X2: X-Men United was a fun romp but not quite as good as the original. I think almost all movies in a series follow that pattern though, so it didn’t come as a surprise.
Meatbag Intern is GOOOOOONE. I am so sad. He was a good worker and intelligent. Great, now I’ll probably get saddled with somebody like myself 😉 (oh the horror!)
Our mattress finally arrived. We have slept so much better. Not exactly a miracle cure, but neither of us now wakes up feeling like we didn’t sleep. That is such a nice change.
My eye has stabilized. Not all better, but getting it stabilized is the first big step in getting it better. That news made me very happy.
With how many books, etc I read this month I have decided to start reading some web comics to help slow my pace. Since they are individual strips, I feel no need to blog about them at all, so that helps with both slowing my book reading down AND my blogging. Started reading Schlock Mercenary this past week and man, I had forgotten just how funny that comic is. Good stuff!
Part way through the month drove up to Maine with Mrs B, WC. Bombfunk and Mrs Bombfunk to visit the maternal pod. She was up visiting for her sister’s 80th birthday. It was a LOT of driving and made for an 11hr day. But it made mom happy, so it was worth it.
Cover Love:
Smoke by Ivan Turgenev. The cover just conveys the emotional turmoil that the story contains. All that red, it totally unsettles me. A good cover should never leave the reader unmoved, for good or for bad. It turns out this is actually a painting by some guy called Charles Hermans and is called “Circe the temptress”. It is extremely apt given the story.
Plans for Next Month:
Going to ease back into the manga game again. I feel like a 2 month break was enough. But I’m not doing a volume every week like I had been. That became too much. I’m thinking of reading one volume of One Piece and one volume of Fullmetal Alchemist each month. Not a lot, but enough.
9/11 is coming up. Again.
Our 15th Wedding Anniversary is this September, so we’re going to be celebrating that. Don’t know if I’ll be blogging about it, but chances are good. I am a blogaholic after all and I’m not too proud to admit it. But I don’t need help, not yet anyway.
The word “movie” is now no longer verboten in the comments. Either WordPress really cleaned up the spam or the filter worked. Either way, I’m not getting a bunch of spam comments linking to pron movies now. So write “movie” all you want to. Nobody will care, hahahaha.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Siege of Earth Series: Empire Rising #6 Author: David Holmes Rating: 4 of 5 Stars Genre: SF Pages: 475 Words: 184K
DASTARDLY SPACE COMMIES!!!!!
Yeeehaawwwwwww! Watch as the evil SPACE COMMIES try to starve Earth into submission. Watch as the heartless SPACE COMMIES try to kill a beautiful woman and new space ensign! Experience thrills and chills as SPACE COMMIES try to throw ice comets at earth while the stalwart defenders are run ragged. Shudder in terror as filthy traitors show their true colors AND get their just desserts! Weep as brave men and women sacrifice all so that their stalwart comrades can kill MORE SPACE COMMIES! Fear not, there are plenty of SPACE COMMIES to kill. Just send in your 5 box tops from Sugar Frosted SPACE COMMIES and we’ll send you your very own SPACE COMMIE to kill at your convenience! (shipping and handling is extra)
I DIDN’T KNOW I WANTED SPACE COMMIES BUT BY GUM, I GOT THEM, I WANTED THEM AND I WANTED THEM DEAD!!!
Holmes gave me what I didn’t even know I wanted and that takes genius and a lot of chutzpah. Because we all know how picky I am. My hat is off to you, sir. Thanks for not screwing this up. Of course, with space commies, you would be hard pressed to mess that up and annoy me. Mak’em evil, kill’em and I’m happy as a pig in mud.
Four Mudbaths out of Five!
★★★★☆
From the Publisher
The Flex-aor invasion fleets have been stopped, but at great cost. Human colonies lie in ruins, fleets have been decimated and the economies of the major space powers have been stretched to breaking point. Yet one nation stands unaffected. Hidden behind their borders, the Russian Space Federation is stronger than ever. Still enraged by the harsh peace terms forced upon them more than thirty years ago, the Federation sees its chance for revenge. Led by an Admiral with the tactical capabilities to rival any from the Allied space powers, the Russians have only one goal in mind; humanity’s homeworld will be theirs.
With the swiftness of the Russian attack, James, Suzanna, Lightfoot and many others find themselves isolated and cut off from one another. Worse, they are surrounded by allies that may no longer be trustworthy. Forced to fight with whatever forces they can muster, victory seems all but impossible.
Once again, the stakes are as high as they can get, for defeat would see the homeworld they sacrificed so much to protect falling under a new Russian tyranny. And if Earth falls, so too will the British Star Kingdom.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Silver Queendom Series: ———- Author: Dan Koboldt Rating: 1 of 5 Stars DNF@60% Genre: Fantasy Pages: 350/ 210 Words: 114K/ 68K
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPresss & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Hands in the Dark Series: The Shadow #10 Authors: Maxwell Grant Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: Crime Fiction Pages: 187 Words: 55K
Ha! Proof positive. The Shadow wears his girasol jewel on his left hand. It was stated explicitly in this book. This matters because Riders and I had a conversation about which hand it was on and neither of us could show a book which proved right or left. So here we go, the question is settled for all ages, or at least until I forget and forget that I answered the question here. So 2-3 months should do it!
Apparently, our conversation centered around which FINGER it was not, not which HAND. Sigh. The Quest for Knowledge must continue then. And back to the unimportant stuff like talking about the book I read. Man, this book reviewing thing isn’t all I was led to believe. However, it has allowed me to read TWO The Shadow books this month, so that’s definitely a check on the positive side of the life column.
This was a pretty gutsy book in that a regular joe schmoe gangster (well, he is pretty smart but still, he’s not super villain league smart) goes up against the Shadow on purpose. And he doesn’t do a bad job of it either. Millions of dollars in loot are at stake and a Great Love between Boyman and Girlwoman is at stake too. And the Shadow cleans house like the vigilante he is. Booyah!
That is why I keep reading these. Bad guys do really bad guy things and the Shadow puts a stop to it and bad guys usually die in droves. If that doesn’t count as a happy ending, I don’t know what does.
I’m just glad there’s no Vicki Vale kind of character. That would have ruined things completely.
★★★✬☆
From the Publisher:
WHO KNOWS WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEARTS OF MEN?
It was a message from a dead man. A small piece of paper worth a fortune in blood. Eight mysterious symbols that marked the beginning of a chain of violence executed by gangsters willing to kill for a code they did not understand. Only one man called the shots for this riddle: The Chief, whose reputation made any further identification unnecessary–and lethal.
Obviously a case for THE SHADOW–a cryptic message, a series of baffling murders, seemingly unrelated, and an invisible mastermind who choreographed killings for the highest stakes in town. THE SHADOW was on a trail leading straight to a brilliant trap–and a face-to-face encounter with a criminal genius determined to beat him at his own game!
Likejitsu, silent but deadly. The Art of Likejitsu is wildly divisive art because it can be used in so many ways. From a non-verbal “I acknowledge your presence” to a full blown “I LOVE YOU AND EVERYTHING YOU DO IS PURE AWESOMESAUCE” (I know most of you use it that way, and no worries, no offerings or worship needed), Likejitsu is one of the most versatile weapons in the arsenal of all Blogshido practitioners.
