Bookstooge's Reviews On the Road: Ultra-Violence

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Tuesday, November 19, 2024

To Hell (Demon Slayer #5) 3Stars

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Title: To Hell
Series: Demon Slayer #5
Author: Koyoharu Gotouge
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Manga
Pages: 192
Words: 9K

Ok, well, this just got gory really fast! I know there has been violence and blood before, but it just seemed to ramp up here. There’s a typical “sliced into pieces” scene that is familiar to fans of Cube to Resident Evil, so it didn’t make me sick to my stomach, but I wasn’t expecting such graphic’ness.

Sadly, but not unexpectedly, Gotouge (the mangaka) commits the cardinal sin of Tanjiro having mercy towards demons mean that they are just poor misunderstood humans who had some bad luck by being turned into demons in the first place. We have evidence that demons CAN refrain from killing humans (Tanjiro’s sister Nezuko is one, as is the Doctor and her apprentice from the previous volumes) and thus they need to be destroyed if they are killing humans. Mercy also doesn’t mean you don’t kill the thing you’re having mercy towards. It didn’t go quite that far in this volume, but suddenly, I am concerned it will. The reason it concerns me is that it means there isn’t evil, just misunderstood “poor babies’ who need just the right coddling and magically everything will be ok and all forgiven with no consequences. I’m not feeling very charitable at the moment so that attitude irks me to no end. Not sure it would actually bother me at another time.

Blaaaahhhhh….

★★★☆☆

From Wikipedia

ToC and Synopsis – click to open

“Scattered”

“This Is Bad!”

“Broken Blade”

“Real and Fake”

“Life Passing Before One’s Eyes”

“Hinokami”

“Shinobu Kocho”

“Behind”

“To Hell”

Zenitsu enters Mt. Natagumo and kills the brother spider but is poisoned. He is saved from the demon’s poison by Shinobu while Giyū dispatches the Father when Inosuke is overpowered. Tanjiro ends up facing the real Kizuki Rui as he was disciplining a demon he forced to be his sister, revealing that assembled the spider demons to create his own familial bonds and takes an interest in Nezuko. Tanjiro is overpowered while trying to save Nezuko, causing him to remember watching his frail father dance the Hinokami Kagura. Tanjiro proceeds to use Hinokami Kagura offensively, managing to behead Rui with support from Nezuko’s Demon Blood Art. Rui survives and nearly kills the Kamado siblings when Giyū appears and kills him, with Rui regaining his memories and closure with the parents he assume did not love him.

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Monster Hunter Alpha (MHI #3) 5Stars

Title: Monster Hunter Alpha
Series: MHI #3
Author: Larry Correia
Rating: 5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 402
Words: 148K

When I originally read this back in 2012, I remember loving it. Nothing changed in the intervening 12 years 😀

This was non-stop werewolf action. The main badguy werewolf ends up with a magic doohickey that allows him to become a 20foot tall werewolf. How awesome is that? It’s pretty awesome, that’s how awesome it is. Throw in the snow shredder scene (where Earl and one of the Good Town Folk literally harvest a crop of werewolves with it) and man, this was just awesome. Are you getting the idea that maybe I really liked this book? Good. Because I did!

For those of you who might not know what a snow shredder is, I’m including a picture so you can visualize it chewing through a whole pack of evil, insane and psychopathic werewolves.

I had forgotten this is where we are introduced to the werewolf who is supposedly now the love of Earl’s life. I can’t remember if she makes any more appearances after she’s whisked away by Special Task Force Unicorn at the end of this book. Another reason to do re-reads.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun reading this and it was even better than my previous read and everything here only firmed up my resolve to keep up this re-read. The series is fun monster killing and I thoroughly enjoy it from beginning to end.

★★★★★

From MHI.Fandom.com

Synopsis – click to open

Earl Harbinger may be the leader of Monster Hunter International, but he’s also got a secret. Nearly a century ago, Earl was cursed to be a werewolf. When Earl receives word that one of his oldest foes, a legendarily vicious werewolf that worked for the KGB, has mysteriously appeared in the remote woods of Michigan, he decides to take care of some unfinished business. But another force is working to bring about the creation of a whole new species of werewolf. When darkness falls, the final hunt begins, and the only thing standing in their way is a handful of locals, a lot of firepower, and Earl Harbinger’s stubborn refusal to roll over and play dead.

