Merge branch 'release/20190814'

content/reviews/books/dragons-winter.md

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+title = "Dragon's Winter - Elizabeth A. Lynn"
+date = 2019-08-14
+
+[taxonomies]
+tags = ["en-au", "books", "reviews", "fantasy", "elizabeth a lynn"]
++++
+
+[Goodreads Summary](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22746453-dragon-s-winter):
+Karadur and Tenjiro are twin sons of Kojiro Antani, the dragon lord of Ippa.
+But only Karadur, whose name means "fire-bringer," bears the blood of the
+dragon in his veins. His younger brother, Tenjiro or "Heaven's hope," was
+second out of the womb and is the weakest and smallest of the two. As the
+twins grow to maturity, Karadur is anxious to attain the promise of his blood
+and transform into the dragon he is capable of becoming. But Tenjiro, who
+bears the scars of Karadur's claws, resents his older brother and, on the eve
+of Karadur's transformation, steals the talisman that makes the change
+possible. That same night he disappears, fleeing to a distant, icy realm where
+he will reemerge as a powerful wizard bent on destroying his older brother.
+But Karadur, lord of Dragon Keep, is prepared to go to war against Tenjiro,
+and it's likely only one will survive. --Craig Engler (less)
+
+<!-- more -->
+
+{{ stars(stars=3) }}
+
+A fantasy book with changelings, a feud between brothers and a medieval
+setting.
+
+The problem? It is too cliché.
+
+Sure it's a simple read, but the amount of clichés, like the big baddie, the
+corruption of a character by some supernatural power, the character with an
+immense power that he needs to learn how to control, even the freaking "let me
+build a character you'll cheer for and I'll kill them" is there.

content/reviews/books/microservices-in-action.md

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+title = "Microservices In Action - Morgan Bruce"
+date = 2019-08-13
+
+[taxonomies]
+tags = ["books", "en-au", "reviews", "microservices", "morgan bruce"]
++++
+
+[GoodReads summary](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36579817-microservices-in-action):
+Microservices in Action is a practical book about building and deploying
+microservice-based applications. Written for developers and architects with a
+solid grasp of service-oriented development, it tackles the challenge of
+putting microservices into production. You'll begin with an in-depth overview
+of microservice design principles, building on your knowledge of traditional
+systems. Then, you'll start creating a reliable road to production. You'll
+explore examples using Kubernetes, Docker, and Google Container Engine as you
+learn to build clusters and maintain them after deployment. Throughout this
+rich, experience-driven book, you'll move through real-world use cases
+including a continuous delivery pipeline, production monitoring, and practical
+techniques for scaling and maintaining a healthy system.
+
+<!-- more -->
+
+{{ stars(stars=2) }}
+
+For an "In Action" title, there is very little "Action" going on. Not that the
+book lacks information: There is plenty of theoretical information, although a
+lot is hidden in "cohesive" adjectives: "If you do this, the service will not
+be cohesive", "doing so will make it more cohesive"... and what the author
+means by "cohesive" is never explained -- I'd ask the author to replace every
+reference to cohesive with a proper explanation.
+
+Also, there are a lot of images. Not that images by themselves is bad, but when
+they are used for the obvious, it really irks me -- specially 'cause I read
+those books on a "black background with white letters" and images do not fit
+that properly, using a white background that usually just hurts my eyes. And by
+"used for the obvious", there are images follow the description of "A and B
+communicate with C" and a large image showing "A --> C <-- B"; was that really
+necessary?
+
+The intro says the code is in Python, and that was something that I'd really
+like to see. There is very little code in this book and the parts shown are
+basically "look at this library" instead of focusing on what it really does; a
+library for retrying is nice and all, but would it be so hard to write the
+code, even if that code would be somewhat longer, to show the point you're
+trying to make instead of being just an example of a library?
+
+Speaking of code, there is also a long discussion about deploying
+microservices, which is a good thing, but the author decided that it would use
+Google Cloud Platform and every single explanation focuses more on how to
+deploy on GCP instead of actually discussing deployment.