I use Likejitsu as an all purpose weapon. Sometimes I use it to acknowledge that someone wrote the post, or comment. Sometimes I just don’t have the words for what you wrote. While I might be a very wordy person, even I sometimes either run out or simply don’t have things to say. When you write a post about the accidental romance book you read, what am I supposed to say? I hate romance. But you read it and blogged about it. I think that deserves an acknowledgement.
Some people will take that to the extreme. You all know the type. The blogger who goes through and “likes” about 30 of your posts in 30 seconds. Most of those aren’t real people anyway. They’re just scumbags or bots. Either of those deserve to be chopped in half with a big fat ninja sword.
Other bloggers eschew likejitsu entirely because they feel it is too easy, entirely misused. I don’t blame them at all. I understand their viewpoint entirely. Of course, if they don’t ever comment, I don’t even know that they show up because they are invisible. So if that’s you, leave a flipping comment once a year or so, okay? Thanks.
However you use Likejitsu, just make sure you’re not expecting everyone else to use it in the exact same way as you do. Down that road lies madness 😉
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: True Believer Series: Terminal List #2 Author: Jack Carr Rating: 3 of 5 Stars Genre: Action/Adventure Pages: 512 Words: 154K
While the Terminal List was a revenge story about a special forces military man, this was just a military story about a military special forces man. It was also 25% longer. Mainly because we get the extended edition of James Reece sailing the ocean running away from Da Man and then becoming a guide and conservation hunter who traps poachers with his expert military knowledge. While all of that is going on the author weaves all the backstory of the badguys and their dastardly deeds so when Reece gets approached to join the CIA to take down said bad guys, we are fully up to date on just how dastardly and badguy’y they really are. It felt bloated to me. Necessary but bloated.
We get all the “Brand X” name dropping I expect from books written by special forces guys. I know I talk about it, but I simply don’t understand. Does the general populace care? Or are you writing for other special forces guys? Because that seems like a very small market. And my polling shows that 100% of the general reading populace (namely, myself) doesn’t care if you use a spiderco folding knife XT-305 or if you just write that the character used a folding knife. I can kind of understand when it comes to the gun-side of things, but even then, dial the fanboy back a notch, ok? I don’t need to know that your Jannhauser 3000KtY rocket propelled grenade launcher uses the side rail system with the Bugaboo xts targeting system with the modified Cobra trigger upgrade to reduce the pull to two pounds. Just tell me Side Character Y blew up the russian oligarch with the Jannhauser 3000 rpg and we’re all good. Or a rocket launcher, or whatever. Joe Public (the anonymous pseudonym of that great master we all know and adore, ie, me) doesn’t care.
I know I’ve complained a lot. But you can still enjoy a good military book and have complaints like this. The above are the reasons this doesn’t get higher than the 3star rating. It doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the story or the action or the pow pow, bam bam, slice slice. It just means I won’t be rating this higher.
I plan to continue this series and I suspect all the above issues will be in the next books as well, so I’m not expecting this series to suddenly “get better”. It is what it is and I’m ok with reading a series that is 3stars for a couple of months. It does make me wonder about going back and trying the tv show again. Just don’t know if I can get past that awful grey tone overlay. It really bugged me.
★★★☆☆
From OfficialJackCarr.com
SOMEWHERE A TRUE BELIEVER IS TRAINING TO KILL YOU.
HE DOESN’T CARE HOW HARD IT IS. HE ONLY KNOWS THAT HE WINS OR HE DIES. HE ONLY KNOWS THE CAUSE.
When a bomb goes off during a holiday fair in London, the body count is horrific and the nation’s market goes into a tailspin. This, it turns out, is just the beginning of a series of coordinated and murderous attacks against the whole of the Western world. As the scope of the mayhem grows ever wider, pulling in country after country, the United States goes on the offensive. Who is pulling the strings? What is their motive? And most important of all, how can the attacks be stopped before bloodshed and economic freefall bring America and her allies to their knees?
There is just one man who stands a chance of answering these questions. Former Navy SEAL James Reece is the only and crucial connection to a shadowy former Iraqi commando who could provide leads the CIA desperately needs. Reece might be America’s last hope. Unfortunately, he is also America’s most-wanted domestic terrorist. To rein him in, a bargain is struck and Reece becomes the reluctant tool of the United States government, traveling the globe to target terrorist lead- ers and unraveling a geopolitical conspiracy involving a traitorous CIA officer and a sinister assassination plot with worldwide repercussions. There is always another true believer out there willing to kill for his cause. James Reece will be there to stop him.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Walpurgis III Series: ———- Author: Mike Resnick Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: SF Pages: 173 Words: 59K
While I enjoyed this little standalone in Resnick’s universe, it just goes to show that inverting something doesn’t always work out well. In this book, everything takes place on Walpurgis III (hence the title), a planet that was settled by all the satan worshippers from Old Earth who felt oppressed that society wouldn’t let them do their thing in peace (like human sacrifice, rape, etc). So they settled their own planet and kept everybody else out.
Which sounds great in theory. But as Resnick shows in his writing here, it simply can’t work out that way. We have a world where woman are ritually raped on altars, “voluntarily” of course, where people just sit there and watch as someone else gets gutted by a knife and at the same time we’re supposed to think that the main cop guy is a moral guy who wants to track down the assassin (Jericho, who is here to kill Conrad Bland, the biggest mass murder in the history of humanity) because he killed 5 random people. I’m sorry, but those two things simply don’t co-exist. Evil doesn’t get compartmentalized like that. That juxtaposition of compartmentalized evil really distracted me. It was like a world of meat eaters decided to kill a vegetarian because he ate some fish and that was just too horrible for them to contemplate. Yeahhhhhhhh.
Other than ALL OF THAT, I enjoyed this. Jericho is a master of disguise and this story was all about him making his way to Conrad Bland’s stronghold so he could kill him. Each town he made it to held its own little adventure. In that regards, this was more like a serialized story but Resnick does pretty good at telling that kind of story, so it worked out well.
The fact that I still enjoyed the story despite the premise means this was a complete success, especially since I have such wishy washy luck with Resnick (I was not a fan of his Dead Enders or Starship series). Every time I read a story by him that I enjoy, it gives me a shot of encouragement to dive into something else by him. Right now, I have a choice of either going for his John Justin Mallory trilogy or his Weird West series. I read a sequel about JJM and I didn’t really enjoy it, so I’m leaning towards the Weird West stuff. I don’t know if it will be Steampunk or Cthulhu’ic or something else entirely.
I chose this cover (which while hard to see, depicts a ritual sacrifice of a woman by one of the death cults) because the current cover is just a grinning skull on a red background. It was the most boring, uninformative cover ever. Reminded of something Amazon would do when they release those free classics but still charge 99cents. So instead I’m showing the cover that is the coolest. You are welcome.
★★★✬☆
From the Publisher
Conrad Bland has slaughtered tens of millions, a butcher vastly worse than Hitler. He has never considered not killing anyone who stood in his way.
