Yes, yes, it’s supposed to be “9000”, but you get the idea
Wow, 2024 is the year of the Milestones for Sir Bookstooge. I had 60,000 Comments, I amassed A Huge Following, at the end of the year I will have done 10 years worth of “Bookstooge Reviews Year X” and will do my first “Decade in Review” and yesterday, with that lowly post about Groo, the silliest comic the world has ever seen, I passed the 5000 post mark.
I celebrated by buying this tshirt on Etsy:
When people ask me what I do for hobbies, I tell them that I read books and then blog about it. When they ask me what else, I tell them that’s it. They are usually skeptical at first. Then I tell them how many books I read a year on average and how much I write online and they begrudgingly admit that maybe I am correct 😉
So rejoice with me! This is another instance of finding the joy in blogging and I for one am taking it for the ride of a lifetime. Until I run out of gas or hit a brick wall, hahahahaha 😀
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 Gourmet Kings Series: Groo the Wanderer #28 Author: Sergio Aragones Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: Comics Pages: 22 Words: 2K
I am getting a serious case of the “don’t want to writes”. It is kind of like writer’s block, except it’s not that I can’t write, it’s that I simply don’t want to! Big difference.
click for the embiggenable version
★★★✬☆
From Bookstooge.blog
Groo is hungry. He smells something tasty and tries to be a cook’s assistant. He quits when he finds out he won’t be eating the tasty food but only slop. He comes into contact with a King who is on the lookout for a new Head Chef. After several failures (cannibals, bat eating cave dwellers, etc) Groo remembers the Chef from the town where he quit. He kidnaps the Chef and the King prepares a vast feast for Another King, in advance of working on a peace treaty. Only, the Other King is the one who the Chef originally worked for and this display of kidnapping his own chef sets the two kingdoms warring, again. But at least Groo got fed this time.
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: 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 Weaponizedbecause 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 24th 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.
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 Warriors of Spider Series: Spider #1 Author: William Gear Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: SF Pages: 326 Words: 125K
William Gear is publicly known as “W. Michael Gear”, an author recently known for his “Donovan” series. But he’s been around for quite some time. I hate “public names”, so I’ll be giving the author as “William Gear” because that’s his name.
I read this originally back in middleschool or highschool, because the cover on the paperback at the library looked wicked cool. I have also recently decided to dive into the Donovan series but wanted to read some of Gear’s older stuff so I have a decent comparison for his writing style changes. I believe his wife Kathleen is credited on many of their books (they’ve written something like 90) and I could see her finger prints all over this. The descriptions of the clothing alone would have told me that.
They are also very native american in their theology and beliefs and that aspect comes through loud and clear. Sadly, it’s just the “God is everything and whatever you call god is god” kind of feel-good bullshit. Nothing with actual epistemology. No bones to support things as it were.
The story itself was decent. Cowboys and Indians fighting off space marines and winning. Tragic losses, heroic sacrifices, battles, this story has it all.
Back in the 90’s the library only had this one book and it ended satisfactorily enough that my young self never felt the need to go out to a Barnes & Noble and search out the rest of the trilogy. To be perfectly honest, I could stop right now and call this a standalone and it would be A-OK. But I do have the rest of the trilogy and so I’ll be reading them. Of course, if the empty mumbo-jumbo shamanism gets too heavy, I might just call it a day. But I suspect Gear is a good writer and a story teller first and a preacher second. As it should be for fiction books.
★★★✬☆
From Wikipedia & Bookstooge.blog
Synopsis – Click to Open
The human race consists of billions of people spread throughout a relatively small area of space containing Earth and several other inhabited planets. The majority of the population lives on giant space stations, either in orbit or moving like giant ships. A change occurred over the generations that was caused by zero-gravity conditions and exposure to different radiations. Most are pale-skinned, thin and frail-boned; some would die if they experienced gravity. The human race is ruled over by the Directorate, a group of three genetically modified humans, through whom all information must pass before it is released; this has given the Directorate complete control over information for the last 600 years. They stopped all war and religion and caused humanity to be composed of mostly obedient cowards.
Before this 600-year period, the Soviets ruled humanity after conquering North America. The Native American tribes, angered that the position of reservations had not changed, fought back against the Soviets and succeeded, to the point that they were all loaded onto a giant prison ship and deported to deep space along with other rebels of Latino and Caucasian descent—a population of over 5,000 consisting entirely of people with the will and heritage to survive. The ship crashes onto a planet that they name World. 600 years later the survivors have mixed into many different clans that comprise two distinctly different and opposing peoples, the Spiders and the Santos. Their culture is mainly Native American with the addition of large bore rifles, hand-forged from metal of the wrecked prison ship and used to deal with beings they call “bears,” natural predators existing on World. The World bear is similar to a dragon-squid combination, having two spines that connect at the base and a tentacle on each side with suction cups on it that it shoots toward its prey.