Plot

Earl Harbinger lost some of his memories during his encounter with the demon he nicknamed “Rocky” at the end of Monster Hunter Vendetta so he started writing them down in the form of journals in order to learn the extent of his loss. This book contains the third of the journals which focuses on his experiences as a werewolf. We also learn more about how the Alpha is designated and what it means to be the Alpha werewolf. Monster Hunter Alpha opens with Earl going off on his own to take care of personal business with Earl’s backstory interspersed.

Earl meets with an old handler from his time in Vietnam and learns of the presence of an old enemy, Nikolai Petrov, in Northern Michigan. It turns out that Nikolai is not the only issue in Copper Lake, MI however. There is another person who is angling to be the Alpha and he has some extra help in the form of a magic amulet and then some.

Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Monster Hunter Vendetta (MHI #2) 4.5Stars

Title: Monster Hunter Vendetta
Series: MHI #2
Author: Larry Correia
Rating: 4.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 412
Words: 169K

I read my review from 2012 before starting to write this one. Honestly, I felt almost exactly the same as 12 years ago. Ballz to the Wallz action that never let up and shooting and blowing stuff up that just didn’t quit. It was exactly what I wanted this time around from this read. I did laugh at my old review saying how I was looking forward to the wrap up of this “trilogy”. Ahhh, to still think that authors have moral rectitude.

This had a TON of cosmic horror elements in it. I didn’t pick up on them last time because I was of the uninitiated, but now that I have taken the first steps towards becoming the Chartreuse Emperor, I understand. But unlike the Harrison Peel books, which tried to BE cosmic horror and still have a surviving hero, MHI (Monster Hunter International) simply takes the pieces that it wants and does its own Urban Fantasy thing. I think it works out great because I get a Hero and some terrible things but they are able to co-exist without me spluttering and ranting like I did with that goober Harrison Peel. For goodness, I get a story where some gun junkie accountant goes to the Other Side, along with Frankenstein (Agent Franks) and they kill an equal of Cthulhu with a magic stone. It. Was. Awesome! So while it had the elements of Cosmic Horror (Shoggoths anyone?) Correia was able to stay this side of that line quite admirably.

On the negative side, and I suspect I’ll be dealing with this in each book, and it will be why these won’t go above 4.5stars, I also saw a lot more Mormon philosophy behind the story. I didn’t know about that stuff when I originally read this book and not knowing didn’t detract from the story. But now that I do know, and since I disagree with it just like I would with a story based on Islamic or Hindu theology, I can’t unsee it, as it were. False religions aren’t something to treat lightly.

Overall, I am once again quite pleased with how this re-read went. It has all the action and guns and horrible bad guys that my little heart could ask for and that just makes me happy.

★★★★✬

From MHI.Fandom.com

Synopsis – click to open

Accountant turned professional monster hunter, Owen Zastava Pitt, managed to stop the nefarious Old One’s invasion plans last year, but as a result made an enemy out of one of the most powerful beings in the universe. Now an evil death cult known as the Church of the Temporary Mortal Condition wants to capture Owen in order to gain the favor of the great Old Ones.

The Condition is led by a fanatical necromancer known as the Shadow Man. The government wants to capture the Shadow Man and has assigned the enigmatic Agent Franks to be Owen’s full time bodyguard, which is a polite way of saying that Owen is monster bait.

With supernatural assassins targeting his family, a spy in their midst, and horrific beasties lurking around every corner, Owen and the staff of Monster Hunter International don’t need to go hunting, because this time the monsters are hunting them. Fortunately, this bait is armed and very dangerous…

Tuesday, July 30, 2024

Monster Hunter International (MHI #1) 4.5Stars

Title: Monster Hunter International
Series: MHI #1
Author: Larry Correia
Rating: 4.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 477
Words: 194K

What a difference 12 years makes! When I read this back in ‘12, I gave a lengthy (for me, back then) review detailing all of my issues with the book. Not big issues, but things that stood out to me. I read that review AFTER re-reading this and had myself a good laugh.

