Bookstooge's Reviews On the Road

Sunday, December 15, 2024

Three at Wolfe’s Door (Nero Wolfe #33) 4Stars

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Title: Three at Wolfe’s Door
Series: Nero Wolfe #33
Author: Rex Stout
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 153
Words: 71K

Another three novellas. A great way to spend your time in fact. Of course, if you’ve been reading my Nero Wolfe reviews for this long and haven’t decided to dive in, nothing I can say at this point will get you to change your mind.

Which actually brings up a very cogent blogging point.

What is the point of a review? Am I writing this review in hopes that you will take my advice and read these books? Am I TRYING to be an influencer and make a vast fortune from you all? Or am I just a hobbyist sharing his love of a something (or hatred in the case of that blasted Neuromancer) that I feel needs more time in the limelight? Or am I just an obsessed reader who HAS to chronicle everything he reads so that when I have forgotten that I read this in 10 years, I can go look at this, remember that I read it and say “Ah hah! I DID read that book 10 years ago. You cad and bounder, bow down in abject awe at my greatness”. So many options, so many reasons.

Well, I can assure you that I don’t give a fig what you think about the books I read. If you want to read them, that is great, because it means you’re going to have a cracking good time. If you don’t, it’s no skin off of my nose. This is America and it’s a free country. If you use that freedom to waste your time and poison your mind with crap, that’s your choice. A bad choice, a VERY bad choice, but you can do it. And if you’re not an American, well, that’s STILL your choice. You can’t help that you were born with that handicap after all 😉

On a serious note though, it is so easy to fall into that trap of writing a review with the end goal being to get others to read the same book. It might be from just simply wanting to share something that you love, but it also might spring from deeper, darker motives. Like a lust for control of all those who you come into contact with. So next time you post a book review, make sure to ask yourself “Self, WHY am I doing this?” and make sure you have a good answer. Otherwise you’ll bring dishonor on you, dishonor on your family and dishonor on your cow!

https://bookstooge.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/dishonor.jpg

And Nero Wolfe wouldn’t like that one bit.

★★★★☆

Table of Contents:

Poison a la Carte
Method Three for Murder
The Rodeo Murder

Synopses from Wikipedia:

click to open

Poison a la Carte

A group of gourmets, who call themselves the Ten for Aristology, invite Wolfe’s chef Fritz to cook their annual dinner. Wolfe and Archie are included by courtesy. Twelve young women, one per guest, serve the food — they are actresses supplied by a theatrical agency, and are termed “Hebes,” after the cupbearer to the gods in the Greek pantheon (later replaced by Ganymede). A member of the Ten, Vincent Pyle, is poisoned and Wolfe quickly concludes that arsenic was administered by a server. Pyle is an investor in Broadway productions, and it’s clearly possible that he knew one or more of the Hebes.

Then the murderer is trapped into making incriminating statements at John Piotti’s restaurant, a location used for an identical purpose in Gambit.

Method Three for Murder

After discovering a body in the back seat, Mira Holt drives the taxi she has borrowed for the evening to 918 West 35th Street. She walks up the front steps of the brownstone just as Archie Goodwin is walking down — having just told Nero Wolfe that he’s quit. Archie and Wolfe solve the case, a murderess is caught and Mira and the murderess’s husband get married a year after the murderess is executed.

The Rodeo Murder

A party at Lily Rowan’s Park Avenue penthouse includes a roping contest between some cowboy friends, with a silver-trimmed saddle as the prize. One of the contestants is at a disadvantage when his rope is missing. When it is found wound more than a dozen times around the neck of the chief backer of the World Series Rodeo, Lily asks Nero Wolfe to sort out the murder. Turns out one of the organizers had been stealing money and investing it in cattle and was caught by the murdered cowboy.

All My “Nero Wolfe” Reviews

Friday, December 13, 2024

Love Saves the Day, Chapters 4-5

Chapter 4 is simply a page break, as the story continues like there had been no break at all. The Earl makes an undying enemy of the Greedy Developer by kicking him out of Tiana’s castle, with threats of physical violence no less. Dude gets mega-points for that as far as I’m concerned.

