Tag: Ethics

Andrzej Sapkowski – Blood of Elves | Review

April 23, 2020
Authors P-T (By Surname)Fiction

Title: Blood of Elves

Author: Andrzej Sapkowski

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 316

Rating: 3.5/5

The issue that I had with this book is exactly the issue that I was worried about. I think I just prefer Sapkowski as a short story writer than as a novelist, although I will admit that he’s pretty good either way and so it’s not as though I didn’t enjoy this book. It was still all right, it just wasn’t as good as the short story collections.

Other than that, though, there’s a lot here to enjoy. As always, Sapkowski does a great job of asking the reader complicated moral questions, and I like that there’s a bit of a grey area between some of the good guys and some of the bad guys that keeps you guessing about people’s intentions. It’s got a lot of great political intrigue in a similar vein to A Song of Ice and Fire, although it’s by no means a knock-off.

There was even some interesting stuff on gender, because the Witcher has an apprentice who he’s teaching, and she happens to be a girl. There’s a lot of stuff on ethics too, because Geralt faces some difficult decisions along the way. Oh, and a war with the Nilfgardians is beckoning, too.

So overall, I thought this book was just okay, and while I would recommend it, I think I’d suggest going with the short story collections first as a way to ease yourself into the world and its politics. I should also offset this review by pointing out that I felt kind of similar to this when I read the first book, and then it sat with me for a while and I realised, looking back on it, that it was fricken awesome. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same thing ends up happening here. So yeah, there’s that.

Learn more about Blood of Elves.

Isaac Asimov – The Robots of Dawn | Review

April 16, 2020
Authors A-E (By Surname)Fiction

Title: The Robots of Dawn

Author: Isaac Asimov

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 480

Rating: 3.5/5

This book is one of the installments in Asimov’s Robot series, and so that makes it essentially a science fiction detective novel with a whole bunch of ethics thrown in. Asimov is probably most famous for creating the three laws of Robotics, which are the following:

  1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

What’s fun about this book, like the other books that tie in with these laws, is that Asimov basically created them only so that he could bend and break them. We get some great examples of that here, including some suggestions of scenarios which could cause two of the laws to come into conflict with themselves and to cause a robot to overload.

Then we have the morality side of things. In fact, the whole case here revolves around the murder of a robot, and so there’s a lot of discussion around whether such a thing is even possible. After all, robots aren’t alive, right? There’s even some stuff on how while you can use roboticide and homicide, the word “murder” doesn’t seem to quite apply.

Obviously I don’t want to go too much into the details of the plot, because the last thing that I want to do is to spoil it for people. What I will say is that it holds its own both as a science fiction novel and as a mystery novel, and indeed I think that Asimov is one of the underrated masters of the genre. I’ve read a mystery of his called A Whiff of Death which was set in our world on an American college campus, and that was fantastic.

Another piece of good news is that despite the fact that this is the third book in a series, you can still read it as a standalone if you want to. Sure, you’ll get a little more out of it if you follow the series through from start to finish, but it’s not a hard and fast rule and all that you miss out on is a little character development.

So all of this brings us on to the final big question of whether this is worth reading or not, and my answer to that would be 100% yes. Asimov is a fantastic writer no matter what he’s doing, and while there are other books of his that are a lot of fun, this is great too. Jeez, he always is.

Learn more about The Robots of Dawn.