So, characterization. Still pretty shallow. After some of the cardboard I’ve read since 2012 however, my sensitivity is greater and this book benefited from it. No one else really has a voice besides Z (Owen Z Pitt, the main character), but that’s ok. We’re getting introduced to everyone and so much happens so fast that I didn’t miss characterization this time around. Most of the time I don’t anyway. I’m not a namby pamby mama’s boy after all.

This was originally self-published on a forum for gun fans and thus the writing isn’t up to the level of Rex Stout or Patricia McKillip. But once again, I’ve read A LOT MORE drek in the last 12 years and so that bar has really sunk. Correia sailed right over it without breaking a sweat here. Honestly, if I hadn’t mentioned the writing in my original review, I’d not have mentioned here at all.

Gun porn. This is where I laughed my head off. Oh, how I have changed so much in this regards, so, so much. This time around, I wouldn’t have qualified this as gun porn at all. Mainly because I knew what he was actually talking about when he started talking gun and bullet specifications. I knew the brands, I knew calibres, I knew the difference between a single stack and a double stack magazine. This time around, this was just a gun guy talking guns and apparently, I am now a gun guy too. Not at his level mind you, but enough that I wasn’t bored. I suspect for most of you, you’d qualify this as gun porn, hahahahaa.

Bad guys, so many bad guys. It was awesome! And they weren’t pansey-ass bad guys who fell over when you made fun of their outfits and hurt their feelings. These were rip your face off, beat you until all your bones are broken and THEN kill you kind of bad guys. What makes it so much better though is that the good guys still kill them in droves. Yes, it was indeed awesome.

When this was originally, published, it was supposed to be a trilogy and that was it. I had no plans to ever re-read this “trilogy”. But here we are now. There are 8 or 9 books in the main MHI series, with several spin off series and a collection of short stories (I believe). We’re talking 12+ books, probably close to 15. AND I’m re-reading this. My poor mid-30’s self just had no idea what the future held, that’s for sure. Hopefully that will help me to not make Nostradamical Predictions and end up with egg all over my face.

The reason this didn’t get 5stars from me is because of the theological content. You just have to “believe” and “have faith” and that’s good enough. The Bible, the Koran and the Kama Sutra will all work if you just believe in them enough. I’d have been ok if Correia had just side stepped the issue altogether.

I loved this re-read though, thoroughly enjoyed it to the max. I am especially looking forward to the rest of the series now.

★★★★✬

From MHI.Fandom.com

Synopsis – Click to Open

After learning of a monster by the name of Lord Machado was planning on using an ancient artifact to open a portal to the Old Ones to summon the Dread Overlord, MHI launched a massive attack at Desoya Caverns to battle Lord Machado and his minions and to stop the portal from being opened. This event caused the death of the most MHI employees in one day, other than the Christmas Party. It also resulted in the collection of the largest PUFF bounty in company history after Owen Pitt successfully defeated Lord Machado and Koriniha, the true mastermind behind everything

Tuesday, June 04, 2024

Jenny Trapdoor (Polity #25) 4Stars

Title: Jenny Trapdoor
Series: Polity #25
Author: Neal Asher
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 122
Words: 54K

The paper version of this book is about 170pages. My ebook version calculates at about 125pages. So why it is emblazoned as a “novella” is beyond me. That’s one of my pet peeves and will stay so until publishers stop Sandersonizing everything and calling everything below 850pages a “novella”. I blame a LOT of other authors as well, but they just aren’t as well known. So Sandersonization it is.

I enjoyed this much more than the previous Polity book, War Bodies. This is fully standalone and I don’t think you need ANY familiarity with Asher’s previous Polity stories to understand what’s going on. Having that knowledge will make this better, but it won’t detract if you don’t.

Penny Royal, the Black AI, turns a dead starship captain into a giant spider drone and drops her off onto a Prador controlled world (Prador are giant, xenophobic space crabs that want to kill us, period) so she can fulfill her wish of getting revenge against the Prador for killing her, her ship and everyone aboard it. Of course, everything with Penny Royal is a multi-edged knife that is sure to cut your groin open while you just look at said knife. So we get the lead up and then Jenny’s time as a Prador killing machine and then once Penny Royal “goes good” (as much as any AI can anyway, which is all chronicled in the Polity: Transformation trilogy) her own reclamation.

