Monday, October 16, 2023
Sunday, October 15, 2023
Antonina 2Stars
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: Antonina
Series: ———-
Author: Wilkie Collins
Rating: 2 of 5 Stars
Genre: Historical Fiction
Pages: 629
Words: 167K
For anyone who doesn’t know, Wilkie Collins is known for writing The Moonstone, sometimes called the first detective novel. He was also a contemporary and friend to Charles Dickens. As you should know, Dickens was known as quite the wordy author, always using 5 or 6 words where 1 would have sufficed. Some find this trait of his insufferable, some love it. I happen to love it. When it is done by Dickens. This was also Collins’ debut novel and in it he tries to out-Dickens Dickens. If 1 word would suffice, Collins crams in 10-15. Usually of the most purplish prose possible too. I found it insufferable.
What is worse, this was also boring. Rome is surrounded by a barbarian horde of goths and everyone just sits there and starves to death. Collins can barely be bothered to scare up some drama for us.
The struggle between Paganism and Christianity, as portrayed, also betrayed Collins inherent apathy for either. He was no believer in anything. It should have had some real pathos, some “zing” instead of two old men living their lives out according to their principles.
This was the first book in one of those “Complete Author X” collections. Bad choice, even though I know they’re going alphabetically. If I hadn’t already read Moonstone and had my interest whetted by that, and this was my first Collins, I’d have tossed it into the rubbish heap and not read anything more by him. Really hope the next book is a little more interesting.
★★☆☆☆
From Wilkie-Collins.info and Bookstooge.blog
The plot revolves around two separate but related struggles. That of the old pagan and new Christian religions, seen as equally destructive, embodied in the opposing characters of Ulpius and Numerian; and that of the strong figure of the Goth, Goisvintha, (modelled on Norna in Scott’s The Pirate) seeking revenge against the weak heroine, Antonina.
In the Rome of 408 AD, the young Antonina lives with her father Numerian, zealous in his aims to restore the Christian faith to its former ideals. Numerian’s steward, Ulpius, brought up in the old religion, secretly lives only to restore the forbidden gods of pagan sacrifice. Vetranio, their wealthy neighbour, has designs on the innocent Antonina. When they are surprised by Numerian in an apparently compromising situation, Antonina flees outside the city walls just before Rome is blockaded by the encircling army of the Goths.
Antonina is captured by the chieftain, Hermanric, who falls in love with her. His sister, Goisvintha, was the sole survivor of a Roman massacre in which her children perished and has vowed revenge on Rome and its people. She attempts to kill Antonina but is prevented by Hermanric who allows Antonina to escape. During the weeks of the siege, she lives in a deserted farmhouse, visited nightly by Hermanric. Goisvintha betrays her brother to the Huns who kill him, while Antonina escapes for a second time.
Ulpius, meanwhile, has discovered a breach in the city wall and attempts to betray Rome to Alaric in exchange for his destruction of the Christian religion. Alaric is interested only in humbling his enemies into surrender and seizing a large tribute of gold. Returning towards the city, Ulpius discovers Antonina and accompanies her to Rome where she finds her overjoyed but starving father. Antonina begs the last morsels of food from Vetranio at a macabre and suicidal ‘Banquet of Famine’, preventing him from making a funeral pyre of his palace.
Antonina is stabbed but recovers, her father stays alive, Ulpias dies, Goisvintha goes completely insane and Vetranio retires to the country side.
Saturday, October 14, 2023
A Hero Arises
As the Shadow Emperor slowly conquered the land, as his unstoppable Warriors defeated town after town, district after district, stronghold after stronghold, resistance began. But resistance needs a spearpoint, a leader, a hero as it were. Unfortunately, heroes do not spring forth from the void, fully fleshed, trained and ready to do those hero’y things they do. This instance was no different. Our hero was battered. He’d had a foot cut off when his captain ran from the pirates and they exacted revenge on the entire crew for daring to resist them. The captain was dead by the way. Our hero had joined the pirates, because it’s pretty hard to swim in shark infested waters with a recently amputated foot.
The Stormcrow clan of humans was never a popular clan, but when the Steampunk Elves saw that there was nobody else with the ability to lead the resistance, even a rogue pirate captain starts to look good. And that, dear reader, is how A Hero Arises.