He takes refuge on Walpurgis III, a planet settled by various cults of devil worshippers. He is the manifestation of the evil they revere, but now that they have come face-to-face with their beliefs, the cults desperately want Bland to be removed from their lives, their world, and entirely from existence.
So Walpurgis III contacts Jericho, the greatest assassin in the galaxy, to rid them of Conrad Bland. But once the assassin arrives and begins to make his bloody way toward Bland’s headquarters, the people—especially John Sable, the top policeman on the planet—must face an excruciating choice.
Who is more dangerous, the man who kills from compulsion? Or the man who kills from calculation?
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: 13 More Stories They Wouldn’t Let Me Do On TV Series: ———- Editor: Alfred Hitchcock Rating: 3 of 5 Stars Genre: Crime Fiction Pages: 180 Words: 70K
I had already read The Most Dangerous game several times, but I found myself reading it again anyway. It is really that good of a story.
There was a story by Roald Dahl here and I must say, it got this collection the “disturbing” tag. While Dahl might be a fantastic children’s author, when he lets his mind run unbridled, like he does with this adult stories, it is not a pretty sight. It wasn’t some sort of supernatural grotesquerie, but a case of one human acting in the most abominable way towards another. I don’t think I could have ever of thought of a story like this. It disturbs me that someone could imagine that.
The final story is one translated from a russian fellow and it was just as disturbing as anything else. It felt like a shoddy story but I suspect that shoddy translation work was more to blame. Either way, it was a typical russian story ending in madness and death. Andreyev was no master though and there’s a reason his name isn’t proclaimed alongside Dostoyevsky, etc.
Overall, this balanced out to a decent but not wonderful read.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Conan the Victorious Series: Conan the Barbarian Author: Robert Jordan Rating: 3 of 5 Stars Genre: Fantasy Pages: 227 Words: 81K
Conan gets poisoned and has to face down two wizards, a demon, a bunch of soldiers and lots of adventure.
This was Robert Jordan’s final Conan novel and I rather enjoyed it. I didn’t rate it any better than his previous books because it’s a Conan pastiche and even when I’m thoroughly enjoying them, they just aren’t good literature. They are good adventure stories though. Fantastic pulp if you ask me.
Conan getting poisoned and then double crossed by a wizard who he thought was on his side was pitch perfect. Conan has always hated magic and magic users and we’re shown a perfect reason for that kind of thinking here. I know that Jordan has shown a wizard or two as not being bad, but they are always the outlyers and not the norm. As it should be. Wizards and the powers they consort with are evil and if you see one, make sure you run him through with your trusty steel sword and then chop his head off just in case. You can’t be too careful after all.
I do wish that Jordan had taken a stab at telling a story about Conan’s time as a sea pirate. That is referenced several times in the original stories by Howard and it is one time in Conan’s life that I am actually curious about. Oh well. But if Captain Conan ever steers his ship into Commodore Bookstooge’s area of influence, well, there will be a bloody battle to tell your kids about. And if Conan just stays a land lubber in all the other stories I plan on reading, well, no one can blame even him for being afraid of the Dwead Piwate Bookstooge!
★★★☆☆
From Conan.fandom.com/
Naipal, court wizard to King Bandharkar of the city-state of Ayodha in Vendyha, prepares to bargain with a demon, Masrock, to win control of the kingdom and rid himself of his rivals, the Black Seets of Mt. Yimsha. Meanwhile, in the Turanian city of Sultanapoor, a Vendhyan-supported plot has resulted in the assassination of a prince. Conan, employed in guarding a smugglers’ ship, is rumored to have been hired to commit the crime. Turanian spymaster Lord Khalid sends his apprentice, Jelal, into Vendhya to find out if a northerner was truly involved.
Running for his life, Conan eventually makes it to the docks and to his friend/fellow smuggler Hordo, whom he met during his time with Karela the Red Hawk. Hordo suggests that Conan leave with him on his next delivery of “fish” and he agrees. While examining the chests, they feel strangely light and, when questioned, the Vendhyan merchant who owns the crates flees. However, as he escapes, the merchant accidentally slices Conan with a hidden blade. The crates contain nothing except dried leaves of an unknown origin. Unfortunately, the blade was poisoned and Conan discovers that the antidote may lie in Vendhya, the original destination of their cargo.
At the mouth of the Zaporaska River in Vendhya, the smugglers question a tribe of Vendhyan warriors who are receiving their cargo. After discovering their chests have been tampered with, the warriors accept Hordo’s explanation in a suspicious way. Moments later, Conan and his crew learn that the Vendhyans were planning to kill them once their cargo was delivered. Soon, an army of Vendhyan tribesmen attack and set their ship alight, stranding them. During the battle, Conan gets close enough to see a caravan loading their crates. Unsure if the caravan will be friendly or not, the crew split up, one will follow the caravan, another will return home by walking along the coast.
Conan’s crew eventually close the distance and, by nightfall, have come within feet from the caravan’s distant bonfire. Conan assumes the identity of a Vendhyan merchant and, after a brief conversation with the captain of the caravan guard, they learn that the owner will speak with them in the morning. During the night, a Khitan merchant approaches the smugglers and offers in hiring them as his guards.
In Vendhya, Naipal discovers Conan has become embroiled in his schemes. Believing Conan’s involvement is purposeful, he plans to kill both the Cimmerian and his companions. After his agents in the caravan attempt without success in slaying Conan, Naipal lays a trap for him in the lost city of Gwandikian. Soon, Conan takes the bait. Lured into an ancient tower, he’s attacked by a swarm of cobras and narrowly escapes. Afterwards, Conan searches for an antidote to his poisoned wound in a nearby forest, where he has been told it can be located. Soon, he discovers the herbalist who originally treated him and learns he was in fact cured by his first treatment; the man had lied about it then to secure the Cimmerian’s aid. He, presumably, is Naipal’s true adversary. A final conflict between the two sorcerers ensues, in which both end up dead at the hands of the demon each tried to control, and the demon itself is destroyed by the spells they had lain on it.
Conan, surviving, decides to return home. On the way, he encounters Lord Khalid’s agent Jelal. The spy has completed his investigations and cleared the Cimmerian of complicity in the Vendhyan plot against Turan. He gives Conan a parchment and instructs him to present it at the headquarters of the Turanian army on his return to Sultanpoor.
The second X-Men movie, subtitled X-Men United, follows right in the footsteps of the first movie. This time around Senator Striker is manipulating mutants with the end goal of taking over Cerebro and using its powers to kill all the mutants in the world. Nice guy right? At the same time Wolverine is on the hunt for his past and lost memories. Plus, there are a lot of little rabbit trails that are like crack to comic book fans of the time.
In this movie, the human/mutant interaction is really ramped up, the looming war seemingly right on the horizon and the threat to mutantkind almost realized. We also get a bunch more mutants but each one has very little screen time and almost no character development. Nightcrawler is the perfect example. He’s brought on board to the X-team but beyond being blue and able to teleport, he’s nothing.
