the story was a lot of fun.  All of his aspects were interesting and had their own unique personalities.

Setting

Modern day U.S. and Jerusalem.

Plot

Someone comes to Stephen asking for his help.  A laboratory had been working with a scientist who created a camera capable of taking pictures of the past, and the scientist has stolen the camera.  So Stephen is asked to help find the missing scientist.

Enjoyment

I really liked this story.  It was funny throughout as a bunch of very different personalities were all interacting through Stephen’s aspects, but there is also a very deep story told in a very short time.  The story raises some deep questions, questions to which there really aren’t good answers.  The book does an excellent job of building the backstory for Stephen, starting with explaining how he came to be in his current situation, to why looking for the camera in the first place would be enticing to him.

There’s another part of this that is really interesting to me.  Earlier today I was talking to one of my co-workers and I wondered what it would be like to be cognizant of the fact that you’re going insane.  I’ve talked before about how I have a bit of Paranoid Personality Disorder (or maybe a bit of OCD), but I deal with it quite well and it doesn’t really affect my life.  I really wonder what it would be like to be aware of the fact that I’m losing touch with reality.  Unfortunately, the very nature of the condition means that it’s impossible to be aware of going insane if it is happening, so it’s largely a moot point.  But it is kind of fun to think about.

Overall Grade

Another really interesting short work from Sanderson, and another good way to check out his fiction if you don’t want to start with a large novel.

9/10

1 Comment
by Adam on April 1, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Books
Tagged , ,

Posted by Adam on April 1, 2013

http://blizzerd03.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/legion/

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