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: Book of Joe Series: Forgotten Ruin #5 Author: Jason Anspach & Nick Cole Rating: 1.5 of 5 Stars Genre: Military Fantasy Pages: 211 Words: 75K
This is a book ALL about Talker and how he survived and helped Joe.
What. The. Feth.
I am now done with this series. Don’t care how cool the story is, because it is always in the background and I hate Talker. I hate him for hogging the book. I hate him for whining about how he’s not good enough to be a “real” Rangeroo. I hate him for writing about coffee instead of what’s going on. I hate him for describing a ruin for 2 pages while a massive battle gets 3 paragraphs.
So I am done.
Nick Cole has a duology that I’m going to try out next. I need a cool down from Team Anspach/Cole.
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: Lay the Hate Series: Forgotten Ruin #4 Author: Jason Anspach & Nick Cole Rating: 3 of 5 Stars Genre: Military Fantasy Pages: 209 Words: 76K
The Ranger-Roos are off on a big bad mission to kill somebody. Only, they get side tracked and kill somebody else and the stupid narrator, Talker, who is like the most important person to the group for his linguistics skills, jumps into a dimensional vortex/rift thingy to save another ranger so he pretty much is dead.
Hurray!!!!!!!!!!!!! No more blathering idiot going on about coffee or blabbing about wanting to be a real Ranger-Roo. I actually did a fist pump when it was revealed that he was dead. It was very carthartic for me.
Of course, we’ll have to see if the next narrator is any better. I have a bad feeling Anspach and Cole (the authors) are just going to use some other nitwit to journal instead of, you know, actually writing an exciting adventure novel. Aaaaaand I just went on Amazon to see how many books were in this series and wouldn’t you know, one of the later books has Talker as the narrator again. Tarnation!
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: Violence of Action Series: Forgotten Ruin #3 Author: Jason Anspach & Nick Cole Rating: 3 of 5 Stars Genre: Military Fantasy Pages: 249 Words: 85K
Hey, would you look at that? There’s an actual story in this book! AND. I only counted 2 instances of Anspach and Cole (the authors) rimming the rangers. Talk about a relief.
So the rangers have to take down Smog the evil green dragon who is in an alliance with other evil powers that menace the kingdom of men. They take him out and rescue a bunch of captive elves and find the King of the Elves, who Last of Autumn is betrothed to. So no more googly eyes for the narrator at his elven lady love. Awww, so sad. Honestly, I was expecting her to die a horrible death, so at least this way she stays alive. Hard core military types are married to the Service and a wife comes in a distant second. Very few relationships can survive that.
This was the kind of story I was waiting for since the very beginning. Special Forces setting themselves an objective and then killing everything that stands in the way of them accomplishing that objective. I am definitely going to keep reading the series now but I simply can’t recommend it to anyone else. The first 2 books just destroy any chance of that. I’ve never been in this situation before, where the first couple of books are absolutely terrible and then improve dramatically. Usually I’m done with a series before that point (or it never does improve, which is what usually ends up happening).
I also can’t recommend starting here because then you’d be lost. Why is the Ranger Captain a were-tiger? Who is Last of Autumn and why is it so shattering to the narrator that they rescue her betrothed? Who is this evil Vampire SEAL? All of the big points get covered, so in that regards you could start here, but all those little things like what I mention, well, good luck. I guess this is for super-hard-core Anspach & Cole fans OR super duper military types who like annoying narrators. I’m glad I stuck through to this point but it pretty much ate up all the goodwill A&C have built up with me. They don’t get any more chances from me.
After the main story is a small “prequel” story that starts to introduce why everything in the Ruin is so Dungeons and Dragons. Long and short, a crazy genius woman, whose only good memories were of a summer when she got to play some D&D with other normal kids, goes off the rails completely and uses nanotech to start changing the world. It was complete “scyenze” but it sounded cool and was good enough for me. And since this is pure fiction and not “A Message From They Who Know Better Than Poor Plebian Me” masquerading as a story, I have no problem with said scyenze being used.
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: Hit & Fade Series: Forgotten Ruin #2 Author: Jason Anspach & Nick Cole Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars Genre: Military Fantasy Pages: 274 Words: 97K
The only reason this was better than the first book was because it was over 100 pages shorter and the final battle was awesome without the narrator going “Ranger X is gonna out-Ranger every other Ranger who is Rangering like a REAL Ranger would Ranger, which you would know if you were rangering like a real ranger too, scrub”.
I’m going to give the next book a chance. But if I hit the 50% mark and rangers are still out-rangering all the other rangers, blah, blah, blah, then I’ll dnf the book and the series. Us regular Mil-SF readers don’t got no time for butt licking. We want a good story.
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: Forgotten Ruin Series: Forgotten Ruin #1 Author: Jason Anspach & Nick Cole Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars Genre: Military Fantasy Pages: 477 Words: 171K
