Erg Raiders - MTG 4E

Sometimes having to explain what the card does takes up all the space and you don’t get any funny quotes like in Elvish Archers. That makes me sad.

The Five Chameleons (The Shadow #17) 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 WordPresss & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Five Chameleons
Series: The Shadow #17
Authors: Maxwell Grant
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 128
Words: 40K

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This was probably the first book where the Shadow really takes a beating. He’s been shot before, but this time it’s to the point of incapacitation. Never seen him so weak, but he still kills the bad guys. That’s how it should be.

I was expecting more from the Chameleons. Turns out they are just crooks that can pretty much blend into any situation and become whatever the circumstances demand. In this case, it was a bank manager, some bank tellers and a mortician. Not quite what I had in mind from the title. But, the leader, the guy playing the bank manager, manages to out think the Shadow and shoots him. Of course, the author sets up “circumstances” so the gang can’t immediately shoot the Shadow dead, which gives him opportunity to revive and fight back. A knife to his throat would have been just as effective at that point and it would have been silent. Lesson Number 1 in Villainy is always make sure the Hero is dead, really, totally, utterly dead. Or else he’ll come back and get you. Just like the Shadow does 😀

Speed of communication is the lifeblood of a society. I wrote about it in Kalin (A Dumarest book) and it has shown itself throughout the Shadow books as well. The crooks plan depends on people and the Feds not finding out about the counterfeit money until they are long gone. They are planning on days and possibly weeks. The Shadow counters that with a highspeed plane that gets information to his confederates in a day and brings those same confederates back to help him out. It still amazes me how the speed of information changes a culture. How much faster can we get? I’m kind of afraid to find out…

★★★✬☆

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From the Publisher & Bookstooge.blog

Synopsis – click to open

The Shadow seeks to unmask The Five Chameleons, master villains whose uncanny ability to blend with their surroundings rivals his own. Having hit upon a plan to funnel counterfeit money through a bank and steal genuine money, the scheme soon turns to murder and the Shadow becomes involved. He kills them all and saves the community.

• All of My “The Shadow” Reviews

[Art] Summer's Avatar

Spring’s Delight

Oh, it seems just like yesterday that I was celebrating Spring’s Delight.

The above picture is everything I like about Summer. While green springs forth in Spring (oh man, am I clever or what?), it is fully mature in Summer.

When I saw this, it reminded in a roundabout way of the Forest Lord from the anime Princess Mononoke. I like this drawing better though. The Forest Lord did not strike me as an intelligent being, just a force of nature. Here, the Avatar of Summer has the power of an Avatar but also the intelligence to use it.

May the rest of your Summer be temperate and filled with good things!

10 Things Only TRUE Bookstooge Lovers Understand or My Week V

This post is inspired by one I saw entitled “X Things Only True Book Lovers Understand”. While I am a book lover, apparently I’m not a TRUE book lover. I felt so ashamed.

So what better way to hide that terrible shame than by making all of you ashamed for not being a True Bookstooge Lover? I will now list the 10 Ways to prove you are a True Bookstooge Lover.

Please leave a comment sharing with everyone how much you failed at this and how ashamed you are. That will make me laugh AND will be cathartic for everyone else. There’s no shame in being a loser and feeling ashamed about it.

1. Bookstooge is always right, even if I think he is wrong.
2. If Bookstooge told me to commit seppuku with a clod of dirt, I would do it, successfully!
3. Short, stocky bald men are the most attractive.
4. I hate doing yard work too.
5. Pizza is the greatest food that has ever existed or will ever exist.
6. Who needs a life when you can blog instead?
7. I enjoy telling all my friends about Bookstooge’s latest posts
8. When I get up in the morning, my first thought is “What would Bookstooge do today?”
9. When Bookstooge says “Jump”, I don’t need to ask “How high” because I already psychically know.
10. I like boots too.
11. Damn commies! (that’s a bonus for y’all)

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What monks who eat nothing but rice look like.

After last week where I ended up in the ER for 9hrs to no avail, I was eating like a monk until about yesterday. Rice for breakfast, plain toast for lunch, rice chex (breakfast cereal) for dinner and applesauce for dessert. And wonder of wonders, my gut got better. No more pain or tenderness. So now I’m going to slowly ease myself back into a more regular dietary habit. If it wasn’t so hot out I’d go eat pizza. Cause that’s the epitome of “easing” back into things 😉

Tuesday we had some serious thunderstorms and rain move through in the evening. It poured so hard you could hardly see anything out the windows. Windy too. We ended up losing power for about an hour, but that wasn’t bad as some of our friends around town ended up losing power for 7-8hrs.

