Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #14 ★✬☆☆☆

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Title: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #14
Authors: Peter Laird & Kevin Eastman
Rating: 1.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 51
Words: 2K

Everyone is hanging out in Casey’s old hometown. A bronze cow is stolen from the roof of a convenience store and Casey decides to solve the case. Turns out the cow is solid gold and a national treasure of Slavakia. An unscrupulous businessman is trying to buy it and the Feds are on the case. While Casey, with help from the turtles and April, bumbles about like an idiot.

Yep. I’m done. This was stupid and idiotic. Casey is just dumb and the turtles do nothing to make him smarter but simply enable his stupidity. Plus, we have ninja turtles and all the authors can think of for a storyline is a gold cow? It’s not even bad, it is worse, it is banal.

I’ve got a marvel comic I want to try next, so that will be coming later today. I figure there’s no sense wasting time and waiting until next month.

★✬☆☆☆

• All My “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” Reviews

Majestic ★★☆☆☆

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: Majestic
Series: ———-
Author: Whitley Strieber
Rating: 2 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 267
Words: 95K

Majestic is the name of the secret government agency tasked with dealing with aliens, etc in the United States Government. This book was published in 1989 and in 1993 the tv show The X-Files started airing. I will eat my hat, and quite possibly my boots too, if Chris Carter, the creator of the X-Files didn’t read this book and lift parts of it whole sale to create the X-Files mythology. The head of Majestic is even a bitter old man who has given himself cancer by smoking so much (one of the main villains in the X-Files is the Smoking Man). Because I have seen the X-Files, this felt like an origins story and was rather boring since all the bits and pieces had already been revealed. The differences and specifics were small enough and didn’t matter enough so I wasn’t really interested.

This is supposedly non-fiction posing as fiction to protect Strieber, but come on. And it committed the cardinal sin of being boring. I mean really, really, really boring. And aliens invading us, or protecting us or evolving us, or whatever the heck Strieber is claiming (all of the above at the same time plus some other stuff as far as I could tell) should NOT be boring.

I am debating whether I want to try again with Strieber. Part of writing reviews is so I can think about things like this and not make a snap decision. Sometimes not continuing isn’t even on my mind (like with Universe 2 from yesterday) until I start writing and then I can easily make a decision. This isn’t like that unfortunately. I have been considering this since about halfway through this book and I still can’t make up my mind. Am I hitting a bad run of Strieber or is he really just not for me? Is he really boring like this book? If he is, do I dare give him a 3^rd chance? Cat Magic was also very boring, so you know what? I’m done with Strieber. I’ll leave him to those who want him.

★★☆☆☆

Universe 2 ★★★☆☆

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: Universe 2
Series: Universe Anthology #2
Author: Terry Carr (ed)
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 231
Words: 70K

Marginally better than the previous volume, but with some of the names involved, I expected a LOT better. Here’s the TOC:

RETROACTIVE
by Bob Shaw

WHEN WE WENT TO SEE THE END OF THE WORLD
by Robert Silverberg

FUNERAL SERVICE
by Gerard F. Conway

A SPECIAL CONDITION IN SUMMIT CITY
by R. A. Lafferty

PATRON OF THE ARTS
by William Rotsler

USEFUL PHRASES FOR THE TOURIST
by Joanna Russ

ON THE DOWNHILL SIDE
by Harlan Ellison

THE OTHER PERCEIVER
by Pamela Sargent

MY HEAD’S IN A DIFFERENT PLACE, NOW
by Grania Davis

STALKING THE SUN
by Gordon Eklund

THE MAN WHO WAVED HELLO
by Gardner R. Dozois

THE HEADLESS MAN
by Gene Wolfe

TIGER BOY
by Edgar Pangborn

The weirdest, out there, completely bonzo’d gourd story was without a doubt the one by Grania Davis. A couple of druggies go to Mexico or South America, or some place south of California and get stoned out of their gourd and eventually turn into monsters. It was very disturbing, mainly because they had a young daughter (toddler age).

