below is a review of what little i've read so far of Sam Hughes' Ra, composed in
a friend's direct messages shortly after finishing a chapter.
i am at once filled with feelings of euphoria and dysphoria when reading this book. it is easy, natural even, to imagine yourself in the shoes of the protagonist, who is magnificent and wonderful and oh-so smart, but there is another part of me that strikes me down as narcissistic. the truth is, i am (in real life) a good developer -- perhaps a prodigy, to some degree, considering my age -- but i am far from Laura's level. i am a good hard honest worker who's also a college dropout, and i don't know how that makes me feel. insignificant, maybe. i am unsure about the difference between a mage and a witch within the fiction of this book. i assume it will be explained later on, but the phrase "i'm a mage, not a witch" raised some questions. i think i would be more in-line as a mage, but witch sounds cooler. i will have to figure this out. in the mean-time, though, i feel kinship and place with the feeling of being above and beyond your peers and your books, and in a sense, i too wield tools that are able to ver
y easily kill. i think i'd make a darn good mage. i've been feeling the need to accessorize with wristbands and the like since long before i've started writing this book, and now i just want more of it. i am a witch. i am a computer witch. one that is one with the computers, but also -- under a different fiction -- one that uses them as the tools that they are to _do their bidding_.
