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 Way of Spider Series: Spider #2 Author: William Gear Rating: 3 of 5 Stars Genre: SF Pages: 395 Words: 151K
The Warriors of Spider ally with the Directorate to invade a rebelling planet. They murder and rape their way across it and subdue it. The mastermind of the rebellion flees with technological secrets at his finger tips.
Yeah, I read this. Wasn’t overly impressed. The Romanans are unbridled rapists and murderers and that doesn’t go down well with me at all. While their brutal savagery is what wins the war, they are not good guys by any stretch of the imagination. Not how I wanted to start this month’s reading.
And I am not looking forward to the final book at all now 🙁
Plus, this cover is a horrible resolution. It’s this bad even on the author’s website. Not cool.
★★★☆☆
From the Publisher
Rebellion on Sirius threatened to become the spark that would set the galaxy ablaze, bringing on the destruction of the Directorate-run empire—a tyranny powered by an elite corps of human, computer-linked brains. The Directorate’s only hope of overthrowing the Sirian rebels rested with three of its once-mighty but now battle-damaged Patrol ships, three backup warships, and a rate of primitive, long planet-bound warriors—the Romanans.
For the Directorate had spent many centuries breeding initiative and the capability for violent action out of the human race. And only on the lost colony of World did true warriors of spider still exist. But would the Romanans willingly join the cause of the star men who had once attempted to destroy their world? And even if they did, could warriors so newly exposed to the weapons of deadly technology defeat a world and a leader ready to utilize legendary tools of destruction more lethal than any humankind had ever known?
Green Eyes by Maxwell Grant. I know everyone focused on the big ol’ schnozz last time, but for goodness sake people, stop being such shallow dipsticks and enjoy the beauty of the whole cover. Or I swear, I’ll grab the Shadow’s twin .45 pistols and shoot you with them.
Personal:
Both Mrs B and I came down with some sort of cold/respiratory infection that just about killed us for a week and then left us hacking up our lungs for 2 more weeks after that. I got it first and then a week later, Mrs B followed the exact same path. It was extremely unpleasant and left us both exhausted. When you wake yourself up coughing, even with having taking cough suppressant, it just hurts the ribs. That really dominated everything. We got through work each day, recovered as best we could over our days off and just prayed for death.
Had dinner with another couple at church and he and I played a couple games of parcheesi while the women folk took a nice long walk. I love parcheesi. I could play it for hours.
Plans for Next Month:
With being sick in May, I’ll probably be taking Fridays off again in June. My ooomph is just completely gone.
I was talking with Nic and she gave me a good idea for a potential new monthly series of posts. I’ll be posting that in the next week or two. Give me some time to cogitate about it.
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 Cossacks Series: (The Russians) Author: Leo Tolstoy Translator: Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: Fiction Pages: 230 Words: 66K
A story of a young man without a guiding hand trying to figure out the best way to live. Olenin is a rich young man who leaves the city life, with all of it’s problems, including his debts, both monetary and social, to join up with the army and be stationed in some Cossack village. He is an outsider, not knowing how to fit in with the Cossacks, or his army buddies or himself for that matter. He makes a friend of an older cossack and falls in love with the beautiful daughter of the headman of the village. The story ends with her refusing to marry him, him leaving the village and nobody caring at all that he is leaving.
What a roller coaster this was to read. I went from being totally disgusted with Olenin and his thoughts and behavior (not that he did anything bad, but he was so unsure of himself and everything) to feeling sorry for him to thinking “Boy, this guy is going to have to grow up fast if he wants to survive”. The biggest issue is that Olenin is by himself in trying to figure out how to live life in a way that suits him. He’s tried the “idle rich” of Moscow lifestyle and it didn’t work. Now he’s trying the “simple life” of a cossack peasant and by book’s end, he realizes that isn’t for him either. It made me incredibly thankful for all the mentors I had throughout the years growing up, from my teens and up into my 20’s. It’s not that I didn’t have questions, but people who had already gone through those same questions could tell me their experiences and what they found out. I didn’t need to repeat all the same mistakes, if I was willing to learn from others. But I had to be around them, I couldn’t be by myself. And that is the thing, Olenin was by himself. It was sad to see.
