Bookstooge's Reviews On the Road

Monday, February 26, 2024

Disenchant - MTG 4E

Sunday, February 25, 2024

Phule’s Company (Phule’s Company #1) 4Stars

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: Phule’s Company
Series: Phule’s Company #1
Author: Robert Asprin
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 182
Words: 77K

My main knowledge about Asprin’s writing is through his “Myth Adventures” series and his “Thieves World” anthologies. The Myth books were boooooring with a few exceptions and the Thieves World books tended to be vulgar and of dnf moral quality. So you can imagine just how dubious I was at giving him yet another chance.

But something about the idea of a misfit millionaire in the military turning other misfits into a semi-reasonable outfit just appealed to me. I like a good underdog story and while Phule isn’t the underdog, everybody else in the story sure is. But even Phule knows that money can only go so far and in some cases can hurt more than help. I found Asprin’s philosophy surprisingly thought out even while disagreeing with Phule’s underlying thought that people are basically good.

This was fun, pure and simple. I had a blast reading this and found this to be the most enjoyable Asprin I’ve read to date (even better than Myth Inc in Action, the best Myth book in my opinion). However, given my past experience with Asprin I’m holding this series very lightly and am putting no expectations on the next book. But for the moment, this is a great book and I recommend it, even if I can’t comment on the series as a whole (yet).

★★★★☆

From Wikipedia.org

The book begins as Willard Phule, a multimillionaire, is court-martialed by the Space Legion for ordering the strafing of a treaty signing ceremony. For his punishment, he is given command of an Omega Company full of misfits on Haskin’s Planet, a mining settlement on the edge of settled space. He quickly goes to his duty station and leverages his personal money and a knack for managing people to get the company to come together as a unit. His antics attract the attention of the local and interplanetary press, but create a very cohesive unit of the Legionnaires.

When a contract for an honorary duty is awarded to the Regular Army on Haskin’s Planet, Phule convinces the governor to leave the contract up for competition between the Space Legionnaires and the Regular Army. The Army sends some of their most elite troops to take part in the competition, and through an impressive show of cooperation and teamwork, Phule’s company ties the regular troops. In the final episode of the book, Phule’s company encounters lizard-like alien explorers from the Zenobian Empire. Quickly reverting to his business instincts, Phule negotiates a business deal to sell swampland to the creatures in exchange for new technologies. This again enrages some of his superiors, but because of a show of support from the Legionnaires for their commander and a complete conviction of his own innocence, Phule evades court-martial again.

All My “Robert Asprin” Reviews

Saturday, February 24, 2024

The Closed Worlds (Starwolf #2) 3.5Stars

Title: The Closed Worlds
Series: Starwolf #2
Author: Edmond Hamilton
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 151
Words: 46K

This was MUCH better than the previous story. This had all the adventure and daring-do that I was expecting from a golden age SF writer. Chane the Starwolf plays a part but not the central part. He is now definitely part of the Mercenary group and not some Lone Wolf (ha!) all by himself.

Most of the action took place on the planet as the Mercs, led by one of the woman of the Opposition, tried to find out a rich archeologist. They ran into some decidely deadly created life forms several times and I thought Hamilton did a great job of showing how deadly the creatures were, either singly or in a massive pack. Of course, they weren’t enough to stop Chane the Starwolf, but come on, he wouldn’t be much of a hero if they had.

Another aspect that I liked was that when Chane was caught in the Astral Projection Machine, trying to rescue the woman, he fought tooth and nail to get back to where his body was. He wasn’t just tough in body, but in mind and spirit. During his time he visited the Starwolves’ home planet, which set things up nicely for the final book in this trilogy.

This was just the right length, with just the right amount of spaceships, just the right amount of jungle and freakish creatures and just the right amount of hand to hand fighting. Had a very good time while reading this and am now looking forward to more of Hamilton’s works.