This wasn’t anything groundbreaking from Asher, but at this point, I don’t really want that. I want what has worked in the past and I get a ton of it here. Prador dying in horrific detail, psychological horror as Jenny merges with a trapdoor spider that’s been implanted in her head. Yeah, all that good gross Neal Asher stuff we’ve come to expect and love.

I will take a shorter story like this any time if it means he keeps pumping them out.

★★★★☆

From the Publisher

During the prador-human war the Dark Intelligence, the AI Penny Royal, fractured and went rogue. The manipulations of this insane and incredibly dangerous intelligence were grotesque. It granted wishes that were deals with the devil, and transformed its victims into chimeras of the technological and the organic. Hunted throughout the war and beyond, it finally found redemption and apotheosis, as it moved itself beyond time.
Though Jenny is terrified of the trapdoor spider that has taken up residence in her ship, the arrival of the war in her home system soon dismisses it from her mind. But the spider returns in a way she could never have conceived. . .

Wednesday, April 24, 2024

War Bodies (Polity #24) 3.5Stars

Title: War Bodies
Series: Polity #24
Author: Neal Asher
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 454
Words: 174K

Most of Asher’s books never grab me by the throat and choke me into enjoyment. It’s always on the re-read that I end up enjoying the story so much more. I still enjoy the initial read, but I’m not excited. War Bodies follows this pattern.

Lots of ultra violence and killing Prador (the giant xenophobic alien crabs that want to kill all humans) and techno-babble about the techno-scyenze inside Piper’s bones (Piper is the main character). We’re talking massive amounts of technobabble. Planck level of technobabble in fact.

This wasn’t as enjoyable as Weaponized because Piper had so much internal angst/emotions/thoughts all on display all of the time. There is a reason for it and it plays directly into the story but I didn’t want to read it. In some ways, it felt like reading someone else’s journal or private correspondence. You ever done that? If you have, you know the feeling I’m talking about. If you have done that and you don’t know that feeling, you’re probably a psychopath with no feelings or sense of shame and guilt.

I know I’m waffling a lot here. I can’t help it. I love the Polity books in their entirety but sometimes the specific books leave me less than 1000% enthused.

Changing subjects here. Reading order. Some people have asked what is the best place to start with the Polity, now that it is over 20 books long and broken up into sub-series and standalone novels. I always recommend Publication Order, just because. Read as Asher wrote them. But I stumbled across an internal chronological list and so wanted to give that out because I know that sometimes people like to read things in that order.

Weaponized (2300 AD)
Prador Moon (2310 AD)
Shadow of the Scorpion (2339 AD)
Gridlinked (2434 AD)
The Line of Polity (2437 AD)
Brass Man (2441 AD)
Polity Agent (2443 AD)
Line War (2444 AD)
The Technician (2457 AD)
Dark Intelligence (Circa. 2500 AD)[9]
War Factory (Circa. 2500 AD)
Infinity Engine (Circa. 2500 AD)
The Soldier (Circa. 2750 AD)[10]
The Warship (Circa. 2750 AD)
The Human (Circa. 2750 AD)
The Skinner (3056 AD)
The Voyage of the Sable Keech (3078 AD)
Orbus (3079 AD)
Jack Four
Hilldiggers (3230 AD)

You might notice there are only 20 books and that this reviewer calls this book the 24^th Polity book. That is because Asher didn’t include the various short story collections that I do include. Because I’m just that awesome. And I didn’t even charge you anything for it either. You are welcome.

★★★✬☆

From the Publisher & Bookstooge.blog

Long ago, the Cyberat left Earth to co-evolve with machines. Now, led by the powerful dictator Castron, their Old Guard believe that machines should replace the physical body. But these beliefs are upended with the arrival of the human Polity – and their presence ignites rebellion.

Piper was raised as a weapon against the Cyberat, implanted with secretive hardware. When his parents are captured by the Old Guard, the Polity offer him unexpected aid. Piper knows the Polity want more from him, but at what cost? The rebellion also attracts the deadly prador, placing an entire world in peril.