The Directorate accidentally picks up a bit of radio chatter from World, as the warriors use hand radios. They send out the Patrol, a combination military/police force that, under the guidance of the Directorate, has had no violence or wars to quell in over 200 years. They arrive at World expecting to find civilized people barely surviving, as with most other lost stations or colonies. On the contrary, the native warriors are savage fighters following the Native American tradition of “coup” taking, or scalping killed enemies as a method of showing how many they had killed.
They then try to conquer the Romanans, as they take to calling the descendants of the crashed star ship the natives arrived in, the Nicholai Romanan, but find that these natives aren’t going down without a fight, as the Spiders, who believe Spider is the name of God and the Santos, a mix of Christian and Mexican beliefs, who call God Haysoos, are all about warfare and following what they interpret God is telling them what to do.
The Spiders and the Santos form an uneasy alliance and subvert the soldiers. They eventually take over a warship, and the prophet of the Spiders convinces the Top Directorate not to destroy their world. The Romanans survive but are irrevocably changed socially and culturally. The Directorate hires the Romanans as the last real warriors to fight a rebellion starting up in another star system.
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 Diary of a Superfluous Man Series: (The Russians) Author: Ivan Turgenev Translator: Garnett Rating: 4 of 5 Stars Genre: Fiction Pages: 88 Words: 21K
I was fully expecting to straight up hate this novella by Turgenev. With a title like that, I figured I was in for some sort of complete existential crisis. Instead, I got an Alpha Edge Lord who doesn’t know how to interact with people socially and blames everybody but himself for his social inadequacies. So I was STILL expecting to hate read.
Instead, I pretty much just laughed my way through the book. The narrator is a Special Snowflake and reminded me of 90% of the young people I meet today. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun. The absolute incongruity of it all is that it is funny. You have a guy who knows he only has days to live and the one thing he fixates on is a failed love interest from years ago. And the old servant woman. He rants on and on about her drinking too much tea. It was truly from the fevered mind of a dying, irrational man. And it made me laugh 😀
Nothing makes me happier than when someone is utterly miserable. If that misery is self-inflicted, so much the better. If they deserve that misery, that is the best of all! This is why I like Russian literature so much. They are miserable son of a guns, who make themselves miserable and they know they deserve it. How can you not love that? Hhahahahaha.
★★★★☆
From Bookstooge.blog
A young man is dying and he sets out to tell his life’s story in the few days he has remaining. He ends up getting hung up on a failed romantic incident years ago and whines and whines and whines. Then he dies.
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: Lord Hornblower Series: Horatio Hornblower #5 Author: Cecil Scott Forester Rating: 3 of 5 Stars Genre: Historical Fiction Pages: 213 Words: 82K
Napoleon gets defeated and Hornblower and Lady Barbara are in France. Hornblower and Barbara split up and Hornblower falls in with the woman he fell in love with back when he was escaping France several years ago. Napoleon makes his comeback, lover lady dies and then Hornblower is rescued in the nick of time by Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo.
Yeah, Hornblower is a scoundrel and a cad. I’d like to take a whip to him until he bleeds into unconsciousness. He excuses and justifies his unfaithfulness to Lady Barbara on the flimsiest of reasoning. It was despicable and I must say, the name “Hornblower” will forever be tainted in my mind from here on out. He is not a hero, he is not someone of character, he is not someone to emulate. He is scum and someone I would spit upon if I met him in the streets. If he were a character in the tv show “Black’s Books”, I’d cut him and totally ignore him.
It was a great story and I really enjoyed that aspect of the book. Which is why this still gets 3stars. But I will NEVER recommend this series to anyone and if I hear of anyone considering it, I will strive mightily to dissuade them.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this is a series that “shouldn’t” be read, but there are better things to spend your precious time on. Like a 3000 piece puzzle of yours truly! Now, doesn’t that sound like a real treat? And if you put it together backwards, you get to hear my secret message that I wrote especially just to you. Wowzers, doesn’t that sound intriguing? It sure does!
So choose wisely. Will you read about a lousy loser who sleeps around or listen to my secret message extolling the life extending properties of Bookstooge’s Special BBQ Sauce™? It goes with everything from your best Sunday Suit to your Sabbath Songbook to melted goats or even whole soccer teams. You just can’t go wrong with Bookstooge’s Special BBQ Sauce™. It’s guaranteed! Unlike this book, which is definitely not.