I think Wolverine’s storyline was more interesting than the main one about Striker trying to kill all the mutants. While the “kill all the mutants” might be interesting to a 14 year old, with the promise of world wide chaos, I liked the more personal touch here. Probably explains why I enjoyed Origins so much. This just extremely busy. It’s one of the reasons I am not a big fan of Team Superheroes. I like the focus to be on one person.
I think Singer does a good job here. Not an excellent job, but a good job. I enjoyed watching this again but unlike the first movie, I’m not sure I’ll ever bother re-watching. This is definitely a comic book movie but not in the bestest way the first movie was.
The twist at the end where Xavier is set to kill all regular humans instead of mutants was about as subtle as a baseball bat to the head. But whatever, it fit with the comic book motif perfectly.
On a weird note, the actor who plays Striker is the same man who plays Boris the Russian diplomat in the RED duology. Hearing him speak with a slight southern drawl was very disconcerting as I’m used to him being all “Dah, Comrade” and whatnot. It was one thing I could not get past.
Overall, this was a good fun re-watch on a Sunday afternoon but not one I’d unreservedly recommend.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: A Quiet Man Series: Victor the Assassin #9 Authors: Tom Wood Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: Action/Adventure Pages: 338 Words: 94K
This was a good “killer does his thing” story but it just wasn’t a Victor the Assassin. The premise is based on Victor going against every survival instinct and rule that he’s ever had to help find a special needs boy who he promised to take fishing. This from the man who poisoned the woman he loved because she “might” turn on him at some random time in the distant future? Yeah, I didn’t buy it all, not one tiny bit.
So that is why this got a halfstar knocked off it’s shiny metal aff. Other than that, this was great! Meth cooker gets burned by gangsters. Victor dukes it out with some lowlife thugs, cuts off all their fingers and delivers said fingers to the man who hired them. Victor takes on a whole team of special forces guys and kills them all. Oh yeah, that was pure awesome. It was stupid, because he was supposedly dying from a bullet wound to his thigh that nicked an artery or something, but hey, whatever. I’m also supposed to believe that Canadians are just so oh so polite and are the best people in the world? How that trucker convoy got handled shows the truth of that. But like I said, you don’t read these books for the realism.
Plus, the cover gives it all away. In case you don’t know, the maple leaf is actually a cabalistic symbol about ritualized secrets too horrible to divulge here in public. If I told you, your life wouldn’t be worth a plug nickel, heck it probably wouldn’t even be worth a penny, nay, not even a widow’s mite! And that’s taking the current inflation into account too. Since you won’t read any more reviews by me if you’re dead, I’m choosing to do the right thing (for myself) and not telling you the secrets. Feel free to thank me in the comments for sparing your miserable, misbegotten life. /s
Thus, this was another fantastic entry about a lethal killer lethally killing other lethal killers. Doesn’t get much more lethal than that. If it did, I’d have to kill you. Again.
★★★✬☆
From the Publisher
One day a man arrives in town. Unassuming. Quiet.
The assassin known as Victor is hiding out in a small motel in Canada after a job across the border. A few days laying low and he’ll be gone and leave no trace behind.
He doesn’t count on getting to know a mother and her boy who reminds him of his own troubled childhood. When both vanish, only Victor seems to notice.
Once he starts looking for them, he finds himself at odds with the criminals who own the town. They want him gone. Only Victor’s going nowhere until he discovers the truth and to them he’s just a quiet man asking the wrong questions.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot, & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Children of the Mind Series: Enderverse #4 Authors: Orson Card Rating: 1 of 5 Stars Genre: SF Pages: 334 Words: 108K
Man, when I finished up Xenocide, I didn’t think Card could get any worse, which is why I dived into this book with a headstrong attitude, convinced I was bigger, badder and stronger. Well, Card sure showed me.
This was a 20 page short story jam packed into 334 pages of complete blather and blither. I was going to still give this 2 stars because of the technical side of things, but then he made one little remark about Jesus that showed the heresy of the Mormon belief about God and so I knocked it down a star. (Here is a run down of the basic 8 issues that separates Mormons from Christianity – Link Here)
With that, I think I am done with Card as an author. While I enjoyed the First Formic Wars trilogy, the fact that the second trilogy has been stuck on book 2 for many years couple with my distaste of the original Enders series means I simply will ignore whatever new book comes out with his name on the cover.
Ugh. I hate when this happens in a series. I thoroughly enjoyed Ender’s Game and to see it end like this (Ender dies in this book, so even though there are 1 or 2 more direct sequels, it is pointless even if I didn’t hate this now with a passion) was simply disappointing and maddening all at the same time.
After Xenocide, several people asked what books by Card I did enjoy. To answer everyone all at once, I’ll list them here:
At the start of Children of the Mind, Jane, the evolved computer intelligence, is using her newly discovered abilities to take the races of buggers, humans and pequeninos outside the universe and back instantaneously. She uses these powers to move them to distant habitable planets for colonization. She is losing her memory and concentration as the vast computer network connected to the ansible is being shut down. If she is to survive, she must find a way to transfer her aiúa (or soul) to a human body.
Peter Wiggin and Si Wang-Mu travel to the worlds of Divine Wind and Pacifica to persuade the Japanese-led swing group of the Starways Congress to revoke their order to destroy Lusitania. By tracing the decision-making trail backwards, they are able to show a philosopher his influence on the Starways Congress. After several complications, the philosopher persuades the Tsutsumi clan to exert their influence with the Necessarian faction in the Starways Congress to stop the Lusitania fleet. The admiral at the head of the Lusitania fleet, however, disobeys the Congress’s order and does what he believes Ender Wiggin, the perpetrator of the first Xenocide, would have done and fires the Molecular Disruption Device (MDD).
Upon Ender Wiggin’s death, Jane guides his aiúa to Peter’s body, while she is granted possession of Young Val’s body, and thus is not destroyed when the ansible shuts down. She is then able to continue transporting starships instantaneously by borrowing the vast mental capacity of the simple-minded Pequenino mother-trees. She transports a ship with Peter and Wang-Mu around the missile, then transports the missile and them to inside of the Lusitania fleet, where it is then disarmed and disabled. Peter and Wang-Mu’s efforts finally come to fruition, and the destruction of Lusitania is averted.
Jane falls in love with Miro, and Peter with Wang-mu. Both couples are married under one of the mother-trees of the pequeninos on the same day as Ender’s funeral.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Caesar is tired, again, of the small Gaulish village flouting his power. And another bright, up and coming young Roman decides that corrupting the Gauls with money will be enough to turn them fat, happy and lazy. With Caesar’s blessing he sets off and starts buying menhirs at exorbitant prices. The rest of the gauls want in on the action and before you know it, the entire village is slaving away making menhirs and selling them to the Romans. Of course, things don’t go quite as planned by the young smart Roman and Caesar ends up losing a bunch of money and the villagers get to beat the stuffing out of the new batch of Roman Soldiers. Good times for everyone!
This was pretty predictable, just like the story where the Roman with the power of gossip goes amongst the Gauls. Things start out as planned and then of course, the Gauls being the Gauls, everything goes off the rails for everyone, Gauls, Romans, Countrymen! And there are more menhirs than you can shake a stick at.
Once the gauls start smacking each other around, Asterix just has to guide them and voila, Gauls are smacking Roman Soldiers around, just like nature intended, hehehehe.