Thursday was one of those work days. We were working in Madison, which is about 2 1/2 hrs from the office. So half the day was spent in traveling; kind of cuts down on the work you can get done, you know? I did get a 10 1/2hr day out of it though, so that’s going to be good for the paycheck.
*insert happy trombone music

Other than the food thing, this was a pretty normal week. I really needed that. After how busy life has been for us the first half of July, I’m super duper ready to get back to my normal routine.

I hope you have a good Friday!

And Four To Go (Nero Wolfe #30) 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: And Four To Go
Series: Nero Wolfe #30
Author: Rex Stout
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 206
Words: 65K

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I enjoyed these four stories. It is kind of hard to call them straight up “short stories” because they’re fifty pages each, but they don’t quite seem like novella length either.

Wolfe is pretty much at his most cantankerous and Archie is at his needle’ist (in terms of how he deals with Wolfe) and murders get solved.

This was a good sit back and let the stories flow over you kind of book. I wasn’t blown away but I wasn’t bored, I didn’t feel like I wanted to stop reading and do something else, I didn’t want to get up to get a snack to take a break. I just read and that tells me it was good stuff if it can keep me engrossed like that.

I realize this isn’t a long review, or even much of a book report, but most of my reviews are like that. And considering this is #30 in the series, at this point you’re either all in or you are out. If you have not read any Nero Wolfe stories by Rex Stout, then go read the first book, Fer-de-Lance. I read that in ‘21 and I’m still going strong with the series, no breaks. That should tell you something too.

★★★✬☆

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Table of Contents:

• Christmas Party
• Easter Parade
• Fourth of July Picnic
• Murder is No Joke

Synopses from Wikipedia:

Synopses – click to open

The Christmas Party

Nero Wolfe occasionally riles Archie when he takes Archie’s services too much for granted. On Wednesday he tells Archie to change his personal plans of two weeks standing so that he can drive Wolfe to Long Island for a meeting on Friday with an orchid hybridizer. After counting ten, Archie explains that he cannot and will not chauffeur Wolfe on Friday. He has promised his fiancée that he will attend her office Christmas party, at a furniture design studio. To substantiate his claim, Archie shows Wolfe a marriage license, duly signed and executed: the State is willing for Archie Goodwin and Margot Dickey to wed.

Wolfe is incredulous, but hires a limousine to take him to Long Island as Archie attends the party. There, a conversation between Archie and Margot reveals that Margot has been trying to get her employer and paramour, Kurt Bottweill, to quit procrastinating and marry her. She has suggested to Archie, who is no more to her than a friend and dancing partner, that a marriage license might motivate Bottweill to propose and follow through. Archie gave her the license on Thursday, and now Margot tells him that the plan worked perfectly, that she and Bottweill are to marry.

Also attending the party are Bottweill; his business manager Alfred Kiernan; an artisan named Emil Hatch who turns Bottweill’s designs into marketable merchandise; Cherry Quon, an East Asian who is the office receptionist; and Mrs. Perry Jerome and her son – Mrs. Jerome is a wealthy widow who is the source of Bottweill’s business capital. The Bottweill-Jerome business relationship is apparently based on intimacy, which her son Leo is bent on disrupting. Santa Claus is also present, tending bar.

Bottweill starts to toast the season but before he can do so Kiernan interrupts. Everyone has champagne, but Bottweill’s drink is Pernod – he keeps an entire case of it in his office. Kiernan brings Bottweill a glass of Pernod. Bottweill finishes his toast, tosses back the Pernod, and promptly dies of cyanide poisoning.

As Archie is issuing instructions – call the police, don’t touch anything, nobody leave – he notices that Santa has already left. Hatch says no one has left via the elevator, and the only other exit is to Bottweill’s office. There’s nothing unusual there, and Archie pushes a button that calls Bottweill’s private elevator. When it arrives, Archie finds Santa’s wig, mask, jacket and breeches on its floor.