★★★☆☆
From Wikipedia.org
Synopsis – Click to Open
In 1814, Hornblower is delegated to deal with the Flame, a brig full of mutineers off the French coast, near the mouth of the Seine. It is a tricky situation because the mutineers’ demands cannot be met, but they have threatened that if a Royal Navy force tries to force their hand, they will slip into a nearby French port.
Hornblower alters the appearance of his own vessel, the Porta Coeli, so it can masquerade as the mutinous vessel. As dusk falls, he follows a valuable blockade runner into port, pretending to be the Flame. Then, once the two vessels are moored, he captures it and takes it out to sea. He then pursues the Flame, which retreats to the French port. Believing the mutineers responsible, the French send four gunboats to take her. Hornblower manages to exploit the fighting to capture both the Flame and a gunboat.
Among the French prisoners is Lebrun, the young and ambitious assistant to the mayor of Le Havre. Lebrun asks to speak with Hornblower privately; he proposes to surrender Le Havre to the English fleet. Hornblower and Lebrun arrange a plan: Lebrun’s role is to undermine those parties who would resist a British seizure of the city. Overcoming some tense moments with audacity, Hornblower is able to capture the city with a half battalion of Royal Marines and finds himself its military governor.
Hornblower finds his new duties different from that of commanding a naval vessel or squadron. He finds his role demanding, in part because he is such a demanding perfectionist. The Duke of Angoulême, one of the heirs to the Bourbon dynasty, is sent to assume control of the civil leadership.
Hornblower hears that Napoleon has been able to amass a strong force, to be transported by barge down the Seine to retake Le Havre. He sends a force, borne by half a dozen large ship’s boats, to try to blow up the barges and ammunition. He puts his best friend, Captain William Bush, in command. The raid is a success and the French force is stopped, but an unexpected explosion kills most of the British, including Bush.
Hornblower is raised to the peerage, possibly in part to provide him with more dignity, gravitas, when dealing with the French heir’s entourage, as well to reward him for his accomplishments.
During the following peace, Hornblower’s wife Barbara accompanies her brother, the Duke of Wellington, to the Congress of Vienna, leaving Hornblower at loose ends. He decides to visit the Comte de Graçay, where he resumes his relationship with the Comte’s widowed daughter-in-law, Marie. When Napoleon escapes from Elba and raises a new army, Hornblower, the Comte and Marie lead a guerrilla fight against the Imperial forces. They are eventually defeated, and Marie dies from a leg wound. Hornblower and the Comte are captured and condemned to death, but news of the Emperor’s defeat at the Battle of Waterloo arrives just in time to save their lives.
In case you hadn’t noticed, WordPress.com decided to shove the block editor down our throats in our comments section. I know, I know. Huge swathes of the community were calling for this. The majority of users needed this. In fact, the world as we know it would end in a fiery cataclysmic fireball if WordPress.com hadn’t instituted this life saving change.
If you would like to turn this option off and make your comment section be the same as it has been for years, if not decades, you will need to go to: https://wordpress.com/settings/discussion/ and turn off the “Enable Blocks in comments” item. I have put up a picture and highlighted everything in angry red to help you.
If you are fine with the block editor in your comments then you don’t need to do anything.
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: Derai Series: Dumarest #2 Author: EC Tubb Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: SF Pages: 188 Words: 60K
Dumarest is hired to escort a young woman back to her home planet. Normally he wouldn’t care to, but she claims to be a telepath and has some knowledge of mythical Earth. In the process, he falls in love with her and ends up in some sort of Death Game to help her family, which would somehow help her. She ends up getting a fatal wound and is put in some sort of cocoon thingy. Another Love That Wasn’t Meant To Be. I have a feeling a lot of these stories about Dumarest will follow that pattern.
I am beginning to wonder if the Cyclans, a group of humanity that is trying to become pure brain power is what sparked the idea of the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica. That’s just one of those random thoughts I had. Nothing to base it on really besides the coincidence of the names.
Dumarest is a great leading character. He’s mature, he’s not stupid, he thinks his actions through (for the most part) and he’s not afraid to do what is necessary to get a job done. And he sticks to his goal of finding Earth. Of course, I do wonder WHY he wants to find Earth so bad. It was a horrible, burnt out wasteland when he left it, filled with horrible people barely surviving. It is not some paradise he was stolen from. He left it for a reason. So why does his whole existence now center around getting back? I don’t feel that Tubbs (the author, but man, I want to make some serious fat jokes now) has really provided a reasonable explanation other than tapping into a collective desire to “go back” that most of humanity has. I realize nostalgia can be a powerful, driving force, but nostalgia for a place where people beat you, used you and tried to kill you? Yeah, something doesn’t scan with that.