However, I still am not sold on this series. I’ll give it one more book to try to actually interest me but if it doesn’t, I’m going to have to call it quits. I’d probably be better off quitting now but I don’t have another anthology series lined up and I want that. Now that I just wrote that, that is absolutely silly. I would be better served simply not reading something than something that is sub-par, like this Universes series. So I’m done.

And this is one reason WHY I write reviews as well as rate the books I read. Being introspective sometimes takes time to allow my thoughts to stop swirling and to settle and that is when I have moments of clarity like the above paragraph.

★★★☆☆

• Universe 1

Traitor’s Gambit (WH40K: Ciaphas Cain #6.5) ★★★✬☆

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: Traitor’s Gambit
Series: WH40K: Ciaphas Cain #6.5
Authors: Sandy Mitchell
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 32
Words: 9K

Cain gets involved in stopping a group of renegade humans who want to help the alien Tau by destroying the flagship that is protecting the human’s world. They all die, Cain and Jurgen escape and Cain looks like a hero.

I like that these Cain stories deal with other villains than just the Ruinous Powers (ie, the demons from the warp) that characterized the Gaunt’s Ghost series. It is also quite interesting to see humanity rejecting the Tau because they are aliens and not humans. Their tech is better, their world/universe view seems to have a greater chance of surviving in the long term but even Cain just rejects them categorically. It shows how much the Empire of Man has truly become an Empire of the Emperor. Kind of depressing, but then, the whole point of the Warhammer 40K universe is to be depressing. Thank goodness Cain lightens things up.

★★★✬☆

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Bog Wraith - MTG 4th Edition

The Void War (Empire Rising #1) ★★★✬☆

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 Void War
Series: Empire Rising #1
Author: David Holmes
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 339
Words: 132K

Sometime in the year 3000 there is a Human Empire and some blathering idiot of a historian decides to chronicle the Rise of the Empire. Thankfully, we get a science fiction novel that tells a good cracking, exciting and interesting story instead of a dry history filled only with names, dates and statistical data. As you can probably tell, I am not a fan of history books (sorry Matt, they’re all yours!).

The Little (disgraced) Rich Boy makes good and starts becoming Somebody. Along the way he helps defeat Space Communists (Yaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!!!!) but doesn’t get to marry the Princess (Boooooooo!). However, Ensign “Chickie Boo” Underling is standing in the wings and while they hate each other at first, it’s all a big misunderstanding and so by book’s end they are besties. (Awwwwwwww!)

Everything is based on The British Navy, in Spaaaaaaace! (say that while remembering the Muppet’s skit, Pigs in Spaaaaaace). Jack Campell did this first with his Black Jack Geary aka Lost Fleet series, but unlike Campbell, Holmes skips all the boring bits (like waiting 6hrs for space missiles to actually arrive or waiting 6hrs to shoot your own space missiles) and thus we zoom along at a pretty good breakneck pace. (don’t try shooting missiles at home, kids. That is not Batman & Robin approved behavior!)

I look forward to reading more in this series and hope it stays as good as this book was.

★★★✬☆

• PG’s Ramblings 2018 Review

PCP: The Libraricus

The church I was attending at the time celebrated the 3 major feasts that are written about in the Old Testament in the Bible. It was a time to gather together, meet old friends, go to meetings (and boy howdy, there were a lot of meetings), and meet new friends. It was also one of the best times to introduce someone, as the grapevine was pretty alive. So everybody who knew me got to meet Miss Library. It really was obvious we were in love and that marriage was inevitable, but I was so introspective (too much so and still am) that I “wasn’t sure”. It really took me awhile to realize just how in love I was with her.

I was a library regular. Every weekend I’d go to the library and load up on books to read for the week. One of my big fears was running out of books to read during the week, so I always took a big stack. I became a familiar and knew the librarians and got to know the Head Librarian. So it wasn’t a big stretch to get them to open the Wadlicus up one Sunday afternoon so I could “show” Miss Library the library and spring the proposal. She tells me she had no idea. I believe her because she’s very similar to me in the subtlety regards, ie, we’re as subtle as hammers. But it was perfect. We both loved books and what could be more fitting than a proposal in a whole building dedicated to books?

Stay tuned for next week’s post-wedding adventure in… The Land of Snow and Ice!

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