It also wakes up Tiana to the fact she is in desperate straits and her parents dream, now hers apparently, of restoring the castle is an impossibility. This gives her the courage to ask The Earl if his offer of marriage is still open. He says it is and that she should really take the day to think about it, as it will be a decision to affect her for the rest of her life. He sets dinner plans for later that day so they can discuss things.

Tiana is 19. The Earl is 29. At least he is decent enough to realize what his marriage proposal will do to her reputation and the fact that she’s not lightly making this. At the same time, 29 and 19 don’t seem as far apart as say Marianne and Colonel Brandon from Sense and Sensibility. It’s still a gap though, which means that our cultural differences from now to 1903 haven’t changed in some of our underlying sensibilities.

You know, I have to say, I think I would have fit right into this story. That, or my emotional quotient is just about the same as Dame Cartland’s. Here’s a quote from Tiana as she is getting ready for dinner that night.

‘I always vowed,’ she reflected, ‘that I would only ever marry for love a man I could respect, who would be my friend and partner.
~Chapter 4, Love Saves the Day

That made me realize that both Mrs B and I have been blessed with being able to state that we got all those things when we married the other. We love each other, we respect each other and we are best friends. I know that isn’t the case with every couple, even happily married ones, so I am thankful that I got such a trifecta.

The rest of the chapter deals with one of the servants taking things amiss and planning on going to the Greedy Developer for nefarious reasons. We also get the engagement ring scene and the chapter ends with the wastrel cousin making a surprise entrance just after the engagement.

It is all so simple and trite and cliched. And I am loving every second of it. I can’t believe I wrote that, but it’s true. Reading this is like eating a white chocolate truffle. Just one little bit is enough to go a long way.

Chapter Five sees Tiana immediately having regrets and doubts about the wisdom of her choice. It doesn’t help that the Wastrel Cousin begins talking to her and talking about how “poor” he will become. Of course, The Earl sees them together, immediately jumps to the wrong conclusion and storms off in a jealous rage. Tiana rebuffs the Wastrel, who in turn writes to a former Lady Love of The Earl’s to come back and come between Tiana and The Earl. The Earl escorts Tiana back to her home and on the way they have “relationship” moment where they both realize that yes, this can work. The chapter ends with Lady Lover determining that only SHE can have The Earl and she swans off to England to put Tiana in her place.

Oh, this was one cliche on top of another. From the “old and jealous” reaction of The Earl to the “misunderstanding” to the “other woman”, they are all situations you’d expect to find in a soap opera. If I was just reading through this at my usual speed, I’d be well past this before all the issues caught up to my attention. I’d just enjoy it and blast on through like a whirlwind. That’s one unforeseen consequence of taking just a couple of chapters at a time.

Thursday, December 12, 2024

The Gambler (The Russians) 4Stars

Title: The Gambler
Series: (The Russians)
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Translator: CJ Hogarth
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Classic
Pages: 221
Words: 60K

When I first read The Gambler in 2010, I came away more confused than not. I wasn’t used to the Russian naming conventions and the nicknaming scheme they’ve invented is worse than Cockney rhyming slang.

Now though, well, I feel comfortable with Alexei Ivanovich as much as I am with John Smith. I had no problem navigating the maze of names and who was who and who was doing what. This was really complicated. It doesn’t help that “The Gambler” refers to almost every person in the story. There are also layers of unspoken assumptions.

For example, Polina did love Alexei, the main character. But why did she never say so? Why did she treat him like dirt, like a lackey, like he didn’t matter? She ends up having a physical and partial mental breakdown and I do not understand at all why. He had confessed his love to her so it wasn’t like she had to worry about rejection. There was obviously something else going on, but I didn’t have the cultural understanding to know what I should. It would be like a guy claiming to have gotten to third base and leaving it at that. Knowing what that meant could convey a whole paragraph of information AND it could be used to convey something else without ever saying it explicitly. It’s frustrating, that’s what it is.