However, the story itself is still quite enjoyable. Adventure, telepaths, dastardly family politics, evil Cyclans. This has it all and Tubbs does a great job of weaving a very entertaining story out of all those parts.
Now that cover. Is that fantastic or what? Of course, it has NOTHING whatsoever to do with the story but man, I’d buy a book with that cover in a heartbeat. I’m giving this the cover love tag because of that and it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s the featured cover at the end of the month. Unless something else really knocks my socks off. But anything else will have to be really gooooood to do that.
★★★✬☆
From Wikipedia.org
Synopsis – Click to Open
Dumarest is recruited to escort a waif of a woman lost on an unfamiliar world back to her home and family. Upon delivery he is recruited to assist the family further by participating in a trial to benefit their patriarch. The waif is the Lady Derai, heiress to a noble house, and they are able to succeed due to special circumstances relating to Derai. In the end, he is confronted with a member of the Cyclan once again and his victory is tainted by sacrifice.
The Day Has Arrived. Bookstooge MacLeod, better known as The Lowlander, was the only warrior left in the whole world who could take on, gasp, The Game! He had spent months preparing for this moment. History, nay, possibly the very existence of the human race would be decided in this clash of the Titan(anic ego)s. Did he triumph, did good overcome evil and smash its face in?
Well, let’s just say it’s a REALLY good thing the fate of the world was NOT hanging in the balance.
I actually played two games. Both with the premade hero and villain decks that the set came with. First I played Spiderman and fought against the Rhino trying to break into SHIELD. That was an utter disaster. Rhino literally stomped all over me and completed his scheme of breaking in, which won him the game.
The second game I chose Captain Marvel and went up against the Rhino again. Spiderman’s deck was a tricksy “Justice” deck that relied on cards combo’ing off of each other to get things done. Cpt Marvel was an “Aggression” deck and relied on powerful attacks, just my style of play. I beat the snot out of Rhino for the first couple of rounds. I destroyed his Version 1 form and had his Version II (not pictured) on the ropes. I had Hulk out and between him and Cpt Marvel, they did a world of damage. Of course, Hulk disappeared after one turn, but he got his licks in. I thought that was going to be good enough. Then in one turn Rhino attacked me for double his usual amount and the Encounters were both Minions that attacked me. There was literally nothing I could do but sit there and get punched in the face, time after time after time. The last minion was a puny little 1 Attack guy but since I was only at 1 health, that’s all it took. It “felt” like I had been pummeled and it really gave me the vibe of getting stomped by a super villain.
In one sense, it was incredibly frustrating. I was still dealing with looking at cards and figuring out all the various symbology’s of everything (anywhere from 3-6 on the cards shown above). I also had a quite a few questions as I played. Thankfully, Spalanz was available on WhatsApp and was able to answer them all, but without him I’d probably have just made up my own rules about the situation without ever knowing if it was actually correct or not. I hate playing games that way. I want to know the rules and know how to apply them, correctly. That’s just how I’m wired 😀 Another thing is that a lot of the text and symbols are hard for me to see because of my eyes and I was doing a lot of squinting, which gave me a head ache. So from a purely enjoyment standpoint, the games were complete and utter failures. I did NOT enjoy myself. BUT!
I almost never enjoy things the first time around. I don’t do well with new situations or new rules, etc. I know this about myself. I like familiar things, things I am comfortable with, things I already know. Like pizza. Faced with the choice between a frozen Red Baron cheese pizza or homemade Kzaxistonian kreetled spinoralash, I’ll choose the pizza every single time.
I did not hate the game mechanics of Marvel Champions. That means that I need repeated playing to become familiar with it and THEN I’ll start enjoying it, thoroughly I suspect. It is just going to take time. So expect some more Playening posts as I learn the game and figure out what in the world I’m doing. In many ways, I feel like Spiderman just after he got his powers. Everything is new and weird and I just don’t know what is going to happen next.
Which is really good for me. I need to be shaken up every couple of years. I don’t want to stagnate on any level.
As I end this post, I’d like to leave you with that famous phrase from The Lowlander, the one everyone knows and repeats, even if they don’t know what it means. Think about it and apply it to your own life. You won’t regret it.