★★★✬☆

From Wikipedia & Bookstooge.blog

Synopsis – Click to Open

While on Earth, Morgan Chane, captain Dilullo, Bollard, and others once again team up to get a new mission. This time they are hired by a wealthy earth businessman and trader James Ashton for $500k to find his brother, Randall Ashton, who disappeared in the Closed Worlds. The latter are notable for being so dangerous and so mysterious that even starwolves don’t dare to step their foot on – they have laws that bar them from landing on Arkuu, the planet of the Closed World, where natives don’t wellcome anyone. The mercs accept the deadly offer and leave for the Closed Worlds.

The Mercs find evidence of Randall and his crew. With the help of a woman of the Closed Worlds who is in opposition to the policy, set out to find the lost expedition. They are pursued by government forces. The Mercs find Randall, who has re-discovered what the Closed Worlds were trying to hide, an astral projection machine for the mind that allowed the user to wander the universe as long as the body was taken care of. It was destructively addictive and was the reason the Closed Worlds shut themselves off from Galactic Civilization. The Mercs rescue Randall against his will and the woman figures out a way to make use of the machine that won’t be destructive.

Thursday, February 22, 2024

Arba and Dakarba (Groo the Wanderer #26) 3.5Stars

Title: Arba and Dakarba
Series: Groo the Wanderer #26
Author: Sergio Aragones
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 23
Words: 2K

Hahahahaahaha, this was another laugh out loud comic. Man, if Groo can DO something and yet still not do it, he will find a way. I am in awe at how Aragones even comes up with these ideas. What kind of mind is so fiendishly twisted that something this funny, this amusing and this twisted is even thought of? It’s just brilliant!

It is one thing to be funny, it’s not too hard to make Groo a complete idiot. But at the same time Aragones has made him this completely unstoppable force of nature who simply cannot do things as people want him to. Sure, he can stop an army. By burning down a forest and destroying all the villages in it. Whatever he is tasked with, Groo will do. But he will do it badly and in such a way that comes back to bite the person who made the initial request. Without fail!

The page I’m including is the last one. Groo has done his job but done it so wrongly that EVERYONE wants to kill him. Classic!

★★★✬☆

From Bookstooge.blog

Click to Open

Groo is hired by two witches to recover an amulet from some tiny people. The witches make Groo small and he attempts to steal the amulet. He fails but is told if he steals ANOTHER amulet from a wizard that the little people will let him have the first amulet. Both amulets end up being a part of an Artifact of Power. Groo steals the wizard’s amulet but in the process of giving it to the tiny people ends up stealing the first amulet, thus owning both. He throws away the wizard’s amulet, since “he” doesn’t need it any more and gives the original amulet to the two witches. Who turn out to be working for the wizard. The comic ends with the two witches, the wizard and the entire tribe of tiny people waiting in ambush to kill Groo for destroying all their plans.

All of My “Groo the Wanderer” Reviews

Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Shelf Control: A Subtle Agency

Shelf Control is a weekly “feature” hosted now by Mallika from Literary Potpourri. The gist seems to be to pick a book or series on your TBR shelf and write about it as a way to get you to either read it or toss it in the eternal battle of trying to trim our TBR’s.

After my last foray (Warlock Holmes) I realized that the next longest waiting series on my TBR was the Metaframe War by Graeme Rodaughan. Don’t ask me how to pronounce that last name because I have no idea. I just know it’s not Cracker, hehehehe.

Here is the blurb from the first book, A Subtle Agency:

Hunters and vampires are fighting a secret war for control of the fabric of reality. Whoever acquires mastery of the reality shifting powers of the Metaframe will become the new gods of the universe.

I have no idea why I put this series on my tbr list. I’m pretty sure I put it on in ’17 and I think the final book is supposed to come out this year (book 7). Once it comes out I will add it to my reading rotation and dive in. I am really hoping that the author does something interesting with vampires and doesn’t turn this into a goopy pnr hellhole.
(setting the bar pretty low in my opinion!)