The police arrive, led by Sergeant Purley Stebbins, and after several hours of questioning he dismisses the partygoers. Purley’s first task is to try to find Santa, and if that approach leads nowhere then he’ll start after the others. Archie heads back to the brownstone, where Wolfe, having returned from his errand, is eating dinner. Wolfe has heard on the radio a report of Bottweill’s death, and after discussing it briefly, Wolfe sends Archie to his room to bring him a book. Archie finds the book, and also finds, draped over it, a pair of white gloves that appear to be identical to the gloves that Santa was wearing while tending bar.

Stunned at first, Archie works it out that Wolfe was the bartender in a Santa costume. He must have arranged the charade in order to judge for himself whether Archie and Margot were genuinely involved or the marriage license was flummery. For Wolfe to have gone to such an extreme must mean that Wolfe regarded the situation as potentially desperate. Finally, Wolfe left the gloves for Archie to find so that he would reason it all out for himself, thus sparing Wolfe the necessity of admitting how much he depends on Archie.

Archie returns to the office and, skipping the issue of Wolfe’s motives, reports on the events that followed Wolfe’s escape. Stebbins has established that all the partygoers knew that Bottweill drank Pernod and kept a supply in his office. All knew that a supply of cyanide was kept in the workshop one floor down from the studio: Hatch uses it in his gold-plating work. Any of them could have found an opportunity to get some cyanide from the workshop and, unobserved, put it in Bottweill’s current bottle of Pernod. But none of them ran when Bottweill died. Only Santa ran, and the police are concentrating for the moment on finding whoever played Santa. Wolfe gives Archie a brief summary about his meeting with Bottweill that afternoon preparing to become Santa, including Botteill’s having a drink, in Wolfe’s presence, from the same Pernod bottle that was later poisoned – a fact the police would love to have.

When Archie finishes reporting, the doorbell rings. It’s Cherry Quon, without appointment, wanting to speak with Wolfe. It comes out that Cherry recently became engaged to marry Bottweill. She is convinced that Margot murdered Bottweill in a rage at being thrown over for Cherry. And she delivers a bombshell: she knows it was Wolfe who played Santa at the party. Bottweill had told her that morning at breakfast.

Cherry has a demand: she wants one of Wolfe’s men to confess to having played Santa. As he was putting on the costume, in the bathroom attached to Bottweill’s office, Wolfe’s man heard something, peeked out, and saw Margot putting something in the Pernod bottle. Cherry is not blatant about it, but she implies strongly that if Wolfe does not comply with her demand she will tell the police that Wolfe himself was Santa.

That’s the last thing Wolfe wants – Cramer would lock him up as a material witness and possibly for withholding evidence, and the publicity would be humiliating. But Wolfe refuses to go along with Cherry’s script. Instead, he sends notes to all the partygoers, inviting the murderer to identify himself.

Easter Parade

When Nero Wolfe’s envy is aroused he’ll go to any length to satisfy it. He embarrassed Archie in his pursuit of Jerome Berin’s recipe for saucisse minuit, and he strongarmed Lewis Hewitt to get those black orchids. Now he’s learned that Millard Bynoe has hybridized a pink Vanda orchid, a unique plant. He wants to examine one and Bynoe has turned him down.

Wolfe has also learned that Mrs. Bynoe will sport a spray of the pink Vanda at this year’s Easter parade in New York, and wonders if Archie knows anyone who would steal it from her. Archie does have a suggestion, a shifty character nicknamed Tabby, who would probably commit petty larceny in public for a couple of hundred bucks. Archie suggests that in addition to arranging for Tabby’s services, it might be wise to get a photograph of the orchids. Archie offers to attend the parade too, with Wolfe’s new camera.

So it’s decided: Tabby will position himself outside the church where Mr. and Mrs. Bynoe will attend Easter services and will try to snatch the orchid corsage from her shoulder as they exit the church. Archie will be across the street with the camera, attempting to get a good photo of the corsage in case Tabby’s attempted theft fails.

Easter morning arrives. Both Tabby and Archie are in place – Archie’s sharing some wooden crates with several other photographers so as to see over the crowd. One of them is a comely young woman named Iris Innes, who is there as a staff photographer for a magazine.

The Bynoes exit the church in the company of another man. Tabby tries to grab the orchids but the Bynoes’ companion wards him off. So Tabby ducks away into the crowd and begins to stalk them as the three walk up the avenue. Archie has been able to capture much of the action on film.

Suddenly, Mrs. Bynoe collapses. As her companions try to help her, Tabby dashes up to them, snatches the orchid corsage, and sprints away. Archie takes off after him, and catches up just as Tabby gets into a cab. Archie joins him, hushes him, and tells the cabbie to take them to 918 West 35th.

