Sarah's Library

10/9 - Thank goodness this was available at the library immediately following the conclusion of T2: Infiltrator. Unfortunately, I had to wait till this afternoon to actually get started because I had another, far less exciting book that had to be finished so I could return it to the library this morning. I got that finished last night, dropped it off after doing the shopping and now here I am with T2: Rising Storm and leftover meatball risoni for lunch. Sounds like a perfect afternoon break. To be continued...

Later on page 14 - Ooops! That's a pretty big mistake, calling Jordan Dyson Miles. To be continued...

Later on page 33 - Oh dear, another editing miss - I've now seen both 'maturity' and 'property' spelt with hyphens in the middle of the words, e.g. prop-erty and mat-urity. To be continued...

Later on page 45 - Another erroneously hyphenated word - pro-ject. I wonder if this is an Adobe Digital Editions formatting fail. Not that that would negate the author or publisher's need to check the editing before the okay was given to go ahead with releasing this eBook version, but it might be a plausible reason for why I'm seeing such strange editing problems that may not be apparent in paper copies. To be continued...

Later on page 71 - I'm pleased to notice that an irritation with the constant announcing of the date with each POV change has been fixed. It's like Stirling heard my complaint from yesterday and changed the way/frequency in which he announced the date. Now the date is only noted if it's different from the previous chapter or POV, for example if a couple of months have passed or we're watching a flashback to the future, much less repetitive and annoying. Readers aren't stupid, we're going to assume that it's roughly the same date as the last paragraph unless you tell us, so, glad to see Stirling no longer thinks we need to be told that it's the 'present day' for a hundred pages straight.

At the moment I'm feeling a bit impatient to read more Sarah and more John and Dieter chapters. The other ancillary characters' chapters are a little bit slow, my heart rate and excitement pick up whenever Sarah or John and Dieter are mentioned. So, lets fast forward through Clea's learning process, and Ron Labane's campaign for a less convenient and less machine driven world, and Colvin and Warren's currently slightly boring meetings regarding the progress of the third secret underground facility, and get to John's plans on what to do about that third Cyberdyne facility and Sarah's escape (or release) from the clutches of Pescadero. To be continued...

Another thought that has always bothered me from watching the movies, and continues now with this series of books. Why doesn't Skynet send a whole army of T-101s back to around the same time as when the first terminator was sent back? Why do they only send one at a time? Skynet is supposed to be this all-knowing and understanding of the human race sentient machine but they constantly underestimate a human's drive to stay alive and their/our ingenuity to achieve that feat. I don't think Skynet could ever achieve its goal of killing Sarah, before John is born, or the both of them after he's born if they keep sending only one terminator at a time. Amass an army and send them back all at once, Sarah, and or John, might be able to survive one Terminator at a time, but they'd never be able to escape a horde of them mowing down everything in sight. That little piece of illogicality from such a coldly intelligent computer has always bothered, because if I can see that solution why can't it. Not that I'm not on the Connors' side and don't enjoy watching them tear the T-101s apart and outsmart the more intelligent terminator leaders. I just like stuff to make sense and I don't think that failure on Skynet's part makes sense. To be continued...

Later on page 109 - First there's a horse called Linda, now there's a deck hand called Arnie who, hilariously enough, is currently on board with two Arnie lookalikes. LOL, I wonder if Arnie is going to get killed by his namesake. To be continued...

11/9 On page 185 - There's going to be chaos with massive amounts of gunfire when everyone realises that there are two Dieters. Despite bringing the added benefit of extra guns, I really doubt the gun runners or the Sector agents are going to be of any help once they realise what the second Dieter is. They'll likely be paralysed with fear or confusion giving the terminator the time to terminate them before dealing with Dieter and John, although maybe their presence will be enough to distract it while Dieter and John destroy it. To be continued...

SPOILERS AHEAD!!

12/9 On page 324 - I have a bad feeling about Wendy's virus/program thing that's going to stop Skynet from becoming sentient and the fact that we just found out that Clea suddenly doesn't have the ability to make it sentient. Plus the fact that we haven't heard from Alissa in ages and that the last thing we did hear was that she was going go through the next growth spurt. What if...Wendy is growth-spurted Alissa? And she's gotten to John and his mum was right and they're gonna have to kill her and OH GOD, THAT WOULD JUST BE TOO TRAGIC!

John's turned into a really nice boy, despite his hoodlum past and uncertain future. In fact, I reckon the actor, Edward Furlong, would rather live his most famous character's life than his own - he's an ex-husband, ex-father (he is no longer allowed to see his child), ex-actor (the last notable part he had was playing a continuing character in CSI), ex-prisoner, drug addict - things have not gone well for Edward. Despite the looming war and death-filled future that awaits John, no matter what he does, he's a pretty well-adjusted 18-year-old (just with a few extra abilities that most 18-year-olds can't claim).  To be continued...

SPOILERS AHEAD

Later on page 332 - Phew! I'm glad to say that theory has been smashed, but I am still a little worried that whatever Wendy's program thing is meant to do it'll somehow end up doing the opposite, giving Clea the ability to sentientise Skynet when she couldn't previously. To be continued...

Later on page 340 - Oh dear! I think I guessed right. Clea just admitted that Skynet's sentience was an accident, and what more surprising accident than someone trying to sabotage Skynet and stop it from becoming sentient only to accidentally awaken it. To be continued...

Later on page 346 - Attached instead of attacked.

"...which she’d used to take stitches in John’s torn face.

Not sure 'take' is the right word here. To be continued...

Later on page 356 - Aha! I knew he wasn't dead! Now he just has to work out how to get out and make his way to the base, on foot with no weapons or outer clothing or goggles. He might still have the knife, maybe he could butterfly one of the seals and wear it as a cloak (kinda Empire Strikes Back-like). To be continued...

Later on page 359 - He's eating raw seal blubber? Ick! I definitely think I'd rather be stuffed inside a tauntaun than eat raw seal. Blargh! I can practically taste the fatty fishiness on its second go round over my tastebuds. To be continued...

13/9 on page 372 - “If only Antarctica had polar bears!” The idea of homicidal seals is bad enough, homicidal polar bears would have been almost as unstoppable as terminators. Plus they would have made a serious dent in the penguin population of Antarctica and they're just too cute to see getting eaten by evil polar bears. To be continued...

14/9 - So, I worked out the main points of the ending, just not the exact journey taken to get there, although I was pleased to find myself right. This got a little slow in the middle, compared with Infiltrator, so I can't rate it quite as highly as I did that one. The loss of (view spoiler)

was quite upsetting and I feel that it wasn't absolutely necessary to kill

just to force John to grow into a man. He was turning into such a nice young man, now he's going to be moody, unwilling to trust, and so much harder in the third book - what a shame. I'm looking forward to starting T2: The Future War (T2, #3) in the next day or so. I currently own that book and I've got a number of other library books that need to be read first due to them being due soon. Infiltrator and Rising Storm were complete impulse reads, I was simply checking the library catalogue to see if I would be able to borrow them when the time came, and then when I saw that they were eBooks I requested them on a whim, only to find out after that you only get six days to read an eBook, compared to three weeks for physical books - how weird is that? - and so had to read them pretty quickly, and now my other (rather large pile of) library books have gone by the wayside and coming due too quickly for my liking. Okay sorry, I'm waffling and this isn't germane to my review of the book, so here are my final thoughts: despite not quite making 4.5-5 stars I really enjoyed this and would highly recommend it to any fan of the movies. Lots more books awaiting my attention, talk to you all later :)