★★★☆☆
From Wikipedia.org
After Obelix single-handedly defeats a newly arrived battalion of Roman soldiers, Julius Caesar ponders over how to defeat the village of rebellious Gauls. A young Roman called Preposterus, using his studies in economics, proposes that the Gauls to be integrated into capitalism. Caesar agrees, sending Preposterus to one of the village’s outlying Roman camps. Upon meeting Obelix carrying a menhir through the forest, Preposterus claims to be a menhir buyer and offers to make Obelix a rich man, on the pretext it will give him power, by buying every menhir he can make. Obelix agrees and begins making and delivering a single menhir a day to him.
Demand for his goods increases in time, forcing Obelix to hire villagers – while some aid him, the others hunt boar for himself and his new workers. The resulting workload causes him to neglect his faithful companion Dogmatix, while Asterix refuses to help him, concerned on what this is doing to him. As Obelix grows wealthy and begins wearing ostentatious clothes, many of the village’s men are criticised by their wives for not matching his success. In response, many turn to making their own menhirs to sell to the Romans, despite not knowing what they are for, with Getafix supplying them with magic potion for their work. As most of the village grows wealthy, except for Asterix, Getafix, Cacofonix and Vitalstatistix who did not engage in the new economic system. Asterix believes that this new change will not last.
Eventually, Caesar becomes angered when he learns that Preposterus’ plan is placing him in financial debt. To counter this, Preposterus decides to sell the abundance of menhirs to patricians on the pretext they are a symbol of great wealth and high rank. However, this causes problems as other provinces begin making their own menhirs to sell to the Romans, creating a growing Menhir crisis that is crippling the Roman economy and threatening a civil conflict from the Empire’s workforce. To put a stop to this, Caesar orders Preposterus to cease further trading with Gauls or face being thrown to the lions.
Unknown to him, Obelix becomes miserable from the wealth and power he made, having never understood it all, and how much it has changed other villagers, making him wish to go back to enjoying the fun he had with Asterix and Dogmatix. Asterix soon hears of this and agrees to go hunting boar with him if he reverts to his old clothes, knowing that the villagers’ lives are about to return to normal. When Preposterus arrives to announce he will not be buying another menhir, the villagers claim Obelix knew of this in advance when he called a halt in his work but did not tell them, causing him to fight with them. Asterix soon breaks up the fight, directing the villagers to attack the Romans for causing the whole mess they are in. As they head off to wreck the camp Preposterus is residing in, Obelix decides to take no part in the fight. While the villagers’ wealth is gone, after events in Rome caused the sestertius they received to be devalued, they hold a traditional banquet to celebrate the return to normality.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: The Bull and the Spear Series: Eternal Champion: Corum #4 Author: Michael Moorcock Rating: 4 of 5 Stars Genre: Fantasy Pages: 128 Words: 46K
Corum survived the god wars. But now he is alone, as he outlived his wife and all the humans who he knew. There are no more adventures and Corum is bored, depressed and acting like a spoiled, selfish brat. Then he gets some weird visions, Jary-a-conel comes back and zippy-de-da, Corum travels to the future where humanity is on the edge of being wiped out by creatures from Limbo. Corum falls in love with yet another human princess and goes on another adventure to find a mythical spear which controls a mythical bull that can somehow defeat the limbo creatures even though it didn’t before.
Yeah, not loving this book as much as the previous ones. Corum comes across more like a boorish angsty teenager in this book instead of a melancholic lone survivor as in the previous books. It really lessened the tension of the following adventure.
It was a decent adventure and I really enjoyed that part. It was just overshadowed by the moodiness. It felt much more like Elric and his brand of emotion than Corum’s normal cool aloofness. Plus, having the creatures of Limbo coming into the world made them completely unlike the previous war between Chaos and Law. These creatures were more creatures of instinct than beings of malicious intent, which almost made it worse, because the normal way one would fight a reasoning, rational being have to all be thrown out the window. So that aspect really was fun.
I was going to use the omnibus edition cover for each of the books in this second Corum trilogy, but was able to track down these Berkley covers from the massmarket paperback from the mid-80’s. They match the previous covers in style and tone and I like that. Just a little thing, but little things matter.
★★★★☆
From the publisher
In the ancient Castle Erorn, Corum of the Scarlet Robe dwells in isolation and sorrow. He has out-lived his great love, Rhalina, and is tormented by voices in his dreams—a crowd of shadowy figures chanting his name. Unable to ignore their calls for help any longer, he will travel through eons of time to an age of tragedy, where the people of Tuha-na-Cremm Croich, descendants of Rhalina, are persecuted by the giant gods of the Cold Folk.
A great black bull has the power needed to defeat the monsters of a new age. But to tame the bull, the Eternal Champion must travel to the fatally beautiful island of Hy-Breasail to find the invincible and magical Spear Bryionak…
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
First off, this was the book that the movie Die Hard was based on. And let me say, the movie adaptation is a FAR superior action/adventure/thriller story than this book could ever hope to be.
This was a bitter, bitter book. Leland’s wife is dead, his daughter is working in LA for a big company and has 2 kids and is divorced. She’s sleeping with her boss and they’re both snorting coke like it’s 1980. Which it almost is. The company has made a huge massive deal with the Chilean government and has a vault full of millions in cash. The problem is, the deal is just a cover for the company to smuggle military grade weapons down to the Dictatorship. And some german terrorist group wants to put a stop to it AND steal all the money. So Leland has to fight the badguys all by himself, watch helicopters explode and good cops get killed by bad leadership and then watch as his daughter is dragged to her death by the leader of the terrorists as he falls out of the building from the 40th story.
Leland is bitter, cynical, disillusioned and spouting off like a Democrat every step of the way while acting like “a good guy with a gun” (which is a myth according to democrats but a real thing in reality). It was very schizophrenic.
And while it was 1/3rd the length of the first book, it was still just as filled with navel gazing bull kaka as the first one. This was a literary novel filled with self-loathing, hatred and despair desperately trying to pretend to be an action thriller. And it flipping failed. If this hadn’t been turned into such a block buster of a movie, nobody would know this book or probably this author. Which might just be for the best. Thorp is (was?) a pretentious wanker and I hope he got a lot of beating from life. Self-pitying assholes who do nothing but whine like him deserve a good beating.
Now I’m off to watch Die Hard to wash the disgusting taste of this disgusting book out of my mind.
★★☆☆☆
From Wikipedia.org
Retired NYPD detective Joe Leland is visiting the 40-story office headquarters of the Klaxon Oil Corporation in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve, where his daughter Stephanie Leland Gennaro works.
While he is waiting for his daughter’s Christmas party to end, a group of German Autumn–era terrorists take over the skyscraper. The gang is led by the brutal Anton “Little Tony the Red” Gruber. Joe had known about Gruber through a counter-terrorist conference he had attended years prior. Barefoot, Leland slips away and manages to remain undetected in the gigantic office complex. Armed with only his Browning pistol and in communication with Los Angeles Police sergeant Al Powell and his belligerent supervisor, Dwayne Robinson, Leland fights off the terrorists one by one in an attempt to save the 74 hostages, his daughter, and grandchildren.
