The Burden of Command (Empire Rising #14) 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: The Burden of Command
Series: Empire Rising #14
Author: David Holmes
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 387
Words: 148K
Publish: 2022

This book was 25% shorter than the previous one and I think it was better for it. This feels like it is the start of a new “series” as it has been 20 years since the previous book and the children we were introduced to in Empire’s Gambit are now adults and making their own way in the world. Emperor James is still the main character but he’s not the sole focus. That really gets spread around.

I think the typical weaknesses/strengths that I’ve talked about before for this series are here in spades. James feels the same as he did in book one. Characterization is not Holmes’ strong point. Action is top notch but mainly focuses on ship to ship space battles.

The torch is being passed from one generation to the next and I am looking forward to seeing how Holmes handles the transition. I don’t think it will be that hard for him though, as this series is more of a chronicles of the events and not as much a character driven series. Characters play their part, but it is only a part.

I still enjoyed this, I had a good time and nothing about the story made me think I need to stop.

★★★✬☆

From the Publisher
For twenty years Humanity has enjoyed an uneasy peace after the Battle of Gayla and the death of the Karacknid Imperator. His death caused the Karacknid Empire to collapse into a bitter civil war. Yet Emperor Somerville is certain the peace will not last. Tanaka-lan is one of three contenders left vying for the title of Imperator, and James knows that if he wins, the flames of war will ignite once again.

The Human Empire has not squandered the respite it was given. Fleets have been rebuilt and defenses put in place. Yet a new generation of Imperial citizens has grown up who have known only peace. They are growing restless with the burden of Imperial taxes, and secession is on the lips of many. Just when it seems the Karacknid civil war is coming to an end, James is confronted by the prospect that his own Empire may fall to infighting and divisions. Faced with threats from within and without, he and Christine must rely on a new cadre of Imperial naval officers to keep the peace. Officers who must learn for themselves the true Burden of Command.

• All of My “Empire Rising” Reviews

My Week XXV

 Well, another week come and gone. Amazing how time flies. I'm wondering when I'll get to the stage where I judge things by the month, instead of the week? I mean, I'm thankful I've matured enough to do a week at a time instead of a day at a time, but just like a teenager champing at the bit to be an "adult", I want to be old enough for time to fly by. I have found myself referring to things by who was President at the time and not just the year, so that's a start ;-)

Didn't work a lot this week. I had to take Tuesday off because Mrs B had a procedure where she couldn't operate machinery afterwards, so I had to do the driving and make the decisions while she was still loopy. We went out to a diner afterwards and had some seriously delicious omelets. Mrs B had a cheese omelet with toast and homefries while I had the cheeseburger omelet with toast and homefries. Oh man, we were both so stuffed afterwards, it was great!

Thursday was a rain day. It started raining around 7am and went all day and into the evening. Maybe 25 years ago I would have gone in, but at some point I have decided that being soaked and miserable all day, while accomplishing almost nothing, isn't worth being paid for. So I called out. It helped that the office manager knew the storm was coming and gave all the field crews the option to call out. All of us took that option ;-)

I spent the day putting together my new tv setup. I had bought a 50in tv about a month ago and ordered a tv stand to go with it. There were missing parts and it was a bleeding process to get 8 little feet mailed to me. But I put it all together and then hooked everything up. Tv, soundbar, bluray player and I attached a 25ft hdmi cable for when I eventually will hook that up to my computer to play computer games on. I started at 8am and was expecting it to be a horrific experience. New electronics are picky and have a bajillion options and I was expecting things to go wrong at every step. Imagine my surprise when everything went smooth as glass and I had everything setup by 9am. I was shocked, in a good way. So I turned on the tv and watched the 3 Stooges until Mrs B got home that afternoon. That was a good day :-D

Friday it was back to work and boy, I did NOT want to go in. It didn't help knowing one of the other crew chiefs had taken the day off, so between the rain day on Thursday and having the next Monday off for Memorial Day, he was getting a 5day weekend, the lucky duck. The site we went to was about 90min away. So we had a lot of driving to do. And it was raining up there. Not enough to stop us, but enough to make it "slightly" miserable. On a Friday, sigh. Then we found out that one of the owners of the company said everyone could leave at 2pm if they wanted to. So we took lunch and hightailed it back to the office. It was a 7hr day and 3hrs of that was pure driving. It was a total waste, hahahahaa. But I was out at 2pm and ready to start my 3day weekend. That's a good feeling!