Thankfully, I know I WILL be reading this. It is now just a matter of when 🙂

Previous “Shelf Control” Posts

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

The Blackmail Ring (The Shadow #13) 3.5Stars

Title: The Blackmail Ring
Series: The Shadow #13
Authors: Maxwell Grant
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 146
Words: 44K

The Batman vibes were almost overpowering in this story. It’s a decent story about a blackmailer using other blackmailers to do his own dirty work and the Shadow catches wind of it and goes on an international rampage taking out the limbs of the Ring before finally cutting off the head.

He does detecting work.

He is very physically present in this story, with both fists, guns and body checks. He’s not a skinny wimp relying on just scare tactics. The Shadow knows how to fight and he does so.

He drives a souped up super car.

He flies his own little private airplaine.

Batman was most definitely based on the Shadow and the more I read of the Shadow, the more I realize just how much Batman took from him. In many ways, Batman is just an updated version for a new generation and a new medium (comics vs books or radio drama). And yet only 9 years separated the two and they ran concurrently for several decades.

The Shadow gets another recruit and still has to rescue Harry Vincent. I don’t understand Gibson’s continued use of him. He has let other recruits slide into the background and barely mentions them, so why can’t he do that with Harry? Some things just aren’t to be I guess. Kind of like wishing that Coca-Cola would bring back Vanilla-Orange Coke Zero. It ain’t happening. Now I am sad. I’m going over to that corner over there and have a good cry.

And that’s how I’m going to end this review, sitting in a corner crying for something that will never exist again. Ahhh, the pathos is real in this review. Weep, minions, weeeeeeeeep I say.

★★★✬☆

From the Publisher

The Shadow follows a bloody trail of extortion and murder that leads from the back alleys of Paris to the country homes of New England to confront “The Blackmail Ring”.

All of My “The Shadow” Reviews

Monday, February 19, 2024

Dingus Egg - MTG 4E

Sunday, February 18, 2024

Killer’s Payoff (87th Precinct #6) 3Stars

Title: Killer’s Payoff
Series: 87^th Precinct #6
Author: Ed McBain
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 118
Words: 53K

Wow, it’s been a while since I read an 87^th Precinct book! I was thinking I had stopped in November of ‘23, but looking at the the blog, it turns out it was back in June with Killer’s Choice. Man, time really got away from me on this series. That’s ok though, as these are essentially standalone stories with just little tidbits connecting them to any previous books.

Cotton Hawes was introduced in the previous book and he’s the main character here. He literally sleeps with some woman every other chapter and is the main reason this didn’t get 3 ½ stars. It’s not graphic or anything, but McBain makes it a point and by the end, it’s almost a joke. But that kind of thing isn’t a joke.

I found the idea of the police working hard to apprehend the killer of a scumbag blackmailer to be morally repugnant but that is how the Rule of Law works. It doesn’t get to play favorites based on your personal choice of who you like or don’t like. Either the Law applies to all or it applies to none. I didn’t delve into that aspect in my own head very deep because I didn’t want to go down a ranty path where I sounded off about various social ills caused by Big Government either ignoring the Law or actively working against it. But it peeped out. Like a ray of ranty sunshine 😉

I still love the fact that these are so short. I read this in one sitting and when I was done, I just sat back and enjoyed the fact that I had a complete story under my belt and didn’t have to spend the next week wading through purple prose and over descriptiveness and so much detail that nothing was left to my imagination.

Overall, I was happy with this story and the continuing adventures of the police of the 87^th Precinct. Cotton Hawes will be the main character for at least one more book, so I’m prepared now for him to be a total manwhore. I do hope though that he gets married and settles down.

★★★☆☆

From the Publisher

Click to Open

Sy Kramer, a blackmailer, is shot dead in a 1937-style drive-by execution. But it is 1958 and Cotton Hawes and Steve Carella have to find out who killed him. It could have been Lucy Mencken, a rich and respectable lady with a past that included some very unrespectable photographic portraits, or it could have been Edward Schlesser, a manufacturer of soda pop. Or perhaps it was one of the members of a hunting party that went very wrong. In the end, it was the 3 hunters. They had accidentally killed a man, were seen by Kramer and he was blackmailing them. He squeezed them too hard and so they decided to simply kill him.