Gruber and the terrorists kill Mr. Rivers, the CEO of the Klaxon building, and proceed to steal documents that will publicly expose the Klaxon corporation’s dealings with Chile’s junta. They also intend to deprive Klaxon of the proceeds of the corrupt deal of $6,000,000 in cash by attempting to access a safe. Leland interferes with this plan by stealing explosives and progressively killing terrorists and receiving multiple injuries in the process.
Leland kills most of the terrorists and, despite no help from the police, faces off with the leader of the terrorist group, Anton Gruber, who is holding his daughter hostage. Gruber falls to his death after being shot by Leland, taking Stephanie with him. Blaming Klaxon for the terrorist attack and his daughter’s death, Leland throws the cash out of the window himself. Once Leland is back on the street, the last terrorist, Karl, who was presumed dead earlier, returns and starts a shooting rampage, killing several police officers (including Robinson) and a doctor in the process, before Sgt. Powell finally kills him, allowing Leland to receive medical care.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Smoke Series: (The Russians) Author: Ivan Turgenev Translator: Garnett Rating: 4 of 5 Stars Genre: Fiction Pages: 287 Words: 78K
This was depressing as all get out and then Turgenev turns around and tries to give everyone a happy ending. I appreciate him trying to do that for me personally, since he knew that 160 years later I would be reading this. But it didn’t fit.
Grigory is the main character. He had a bad romantic experience a decade ago and is now engaged to another woman. He thinks he is over the previous woman until he runs into her while waiting for his fiance in a french town. Things go characteristically Russian (ie, she’s now married, he falls in love with her, throws his fiance over and then finds out the woman won’t run away with him leaving her former life behind) and then the happy reconciliation with the thrown over fiance happens at the end.
I enjoyed the living daylights out of this. While it was very evident what was going to happen, and I was protesting the whole time (I mean, what kind of man throws over a wonderful woman who loves him for a floozy who threw him over a decade ago, just because of feelingz?), it was also strangely comforting to watch someone else being an idiot and knowing I didn’t have to deal with it myself. It was cathartic actually.
While I didn’t enjoy this quite as much as Fathers and Sons, it was definitely the second top Turgenev that I’ve read. If he can keep up this kind of output, I’ll be a very happy (albeit miserable) reader.
The story now reverts to about a decade earlier to relate the background story of the young Grigory Litvinov and Irina Osinin. Acquaintances in Moscow, the two fall in love when barely out of childhood and promise themselves to one another. Unlike Litvinov, Irina comes from an ennobled family of long pedigree, though in recent times fallen into near penury. One day the Osinin family, in view of their nobility, are invited to a ball being thrown by the emperor on his visit to Moscow. Irina agrees to go though she pleads with Litvinov not to go himself and Litvinov acquiesces to her wishes, though he does bring her a bouquet of heliotrope. Irina’s beauty makes quite an impression at the court ball and the very next day the court chamberlain Count Reisenbach, a relation of the Osinins and a wealthy man with high connections, decides he will adopt his niece Irina and bring her to live with him in St. Petersburg. Irina is heartbroken but bends to her parents’ wishes to become his adopted niece and heiress. It means leaving Litvinov and she writes to him breaking off their relationship. Soon thereafter she is whisked away to St. Petersburg and her new home.
The story moves back to Baden. Litvinov wonders excitedly whether it wasn’t Irina who left him the flowers. The next morning Litvinov decides to escape Baden and the Russian crowd by hiking alone up in the hills around the town’s old castle. Stopping later at the old castle for refreshment, he encounters the arrival of a large Russian entourage, clearly composed of Russian nobility of the highest rank, many in military uniforms. Among them, a young woman calls to Litvinov and he soon recognizes her as Irina, his former love. The ten years since their last meeting in Moscow has brought her to her full bloom and he is struck by her mature beauty. Litvinov is introduced to her husband, the general Valerian Vladimirovitch Ratmirov, an affable man who it soon becomes clear holds very conservative opinions, wishing to turn back the clock on all the reforms that have taken place in Russia. As the “son of a plebeian”, Litvinov feels out of place among these aristocrats and put off by their manners and opinions. He bids farewell to Irina and she urges him to come see her while in Baden.
The Hohenbaden, or old castle, near Baden-Baden, where Litvinov again meets Irina.
Though affected by his meeting with Irina, Litvinov does not go to see her. Several days pass. A letter from Tatiana telling him that she will be delayed arriving in Baden due to the illness of her aunt puts Litvinov in a petulant mood. One day Potugin comes to see Litvinov. Litvinov is glad for the company but soon learns that Potugin knows Irina quite well and that he has in fact come to bring a message from her urging Litvinov to come see her that very day. He agrees. Irina is staying in one of the finest hotels in the city and her husband is away on personal business. Irina and Litvinov have a long talk catching up on the past decade. Irina pleads with Litvinov to forgive her for what she did to him and Litvinov seems to dismiss the notion of forgiveness, as those events were long ago in their childhood. When Litvinov touches upon the flowers left in his room, Irina claims to know nothing about them. The return of Irina’s husband seems to break up the meeting. Later Litvinov passes Irina again while out walking but feigns not to recognize her. Irina later accosts him on his walk, asking why he ignores her and pleading with him not to do so, for she is desperate and alone and misses their simple relationship. Litvinov tells her what is in his heart, that she meant much to him and was the cause of great anguish and now that their paths and situations are so different he sees no point in renewing an acquaintance has only the potential to hurt again and to reveal to Irina how much power she still holds over him. She urges him again warmly that they might be, if not friends, at least friendly, “as if nothing had happened.” Litvinov promises her not to treat her as a stranger, though he still does not understand her intentions. Irina is then called off by the approach of an aristocratic friend. Litvinov, walking on, again encounters Potugin, now sitting and reading on a bench. They have another lengthy conversation about Russia that Potugin dominates, ridiculing those Slavophiles who are constantly heralding the native Russian genius but who refuse to see that the mastery of things comes with training and education and not through any internal nature or instinct. Litvinov is still unable to learn of just how Potugin knows Irina, only that he has known her for some time. Returning to his rooms, Litvinov later finds an invitation from Irina to attend a soiree in her rooms, where he will be able to meet many from her circle and better understand “the air she breathes.” Litvinov later attends this soiree and returning to his rooms comes to realize with exhilaration and horror that he loves Irina and that his marriage with Tatiana is threatened by this looming passion. Litvinov decides he must leave Baden and Irina forever and makes arrangements for the omnibus to Heidelberg. He visits Irina’s hotel rooms to reveal both his love and his determination to leave rather than ruin himself. Irina is moved by this confession and though she initially supports his decision, she later comes to him to confess her love and tells him her destiny is in his hands.