Today we're leaving for church in about 2hrs and once again, it is foggy, cloudy and drizzly. I hope that is going to help keep the traffic down, as we have to use a major highway and I don't want to share the road with a bajillion people all driving to their summer homes for the long weekend. Once we're back, I suspect I'll either be reading or writing up posts for June. Can you believe it is almost June already? I just blinked and it's the last week of May. Maybe I am getting old enough!

You all have a wonderful Sabbath, cheers!

The Holmes-Dracula File (The Dracula Files #2) 3Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Holmes-Dracula File
Series: The Dracula Files #2
Author: Fred Saberhagen
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 189
Words: 68K
Publish: 1978

Dracula gets conked on the head, loses his memory for a bit and spends the book tracking down the villains who did this to him. Sherlock Holmes is looking out for a crazy guy who drains people of their blood and a psychopathic doctor. Worlds collide as Dracula and Holmes team up to stop a second Black Plague from enveloping London.

Much, much, much more enjoyable than the previous book. Most of that is because this was a brand new, wholly original story. But still just a 3star read in general. I find it rather ironic that I enjoyed this book more than the previous one but still rated it the same. Part of that is because that’s all this book is worth. It’s a good, disposable read that I have zero interest in ever re-reading.

Thankfully, Dracula doesn’t completely change character here. He’s still the totally unreliable narrator from the first book, with an ego the size of Europe. In this book’s setting, that’s actually a good thing. It worked, unlike in the Dracula Tape. Holmes on the other hand, felt very cardboard cutout’y. Saberhagen uses Doyle’s style of Watson doing the narrating for Holmes’ side of the story and he didn’t quite have the writing chops to fully flesh out a character being written about by another character. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that’s an easy thing at all. Doyle did a masterful job of it and we’re all enriched by him making that conceit a “thing”, but it takes more skill than I feel Saberhagen had. Saberhagen aped it well enough, but didn’t have it down comfortably.

There was one thing that had me rolling eyes though. Holmes and Dracula look similar enough that even Watson gets them mixed up in a bar room brawl (♪bar room blitz♪). Turns out that Dracula is Holmes daddy from an affair Dracula had with Holmes’ serially unfaithful mother. Come on, really? And to make things even more awkward, young Mycroft had to kill Holmes’ mother because she’d turned, or something like that. It was all very “backstory” and didn’t work and made me cringe. And yet now, thinking about it, I’m laughing my head off at how badly it was executed. That obviously wasn’t Saberhagen’s intent, but hey, whatever gets me through the book ;-)

I’m definitely going to be reading more of these, eye rolls and all.

★★★☆☆

From the Publisher

1887, London, Victoria’s Jubilee -- criminals threaten to release thousands of plague infested rats on the day of celebration. The extraordinary powers of the Count and sharp mind of the Master Detective team up to avert a catastrophic public disaster. (And, the reader discovers more than a deerstalker hat and an Invernes Cape in Holmes’ family closet.)

What Is A Healthy Church? (Non-fiction) 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: What Is A Healthy Church?
Series: -----
Author: Mark Dever
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Non-fiction
Pages: 128
Words: 25K
Publish: 2007

The Sunday church read this together in the various small groups they have a while back. Due to the groups meeting in the evenings, I just didn’t have the ooomph to go, as I would end up falling asleep part way through. That happened enough times in the previous year or so that I gave up going. So I didn’t read this book with the group. I think it would have been a fantastic book to read within a group though.

First thing to know is that Dever is approaching this from a VERY Evangelical viewpoint. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it is the lense through which he is viewing Scripture and how he interprets what it means. I don’t think I actually disagreed with a single point he made however.

This was written for Christians. Not necessarily for old or new Believers, but for anyone who calls themselves a Christian and wants to attend a church.