As war rages across the planet, Piper must battle with the unknown technology implanted in his bones. It may be the Polity’s answer to their relentless fight against the prador. It could also be civilization-ending Jain tech – or something far more extraordinaryl.

After the surrender of the Prador, Piper returns home, a war seasoned general with millions of loyal troops at his command. Castron has fully taken over the planet and subjected the cyberat to prador thralling techniques. With the help of an Agent and a sparkind unit, it will be up to Piper to set himself free from the entity inhabiting his bones and in the process destroy Castron and set the Cyberat free.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Lockdown Tales #2 (Polity #23) 4Stars

Title: Lockdown Tales #2
Series: Polity #23
Author: Neal Asher
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 337
Words: 150K

I read the first set of Lockdown Tales in ‘21. It was a strictly Polity universe set of stories and I enjoyed them. This time around, not every story was in the Polity universe. I’m still including this in my Polity numbering for the series, but there are one or two that aren’t Polity.

In his intro, Asher really lets loose against Civil Authorities overstepping the boundaries setup for them and how people just let them. He sounded very much like me in fact, or I sound like him (he’s older, so age before me). It made me laugh and cry because I completely agreed and yet a majority of the world didn’t, as they let fear, lies and manipulation determine their fate instead of taking it into their own hands.

I went into this collection thinking I would try to take notes on each story and write up my review that way, the way Marzaat (and others) do. However, that resolution didn’t last very long. With nine stories, each is a bit longer than just a “short story”, so I had to pay attention. I can’t read, pay attention, take notes AND enjoy the story all at the same time. So something had to give. Obviously, I just decided to not enjoy the stories and sacrifice my enjoyment for your edification. Because nobody is as important as you.

And if you believe that, you need some serious help. No, seriously, get some professional help. You rank about the same as monkey poop to me. Honest.

Therefore the notes went right out the window.

Xenovore was VERY similar to the previous book Weaponized and Asher even mentions that in his introduction. I was glad he did or else I would have felt very gypped. It wasn’t the same story but had enough of the same elements that I wished it had been shorter.

An Alien on Crete was a non-Polity story about an alien coming to Earth to awaken Earth’s guardian, blah, blah, blah. It didn’t engage me at all.

Skin was a story about a Polity citizen getting a new skin from a doctor who had run up against Polity rules. Of course, things go horrifically wrong and the skin ends up slithering away to the ocean. It was awesome.

Antique Battlefields was a tale of the Quiet War, when the AI’s took control. For me, this has always been the achille’s heel of the Polity Universe. I regularly overlook it every time I read a Polity book. The idea is that the AI’s are better than us without our corruption. We created them and thus they are inherently broken. That doesn’t fit Asher’s world view and so he just ignores it. It was interesting to see a quick snapshot of the war, but it really brought the aforementioned issue to my mind and so I just couldn’t ignore it.

Ha, would you look at that? I did ALL that without a single flipping note. My brain is awesome, that’s all I have to say. Suck it AI, you’ll never be anywhere near as talented in so many fields as I am.

There was one story where Asher lets loose his hatred of religion, but it was all of one sentence and in many ways felt more of an obligatory thing than because he actually feels that way. I think he does, but the fire is going out.

And that’s enough out of me. This is over 700 words now. Nobody needs to write or read something that long!

★★★★☆

Table of Contents:

LOCKDOWN TALES II An Introduction

XENOVORE

AN ALIEN ON CRETE

THE TRANSLATOR

SKIN

EELS

THE HOST

ANTIQUE BATTLEFIELDS

MORAL BIOLOGY

LONGEVITY AVERAGING

Sunday, January 28, 2024

John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023 Movie)

Excess. Nihilistic Excess. This was not actually a movie. This was a video game with a body count so high that I’m never going to view the original John Wick film in the same light. JW should have been the lowest bar that has ever been set in terms of sheer violence. Sadly, it ended up being the top level of an underground bunker.

I have enjoyed each successive John Wick movie less and less. To the point where I actually questioned whether I would watch this or not. I enjoyed the pure brutality of the first movie. This, this made me sick and question myself as I kept on watching instead of turning it off.