The story then reverts to eight years previous to relate Potugin’s history with Irina. At that time he was still working as a government official and would visit the country estate of the Count Reisenbach, the guardian of the young Irina, near St. Petersburg. Later, Irina, realizing that the older Potugin had fallen in love with her, uses this leverage to seek a great favour of Potugin. Irina’s close friend Eliza Byelsky, an orphan but the heir of a wealthy estate, was facing ruin (though left unsaid in the novel, this is understood to be pregnancy out of wedlock). For a large sum of money, but primarily because Irina desired it, Potugin agreed to secretly marry Eliza. Eliza later had her child, a daughter whom Potugin then adopted, before poisoning herself. Since that time Potugin has followed in the train of the Ratmirovs, utterly devoted to Irina.
Back at his hotel, Litvinov spends the evening with Tatiana and her aunt. He now tells Tatiana that he has something important he must tell her the next day. Tatiana has a foreboding of what this might be. The next morning a distraught Litvinov attempts to inform Tatiana of the situation but it is Tatiana, rather, who guesses he has fallen in love with that other woman they saw on the street. Soon thereafter, Tatiana leaves unceremoniously back to Dresden with her aunt without leaving any farewell note for Litvinov. Meanwhile, Litvinov writes a letter to Irina telling her of his break and urging her to run away with him only if her will is strong enough to stand such a life. If not, he will go away. Irina arranges for him to come see her again when her husband is out, and she reaffirms her commitment to follow him, though all her finances are in her husband’s hands. Eventually, however, Irina writes to Litvinov telling him that despite her love she is not strong enough to abandon her current life and declaring sorrowfully that she is unable to elope with him. Litvinov is heart-broken and leaves Baden on the train back for Russia. Along the way he muses over the mutability and seeming meaninglessness of all things, which have all the permanence of the smoke being blown forth by the train.
Back in Russia Litvinov returns to his estate in time to see his elderly father pass away. On his land Litvinov slowly recovers and even begins gradually to implement some of the land management and agricultural techniques he had learned in Europe. One day he hears through a visiting relative that Tatiana is living not too far away on her own estate with Kapitolina. He writes to Tatiana asking if he might visit her one-day and she responds in the affirmative, signaling to Litvinov that she has forgiven him. Litvinov wastes little time and sets out for her village. At a way station en route he encounters none other than Gubaryov and his brother. They reveal their true colors by their derision of the peasantry and their base treatment of Bambaev who, his finances wiped out, has been forced to become a servant to the Gubaryovs. Arriving at Tatiana’s, Litvinov falls at her feet and kisses the hem of her dress. Here the narrator leaves the story, with the note that readers can guess the end by themselves.
As he does with almost all his novels, Turgenev then briefly relates what became of some of the other characters. Irina is related to be older but still lovely, with young men still falling in love with her “ironical intellect.” Her husband is steadily rising in the world. As for Potugin, the little girl he had adopted has died but he still follows in the train of Irina.
You think maybe his people live fulfilled lives, full of love, family and duty? This scout goes out into the wilderness every week, looking for what he may. Sneaky, stealthy, capable of invisibility, this scout is the linchpin upon which his peoples’ safety depends.
Did you notice his eye? Does it look familiar? Certain mages of shadow find them to be talismans of great power. While the Emperor of Shadow is bound to the Throne of Chainsin the Forest Refuge, his mind roams free with the powers granted by his talismanic chain of authority.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Troilus and Cressida Author: William Shakespeare Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars Genre: Play Pages: 315 Words: 91K
Yawn.
It appears that 4 of Shakespeare’s play in a monthly row is about all I can handle. Troilus and Cressida was the 5th and it was pure drivel and misery for me. I simply could not get into the flow or anything. It might have been the play itself but whatever the reason, I was within an inch of just skipping it and reading the Wikipedia entry. That’s not a good place to be in.
So I’m taking off from Shakespeare, yet again. I have no clue if I’m going to come back this time. I’ll give it a couple months of thought and make a decision then. I’m in no frame of mind to think rationally about these plays right now.
★★✬☆☆
From Wikipedia:
Troilus and Cressida is set during the later years of the Trojan War, faithfully following the plotline of the Iliad from Achilles’ refusal to participate in battle to Hector’s death. Essentially, two plots are followed in the play. In one, Troilus, a Trojan prince (son of Priam), woos Cressida, another Trojan. They profess their undying love, before Cressida is exchanged for a Trojan prisoner of war. As he attempts to visit her in the Greek camp, Troilus glimpses Diomedes flirting with his beloved Cressida, and decides to avenge her perfidy.
While this plot gives the play its name, it accounts for only a small part of the play’s run time. The majority of the play revolves around the leaders of the Greek and Trojan forces, Agamemnon and Priam, respectively. Agamemnon and his cohorts attempt to get the proud Achilles to return to battle and face Hector, who sends the Greeks a letter telling them of his willingness to engage in one-on-one combat with a Greek soldier. Ajax is originally chosen as this combatant, but makes peace with Hector before they are able to fight. Achilles is prompted to return to battle only after his protege Patroclus is killed by Hector before the Trojan walls. A series of skirmishes conclude the play, during which Achilles catches Hector and has the Myrmidons kill him. The conquest of Troy is left unfinished, as the Trojans learn of the death of their hero.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot, by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Groo and the Siege Second Try Series: Groo the Wanderer #20 Author: Sergio Aragones Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: Comics Pages: 24 Words: 2K
Hahahahahaa! Oh man, I totally did not see the final part coming. I knew the Sage was going to be able to help Groo, but I just didn’t see him misunderstanding the whole situation. Oh, it took Groo’s level of destruction to a whole new level. If I lived in a world with a Groo, I’d try to figure out a way to harness his contrary-luck (it’s not necessarily “bad”, it just doesn’t work for anyone but Groo).
Of course, the enemies of Grooella do just that. Well, maybe not quite “harnessing” it, but they figure out how to make it work for them. Which is more than Grooella has ever done, hahahahahaa.
I’ve included the final panel where the enemies make use of Groo’s particular disability 😉
★★★✬☆
From Bookstooge.blog
Groo tries to help Grooella again and just makes things even worse. As always. To the point where the enemy uses Groo. Finally Groo decides to get help from the Sage, who helps Groo destroy the castle, because Groo forgot to tell him that the castle belonged to Grooella. The comic ends with both the Sage and Grooella chasing Groo down so they can kill him.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Firestorm Series: Empire Rising #5 Author: David Holmes Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: SF Pages: 324 Words: 124K
MUCH more enjoyable than the previous book. Over 20K of words less and it showed by being a tighter, leaner story and I think we all benefit from that. There were no letters, thank goodness.
There is still the “they fire X missiles” and the countdown to how they all get destroyed or not. But I was reading an older review of one of Doug Dandridge’s books and he did the exact same thing, so I guess that’s a “feature” of indie milsf writers.
We are also introduced to the next Somerville, Captain Happypant’s illegitimate niece. Since Happypants is pretty much now a commodore and the next step for him will be sitting behind a desk getting fat and reminiscing about “back in my day the Navy was blah, blah, blah”, and Mighty Niece is just entering navy school, I fully expect the next book to be a transition from Happypants as the main character to Mighty Niece.
Also, now that there is evidence of the Master Alien Race that really is setting lower races against each other, I expect them to take more of centerstage as the villainous, gloating, rubbing of hands (or whatever appendage that translates to for them) bad guy. There have been hints from the beginnings of each chapter (where it is the year 3000’ish and the Empire is at the height of its power) that is a War of Doom where humanity takes a tremendous beating and almost loses the survival war. I suspect the new MAR’s have a hand in that.