I thought the content was great. Like I said, I didn’t disagree with anything. But the reason this isn’t getting 5stars is because of how he laid things out. He would include snippets of Bible verses in italics and then include the actual reference, but in bold, to support the points he was making. It was incredibly hard to read through as I kept getting jogged out my reading flow by the setup. I guess it would be like I think, “therefore I am. But only on Tuesdays” (Bookstooge 1:47). So imagine each chapter being filled up like that. It was a big issue for me and I really noticed it. I feel kind of bad about dinging a whole star for it, but I was having to skip, hop and jump through the book instead of walking or even running smoothly. Maybe if you were taking one section at a time, like in a small group it wouldn’t be such an issue.

But to end, I am very glad I read this and would mightily recommend it

★★★★☆

From the Publisher & Table of Contents

What is an ideal church, and how can you tell?

How does it look different from other churches? More importantly, how does it act differently, especially in society? Many of us aren't sure how to answer those questions, even though we probably have some preconceived idea. But with this book, you don't have to wonder any more.

Author Mark Dever seeks to help believers recognize the key characteristics of a healthy church: expositional preaching, biblical theology, and a right understanding of the gospel. Dever then calls us to develop those characteristics in our own churches. By following the example of New Testament authors and addressing church members from pastors to pew sitters, Dever challenges all believers to do their part in maintaining the local church. What Is a Healthy Church? offers timeless truths and practical principles to help each of us fulfill our God-given roles in the body of Christ.

Toc:
Series Preface
Preface: A Parable 
Introduction: What Are You Looking for in a Church? 

Part 1: What Is a Healthy Church? 
Chapter 1: Your Christianity and Your Church 
Chapter 2: What a Church Is . . . and Isn’t 
Chapter 3: What Every Church Should Aspire to Be: Healthy 
Chapter 4: The Ultimate How-to Guide: How to Display God’s Character 
Quick Tips: If You're Thinking about Leaving a Church . . .

Part 2: Essential Marks of a Healthy Church 
Chapter 5: Expositional Preaching 
Chapter 6: Gospel Doctrine 
Quick Tips: How to Find a Good Church

Part 3: Important Marks of a Healthy Church 
Chapter 7: A Biblical Understanding of Conversion and Evangelism 
Chapter 8: A Biblical Understanding of Membership 
Chapter 9: Biblical Church Discipline
Chapter 10: Biblical Discipleship and Growth
Chapter 11: Biblical Church Leadership 
Chapter 12: A Biblical Understanding and Practice of Prayer
Chapter 13: A Biblical Understanding and Practice of Missions
Conclusion: Where the Rubber Meets the Road 

Appendix: A Typical Covenant of a Healthy Church
Special Thanks 
General Index
Scripture Index

The Shadow of Doctor Syn (Doctor Syn #7) 3Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Shadow of Doctor Syn
Series: Doctor Syn #7
Author: Arthur Russell Thorndike
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Historical Fiction
Pages: 177
Words: 83K

This was a good end to the Scarecrow/Dr Syn series. The action and the smuggler scenes were just as enjoyable as ever. Sadly, The Scarecrow in France during The Terror is only a tiny part, but he does make a complete fool of Robespierre, so I was happy with what I got.

My biggest gripe, and what prevented this from being 3.5stars, was the infernal romance story. Yet another daughter of Dr Syn’s best friend Tony falls in love with him, with quite predictable results. That Dr Syn, he’s just got ZERO chance with women. His wife cheats on him and runs off. His second fiance is killed while pretending to be the Scarecrow and so of course, the younger sister also dies while pretending to be the Scarecrow. It does remind me of the whole Age Gap thing in romances. I’ve talked about this in other books (namely Jane Austen’s books) and don’t feel the need to rehash the whole thing. BUT. At this point in time, Dr Syn is in his mid to late 40’s and Cicily is either 17 or 19. That is a MUCH bigger age gap than even Marianne and Col. Brandon in Sense and Sensibility. I didn’t honestly see how it was going to work. The author makes it work by making Dr Syn pretty much be the same person he was in his 20’s. While he’s had all these experiences, they didn’t change him, and they should have. No offense to any teens who might read this, but you’re all a bunch of muffinheads to be honest and being married to a teenager at my age would be its own special brand of heck. The author just cheated and used the “Love conquers all” trope so he could shoehorn in a romance subplot. But it was awkward and since I read the first book first, well, I knew Dr Syn was single then, so Cicily had to go one way or another.