It was also depressing to see everyone get caught up in gambling. It’s one of the reasons I don’t gamble. The only gamble I take is when our national lottery gets to 1 billion dollars, then I’ll buy one $2 ticket, once. I’ve seen the mess people make of their lives in real life and a story like this one only emphasizes such caution in regards to gambling.

Earn your money, there are no short cuts.

★★★★☆

From Wikipedia

Synopsis – click to open

The first-person narrative is told from the point of view of Alexei Ivanovich, a tutor working for a Russian family living in a suite at a German hotel. The patriarch of the family, The General, is indebted to the Frenchman de Grieux and has mortgaged his property in Russia to pay only a small amount of his debt. Upon learning of the illness of his wealthy aunt, “Grandmother”, he sends streams of telegrams to Moscow and awaits the news of her demise. His expected inheritance will pay his debts and gain Mademoiselle Blanche de Cominges’s hand in marriage.

Alexei is hopelessly in love with Polina, the General’s stepdaughter. She asks him to go to the town’s casino and place a bet for her. After hesitations, he succumbs and ends up winning at the roulette table. He returns to her with the winnings, but she will not tell him why she is in such need of money. She laughs at him (as she does when he professes his love) and treats him with apparent indifference. Alexei only learns the details of the General’s and Polina’s financial state later in the story through his long-time acquaintance, Mr. Astley. Astley is a shy Englishman who seems to share Alexei’s fondness for Polina. He comes from English nobility and is very wealthy.

One day, while Polina and Alexei are on a walk on the Schlangenberg (a mountain in the German town), he swears an oath of servitude to her. He tells her that all she has to do is give the word and he will gladly walk off the edge and plummet to his death. Polina dares him to insult the aristocratic couple Baron and Baroness Wurmerhelm, whom they have just seen, and he does so. This sets off a chain of events that explains Mademoiselle Blanche’s interest in the General and gets Alexei fired as tutor of the General’s children. Shortly after this, Grandmother shows up and surprises the whole party of debtors and indebted. She tells them all that she knows all about the General’s debt and why the Frenchman and woman are waiting around the suite day after day. She leaves the party of death-profiteers, telling them that none of them are getting any of her money. She asks Alexei to be her guide around the town, famous for its healing waters and infamous for its casino; she wants to gamble.

Grandmother plays at the roulette table and wins a large amount of money. She briefly returns to the hotel, but she has caught the gambling bug and soon returns to the casino. After three days, she has lost over a hundred thousand roubles.

After sending Grandmother off at the railway station, Alexei returns to his room where he is greeted by Polina. She shows him a letter where des Grieux says he has started legal proceedings to sell the General’s properties mortgaged to him, but he is returning properties worth fifty thousand roubles to the General for Polina’s benefit. Des Grieux says he feels he has fulfilled all his obligations. Polina tells Alexei that she is des Grieux’s mistress and she wishes she had fifty thousand roubles to fling in des Grieux’s face. Upon hearing this, Alexei runs out of the room and to the casino where, over a few hours, he wins two hundred thousand florins (100,000 francs) and becomes a rich man. When he gets back to his room and the waiting Polina, he empties the gold and bank notes from his pockets onto the bed. At first Polina accuses him of trying to buy her like des Grieux, but then she embraces him. They fall asleep on the couch. Next day, she asks for fifty thousand roubles (25,000 francs) and when he gives it to her, she flings the money in his face and runs off to Mr. Astley (Polina and Mr. Astley had been secretly meeting; she was supposed to meet Astley the night before, but had come by mistake to Alexei’s room). Alexei doesn’t see her again.

After learning that the General won’t be getting his inheritance, Mademoiselle Blanche leaves for Paris with her mother and seduces Alexei to follow her. They stay together for almost a month; he allows Mlle Blanche to spend his entire fortune on her own personal expenses, carriages and horses, dinner dances, and a wedding-party. After getting herself financially secured, Mlle Blanche, desiring an established social status, unexpectedly marries the General, who has followed her to Paris.