Thursday, October 12, 2023
Groo and the Ambassador (Groo the Wanderer #22) 3.5Stars
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 Ambassador
Series: Groo the Wanderer #22
Author: Sergio Aragones
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 24
Words: 2K
Groo gets into trouble, causes trouble and eventually just wanders out of the picture leaving death and destruction in his wake, as usual. Hhaahahahahaa!
Ahhhh, I love this comic 😀
★★★✬☆
From Bookstooge.blog
Groo the Wanderer is wandering around and at the same time an Ambassador named Gru is accidentally following the same path. Gru ends up taking all of the consequences that Groo creates by not paying for anything. Eventually war breaks out between two kingdoms and Groo is left wandering in the woods, clueless as ever.
Tuesday, October 10, 2023
Savage Son (Terminal List #3) 3Stars
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: Savage Son
Series: Terminal List #3
Author: Jack Carr
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Action/Adventure
Pages: 464
Words: 134K
This was a love letter to the short story “The Most Dangerous Game”. Carr starts his introduction talking about it in fact. He mentions that the idea came to him first, but he needed Reece to get to that point and so he had to write the first two books. If you liked TMDG, you’ll like this story.
Much like Carr’s previous books though, he takes a while to get to where he’s going. Reece faces down a large group of russian mobsters in some mid-western state out in the middle of no-where and it was awesome. But Carr felt like he had to set things up like a SEAL operative. Too much detail to things that don’t matter in a novel. This would have been a fantastic 350 page novel. I probably would have given it 4 stars. But there was simply too much setup.
I found the fight against the mobsters in the US to be the better fight, as the one in Russia on the deserted ice island where the Crazy Guy was hunting Reece and his buddy Raife turned out to be rather anti-climactic. Carr should have taken a page from TMDG and tried for a three day fight and flight narrative instead of a six hour in and out escape narrative.
Overall, I was pleased with this read and am satisfied with how it turned out. While I still have one more book to read, Jack Carr is doing a much better job with James Reece than “Dalton Fury” did with his Delta Force series. That might sound like faint praise, but praise is praise and Carr should be thankful.
★★★☆☆
From OfficialJackCarr.com
Deep in the wilds of the Russian Far East, a woman is on the run, pursued by a man harboring secrets, a man intent on killing her.
A traitorous CIA officer has found refuge with the Russian Mafia with designs on ensuring a certain former Navy SEAL sniper is put in the ground.
Half a world away, James Reece is recovering from brain surgery in the Montana wilderness of his youth, learning to live again, putting his life back together with the help of investigative journalist Katie Buranek and his longtime friend and SEAL teammate Raife Hastings.
For reasons both personal and professional, the Russian intelligence-mafia consortium has their sights set on removing a player from the board before he can return to the battlefield, targeting Reece on U.S. soil.
With an unknown entity inside the U.S. government compromised by Russian intelligence, Reece is forced to recruit a team of former commandos to bring his unique brand of vengeance to the Russian Mafia on their home turf, turning the hunters into the hunted.
Monday, October 09, 2023
Sunday, October 08, 2023
The Misfit Soldier 1Star DNF@28%
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 Misfit Soldier
Series: ———-
Author: Michael Mammay
Rating: 1 of 5 Stars DNF#28%
Genre: SF
Pages: 270/76
Words: 89K/25K
DNF’d at 28% for the usual reasons.
★☆☆☆☆
Saturday, October 07, 2023
Pumpkin Fest '23
When in the Course of human events it become necessary for one people to celebrate a Pumpkin Festival, it behooves them to celebrate like there is no tomorrow. Amen!
The proper way to start a Pumpkin Festival is in the food alley. While most people go this later, we always go there first. It’s not crowded and there are no lines. One year I had to forego the whole food experience because the lines were so long. I didn’t make that mistake again.
I tried some chicken parm sliders, but they were so bad that I threw them out after eating just one. Thankfully, Old Reliable, ie, french fries, came through in a pinch. It is almost impossible to ruin french fries and the vendor selling these certainly didn’t. They were hot and salty. Perfect!
Once you are done eating, then it’s time to make the rounds. Lots of vendors show up, from artsy-fartsy crappola (Mrs B buys a flower head dress with flashing lights every year) to the local dojo-master who breaks boards to obnoxiously loud amateur bands. It’s all fantastic! And sometimes you see things like the above picture that make even the obnoxious bands worth hazarding.