The cover is ridiculous. It’s a great cover, but it’s still ridiculous. Dr Syn is very careful to keep his shirt on because of a tattoo that would prove he was Captain Clegg the notorious pirate. And him being next to the guillotine, well, I addressed that earlier. But it sure is eye catching and garish, just what you want to sell a book!

Overall, the fact that I finished this series when I wasn’t sure near the beginning means it was enjoyable enough to keep me hooked despite my issues with treating the clergy like an unbeliever.

★★★☆☆

From Wikipedia

Set in 1793 during the events of the French Revolution, Syn travels to France amidst the Reign of Terror. He has fallen in love with young Cicily Cobtree and hopes his actions against Robespierre will earn him a pardon from the King. When Cicily dies, Syn gives up his ideas of pardon and nearly loses his sanity. This sets the stage for the fiendish character he becomes in Doctor Syn: A Tale of the Romney Marsh.

City of Stairs (The Divine Cities #1) DNF@19%

 

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: City of Stairs
Series: The Divine Cities #1
Author: Robert Bennett
Rating: 1 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 88/464
Words: 28K/148K
Publish: 2014

Due to the inclusion of certain subject matters, I am dnf’ing this book and will not be reading any more by Bennett.

★☆☆☆☆

Green Mana Battery - MTG 4E

 

This doesn't look like ANY sort of battery, but it looks wicked cool. That was enough for me back in '95 anyway :-D

Sunshine Blogger Award - 2025 Edition

 

Pooja recently did an SBA and when I went looking, the last time I had done one was back in '19, so it seemed like it was time to participate again. Give me something to write about besides a book review anyway :-D Plus, sunshine, amiright?

Rules For The Sunshine Blogger Award:

• Display the award’s official logo somewhere on your blog.
• Thank the person who nominated you.
• Provide a link to your nominator’s blog.
• Answer your nominators’ questions.
• Nominate up to 11 bloggers.
• Ask your nominees 11 questions.
• Notify your nominees by commenting on at least one of their blog posts.

Questions:

What inspired you to start blogging?

I discovered Blogspot when google bought it in 2003 or so. It allowed me to write and to stay in contact with my scattered friends and family. Over the years blogging has changed as I have changed and now I mainly blog about the books I read. Of which there are a lot.

What is your favourite movie?

Die Hard. Bruce Willis will always live in my head as John McClane.

Which season do you prefer most and why?

The Autumn. The mornings are crisp, the sun is still strong in the afternoons, harvests are happening and the Pumpkin Festival is right around the corner!

If you could be a fictional character for a day, who would you be?

Garric, the main character from David Drake's Lord of the Isles series. He is a Chosen One and I love those kind of stories.

What was your favourite game growing up?

The Farming Game. It made Monopoly look like a scrawny chicken. My friends and I would have sleepovers and we'd set things up the night before, get up at 7am and then play the entire day and if we were lucky, finish that night.

Other than blogging, what hobby or hobbies do you enjoy?

Reading. It's actually what drives my blogging :-D

What is the last TV show you watched?

The 3 Stooges on Tubi.

What is a dish or food that reminds you of your childhood?

Chicken pot pie, just like Mom used to make it!

Is cereal technically soup, why or why not?

Cereal is most definitely NOT soup. I don't know how anyone could ask that question with a straight face.

What would you do if you could live forever?

Pull of a massive heist so I could hire authors to write books for me. I'm going to need a LOT of books to last forever ;-)

Who was your first celebrity crush?

This was an easy one. Cindy Crawford doing that Pepsi commercial in '92. It burned itself into my brain and has never left.

Now comes the part where I'm supposed to nominate 11 of you and ask 11 new questions and continue things.

First, consider yourself nominated. Because if you are reading this, that means you have a pulse. That's an absolute must for bloggers! ;-)

Second, I will officially nominate 11 bloggers who "follow" me and appear to be active but don't interact with me.

