The Nomad and the Olive Branch

Few trilogies espouse a universe so encompassing, engrossing, engaging, and breathtaking as Mass Effect, a franchise that combines the best of classic space opera and traditional science fiction elements such as cyberpunk and Lovecraftian horror into one genre-defying masterpiece that draws influence from media greats such as Blade Runner, Dune, Star Trek, Star Wars, and Deus Ex. The trilogy was an absolute blast to play, with its story of memorable characters, beautiful locales, and myriad social, political, and religious themes. It is no surprise that it is deemed as one of the greatest if not the greatest science fiction franchise of our generation . It comes to no surprise that a universe this big has other products. They already have an animated movie being released and have published several Dark Horse comics to date. While tie-in novels are considered supplementary and not stand-alones, this set of books deserves special mention for several reasons. First, the books are...

This is the first post in a series of posts that deals with books I have read or come across. The first book to receive this treatment is "A History of the Arab Peoples" by the late Lebanese scholar Albert Hourani. I finished reading this book about a year ago and I remember feeling somewhat underwhelmed by its premise. The book serves as an excellent primer to Arabs at the advent of Islam, but falls short of giving us as detailed a history as possible about Arabs prior to the coming of the world's second largest religious group. It seems to run on the hypothesis that modern Arab history started with the coming of Islam, and that the Arabs have had no history prior to this. The same has been said of the Palestinians, who are accused of having no history prior to 1948. The presence of a people and the socio-political climate that governed them in the past is just as important as the one in the present. In fact, it can be argued that much of what we see in Arab society...