Alexei starts to gamble to survive. One day he passes Mr. Astley on a park bench in Bad Homburg and has a talk with him. He finds out from Astley that Polina is in Switzerland and actually does love Alexei. Astley tells him that Grandmother has died and left Polina and the children financially secured. The General has died in Paris. Astley gives him some money but shows little hope that he will not use it for gambling. Alexei goes home dreaming of going to Switzerland the next day and recollects what made him win at the roulette tables in the past.

Wednesday, December 11, 2024

Operation: Entertainment District (Demon Slayer #9) 3Stars

Title: Operation: Entertainment District
Series: Demon Slayer #9
Author: Koyoharu Gotouge
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Manga
Pages: 180
Words: 8K

I am definitely starting to burn out on manga again, not sure it’s just this particular one. So I can’t blame it.

The gang are used by a Pillar to go into the “Entertainment” District (ie, the Red Light district), dressed up as girls, to rescue the Pillar’s three wives and sniff out a demon. The wives are all demon slayers of a sort as well and they’ve gone silent. So of course the Pillar is worried.

I had a hard time reading this mainly because I could only see the weaknesses in the planning. Just like in the last volume, there’s a distinct lack of smarts on the Demon Slayer’s upper echelon and that puts the lower demon slayers in jeopardy. The problem is, that is not a problem in this particular manga, but in all shonen manga in general. It is the idea that one can only grow stronger through conflict, that war fuels innovation, etc. So the story must be structured to give the main characters plenty of instances to fight, to “grow” as it were. I’m just tired of it, that’s all.

There is one panel that made me laugh out loud though. It is when we first see the three main characters dressed up like girls. I just laughed out loud and showed Mrs B. Good stuff!

I was also concerned about the visual side of things, as this was taking place in a Red Light District. But there was nothing to worry about. The manga-ka does an admirable job of showing the idea of “sexy” without it actually being sexy or lust inducing. I say “admirable” because I’m trying to be positive. Otherwise I’d have to say he’s just not good enough to draw that way and I am tired of being a negative nancy.

★★★☆☆

From Wikipedia

ToC & Synopsis – click to open

Operation: Entertainment District”

“Search for My Wives”

“The Chase”

“Daki”

“Various Feelings”

“In Various Places”

“Roar”

“Wriggly”

“Air Hole”

Tanjiro and his friends are drafted by Tengen Uzui, the Sound Hashira to help investigate the red-light district in Yoshiwara, Tokyo, where Daki, one of the Upper Ranks, has established herself while disguising herself as an oiran. Once learning Daki’s secret, they are forced to confront not one, but two enemies, as she shares her body and the position of Upper Rank Six with her brother, Gyutaro.

Tuesday, December 10, 2024

Technos (Dumarest #7) 3.5Stars

Title: Technos
Series: Dumarest #7
Author: EC Tubb
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 154
Words: 47K

At least this book wasn’t named after a woman. I was getting rather tired of that. Of course, Earl Dumarest sleeps around like a flipping clock. I mean, a space prostitute is so smitten by him that she gives him a freebie, apparently all night long. Sigh.

The story is the same as all the previous ones. Earl is trying to track down more info about Earth, goes to a hellhole of a planet, finds out it was all for naught, gets one teensy tiny clue and then goes off hunting again.While fighting off Cyclan plots.

It’s always the setting and whatever adventure is written that makes these stand out. Here Earl has to hide out on a technological planet and survive a mechanical death maze. It was pretty cool.

Once again the cover is awesome. Earl is wearing his usual 70’s disco-spacesuit with the bubble helmet. It just makes me want to do the whole Dance Fever, John Travolta thing. Oh Beeeeehaaaaave!