All My “87^th Precinct” Reviews

Saturday, February 17, 2024

The Expanding Universe #1 1Star

Title: The Expanding Universe #1
Series:
Editor: Craig Martelle
Rating: 1 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 432
Words: 178K

Where do I even start? That’s the thought that kept running through my head as I waded through this pile of utter drek. Every new story would bring me hope that maybe “this” writer would write a good story and then the first paragraph would show me they were just as much a talentless hack as the previous writers.

I had seen Martelle’s name in the Larry Correia collection No Game for Knights. I am always on the lookout for SF anthologies of short stories and thought I’d give this a try. It was a big mistake.

My first clue to the impending disaster to come was the big fat inclusion of Michael Anderle’s name on the front cover. He wrote the introduction. If you don’t know, Anderle is a whore who writes bad space vampire fiction and will put his name on anything, written by anybody. He has no talent, no shame and no limits. But he just wrote the introduction I reasoned, I can’t blame the other authors for that. I do now.

This was published in 2016, and Martelle hadn’t written anything on his own before ‘16 as well. He’s one of those turn and churn authors. But even a mediocre author can be a decent editor, or so I thought. Martelle also belongs to an organization of Indie Writers who support each other. Apparently, what that means is that if one of them edits an anthology, they will automatically include stories from other writers in the organization, no matter how terrible or badly written those stories might be. Martelle could have gone to any Science Fiction forum on the internet, copy/pasted some of the fan fic on there and he couldn’t possible have done a worse job than he did with these stories.

Another issue was that almost all of these stories took place in existing universes or storylines of the writers and were not standalone stories at all. They were prequels, sequels, side stories, to already established storylines and were nothing more than advertisements by the writers waving their wares obnoxiously in my face. Over half of these had some sort of “and if you want to find out how the story resolves, read the writers other books”. That really got my goat.

Another issue is that many of these stories were not actually science fiction. They were modern dramas set on a spaceship or had some fantasy element. Putting a spaceship into a story doesn’t automatically make it a science fiction story. I’m afraid that all of these authors do not understand that very fundamental concept and I’m also afraid that they will never learn it. Because they are all chowderheads with no talent.

The lack of skill here was atrocious. I mentioned internet forum fan fiction early and this is that level of writing. These stories are the things you write when you are practicing to learn the very basic basic of writing. None of these stories should have seen the light of day. Some were definitely better than others, but not a single one of them deserved to be in print. There’s a reason these writers belong to that organization that Martelle belongs to.

Then you had the moral content. I knew going in that since this was published in 2016, that the chances of at least one of these authors would be some woke dill head pushing a perverted agenda was high. I made it almost to the end and was pleasantly surprised that perversion hadn’t reared its ugly head when bam. Sho’ nuff, one writer just had to add it to their story, for no apparent reason either. It was the literal expression of “check box” writing.

Finally, I want to highlight the worst two of the stories here.
Taken for a Walk describes itself thusly:

“The short story that follows is Justin’s teaser for a novel he hopes to one day write in what he thinks will be something like Alien meets The Matrix meets Braveheart. The short story is at times silly, but leads into a very serious moment and situation”

The only good thing about this story was that I think it was the shortest of the collection. It was just plain bad.

Worlds Revealed has this for its intro:

“This is a brand new story in the Alpha Alien Abduction Tales series. It starts out with the couples we know from the first two books in the series, Worlds Away and Worlds Collide. But it quickly goes back to the summer of 1947 when a spaceship crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. Venay’s grandfather was the Commander of the ship that was involved in that nightmare. But it wasn’t the V’Zenians, or even the Zateelians, who crashed on Earth! You can expect to learn the true story of the Roswell Aliens, and who they really were.”

