Luka and the Fire of Life: A Novel Review

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Luka and the Fire of Life: A Novel ReviewLuka's father is dying, and, without Luka's help he will soon be gone. But what can a 12-year-old boy do to save his father? As it turns out -- quite a lot.
Luka's story was created by Salman Rushdie for his own 12-year-old son, Luka. The novel is filled with contemporary references, clever puns, and wonderful language, so why would I rate it only three stars? Let me explain:
PROS:
This is my first experience reading Salman Rushdie, and it's quite a treat. Mr. Rushdie has wide-ranging classical knowledge which he brings to his narrative. His use of the English language is stunning. For the first 100 pages of this novel, I was charmed by his skills.
CONS:
For me, the problem with this novel is the story. In spite of the wonderful language, I was never able to connect with the story. In fact, after the first 100 pages, I found myself skimming rather than engrossing myself in the reading. Too bad, because Mr. Rushdie is a wonderful writer -- but a not-as-good story creator.
To illustrate: A dog named Bear, and a bear named Dog, were amusing when first introduced, but this name reversal quickly grew stale and, eventually, annoying. Although these two characters contributed to the story, it was not enough to rescue a tale that stretched on far too long.
So, would I buy this novel for my own 12-year-old son? No. I don't find the story strong enough to hold (what I remember of) his interest.
STARS:
For his writing, five stars.
For the story, two stars.
Average: 3.5 stars
Luka and the Fire of Life: A Novel Overview

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Game Engine Architecture Review

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Game Engine Architecture ReviewJason Gregory's book offers a 10,000-foot view of game engine architecture, covering every system found in modern game engines, and detailing how those systems interact. It details the subjects at a level easily understood by anyone with a modest level of programming experience -- even non-programmers can gain a solid understanding of engine design from the book. This would make a great first book for anyone interested in programming game engines, either as a hobby or a future career.
However, it is important to clarify the limits of the book. I do not consider this to be a programming book, since it does not present the material at a sufficiently low-level that would permit an inexperienced programmer to implement a game engine from the ground-up. It describes how the algorithms work in enough detail that you can understand the idea, but does not present complete code examples that would demonstrate exactly how the algorithms would be implemented. There are occasional code snippets, and brief examples from engines like Ogre, Unreal, and idtech. But most of the content is entirely prose.
Experienced programmers/game devs have the coding background to implement many of the designs described in the book from the level at which they are presented. But neophyte programmers will not find enough details in this book to implement a full game engine on their own. However, no one book could do an adequate job of detailing how to implement an entire game engine: learning to program a game engine from the ground-up requires a very large stack of books (especially for physics and AI). So it would be unfair to fault this book for what it is not.
The value of the book is in providing clear, prose descriptions of the functional blocks found in a game engine, covering alternate ways different engines implement certain features, and cross-referencing how those blocks interact.
Another positive is that the book benefits from a mature writing style. Unlike the "Oh wow! Cool! Dude! Whew, math is hard! {BG}" style of writing inflicted upon many intro/for-teens books, this book can be read by adults (and most teens) without any undue eye-rolling due to bad writing. Which, sad to say, is why I feel inclined to remark on this point. Granted, this book was written for a course a SoCal, so a more mature writing still is required. I do wish more games-related books would follow this convention, instead of assuming the reader is mentally bereft or a pre-teen.Game Engine Architecture Overview

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