I found the ending to be truly sad though. He’s leaving the village and the guy who he thought was his friend just ignores him, because he’s gotten everything from him that he could. Since Olenin is leaving, there’s nothing more to be got from him and so he is no longer worth paying attention to. The issue with the headman’s daughter did leave me confused. I was under the impression that she was willing to marry Olenin, but then suddenly, she’s not. There’s a lot of unsaid stuff alluded to and I couldn’t tell if that vagueness was in the original writing or the translator’s fault. Either way, it felt like walking into a brick wall when you were expecting an open door.
Glad to have read this but I doubt I’ll ever attempt to re-read it.
★★★✬☆
From Wikipedia
Synopsis – Click to Open
The young idealist Dmitry Andreich Olenin leaves Moscow, hoping to start a new life in the Caucasus. In the stanitsa, he slowly becomes enamored of the surroundings and despises his previous existence. He befriends the old Cossack Eroshka, who goes hunting with him and finds him a good fellow because of his propensity to drinking. During this time, young Cossack Luka kills a Chechen who is trying to come across the river towards the village to scout the Cossacks and in this way gains much respect. Olenin falls in love with the maid Maryanka, who is to be wed to Luka later in the story. He tries to stop this emotion and eventually convinces himself that he loves both Luka and Maryanka for their simplicity and decides that happiness can only come to a man who constantly gives to others with no thought of self-gratification.
He first gives an extra horse to Luka, who accepts the present yet doesn’t trust Olenin on his motives. As time goes on, however, though he gains the respect of the local villagers, another Russian named Beletsky, who is still attached to the ways of Moscow, comes and partially corrupts Olenin’s ideals and convinces him through his actions to attempt to win Maryanka’s love. Olenin approaches her several times and Luka hears about this from a Cossack, and thus does not invite Olenin to the betrothal party. Olenin spends the night with Eroshka but soon decides that he will not give up on the girl and attempts to win her heart again. He eventually, in a moment of passion, asks her to marry him, which she says she will answer soon.
Luka, however, is severely wounded when he and a group of Cossacks go to confront a group of Chechens who are trying to attack the village, including the brother of the man he killed earlier. Though the Chechens lose after the Cossacks take a cart to block their bullets, the brother of the slain Chechen manages to shoot Luka in the belly when he is close by. As Luka seems to be dying and is being cared for by village people, Olenin approaches Maryanka to ask her to marry him; she angrily refuses. He realizes that “his first impression of this woman’s inaccessibility had been perfectly correct.” He asks his company commander to leave and join the staff. He says goodbye to Eroshka, who is the only villager who sees him off. Eroshka is emotional towards Olenin but after Olenin takes off and looks back, he sees that Eroshka has apparently already forgotten about him and has gotten back to normal life.
Today class, I, Sensei Bookstooge, will attempt to beat some facts into your head in the vain hope that maybe one, just one, will remain there. I am not hopeful. But a player of the game, one who is seeking The Championening, must ever strive against nigh impossible odds.
We will be focusing on the Villain Play Area today. Last week, we looked at the Hero Play Area and I hope some of that has stuck in your head. If not, simply nod and pretend. The most important parts of the VPA are the Villain, the Main Scheme and the Encounter Deck.
The Villain!Main Scheme!
There are two ways to lose the game and one way to win. The one way to win is to defeat the Villain. But you have to do that twice. The first time you defeat him, you replace him with his next iteration, which is usually slightly better than the previous iteration. The two ways to lose are by having the villain and his minions kill you (the hero) OR for the Main Scheme to acquire the number of tokens shown in the upper left corner of the card. A threat token is placed there each turn, so it is something you have to deal with at some point. During the villain’s phase, you go through the following steps in order.