When I read that intro, I immediately made a note in my kindle along the lines of “Frak No!” Aliens abduct human women, use their mind powers to make them fall in love with them and then marry and mate them. Just for the record, the author is a woman. This is not some man’s fantasy, it’s a woman’s fantasy.

To end, I had several of these collections lined up, but after this Titanic level of reading disaster, I’m dumping them like a pile of nuclear waste.

★☆☆☆☆

Table of Contents

Click to Open

Fear Peace – Craig Martelle
Taken for a Walk Justin Sloan
Fall to Earth TJ Ryan
Blue Eyed Devil Spencer Pierson
Those Who Breathe Under the End James Osiris Baldwin
Pilgrim Andrew Dobell
DROP Andrew Broderick
Worlds Revealed J.L. Hendricks
Within a Phrygian Sky Jim Johnson
And the Kat Came Back RJ Crayton
The Signal and the Boys Felix R. Savage
Smuggler for Hire Bradford Bates
Light in the Dark H.J. Lawson
Origins of the Gemini Project E.R. Starling
An Attitude Adjustment Taki Drake
The Iron and the Mud James Aaron
The Last Human: Fire of Truth E.E. Isherwood
New Beginnings Paul C. Middleton

Thursday, February 15, 2024

Deal Breaker (Myron Bolitar #1) 3Stars

Title: Deal Breaker
Series: Myron Bolitar #1
Author: Harlan Coben
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 291
Words: 88K

This is the first book in a series about Myron Bolitar (hence the series name), a man who was an up and coming basketball star, only to have things come to a complete crashing halt when his leg gets shattered in his first game. So he goes to school, becomes a lawyer and then becomes a sports agent. He also apparently did some super-secret black ops stuff for the government with a man who is now one of his best friends and business partner. But this book isn’t about those events at all. They are just alluded to and form a bigger picture of who Myron Bolitar is.

This is a Harlan Coben novel through and through. It has all the elements from the standalones that I’ve read so far (except for the absence of the Witness Protection Program. I just kept waiting for that to pop up and it never did. I was surprised!) but reworked deftly enough that I was never quite sure what the picture was that I was looking at. It was like seeing things when your eyes are dilated. You can generally tell what you are looking at but even the middling details get a bit muddled.

I was generally happy with this read and as long as Coben can keep his stories original with the character of Myron, I’ll happily feed at the trough even if it’s not 5star material.

That does bring me to Myron himself though. He was one of the reasons this didn’t get to the 3.5star rating. He’s a semi-successful business man in his early 30’s I think, but he still lives in his parents basement and participates in their family life, ie, eating breakfast with them, etc. What a loser. I mean, what a complete and utter loser who deserves to have his face ground into the dirt for being such a loser. His parents don’t need his help, he doesn’t make their life better, he complains in his head about both of them, but he won’t move out even though he has the means to. What a scumbag. I hope in one of the later books some mobster shatters his other leg to teach him a fething lesson about growing up. In that same vein, there was also a page where he complains about his parents naming him Myron. What 30 year old is still worrying about his name? I can see a highschooler doing that, but not a grown man. And that is the crux of the matter right there. Coben has written Myron Bolitar as a mix of little boy and grown man and it grates on me, almost like Coben took a cheese grater to my washboard abs.

★★★☆☆

From Wikipedia and Bookstooge.blog

Click to Open

Investigator and sports agent Myron Bolitar is poised on the edge of the big-time. So is Christian Steele, a rookie quarterback and Myron’s prized client. But when Christian gets a phone call from a former girlfriend, a woman whom everyone, including the police, believes is dead, the deal starts to go sour. Suddenly Myron is plunged into a baffling mystery of sex and blackmail. Trying to unravel the truth about a family’s tragedy, a woman’s secret and a man’s lies, Myron is up against the dark side of his business—where image and talent make you rich, but the truth can get you killed.

In the end, facing down mob bosses, angry dead dads and corrupt sports stars, Myron figures out one of his sports athletes participated in the events that led to a young woman’s death and another of his athletes committed the crime itself.

All My “Harlan Coben” Reviews