Thirdly, I will actually ask 11 new questions, but they will be Bookstooge-esque questions, so you might have to think a couple of extra seconds to answer them. And thanks to Pooja for kicking things off.

My Nominees:

The Silmaril Chick

Texeira

Ovat Friday

Willy Stevens

Godly Chic Diaries

Joseph Newcomer

Myrelar

Joyce O'Day

Marilyn Gardner Milton

Uncommonly Bound

Radiant Creations in Motion

My Questions:

1. Why Would Anyone Consider Cereal to be Soup?
2. Why Do You Blog?
3. How Do You Justify Your Existence? (I got that one from the Tales of the Black Widowers, good isn't it?)
4. How Do You Choose Who to Follow?
5. If John McClane and John Wick were tied on a railroad track and you could only set one of them free, which would you choose and why?
6. In a game of Parcheesi, who would win, Spongebob Squarepants or the Doom Slayer?
7. Do you feel guilty about all of my oxygen that you are breathing?
8. What is your favorite movie?
9. If you were going to be "accidentally but on purpose" killed tomorrow, how would you spend today?
10. Are mirrors Friend, or Foe?
11. If you could change ONE THING about your blog, what would it be?

• Sunshine Blogger Award - Grumpy Cat Edition
• Sunshine Blogger Award - Part Shnayim

Casino Royale (James Bond #1) 3Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Casino Royale
Series: James Bond #1
Author: Ian Fleming
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 157
Words: 51K
Publish: 1953

I’ve seen various Bond films over the years, just at random and usually thought of them as empty action films (except for the ones where the directors tried to make Bond a comedian) but enjoyable, like popcorn. I’m pretty sure I read one or two of the novels in highschool too, but I couldn’t even tell you which ones. I’ve also heard what I consider “woke” talk about the books and I wanted to make up my own mind and see what the books actually said, as opposed to some kid spouting off about things he doesn’t know a thing about. This has led me to start reading the entire collection. Or at least, starting the journey and seeing how far I get!

This book was not what I was expecting. At times completely banal (the gambling scenes at the casino were mostly boring) and at others brutal (Bond getting his balls hit/whipped/whatever), I felt some whiplash reading this. Then you had Bond himself. He was definitely a jerk. There’s a scene where the girl, Lynd, is introduced to Bond and she ignores his come on. Bond thinks about how’d like to break her because of that. It was SO wrong. He wasn’t displaying masculinity, but selfish brutishness. There was another instance where Fleming shows us the inside of Bond’s mind and it isn’t a nice place, not a good place. Why Fleming chose to portray Bond this way baffles me.

The twist I never saw coming. I probably should have, given how double agents were such a big thing during the Cold War, but nope, it completely cut me off at the knees.

This was a very see-saw read. It’s why it is getting 3stars and not something higher. I think I’ll have to take each book one at a time too and not make any big decisions, yay or nay, about the series as a whole. I guess I’m hoping Fleming’s writing evolves.

★★★☆☆

From Wikipedia

M, the Head of the British Secret Service, assigns James Bond, 007, to play against and bankrupt Le Chiffre, the paymaster for a SMERSH-controlled trade union, in a high-stakes baccarat game at the Royale-les-Eaux casino in northern France. As part of Bond's cover as a rich Jamaican playboy, M also assigns as his companion Vesper Lynd, personal assistant to the Head of Section S (Soviet Union). The CIA and the French Deuxième Bureau also send agents as observers. The game soon turns into an intense confrontation between Le Chiffre and Bond; Le Chiffre wins the first round, cleaning Bond out of his funds. As Bond contemplates the prospect of reporting his failure to M, the CIA agent, Felix Leiter, gives him an envelope of money and a note: "Marshall Aid. Thirty-two million francs. With the compliments of the USA." The game continues, despite the attempts of one of Le Chiffre's minders to kill Bond. Bond eventually wins, taking from Le Chiffre eighty million francs belonging to SMERSH.

Desperate to recover the money, Le Chiffre kidnaps Lynd and tortures Bond, threatening to kill them both if he does not get the money back. During the torture, a SMERSH assassin enters and kills Le Chiffre as punishment for losing the money. The agent does not kill Bond, saying that he has no orders to do so, but cuts a Cyrillic 'Ш' for шпион (shpión, Russian for spy) into Bond's hand so that future SMERSH agents will be able to identify him as such.