★★★✬☆

From the Publisher

Synopsis – click to open

“A dying man’s last words brought Dumarest to Loame, ‘the garden planet’. Its name was a mockery–Loame’s gentle citizens could only watch in horror as their fields were ravaged by a mutated vine that destroyed all it touched. They were sure the acid-dripping vine was the work of their enemy world, Technos.

Technos was not a world open to outsiders–but Dumarest is not a man who takes no for an answer. As a fugitive, as a prisoner of war, as the captive bedmate of a queen, he continues his quest, seeking an answer to the question that his his life’s obsesson: ‘Have you ever heard of a planet called _Earth_?'”

All of My “Dumarest” Reviews

Monday, December 09, 2024

The Sign of Nine (Warlock Holmes #4) 4.5Stars

Title: The Sign of Nine
Series: Warlock Holmes #4
Author: Gabriel Denning
Rating: 4.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy Parody
Pages: 269
Words: 98K

This has reignited my book hunger. While Sanditon started it and Mon Dieu Cthulhu and KTF Part II put a damper on things, The Sign of Nine has made me voracious again. Every time I put this book down, all I could think about was when I would be able to pick it back up.

Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t laughing out loud or reading horrible excerpts to Mrs B like I did with the first book, but it still fed my soul and I needed that. I was also ready to be fed. If I had read this even two weeks earlier I suspect I’d have been very “meh” about it.

It was the right book at the right time, so watch out. I suspect there will be a lot more book reviews in the coming weeks, even with my Love Saves the Day updates taking up Fridays and not posting on Sabbaths.

Once again I am impressed, and quite rightly, by Denning’s sticking to the short stories of Sherlock Holmes. Every story for Warlock Holmes is based on a story by Doyle and while they veer off, madly and wildly at times, the details included always keep us grounded in a very Holmes oriented world. If you’ve never read Sherlock Holmes, or read them so long ago as to have all the details be fuzzy for you, don’t worry, you won’t miss out on a thing. But if you DO remember the stories, you’re experience will be deeper, richer and oh so much more FUN! Denning continually riffs on the originals and you’ll miss out on all that humor, which would be a crying shame.

Watson is a complete wreck in this book. He is recovering from being poisoned by Irene Adler, he’s obsessed with her (any man who has been in love with a woman who he knows he simply cannot have will know that obsession), he’s obsessed with Moriarty, he’s taking a magical drug solution made out of his own blood and shredded Mummy and he’s got Holmes trying to “help” him. Mainly by getting him hitched to a woman so he’ll move out and stay out of Holmes’ sphere of influence, thus saving Watson’s life. That is the reason why this didn’t get the coveted 5Star Award from me.

In the originals, Watson marries one of the clients and has a happy, contented life with a wonderful woman who supports him. Here, Mary is a tyrant, who he hates on sight and she despises him just as much. Warlock intertwines their “fate” lines so they fall in love, but they still hate each other. I get why that is funny, but it didn’t work for me. Killing puppies is funny (like in the first book), but having people get married who literally want to kill the other isn’t. This is why humor is such a subjective thing. But that was my only issue and was relegated to the last chapter in the book.

Now we come to the future.

There is only one more book left in the series. Unfortunately, I have heard it ends on a cliffhanger as big as the one where Doyle killed off Holmes, but more cliffhanger’y. I’m going to read the final book, but I’m already wondering if that’ll be a mistake. While this book isn’t exactly a “great” ending, it does end on a pretty settled note. See, people who think reading has no drama are idiots. THIS is high drama.

I’d like to thank Mogsy for introducing this series to me over 5 years ago. Here is her review of this volume. Mogsy’s 2019 Review of “The Sign of Nine”.

★★★★✬

From the Publisher

Synopsis – click to open

Warlock Holmes may have demons in his head, but now Dr. John Watson has a mummy in his bloodstream. Specifically that of the sorcerer Xantharaxes, who when shredded and dissolved in a 7% solution, results in some extremely odd but useful prophetic dreams. There’s also the small matter of Watson falling for yet another damsel-du-jour, and Warlock deciding that his companion needs some domestic bliss…

Forest 1 - MTG 4E

Nowadays each set comes with 4 variations on the lands that produce mana, but back in 4th Edition (and earlier), there were only 3 variations. Here is the first “Forest” that you could choose to use. Some people didn’t care and would just grab however many forests they needed for their decks without looking at the art. Others would choose just ONE artwork version and make all 22-24 lands the exact same. Other people would choose 8 of each land exactly and others would do some mix. It always depended on the person making the deck.