Only after Wolfe has had time to examine the orchids, and to announce that he would pay $3,000 (in 1958) for the full plant, does Archie get a chance to point out that if necessary the police will identify and track Tabby down, and that inevitably Tabby will give up Wolfe and Archie. Archie phones Lon Cohen and learns that Mrs. Bynoe is dead. Wolfe wants to avoid any public mention of his association with the incident, and offers Tabby $10 a day to remain incommunicado at the brownstone. After trying unsuccessfully to raise the per diem, Tabby accepts.

Archie prudently removes the film from the camera, and his foresight soon pays off when Inspector Cramer arrives. A needle containing strychnine has been found in Mrs. Bynoe’s abdomen, and the theory is that the needle was shot from a spring-loaded mechanism such as a camera. Cramer appropriates the camera, but doesn’t ask whether the film is still in it. Monday morning, Archie takes the film to a camera store to be developed.

Then he spends much of the day trying futilely to reach the other photographers, including Miss Innes.[1] Archie spends the remaining hours at the District Attorney’s office, answering questions and refusing to answer questions that he contends are immaterial to the investigation of Mrs. Bynoe’s murder. He is dismissed in time to get the developed pictures from the store and return to the brownstone before dark.

There he finds Mr. Bynoe, Inspector Cramer, DA Skinner and several others, including the photographers Archie’s been looking for. Wolfe asks to see the photos. He arranges a re-enactment of the scene in front of the church, and shows Cramer how the photos that Archie took demonstrate the murderer’s identity.

Fourth of July Picnic

A restaurant workers’ union is having a Fourth of July picnic in a remote meadow on Long Island. Time has been set aside during the afternoon for a few speeches from prominent figures in the restaurant business, and also one from Nero Wolfe. Wolfe has been the trustee for Rusterman’s Restaurant since the death of his old friend Marko Vukcic, and because the restaurant is so highly regarded the union wants Wolfe to speak. As an added inducement, the union has also promised to stop trying to get Fritz, Wolfe’s personal chef, to join.

Wolfe and Archie arrive at the meadow and work their way through a tent to a raised platform from which the speakers will address the thousands of union members. One of the organizers, Phil Holt, has eaten some bad snails and is lying in misery on a cot in the tent. He has been seen by a doctor but is too weak to participate in the festivities. He is shivering and Wolfe tells Archie to tie the tent flap closed, to help stop the draft blowing through.

One by one, as the scheduled speakers address the throng, those on the speakers’ platform go back into the tent to see to Holt. Eventually Wolfe goes to check on Holt and shortly calls to Archie to join him. Holt is dead, lying on the cot, covered by a blanket that conceals the knife in his back.

It is Wolfe’s habit, when he is away from home and confronted by a murder, to tell Archie to take him back to the brownstone immediately, before the police arrive. It is Archie’s habit to refuse and he does so now, pointing out that they would simply be hauled back to Long Island. Wolfe concedes the point and returns to the platform to deliver his speech.

Archie has noticed that the tent flap is no longer tied shut. He glances out the back of the tent and sees a woman sitting in a car parked by the tent. Archie gets her name, Anna Banau, and asks her if she has seen anyone enter the tent since the speeches started. Mrs. Banau says that she has not. Archie is impressed by her calm certainty, and concludes that no one entered the tent from the back. Someone must have gone in from the platform, stabbed Holt, and then opened the rear flap to make it appear as though the killer came from that direction, not from the platform.

The body is soon discovered and the police are called. It’s clear that the local District Attorney would love to hold Wolfe and Archie as material witnesses, but he can’t find a legitimate reason, so Wolfe returns home after all. The next day, though, Mr. Banau comes calling. He knows of his wife’s discussion with Archie on the prior afternoon, and cannot understand why the papers report that the police are proceeding on the assumption that the murderer entered the tent from the rear. His wife saw no one enter the tent from that side, and that is what she told Archie – surely Archie passed that along to the police. When Wolfe tells Banau that Mrs. Banau’s information was not passed along, Banau becomes upset and leaves the brownstone, stating that he must tell the police.

Wolfe sees that he and Archie will be arrested and must make their getaway. They head for Saul Panzer’s apartment, where they have arranged to meet with the others who were on the speakers’ platform. Wolfe as yet has no idea who the murderer is, nor the motive for the crime. But when the principal suspects arrive at Saul’s, Wolfe finds it important that he and Archie share autobiographical sketches with them. Then he bluffs the murderer into identifying himself.

