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: Book of Cthulhu II Series: Cthulhu Anthology #18 Editor: Ross Lockhart Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: Cosmic Horror Pages: 515 Words: 184K
Not nearly as many repeats as last time. Thoroughly enjoyed this. Still, considering the material, nothing pushed this into 4star territory. After realizing that Cthulhu just doesn’t have re-readability, that really limits how high the rating can actually go. So unless there is something amazing from here on out, 3.5 is pretty much as high as Cthulhu is going to go, no matter how badass he might think he is. He’s dealing with The Bookstooge now. I have my Star Rating System and even Cthulhu has to bow down to my rules.
Iä! Iä! Bookstooge fhtagn!
★★★✬☆
Table of Contents:
ROSS E. LOCKHART : Introduction
NEIL GAIMAN : Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar
CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN : Nor the Demons Down Under the Sea (1957)
JOHN R. FULTZ : This Is How the World Ends
PAUL TOBIN : The Drowning at Lake Henpin
WILLIAM BROWNING SPENCER : The Ocean and All Its Devices
LIVIA LLEWELLYN : Take Your Daughters to Work
KIM NEWMAN : The Big Fish
CODY GOODFELLOW : Rapture of the Deep
A. SCOTT GLANCY : Once More from the Top
MOLLY TANZER : The Hour of the Tortoise
CHRISTOPHER REYNAGA : I Only Am Escaped Alone to Tell Thee
ANN K. SCHWADER : Objects from the Gilman-Waite Collection
Normally, I get between 40-60 visitors a day and between 50-100 views. That is quite a variance I know, but that’s how the blogging game goes. However, in the last week or so, the numbers have been really weird. I get these spikes in numbers of views. You can see the first one, on May 27th. That was just over 200 views. Then on the 30th I got another spike up to 300. Things seemed to settle down and then BAAAAAAM, on the 5th I got 650 views, the largest amount I’ve ever gotten in my entire blogging time here at wordpress. I figured that was that but then the 6th happened and as you can see, by 4pm I was up to over 300 again.
My first thought was “bots”, but while I complain, quite legitimately, about some of the shenanigans WP.com pulls, they have been really good about not recording bot visits and cleaning up spam comments. I also noticed that a lot of the views were from my Bookstooge in 100 Books page. Then yesterday a lot of of the views were posts with books that I had DNF’d.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m really happy to get these huge boosts, but I just wish I understood them. Have any of you had any weird spikes in your stats over the last 2 weeks?
“When I was a little boy,” said Mr. Banks, “I loved going for walks. I used to walk with my Governess down to the second lamp-post and back every day. And I never grumbled.”
Michael stood still on his stair and looked doubtfully at Mr. Banks.
“Were you ever a little boy?” he said, very surprised.
Mr. Banks seemed quite hurt.
“Of course I was. A sweet little boy with long yellow curls, velvet breeches and button-up boots.”
“I can hardly believe it,” said Michael, hurrying down the stairs of his own accord and staring up at Mr. Banks.
He simply could not imagine his Father as a little boy. It seemed to him impossible that Mr. Banks had ever been anything but six feet high, middle-aged and rather bald.
“What was the name of your Governess?” asked Jane, running downstairs after Michael. “And was she nice?”
“She was called Miss Andrew and she was a Holy Terror!”
“Hush!” said Mrs. Banks, reproachfully.
“I mean—” Mr. Banks corrected himself, “she was—er—very strict. And always right. And she loved putting everybody else in the wrong and making them feel like a worm. That’s what Miss Andrew was like!”
~Chapter 2
Ha! I can remember as a young boy realizing one day that my Dad’s name wasn’t “Dad”. He had his own name, just like I had mine. It shocked me to be honest, and the world got a whole lot bigger in just those few seconds. Did you ever have some experience like that as a kid, when you just suddenly weren’t a child anymore in some minor regard and how big it was to you? Tell me about it if it did.
I included the rest of the scene because every description that Mr Banks applies to his old governess, Miss Andrews, pretty much applies to Mary Poppins as well. I’m just waiting for them to meet and for the sparks to fly!