Place threat token on Main Scheme and any Side Schemes
The Villain and Minions attack the Hero or add a threat token to the Main Scheme if the Hero is in Alter-Ego mode
Deal and Reveal an Encounter Card (the top card of the Encounter Deck, ie, the villain’s deck)
When a villain or minion attacks the hero, you reveal the top card from the Encounter Deck and add the value of the boost icons to the villains attack value. The boost icons are the red triangles in the lower right of the card. The following card is a Minion card and has 2 boost icons. So if Rhino attacked me, and I flipped Titania, I’d add 2 to the Rhino’s base attack of 2 for a total of 4.
If you are in alter-ego form, you follow the same procedure but for adding threat tokens to the scheme. So once again, if I flipped Titania, I’d add 1 threat token from Rhino himself (1 SCH) and then 2 more from the boost icons on Titania.
Not Gru’s Minion, that’s for sure!
Once the attack/scheme is done, then you would flip the top card of the Event Deck and follow directions. For instance, if I flipped Titania as my Encounter Card, she’d immediately attack my hero. Along with Minion cards, the Event Deck also has Treachery cards (that is something bad that happens to the hero), Attachment cards (attaching to the villain and increasing their attack/thwart capabilities or even giving them a whole new ability) and Side Schemes (one more headache for the hero to deal with). So while the Villain Phase might seem to have less steps, it’s just as complicated and tricksy as the Hero Phase.
Well, I think that’s enough Explainening for you all. I hope to get back to more Playening posts next month.
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: A Subtle Agency Series: The Metaframe War #1 Author: Graeme Rodaughan Rating: 3 of 5 Stars Genre: Urban Fantasy Pages: 212 Words: 84K
When I featured this series in a Shelf Control post, I was under the impression that the final book was coming out this year. I later found out it had been released at the end of ‘23. That decided me right away and I added the series to my kindle to read. Waiting seven years for the series to be written was long enough in my opinion.
Unfortunately, for me, it didn’t start out so well. I featured a quote in a Currently Reading post and it was pretty much the epitome of an indie urban fantasy and it encapsulated every single reason why I tend to avoid UF as a genre. Thankfully, for the book and author, things did improve after that disastrous start, but it never truly recovered in my mind.
The writing was decent, nothing bad stood out, no egregious grammatical errors or butchering of the English language. At the same time, it wasn’t very good writing either. It didn’t flow. It was choppy. There were quite a few instances of “He said, she said, he did, she did” kind of writing. Rodaughan came across as an author who was working hard to do the right thing, but was someone who didn’t have an instinctual grasp of the art of writing. “General Chloe Armitage” made a lot of appearances, with that title attached every time.
The ideas presented were what saved this book. Things start off in Ancient Egypt, with two brothers. The wife of one of them has just died and he is using the power of the Metaframe Engine to bring her back to life. His brother is trying to stop him. She is revived, as a vampire and thus the race of vampires is born and the hidden course of history is set. The surviving brother starts a hidden group bent on fighting the vampires to keep humanity free. That group, over the years, has schismed into two groups, one that wants to fight the vampires and protect humanity and the other, which just wants to fight the vampires. Oh, the vampires secretly rule the world too. We get to follow a possible “Chosen One” on his “Coming of Age Journey”. All tropes that I really enjoy.
I definitely plan on continuing the series and hope that as the years passed for the author, that his skill increased. I guess I’ll be finding out in the coming months 😀
★★★☆☆
From the Publisher
Synopsis – Click to Open
ACTION STATIONS! A Thrilling Suspense-Filled Fantasy Action Adventure in a complete series of seven books.
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.
“Imagine if you could change the rules of the game, what rules would you choose?”
Witness to a brutal murder, eighteen year old Anton Slayne is inducted by the mysterious Mr Wu into the secret society of vampire hunters, the Order of Thoth. He soon discovers that vicious local gangsters, determined Boston Police Detectives, and relentless Shadowstone operatives pale into insignificance as he is drawn into the machinations of the enigmatic vampire general, Chloe Armitage.
Heir to a legacy of extraordinary powers, Anton joins a team of hunters, but that is no guarantee of survival against the most powerful vampires in the world, especially when they’re equipped with the latest available technology and super weapons.