Murder Is No Joke

Alec Gallant was a member of the French Resistance during World War II and at that time married another member, Bianca. After the war, he learned that his wife and her two brothers had been traitors to the Resistance. He murdered both men, but Bianca escaped him.

Gallant came to the United States in 1945 and rejoined his sister Flora, who had immigrated from France several years earlier. Gallant became a highly regarded couturier (as Wolfe later terms him, “an illustrious dressmaker”) with a studio employing several staff, including Flora. A successful Broadway actress, Sarah Yare, is a valued customer, one who is well liked by all of Gallant’s employees.

Into this happy mix comes Bianca. She has changed her surname to Voss and insinuated herself into Gallant’s operation, making decisions about company strategy, apparently with Gallant’s approval. Gallant has kept information about his past with Bianca to himself, hiding it not only from the staff but also from his sister, Flora. Everyone at Alec Gallant Incorporated is mystified that Gallant is putting up with Bianca’s odd and counterproductive decisions, particularly because she seems to have no formal title or position at the company.

Fearing for her brother’s career, Flora calls at Nero Wolfe’s office and asks him to investigate the situation. She has only $100 to pay Wolfe’s fee, but she says that her brother would be grateful to be rid of Miss Voss, and he is a generous man. Wolfe points out, though, that it’s not Mr. Gallant who would be hiring him. Flora suggests that they phone Bianca, and invite her to Wolfe’s office where he can ask questions of her, and then, “We shall see.” In reporting this exchange, Archie Goodwin claims that it is Flora’s choice of phrasing, instead of an informal “We’ll see” or “We will see,” that moves Wolfe to acquiesce.

Flora uses Archie’s phone to call Miss Voss, and gives Archie the handset as Wolfe picks up his own phone. After identifying himself to Miss Voss, Wolfe becomes the target of a string of insults hurled by Miss Voss – “You are scum, I know, in your stinking sewer.” – and then both Wolfe and Archie hear a thud, a groan, a crash, and a dead phone line.

Archie calls Gallant’s offices back, and asks for Miss Voss. Archie and Wolfe learn that Miss Voss has just been found dead in her office. When they inform Flora, she seems stunned, and hurries from the office.

Later, discussing the situation with Inspector Cramer, Wolfe agrees it’s very neat that Wolfe and Archie were on the phone with Miss Voss just as she was being assaulted, and thus can fix the time of the attack within a minute or two. That makes it difficult, because everyone at Gallant’s studio has a strong alibi for that time.

The next day, Archie is summoned to the District Attorney’s office to go over his statement once again. When he returns to the brownstone, he is astonished to see that Wolfe has exerted himself to the point of getting the phone book from Archie’s desk and taking it to his own. Wolfe has no explanation of the phone book for Archie, but he does have instructions.

• All My “Nero Wolfe” Reviews

Cthulhu Reloaded (Cthulhu: Harrison Peel #1) 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, & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Cthulhu Reloaded
Series: Cthulhu: Harrison Peel #1
Editor: David Conyers
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Short Story Collection
Pages: 240
Words: 94K

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I enjoyed this collection of Cthulhu oriented stories, but with some big ol’ caveats. And they are big enough that I seriously considered dinging this down to 3stars instead of the 3.5 I ended up giving it.

First off, this is a collection of short stories all centered about the adventures of one Australian, Harrison Peel. He’s special forces and gets inducted into a secret agency that fights intrusions of the cosmic horror into our reality. And that is where my first caveat comes in. They are great horror stories. Wonderful in fact. But Peel sails through them all with nary a mind break in sight. What he sees affects him, but not any more than how veteran cops are affected after a life time of seeing the worst of humanity. And that is why I didn’t give this the “Cosmic Horror” tag. Peel should have been broken like an egg dropped from a sky scraper and he was barely scratched, not even cracked and totally not broken. In both the Introduction by Peter Clines and the Forward by the author, they mention how they don’t understand why people want to read stories about the main characters failing or breaking and thus Conyers created Harrison Peel as a character to combat that idea. Which just goes to show that Conyers doesn’t understand Cosmic Horror at it’s fundamental, foundational level. THE WHOLE POINT IS THAT CTHULHU AND HIS ILK ARE INIMICAL TO HUMANITY WITHOUT EVEN TRYING TO BE, THEY SIMPLY ARE. When you depart from that premise, you can have some great horrific stories but they aren’t cosmic horror. So that is my first and biggest caveat.