Tuesday, January 23, 2024

Weaponized (Polity #22) 4Stars

Title: Weaponized
Series: Polity #22
Author: Neal Asher
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 481
Words: 163K

It’s been almost two years since I read Jack Four, the previous Polity book by Asher. I still vividly recall that book though because of all the pooping. Thankfully, in Weaponized, Asher moves away from that. However, what he moves into is as close to body horror as I ever want to get. I’ll talk more on that later.

This novel takes place before and around the beginning of the Prador War. We follow one Ursula as she moves into the ennui stage of life (somewhere around the 200 year mark for most humans, kind of like a very deadly puberty phase of life), then beyond it and then into the present, where she is trying to colonize a world outside of Polity control. Asher slices the story up into Past, Near Past and Present and slices each time line up and interweaves them. So for Chapter 1, you’ll have Present, about Ursula fighting on the planet. Then we’ll switch to Near Past about the colonists discovering whatever they are fighting in the Present. Then we’ll go to the Past which starts with her going through the military and getting kicked out because of the ennui. While it was handled well, I didn’t like it. It was very different from his previous novels and I suspect he did it just to see if he could but I sure hope he’s done with that little “phase”.

The pace here was just as unrelenting and furious as in Jack Four. Which leads into the body horror. This was also a Jain tech novel. By now, fans of Asher know how horrible Jain tech is, how pervasive, twisting and overpowering it is. But instead of the jain changing the colonists over a period of years, it happens within months, days and even hours. They change from humans to whatever is needed to survive, not only physically but also mentally and emotionally. It was degradation on every level. What made it worse is that they chose it, even if they were under the influence of the jain tech. It became so bad that a Polity golem sacrificed herself to set off the entire CTD arsenal in a prador dreadnaught. Ursula STILL managed to survive and the novel ends with her entity being taken to a Polity AI to be studied. It was brutal. Asher does a great job of showing that the Polity is not some benevolent technocracy but just a series of programs weighing what is the best outcome for the greatest number. There have been times it felt like he was promulgating the idea that they were truly benevolent, but either my perceptions have changed or his writing has changed. Either way, it feels much more inline with my worldview and I for one am ok with whatever the reality of the change actually is.

Another fantastic journey into the heart of a future as envisioned by Neal Asher. I continue to recommend this Polity series.

★★★★☆

From the Publisher

Click to Open

With the advent of new AI technology, Polity citizens now possess incredible lifespans. Yet they struggle to find meaning in their longevity, seeking danger and novelty in their increasingly mundane lives.

On a mission to find a brighter future for humanity, ex-soldier Ursula fosters a colony on the hostile planet Threpsis. Here, survival isn’t a given, and colonists thrive without their AI guidance. But when deadly alien raptors appear, Ursula and her companions find themselves forced to adapt in unprecedented ways. And they will be pushed to the very brink of what it means to be human.

As a desperate battle rages across the planet, Ursula must dig deep into her past if she is to save humanity’s future.

Tuesday, November 28, 2023

Heroes Die (Overworld #1) 2.5Stars

Title: Heroes Die
Series: Overworld #1
Author: Matthew Stover
Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 541
Words: 213K

So much profanity. So much violence. This was not a nice book. It was grim, gritty and 10 years ago I probably would have either dnf’d the book or at least the trilogy. As it is, I’m giving it lower rating and will be thinking about if I want to continue this.

Stover knows how to write well and tell a captivating story, but he has set out deliberately to tarnish the idea of “Hero” and “Adventure” with a soiled rag soaked in the excrement of lepers. A “hero” can’t be good and virtuous, but must be utilitarian and vicious to gain the end goal. An “adventure” isn’t a wonderful thing but something that exploits everyone involved and debases them at every possible turn. Now whether Stover is actually writing that or some “Message” about it, doesn’t matter. Caine is not a hero. He is an anti-hero and his every action reminds of us that.

I enjoyed the book while I was reading it, but once I finished and started thinking about what I had actually read and the implications behind it (whether in earnest or satirized), my ratings kept plummeting. I was originally thinking it was 4stars because I did enjoy it quite a bit. Then I dropped it half a star for all the gratuitous profanity that would make even a sailor blush. Then I started thinking about Caine and his actions and dropped it another half star. Finally, I realized that Stover wasn’t writing to just tell a good story but to prove or make a point and so I dropped it to it’s current.