I always found it interesting how the various mana cards managed to convey the “sense” of the land they were representing. A Forest is much more than just a bunch of trees all in the same place. As a land surveyor, I know this all too well. Small bushes and rocks and trees all make up what you stumble across when you’re running for your life from a bear, especially if they happen to be angry mutant magic bears! 😉

Sunday, December 08, 2024

[Art] The Christmas Witch

While Santa might drop off the presents for the kiddies, he’s outsourced that whole “coal” thing. So now the Christmas Witch exists and if you’ve been a bad boy or girl, she’ll be dropping coal into your stocking. Or onto your head if you’ve been really bad!

Look at those boots, eh? I just love boots!

Friday, December 06, 2024

Love Saves the Day, Chapters 1-3

The date given right in the first chapter is 1903. And Dame Cartland wastes no time in inundating us with the most purple’ish of prose. The saving grace is that each purple description is so short.

We find out that Tiana’s parents (Tiana is the main character, who is 19) died together from a fever they contracted while nursing amongst the local villages. And her father wrote her a letter saying not to worry, because they were so happy together and were happy they both were dying so they could be in heaven together. Oh, and they talk about restoring the dump of a castle they had inherited and been pouring their money into. I mean, your wife has just died, you are about to die and you’re sending your only child of 19 a letter and you talk about the bloody castle restoration?

It was all just a syrupy potion to mask the reality of the sadness of their death. Can’t have sadness in a romance after all. Not even “I” would want that. So I have to give Dame Cartland her due, she writes the situation well.

The scene then immediately changes over to the other main character, Richard, Earl of Austindale. Who has just found out that the will from his grandfather has made matrimony a part of inheriting the estates. If he’s not married by 30, he loses it all. What kind of nonsense is this?!? Not that it exists, because that kind of stipulation seems rather wise to me. If you have to think about somebody else besides yourself in regards to your fortune, you are going to be LOT more careful. No, what I refer to is that Richard is just finding this out 3 months or so before his 30th birthday when this will take effect. WUT?!?! That’s the kind of information his dad should have talked about with him along with the birds and the bees talk at 12. If I were him, I’d immediately fire the lawyer handling this for dereliction of duty. Like a real man, Richard immediately thinks of a solution and realizes it isn’t viable (some chickie boo who he likes and apparently likes him, but prefers gallivanting across the continent to country life). At least Richard is smart enough to realize trying to marry Chickie Boo would be a huge mistake. Good on him for that! And it gets even more drama’y when he finds out that his younger cousin will inherit everything, and said cousin is a confirmed gambler and will spend the accumulation of wealth of three lifetimes in a matter of months, thus destroying the family name, honor and material wealth. Now there’s a conundrum for you.

The chapter ends with the two main characters meeting each other.

Incredible! While the prose is some of the most purple I have ever read, and so generic and vague that it feels like a formula (Duke “insert name” with “insert pants type” walked over to Heroine “insert name” and said “insert romantic platitude”), the intent and the information are gotten across quick as a whip. The setup is completely done in ONE chapter. Man, I wish more authors out there would do things like that.

On to chapter two.

In which we find out that Tiana’s parents were typical pie in the sky dreamers and wasted everything on restoring the castle, to the point where they left no money whatsoever to their daughter. And the castle wasn’t really restored. Oh, that pissed me off. The parents put their dream ahead of their child. If they weren’t already dead, I’d be tempted to toss them off the battlements of Castle Rose. I would say they were typical English idiots without a passing grasp of reality, the kind who squander the little they do have and bring their children to rack and ruin. Shame on them. They aren’t going to heaven now, that’s for sure!