My second caveat is almost a sub-caveat to the first one. A lot of side characters DO go mad or get destroyed or totally lose it in one way or another. But not Peel. He keeps surviving through each and every short story. That is inimical (love that word!) to Cosmic Horror. It makes the stories simply adventure stories and if you’re looking for that, you’ll get your fill of some really good ones here. I was pretty impressed overall with the quality, but the author does admit that he went back and reworked many of these stories to fit together better and to polish them up. I had no problem with that and considering this collection came together, I’m happy he did that.

My final caveat is that there is a King in Yellow story and man, was I disappointed. It all springs from the idea that Peel doesn’t crack, so of course I was disappointed. The Yellow King never attempts to destroy someone until they have been sufficiently worked on so that they will destroy themselves. The King in Yellow would not offer me a harem, because he would know I was committed to Mrs B. But what he would do is to work against that love and loyalty that I have for Mrs B for my entire life until I WAS ready to accept a harem. And he would work it so that I would give myself heart and soul to him for just that chance. But once again, not Peel. He gives Peel the option to have something he truly wants, but it is offered without the ground work being laid so of course Peel walks away from it and the King in Yellow just lets him go. Bologna! That is NOT how the King in Yellow stories work. If he knows you are insusceptible, he won’t tempt you. Now, the story itself, dealing with the side characters, was a great KiY story and I enjoyed that part of it, a lot. But the inclusion of Peel and his “shrug it all off” attitude destroyed my enjoyment.

I really debated about including this as part of my Cthulhu Anthology “series” and wondered if it would be better served as it’s own little thing, but in the end I did include it because I feel that anything Cthulhu related should stay together to make it easier for others to find out about it. There are two more Harrison Peel collections and I plan on reading them both, but I will approach them quite differently than I did this time and hopefully that will help mitigate some of the dislike I felt for this author and his deliberate misinterpretation of the “Cosmic Horror” genre.

★★★✬☆

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Table of Contents:

• Introduction -Peter Clines
• Forward – David Conyers
• Made of Meat
• Driven Underground
• Impossible Object
• False Containment
• Tears in Yellow
• The Weaponized Puzzle
• Weapon Grade
• The Elder Codex

• All of My “Cthulhu Anthology” Reviews

Triumphant (Genesis Fleet #3)(Lost Fleet) 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: Triumphant
Series: Genesis Fleet #3 (Lost Fleet)
Author: Jack Campbell
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mil-SF
Pages: 266
Words: 103K

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Much better than the previous two books. Lots less detailed politic’ing and lots more fighting. Don’t read that wrong, there is some politics going on, but it is almost skated over, as if Campbell realized that the readers of his books aren’t necessarily armchair socio-political theoreticians. Give the people what they want Mac, which is ships blowing each other up and space marines fighting tooth and nail to the bitter end.

That is what I want out of a Jack Campbell/Lost Fleet book. Space action, whether ship to ship or groundpounders beating the stuffing out of each other. Give me that and nine times out of ten I’ll be satisfied.

I do feel that the trilogy got off to a shaky start with the first book but it has ended strong here. Not a place I’d recommend for Lost Fleet newbs though. There are too many references to family names that are recognizable to veteran readers of the Lost Fleet that will simply have zero meaning for anyone who hasn’t read the series up to this point.

★★★✬☆

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From Jack-Campbell.com & Bookstooge.blog

Synopsis – Click to Open

The recently colonized world of Glenlyon has learned that they’re stronger when they stand with other star systems than they are on their own. But after helping their neighbor Kosatka against an invasion, Glenlyon has become a target. The aggressive star systems plan to neutralize Glenlyon before striking again.

An attack is launched against Glenlyon’s orbital facility with forces too powerful for fleet officer Rob Geary to counter using their sole remaining destroyer, Saber. Mele Darcy’s Marines must repel repeated assaults while their hacker tries to get into the enemy systems to give Saber a fighting chance.

To survive, Glenlyon needs more firepower, and the only source for that is their neighbor Kosatka or other star systems that have so far remained neutral. But Kosatka is still battling the remnants of the invasion forces on its own world, and if it sends its only remaining warship to help will be left undefended against another invasion. While Carmen Ochoa fights for the freedom of Kosatka, Lochan Nakamura must survive assassins as he tries to convince other worlds to join a seemingly hopeless struggle.