And I’m going to end my review before I end up talking my rating even more into the ground.

★★✬☆☆

From Wikipedia

(click on “Details” to expand the synopsis)

The novels are set in a future dystopia Earth where a parallel world called Overworld reminiscent of the worlds featured in post-Tolkien secondary world fantasy has been discovered. The corporations that run Earth send actors into Overworld in order to provide the masses of an overcrowded world with virtual-reality entertainment.

Hari Michaelson is a famous Actor and son of a now-mentally ill libertarian professor. On Overworld, he is the assassin Caine, while his estranged wife Shanna is another Actor, playing the mage Pallas Ril. Actors who travel to Overworld through advanced technology and assume an alternate persona which they then use to carry out ‘adventures’. Pallas is captured by Ma’elKoth, the Emperor of Overworld’s human kingdom of Ankhana, on one of her adventures. Ma’elKoth’s plan to rule Ankhana by wiping out a final resistance group is blocked by a spell that causes others to forget the existence of the resistance group’s members. The remainder of the book plays out the conflict between Ma’elKoth, Caine and the resistance. Hari finds himself manipulated by both the powers on Overworld and the Studio on Earth, and must defeat them both in order to save himself and Pallas Ril from death. In the end, Hari brings both MaelKoth and Pallas Ril back to Earth and begins the process of showing the world how they’ve been manipulated.

Sunday, February 26, 2023

The Mugger (87th Precinct) ★★★✬☆

Title: The Mugger
Series: 87^th Precinct
Author: Ed McBain
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 149
Words: 49K

Oh, this not a cozy crime novel and I’m realizing this series is not even going to be “comfortable murder solving 101” like with Nero Wolfe. Not being a “crime fiction” aficiando, I think I would call this True Crime. It’s certainly dirty, gritty and violent enough. I added the ultra violent tag because a 17 year old is killed and she was pregnant, by her brother in law. I felt dirty just writing that.

The whole Mugger thing is a separate storyline and McBain plays the reader like a violin in how he interweaves them and makes them appear as one. It was fantastic. There are times I like being manipulated as a reader and McBain did that masterly in this book.

At the same time, the whole pregnant 17 year old thing was extremely disturbing. She had fallen in love with her brother in law and he used that to his own advantage. It was the grossest violation of adult power that I have read about in a long time. Realizing that people can be, and are, like this really depresses me. As a Christian I know that humanity as a whole is fallen, ie, no longer perfect because of sin. But knowing something and seeing something are very different things. I’ve talked about this with a friend of mine, and that dichotomy of knowing that humanity is the worst while still expecting the best of them, is something most Christians seem to have to live with. So while this kind of behavior is rather normal, unfortunately, it still shocks me.

I do hope this kind of thing isn’t going to be the norm. That would be too heavy a burden for me to deal with I suspect.

★★★✬☆

All My “87^th Precinct” Reviews

Saturday, November 19, 2022

Vang: The Military Form (Vang #1) ★★★✬☆

Title: Vang: The Military Form
Series: Vang #1
Author: Christopher Rowley
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 229
Words: 99.5K

A good re-read. I am pretty happy with how this went, even though I took it down half a star from when I read it in 2010.

It starts out slow and I initially thought “Oh good, this is some good setup”. But then the setup kept going and going and it wasn’t until almost the 50% mark that the Vang even shows up. It is just ONE Military Form and it still manages to take over a planet in about 24-48hrs. It comes thiiiiiiis close to getting loose into the galaxy at large too * hold finger and thumb a hairs width apart *

While I was happy it was defeated, it wasn’t very satisfactory. It has genetic directives and they take over and so it has to make a politician Vang and that of course that just ruins everything. The world is cleansed with nuclear fire by the Human Space Armada and the Military Form pretty much just has to sit there and take it. Sucks to be him!

This used to be a favorite of mine but now I think this is the final fling I will be having with it. Farewell Vang, you’re just not what I’m looking for in a book anymore. But don’t worry, it’s all you, so that way you don’t have to feel guilty that I changed on you. You were just not quite good enough but I wasn’t mature enough to realize it.

Sucks to be the Vang, hahahahaha!

★★★✬☆