Lynd visits Bond every day as he recuperates in hospital, and he gradually realises that he loves her; he even contemplates leaving the Secret Service to settle down with her. When he is released from hospital they spend time together at a quiet guest house and eventually become lovers. One day they see a mysterious man named Gettler tracking their movements, which greatly distresses Lynd. The following morning, Bond finds that she has committed suicide. She leaves behind a note explaining that she had been working as an unwilling double agent for the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs. SMERSH had kidnapped her lover, a Polish Royal Air Force pilot, who had revealed information about her under torture; SMERSH then used that information to blackmail her into helping them undermine Bond's mission, including her own faked kidnapping. She had tried to start a new life with Bond, but upon seeing Gettler—a SMERSH agent—she realised that she would never be free of her tormentors, and that staying with Bond would only put him in danger. Bond informs his service of Lynd's duplicity, coldly telling his contact, "The bitch is dead now."

A Gathering Evil (Dark Conspiracy #1) 3Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: A Gathering Evil
Series: Dark Conspiracy #1
Author: Michael Stackpole
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 276
Words: 98K
Publish: 1991

This is a trilogy by Michael Stackpole. He was a staple for me growing up. He wrote some kickass standalone fantasy novels, he wrote a bunch in the Star Wars Expanded Universe (back when Star Wars’ book were still good, even when they were bad) and he wrote a couple of original series. He also wrote in other universes, what I now call Franchise Fiction. He wrote in the BattleTech series, and really, his Star Wars stuff was franchise fiction too. But it was stuff I grew up on in the 90’s and early ‘00’s and formed what I wanted and looked for in stories. He pretty much stopped by the early ‘Teens and as such, I haven’t seen new stuff from him in years.

So I decided to go back and read some of his older stuff. Stuff I hadn’t read. I wasn’t interested in his Battletech stuff, as I tried to read a couple of books by other authors in that Franchise and didn’t care for it at all. I’d never played the game and had no connection, which meant I wasn’t going to try. That left me with this trilogy, originally called The Fiddleback trilogy and some standalones. I wanted to get a taste and a trilogy is the best way to do so in my opinion. Longer than a standalone book but not a bloated, unfinished monstrosity like Game of Thrones.

Only to find that this trilogy was based on an Role Playing Game (rpg) called Dark Conspiracy. And that this was now known as the Dark Conspiracy trilogy. I found all of this out AFTER reading the book. You might be wondering why I am going on and on and on about this.

That is simple. 

This is Proto-Litrpg and next to the Romance genre, Litrpg is the lowest rung on the ladder. I spit on Litrpg. If I was the hero, Litrpg would be a Nazi Zombie and I would be doing the world a favor by killing it. If Litrpg was a hero, it would be as a pathetic, spineless pos protagonist like Shinji Akari (from the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion) and it would be my DUTY to kill him and get a real hero in his place. Needless to say, I don’t like Litrpg. Thus, finding out that this trilogy is proto-litrpg was like drinking a bottle of coke only to find out afterwards that someone had peed in it. GROSS!

And Yet.

Stackpole was still good enough of an author to make me enjoy the story. That’s why it got 3stars. Now that I know he has “pee’d in the Coke bottle” I’m not sure how I’ll feel about the next two books. But that’s another month’s problem, right? I know, I’ll just buy a new, sealed Coke bottle for the next book and call it good enough ;-)

★★★☆☆

From the Publisher & Bookstooge

Tycho Caine is a man with a mission. He's sure of that. But, waking up in a body bag with amnesia, he not sure of much else. Except that someone wants him dead. An exciting adventure novel of a near-future world where technology and occult mysticism merge. Dark forces and hidden masters conspire to control humanity, and Tycho Caine needs to figure out which side he's on.

An interdimensional being wants to invade Earth and Caine was his catspaw. But an opposing Earthly psychic has turned Caine to his side and now it is up to Caine and small group of misfits to stop this Entity from entering their world and devouring it.