When I watched Dune Part I, I knew the director Villeneuve was taking liberties with the story but didn’t mind that much. So going into Part II, I knew he would continue to make changes and I mentally and emotionally prepared myself. And it was good that I did, because there were some significant changes from the book.
Paul and Chani never had their first son, so he was never killed by Rabban.
Alia, Paul’s preborn sister, was not born in this movie. She was totally in-vitro the entire time. So she never killed the Baron. That fell to Paul.
Chani was a fremen warrior and nothing else. She was not the protege of Lady Jessica, a Wise Woman in training.
Paul’s transformation into Muad’dib was very understated. His visions were ones of billions starving, instead of a monstrous galaxy wide jihad where billions were killed. His prescient sight was almost non-existent.
I could live with those changes. I didn’t care for them and I thought the director was wrong, but I was ok. I was fine with this movie and those changes.
Until the last five minutes of the movie. Then I exploded at the last scene. I was angrier than I have ever been about changes from a book to a movie. I was angrier than when Lucas changed the dvd release of Return of the Jedi and cgi’d in Christian Hayden at the ghost scene with Yoda, Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker. I was ready to take a dull spoon to Lucas then.
And that was nothing to how I felt at the ending of this movie. I had gotten this bluray for my b-day and after that ending, I will be throwing it into the garbage along with Part I. I am so done with Villeneuve that I will never watch another movie by this expletive expletive expletive guy if I can help it. If there is a Dune Part III (which it really seems necessary as this doesn’t complete the book’s story at all), I will ignore it harder than I did Star Wars episodes 7, 8 and 9. Villeneuve is not only dead to me, he is the devil incarnate and the source of all evil in the world.
In Part I, Villeneuve kept the relationship between Paul and Chani kind of at odds, which made sense. But in the second part of the book, Chani and Paul were not just lovers, but soul mates. They had a child together. Chani knew that she had to share Paul as Duke Paul Atreides, Muad’dib the Fremen Leader and The Kwisatz Haderach, the genetic superman that was the next step in humanity’s path. She knew all this, even knew what the cost was, and she not only accepted it, she gave her heart and soul to support Paul. She was the bedrock upon which Paul rested. He knew his time was limited with her and he knew that any outcome that would prevent her death would make the Jihad unimaginably worse, trillions dead instead of billions. They were the two sides of one coin. In the book, Paul had to marry the daughter of the Emperor, Princess Irulan. But it was a marriage of politics and Chani was always his love and the mother of his children. Irulan was simply a figure head. Lady Jessica had to go through the same thing with her Duke Leto, being his concubine and mother of his heir, but leaving marriage open to other Great Houses. Jessica counseled Chani on the reality of the situation and Paul reassured Chani of his love and devotion. Chani knew what she had to sacrifice and chose to still love Paul.
In the movie, Chani storms out of the Imperial Hall and calls a worm to go off by herself into the desert. She abandons Paul. She abandons Duke Paul Atreides. She abandons Muad’dib. She abandons the Kwisatz Haderach. She abandons who she was in the book.
If Villeneuve will make such a fundamental change to a character, he has completely lost my trust.
From a purely technical side of things, I didn’t like this movie either. First, the bass track also contained the audio track, so if I wanted to hear what anyone was saying, I had to put up with floor rumbling noise that I could literally feel from 20feet away, while sitting on my couch. There is no need for crap like that. The other thing that annoyed me greatly was how dark many of the scenes were. There were times I turned my tv on and off to make sure it wasn’t misbehaving. There is no need to make a movie so dark that the audience HAS to sit in complete darkness to make out the details.
So between the technical annoyances and then the utter betrayal of the relationship between Paul and Chani. I ended up hating this movie. I don’t know what the normal person who has never read the book will think of this. They might be just fine. But I AM NOT JUST A NORMAL PERSON WHO HAS NEVER READ THE BOOK. Dune is as close to a sacred text as I’ll ever have in the fiction department.