Then it is time to park your backside on a bench and watch the people ebb and flow under the glowing orange moon. But wait, that’s no moon! (say it in your best Admiral Ackbar voice).
No, it’s a PFO!!!!! (Pumpkin Flying Object) Run for your lives before the little orange men probulate you. What’s that, it’s just a pumpkin balloon with the name of the biggest realty company in the town? Oh Willard, say it ain’t so!
Then comes the part we all look forward to every year. A firetruck pulls up to town hall and fully extends its ladder to the screams and ululations of the crowd.
Then the Citizen of the Year runs around the oval with a police escort, waving a pumpkin torch. They ascend the brightly lit ladder, stopping every couple of steps to egg the crowd on to longer and louder shows of town spirit, ie, screaming at the top of one’s lungs as long as possible.
Finally, the giant pumpkin is lit and all’s right with the world.
What a grand time. Even this year, when it rained buckets earlier and everything was wet and it was threatening rain all evening, we enjoyed ourselves tremendously. Another great success in the Social Life of Mr and Mrs Bookstooge.
Friday, October 06, 2023
Currently Reading & Quote: Sense and Sensibility
Colonel Brandon alone, of all the party, heard her without being in raptures. He paid her only the compliment of attention; and she felt a respect for him on the occasion, which the others had reasonably forfeited by their shameless want of taste. His pleasure in music, though it amounted not to that ecstatic delight which alone could sympathize with her own, was estimable when contrasted against the horrible insensibility of the others; and she was reasonable enough to allow that a man of five and thirty might well have outlived all acuteness of feeling and every exquisite power of enjoyment. She was perfectly disposed to make every allowance for the colonel’s advanced state of life which humanity required.
~Sense and Sensibility, Chapter 7
This quote is from Marianne Dashwood’s viewpoint, from Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. She is 17. It made me laugh so hard because “Ancient” Colonel Brandon is 10 years my junior. Oh, I love Austen’s writing almost as much as I do Dickens’.
ps,
I am posting this because,
A: I Have Words in need of getting loose
B: The Pumpkin Festival might get rained out tonight AND tomorrow and thus I’ll have nothing to post about it tomorrow. Thus this post is my “Blog Insurance”.
Thursday, October 05, 2023
Mutineer (Empire Rising #7) 3.5Stars
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: Mutineer
Series: Empire Rising #7
Author: David Holmes
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 389
Words: 151K
I enjoyed this even though it wasn’t the transition of power from Awesome-Admiral Happypants to Ensign Mighty Niece like I thought. Das Admiral is front and center and takes a mighty hit from the bad politicians. He’s hurt, he’s down but he’s not done, not by a long shot! There’s dastardly politicians still to kill. There’s dastardly Really Bad Aliens to kill! There’s thrills and chills as new good aliens pop out of the woodwork like weevils from a biscuit!
Das Space Battleos gets biggemized, to the point where thousands of missiles get fired but thankfully we don’t have to follow every single one to their destruction. We do still get “then X missiles made it through and exploded and destroyed/damaged X ships”. So if that’s your space jam, bring your own toast.
The Bad Politicians left a bad taste in my mouth. Just like they should. But I still didn’t enjoy that aspect of the story, even though it was very necessary. Going number two is ALSO necessary but it doesn’t mean I have to like it, or like hearing other people talk/write about it.
But don’t worry, this series is Number One in my books!
★★★✬☆
From Bookstooge.blog
Awesome-Admiral Happypants (because there are lots of admirals but only the most Admiral’y of them all gets to be in charge with that title) saves humanity from a bunch of bad aliens, finds even more good aliens, and finds the Really Bad Aliens.
Politics gets involved, Awesome-Admiral is court-martialed by jealous incompetent and totally stupid Politicians and the Powers That Be blow off the new good aliens and pretend that the RBA’s don’t exist.
Awesome-Admiral doesn’t take it lying down and goes to his wife’s space system to start preparing humanity, along with his niece, Ensign Mighty Niece. Of course, she’s some sort of lowly officer now, but she’s going to stay Ensign Mighty Niece from hereon out in my books!
The End!
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