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
This started really politically heavy, to the point where I considered dnf’ing this. But after a couple of chapters he went back to the tried and true “underdog takes on impossible odds against very unsavory people and wins” way of writing.
One thing that stood out to me this time was just how squeamish Campbell makes his good guys. They kill the bad guys but moan and piss before hand, during it and after. You’d think they were offing their own dear sainted grandmother instead of brutal thugs intent on killing them and everyone they love and know. There is a point where good guys need to keep from becoming brutal thugs themselves, but making them emotional weaklings isn’t the way to do that.
I’ll be reading final book in this trilogy but I must say, it’s the weakest story that Campbell has written so far. I don’t recommend this trilogy to anyone but hardcore Lost Fleet fans.
★★★☆☆
From the Publishers
In the three years since former fleet officer Rob Geary and former Marine Mele Darcy led improvised forces to repel attacks on the newly settled world of Glenlyon, tensions have only gotten worse. When one of Glenlyon’s warships is blown apart trying to break the blockade that has isolated the world from the rest of human-colonized space, only the destroyer Saber remains to defend it from another attack. Geary’s decision to take Saber to the nearby star Kosatka to safeguard a diplomatic mission is a risky interpretation of his orders, to say the least. Kosatka has been fighting a growing threat from so-called rebels–who are actually soldiers from aggressive colonies. When a “peacekeeping force” carrying thousands of enemy soldiers arrives in Kosatka’s star system, the people of that world, including Lochan Nakamura and former “Red” Carmen Ochoa, face an apparently hopeless battle to retain their freedom. It’s said that the best defense is a good offense. But even if a bold and risky move succeeds, Geary and Darcy may not survive 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: Jenny Trapdoor Series: Polity #25 Author: Neal Asher Rating: 4 of 5 Stars Genre: SF Pages: 122 Words: 54K
The paper version of this book is about 170pages. My ebook version calculates at about 125pages. So why it is emblazoned as a “novella” is beyond me. That’s one of my pet peeves and will stay so until publishers stop Sandersonizing everything and calling everything below 850pages a “novella”. I blame a LOT of other authors as well, but they just aren’t as well known. So Sandersonization it is.
I enjoyed this much more than the previous Polity book, War Bodies. This is fully standalone and I don’t think you need ANY familiarity with Asher’s previous Polity stories to understand what’s going on. Having that knowledge will make this better, but it won’t detract if you don’t.
Penny Royal, the Black AI, turns a dead starship captain into a giant spider drone and drops her off onto a Prador controlled world (Prador are giant, xenophobic space crabs that want to kill us, period) so she can fulfill her wish of getting revenge against the Prador for killing her, her ship and everyone aboard it. Of course, everything with Penny Royal is a multi-edged knife that is sure to cut your groin open while you just look at said knife. So we get the lead up and then Jenny’s time as a Prador killing machine and then once Penny Royal “goes good” (as much as any AI can anyway, which is all chronicled in the Polity: Transformation trilogy) her own reclamation.
This wasn’t anything groundbreaking from Asher, but at this point, I don’t really want that. I want what has worked in the past and I get a ton of it here. Prador dying in horrific detail, psychological horror as Jenny merges with a trapdoor spider that’s been implanted in her head. Yeah, all that good gross Neal Asher stuff we’ve come to expect and love.
I will take a shorter story like this any time if it means he keeps pumping them out.
★★★★☆
From the Publisher
During the prador-human war the Dark Intelligence, the AI Penny Royal, fractured and went rogue. The manipulations of this insane and incredibly dangerous intelligence were grotesque. It granted wishes that were deals with the devil, and transformed its victims into chimeras of the technological and the organic. Hunted throughout the war and beyond, it finally found redemption and apotheosis, as it moved itself beyond time. Though Jenny is terrified of the trapdoor spider that has taken up residence in her ship, the arrival of the war in her home system soon dismisses it from her mind. But the spider returns in a way she could never have conceived. . .
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.