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: Betrayal Series: Jet #2 Author: Russell Blake Rating: 2 of 5 Stars Genre: Action/Adventure Pages: 238 Words: 75K
I am a fan of the Bourne movies, not the books. The books are slow and while not technically boring, are not action/thriller books. They are 1980/90’s spy books. I bring this up because in the synopsis it claims that fans of the Bourne trilogy will be delighted by this book. They lied. I was NOT delighted. I wasn’t enthralled. I was not even amused slightly.
Pretty much everything I wrote in my review for Jet (book 1) applies to this one as well.
Jet is not professional. In fact, I might be a better assassin than she is. She’s just lucky. All the time, every time. Even when she’s not, she’s still lucky because she lives and doesn’t die.
Jet is stupid. Plain and simple. This book starts with her heading to the US to kidnap her daughter from the family she was hidden with to protect her from any enemies that Jet has. Does she give ANY thought to the family she is taking her daughter from? Exactly zero fucks were given by Jet about them. As far as I could tell, she didn’t even research who they were, beyond where they lived. Are they good people, are they bad people, are they stable people? None of those questions are asked by Jet because all she wants is her daughter and she doesn’t take even one second to think if she SHOULD take her daughter or what is best for her daughter. It is all about Jet and nobody else.
Jet is too emotional. In fact, Jet reminded me of Agent Zero, in every worst possible way. She regularly jeopardizes whatever current mission she is on because she reacts to circumstances she encounters. She also regularly has emotional outbursts that translate into violence to those around her, with no regard for what those outbursts will lead too. Which in most cases would her being killed, if it weren’t for the author making her so lucky and staying alive (see the first point above).
The action was still awesome. In some ways, it was even better than the first book. But that is not enough.
I will be abandoning this series and I’m going to be avoiding this writer. Someone who writes such stupid people and saves them from their decisions by authorial fiat is not a writer who I want anything to do with. That is bad writing folks, just plain bad writing. There is no need for it and I won’t contribute to its perpetuation any more.
So adios Blake. You’re a wanker, a bad writer and you are making the world a worse place with your subpar crap.
★★☆☆☆
From the Publisher Twenty-eight year old Jet, the former Mossad operative from the eponymous novel JET, must battle insurmountable odds to protect those she loves in a deadly race that stretches from the heartland of Nebraska to the corridors of power in Washington, D.C., from the lurid streets of Bangkok to the deadly jungles of Laos and Myanmar. Fans of Kill Bill, The Bourne Trilogy, and 24 will be delighted by this roller-coaster of action, intrigue and suspense.
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
I felt like something different today and so I delved back into my collection of comics. Don’t expect this to be a monthly thing though, this is pure mood.
I quite enjoyed this. Each chapter was a self contained story where we learned a little about Usagi (the Yojimbo is a title meaning bodyguard) and how he became a Ronin and how he got the title Yojimbo. This is a linear story with some flashbacks. I liked the straightforwardness of it.
The author/artist, Stan Sakai, also does a good job right from the get go. His drawings at the beginning of the book look just the same as those at the end, which considering these were released individually over time, means he was already skilled when he started. Unlike, say, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, where the art looked like it was done with a number 2 pencil on a napkin, this was well done from top to bottom. I enjoy looking at something that is well executed from the start. The lines are clean and I can actually see what is going on, even in the action sequences.
Because this takes place in the 1600’s in Japan, when the Shogunate was just coming into being, it felt very similar to the manga Rurouni Kenshin, which takes place in the 1800’s at the ending of the Shogunate. No magic or super powered villains though, just plain skilled warriors and a rough and tumble lifestyle. I thought the mix of anthropomorphic animals and humans together wasn’t going to work, but I have to say, it really did. Sakai didn’t try to give each animal set of people some “animal” trait and thus they were able to simply be another set of people. It definitely makes for a more fun reading time.
I had a good time reading this but feel no need to pick up the next volume. Which means when the mood strikes, I’ll probably enjoy the next volume quite a bit too.
Oh, oh, oh, I ALMOST FORGOT THE MOST IMPORTANT BIT!!!!!!!!!!! (that’s what happens when I start blabbing, the important bits go right out the window)
Groo the Wanderer is referenced AND he makes an appearance. Now that is totally awesome awesomesauce.