As star systems founded by people seeking freedom and autonomy, will Kosatka, Glenlyon and others be able to overcome deep suspicions of surrendering any authority to others? Will the free star systems stand together in a new Alliance, or fall alone?

Of course, they stand together, defeat the bad guys and form the beginning of the entity known as The Alliance.

Energy Tap - MTG 4E

If you can cheat in a big creature, you suddenly have access to a massive amount of mana and can pull some serious shenanigans with this card. IF being the operative word. Blue was always tricky but fragile.

Book Recommendations I

Please read the Intro Post if you haven’t already. It explains pretty much everything (except how to use your microwave. Nobody can explain that!) Given how many responses I got from the Get-Go, my plans to collect responses over several months fell by the wayside. I’m able to start right away! That makes me pretty happy.

Recommendations & Responses

Alex Good recommended the 23 Volume Encyclopedia Britannica. I had read a 1988 version of either Colliers or the Americana version between 1988-1997. Yes, I was one of those kids 🙂

Fraggle recommended the Jason Trapp series by Jack Slater. That’s a big fat Checkaroo and it’s already on my kindle!

Will suggested A Green and Ancient Light by Fred Durbin. I gave it some serious thought, but after reading the reviews, all of which contained key words that I dread hearing about a book, I decided to say “That’s a negatory, Ghost Rider!”.

Chartreuse Flag Hall of Shame

Eddie, otherwise known as the Film-Authority to his enemies, immediately suggested I read all 700+ romance novels by Barbara Cartland. He knew exactly what he was doing, so he immediately got One Chartreuse Flag.

Dawie mock suggested A Haunted Vagina. We’d joked about it on on Whatsapp, but even still, it gets him One Chartreuse Flag! Even Netnanny doesn’t approve…

Maddalena suggested I try the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic series. Didn’t even have to think about that to assign her One Chartreuse Flag

The Most Important Part

Recommend me some more books!!!! Leave a comment with your recommendation of books you think I should respond to. I have the list of all the recommendations so far, so don’t you worry, I’ll be getting to them all eventually. And I had a lot of fun doing this 🙂

Book Reviews ≠ Book Reports

I’ve been mulling over book reviews and what they are good for over the past several years. I’ve written several drafts and most of them descended into rage fueled rants that I was simply not comfortable with. So it’s just been an idea floating around inside my head.

Until today.

For me, a book review is simply a blog post with my thoughts (random, scattered, tangential OR completely ordered) on the book as I read it, as I thought about it beforehand and afterwards. As you get to know me and see how I rate and write about various books, you begin to learn the ins and outs of what I’m looking for or not in a book. My book reviews are tiny little snapshots of me as a whole person, glimpses into my soul as it were. I’ve always known this and operated this way, but hadn’t mentally codified it.

A book report on the other hand, is a medium by which you the reader hope to convince someone else, probably a tyrannical evil stepmother, that you have read the book and comprehended the basic plot and perhaps some of the deeper meanings if the author was the kind of jerkwad who thought their words were akin to gold.

I can understand why book reports exist. Kids need to be forced to do certain things and reading books is one of those things. They might not comprehend everything in the book, but their minds are like rubber, it must be stretched. If you just give it stuff that doesn’t challenge it, it will never grow.

But once you start reading for pleasure, all that changes. Once you start reviewing, the reasons that drive you onward, while not infinite, are so much greater that trying to nail it down to even a handful is a fool’s errand. Why I review and more importantly, HOW I review are going to vastly different from you.

That is why I had to leave the site Goodreads (which I now refer to as Devilreads). They enforced a certain way of writing a review that was more akin to a book report than an actual book review. When everyone says the same thing about a book, with just tiny, minor variations, it makes for a very bland experience. The whole point of having a place with thousands of different people is to get thousands of different views and thoughts and ideas.

That is why I have always used my blog as my main book review outlet. Here I can say what I want, how I want and any old thing that enters my head is perfectly acceptable in my review. If I’m reviewing “How to BBQ a Raccoon” and I end up spending the whole post talking about a camping trip the book made me think of, that’s my choice. Now, if you don’t like that, the wonderful thing about blogging is that you can stop following me at any point.

Give me the freedom to speak my mind as I wish.