Unlike the last book, I didn’t notice any awkward dialogue. Nothing that threw me out of the book at all. Doesn’t mean it was Nero Wolfe / Archie Goodwin banter, but it was solid dialogue that didn’t make me wince. That’s a big step in the right direction and I’m happy about that.
★★★✬☆
From the Publisher
Four peaceful years have passed since the liberation of Haven. Captain James Somerville has taken his command, the heavy cruiser Titan, to Earth for a much-needed refit. As he is there, shocking news arrives from the American colonies. Unknown ships have attacked a remote colony. Nuclear missiles have devastated the planet’s surface leaving almost no survivors. Suddenly, the human nations find themselves thrust into a war for the very survival of their species. Old rivalries must be set aside if this new threat is to be confronted. Once again James finds himself thrust into the midst of battle. This time, the stakes are as high as they can get.
This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Golden Spiders Series: Nero Wolfe #22 Author: Rex Stout Rating: 4 of 5 Stars Genre: Mystery Pages: 175 Words: 58K
This was a tough one because right near the beginning a boy gets killed after coming to Nero Wolfe and Archie lets him in the house as a way to get revenge on Wolfe for his bad attitude. It wasn’t their fault but it happened. Several other people are killed too but the death of the child is what makes Wolfe do his utmost this time around.
Whooooo, what a great cast of characters this time. Sometimes Archie and Wolfe dominate a book and the side characters are very small side characters. But sometimes, like here, the side characters really pop and stand out. There is a lawyer and a public relations guy and man, they are both as slimey as Cthulhu’s tentacles, and they’re probably just as evil, whether willfully or through deliberately ignoring what is going on. I loved to hate on them and every time Wolfe put either of them into their place I was super happy and felt good about myself. Childish and immature, yes, but also very, very, very true.
I always rave about how good Nero Wolfe stories are and what a wordsmith Rex Stout is and it remains true. That is part of why my reviews of these books are so short. When something is good, I simply read it and enjoy it and my review consists of a lack of problems. I don’t necessarily enumerate all the positives but the lack of negatives is how I roll.
I am about at the halfway mark through the series. I started with Fer-de-lance in March of 2021. Here I am, 2 ½ years later, still reading, still loving, still going strong. To me, the fact that I still look forward to reading a Nero Wolfe book every 4-6 weeks speaks absolute volumes about not only the entertainment value but also the quality. I’ve dropped indie SF authors before simply because the quality of writing was mediocre and I could only stand it for a couple of volumes. Stout puts out quality stuff each and every time and I am proud to say that I can appreciate that fact. I suspect Stout is pretty proud that such an esteemed personage as myself is not only reading his books, but reviewing them too. But don’t worry, there is plenty of room on this bandwagon, so jump on and have yourself the ride of a lifetime.
★★★★☆
From Wikipedia:
After Nero Wolfe reacts petulantly to a change in one of his favourite meals, Archie Goodwin plays a prank on him by allowing Pete Drossos, a neighbourhood child, to enter and ask for Wolfe’s help on a case. Pete claims that while he was washing the windows of car at a stop light the driver, a woman wearing distinctive golden earrings in the shape of spiders, silently asked him to summon a police officer, and Pete believes she was being threatened by her male passenger. To indulge Pete, Wolfe has Archie pass Pete’s information on to the police, but the next day they learn that the same car, now driven by a man in a brown suit and hat, has struck and killed Pete. Matthew Birch, an agent of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, was also struck and killed by the same car, apparently on the same day that Pete approached Wolfe. While this suggests Birch was the man Pete saw in the car evidence at the scene proves Birch was killed before Pete, ruling him out as Pete’s murderer.
Wolfe is visited by Pete’s mother, who gives them his savings of $4.30 and asks them to use it to find his killer. Archie, angered at Wolfe’s reluctance to get involved, puts an advertisement in the newspaper, asking the woman in the car to contact Wolfe. Laura Fromm, a wealthy widow, responds to the advertisement and arrives at Wolfe’s house wearing the golden spider earrings. Wolfe and Archie quickly determine that she is not the person they seek, but she is horrified on learning of Pete’s death and claims that she may know who was driving. Fromm refuses to reveal the information, but the next day Wolfe and Archie receive news that she too has been struck by a car and killed. Infuriated by the fact that two people who came to him for help are now dead, Wolfe decides to solve the murders.
Archie learns that the last people to see Fromm alive are all directly or indirectly connected to a charity for displaced persons that Fromm supported with sizeable donations. While Wolfe assigns his operatives Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin and Orrie Cather to pursue various leads, Archie approaches those present at a dinner attended by charity officials – including Fromm’s secretary Jean Estey, the charity’s attorney Dennis Horan and his wife, and the charity’s director Angela Wright – and offers to sell the details of the conversation between Wolfe and Fromm in an attempt to flush out the guilty party. Before he can approach Paul Kuffner, the charity’s public-relations director, Kuffner approaches Wolfe and offers to pay for the information. Realising he has been tipped off, Wolfe rejects the offer.
Saul, who has been posing as a displaced person seeking help from the charity, reveals that after he had approached Horan for help he was subsequently visited by a man who tried to blackmail him out of $10,000. Meanwhile, Fred has tracked down two hoodlums who claim to have been working with Birch. On discovering that Fred is a private investigator they attempt to torture him for information, but Archie, Saul and Orrie — who have been independently following either Fred or the hoodlums — manage to rescue him. Saul confirms that one of the hoodlums, “Lips” Egan, is the blackmailer, and a notebook in his pocket reveals the existence of a blackmail ring targeting poor, illegal immigrants.
Before the investigators can interrogate the hoodlums further, Horan arrives unexpectedly at Egan’s base of operations. Archie takes Horan and the hoodlums to Wolfe’s office, where they are held for questioning by Wolfe and Inspector Cramer. Horan tries to distance himself from the two hoodlums, but Egan confesses to the blackmail and implicates Horan as well. Egan reveals that Birch was one of the ringleaders of the operation, but that he in turn took orders from an unknown woman. This confirms to Wolfe a flawed assumption made by the police: that the driver of the car that killed Pete was a man, when in fact it was a woman disguised as a man.
With the principals and several police officers assembled in his office, Wolfe reveals the identity of the murderer: Fromm’s secretary Jean Estey. Estey was the true mastermind of the blackmail ring, but Fromm had begun to suspect her and, after overhearing the codeword she used – “said a spider to a fly” – had given the spider earrings to Estey as a subtle way of confronting her. Estey murdered Birch when he demanded a larger share of the blackmail proceeds, then killed Pete and Fromm to hide her connections to Birch and the illegal operation. When a clothing store owner brought in by Orrie identifies Estey as having purchased the suit and hat worn by the driver who killed Pete, she is arrested for the murders and Horan and Egan are arrested for the blackmail.
Wolfe burns Egan’s notebook to prevent the identities of the blackmail victims from being exposed, leading Archie to worry that he may be charged with destroying evidence, but all three defendants are convicted even without it.