Tiana meets an old Grand Uncle who drops by for just enough time to give her a family heirloom, which she can sell to live on. Of course we know she’ll use the funds for the castle. She approaches Richard and they are both surprised when they discover who the other really is. They met in chapter one and Richard thought Tiana was a visiting townie and Tiana thought Richard was a farmer. Richard is not at all impressed with the Grand Uncle placing the burden of selling the jewelry on Tiana, and I must admit, I am in full agreement with him on that.

The chapter ends with Richard proposing to Tiana, since he needs a wife and she needs the funds for Castle Rose. It comes out of no where, but it fits with the hasty speed of this story. It wasn’t jarring, it simply needed to happen, so Dame Cartland made it happen.

Chapter three sees Tiana being highly insulted at the Earl’s proposal and storming out of the room, just like a teenager, without thinking through the consequences of her actions, ie, Castle Rose aint going nowhere except to the seller’s block without outside money. She accidentally meets the wastrel cousin and is instantly attracted to his youth, blond locks and deep blue eyes. Aye carumba.

I’ve noticed that teenagers tend to group adults into two groups. I vaguely recollect doing this myself too back in the day. There are the adults in their 20’s who are adults but you still feel comfortable with. Then there are the adults over 30 and they are just plain old. They are all the same and a homogenous group and it’s easier to ignore them and go about your own business of living your life. Dame Cartland obviously remembers this too and uses it, albeit as lightly as any other trope to amp up the drama.

Then the drama amps up again and I must say, I actually loved it! A developer, an EEEEEEEVIL developer shows up and he owns all the bills that Tiana’s parents never paid. Apparently, they were even worse than I initially thought. They not only spent all their money on the ruin of the castle, leaving their daughter destitute, but they also spent well beyond their means and left debts amounting to “a lot” (money from that time period means absolutely nothing to me, so whenever an amount is named and the form of currency, I just translate it as “a lot” or “a little” in my head). Said developer is described just how you’d expect an “evil greedy” developer to be described and he’s a complete ass. The chapter ends with the Earl threatening to toss him out when he refuses to leave at Tiana’s request. That’s how a man should act. Good for the Earl!

And thus ends this particular update for the first three chapters of Love Saves the Day by Dame Barbara Cartland. I have to admit, I enjoyed this way more than I thought I would (ie, not at all). Cartland’s writing, while formulaic and generic, gets the point across very well. There is no mistaking who is who, who is good, who is bad, who is supposed to end up with who. It is a comfort read I would say. I’m no longer dreading the rest of these updates 😀

Thursday, December 05, 2024

KTF Part II (Galaxy's Edge #17) 2.5Stars

Title: KTF Part II
Series: Galaxy’s Edge #17
Author: Jason Anspach & Nick Cole
Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Military SF
Pages: 285
Words: 117K

This series is done. I’m glad. It had sunk to disappointing levels. Even here, Anspach and Cole (the authors) do their best to get rid of every “force” user and divorce this series from its space opera roots. Not particularly happy with them as authors right now.

I do have a couple of standalone Tyrus Rex novels still to read by them. I still haven’t decided if I’ll actually read them or not. I don’t have anything else to say that won’t sent me descending into a rant and I just don’t have the energy for that right now.

★★✬☆☆

From the Publisher

IT ALL ENDS HERE.

Every decision, battle, triumph, and heartache has led the galaxy to this moment.

The Republic is spun wildly into sudden war as Gomarii slavers, in overwhelming numbers, strike on behalf of their Savage allies. The battle is fiercest on a newly rediscovered world: Earth.

But galactic war is only the symptom of an older, deeper, and far more dangerous conflict. Now Keel and Ravi must work frantically to assemble the warriors needed to withstand an ancient threat, and Prisma must wrestle to control her own inner darkness. While on the front lines, Death’s grim specter comes for Chhun and Victory Company.

For once again, a Legion stands steadfast before the void.