12 Years and Counting

 

Ahhh, see that last part of that sentence, the part where it says "...the good blogging"? Yeah, I remember when Wordpress was about the bloggers. Pepperidge Farms remembers too!

Please excuse me as I stomp off and sulk in the corner...

SciFiMonth Friday Fives: Strange New Worlds

 

Today I participate for the first time in #Scifimonth2025. Each Friday they have a theme based around the number 5. Today's theme is Strange New Worlds: Places We'd Love to Visit. So while I hate traveling in real life, I am more than happy to travel in the books I read. So without further ado, here are five SF worlds I'd love to visit.

Prism. An intriguing world that I have visited five times since 2000. Sentenced to Prism is a wonderful standalone book by Alan Dean Foster that explores a world made of crystal instead of flesh and blood. The cover drew me in as a teenager in the 90's and now I find it to be like mashed potatoes, warm and comforting.

Otherland. Technically, this is/was a prototype virtual reality, but it is its own place. The Otherland Tetralogy by Tad Williams is some of my favorite SF to date. Considering my last re-read of it was back in 2011, it is about time to add it to the TBR pile again :-D

Spatterjay. A world infested by a virus that turns you into an immortal, nigh indestructible being. The downside is that you constantly want to eat everything, even other people and you can possibly (usually, sigh) go stark raving mad and have to be put down. But I've always wondered, could I handle the Spatterjay virus? Neal Asher shows us varying cases of failures and successes in his Spatterjay Trilogy.

The City World of Coruscant, the capital of the Star Wars galaxy. Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allston did a wonderful job of bringing Coruscant to life in their X-Wing books. Given my penchant for "paving the planet", I'd fit right in on Coruscant, a knock-off copy of Trantor. But most of Star Wars is a knock-off, if you know what you're looking for. And that's no knock on Star Wars ;-)

Dune, Arrakis, Rakis. The world of the giant sandworms, of the Spice, of Fremen, of continent sized dust storms. Frank Herbert created a modern classic with Dune, and while I am not sure I'd actually like to visit such a place, the very challenge of survival draws me in. 

Groo’s Clothes (Groo the Wanderer #46) 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: Groo’s Clothes
Series: Groo the Wanderer #46
Author: Sergio Aragones
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 25
Words: 2K
Publish: 1988

Groo is hungry and needs kopins. He accidentally sinks a boat and everyone starts telling him how smelly he is. After not taking a bath for weeks, wearing the same clothes for years, carrying two fish in his clothes for a day and sleeping in a pigpen, Groo can’t understand why no one will hire him. He proceeds to hit various people on the head and steal their clothes. This leads him to being mistaken for very non-Groo people, like a world famous architect, or a brain surgeon, with very predictable and Groo-like outcomes, hahahahaa. Groo eventually steals his own clothes back from a scarecrow. He is then hired by a mercenary and given kopins to go buy himself some new clothes, which he does. Only he forgets who hired him and wanders around the town asking people if they hired him. Some tough guys start making fun of his clothes, not realizing he is Groo. Groo attacks them, gets his clothes all cut up and then finds the mercenary who hired him and who demands why Groo didn’t buy himself some new clothes (the new clothes were all cut up in the fight with the toughs AND Groo fell into a pot or orange dye). Groo reacts as only Groo can and starts attacking everybody. Both armies race away from the fray for their lives.

The clothes that you see Groo wearing on the cover are the actual ones in the comic. And it only takes Aragones four pages to have Groo turn them back into his old clothes. Each step along the process made total sense, especially for Groo, and nothing about it felt forced or out of place. It was hilarious!

The page I’m showing for this comic is the one of Groo sleeping in the pigpen. It just struck my funny bone :-)

★★★✬☆

• All of My “Groo the Wanderer” Reviews

D is for Deadbeat (Kinsey Millhone #4) 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: D is for Deadbeat
Series: Kinsey Millhone #4
Author: Sue Grafton
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 209
Words: 72K
Publish: 1987

Ahhhh, Kinsey is just a stupid woman. Call me sexist, but while I can understand a man being stupid (because I usually understand the WHY of why he’s being stupid), I simply do not understand some, errrr, most of the things Kinsey does, I just don’t. What she reacts to, and how she reacts to those things, completely mystifies me. And not in an inscrutable way, but in a head scratching “WUUUUUT?!?” kind of way.

Which leads to you asking “But Master Bookstooge, WHY did you give this 3stars then?” That is very astute of you, oh useless student who I’ve taken pity on. Maybe once you’ve worked like a death slave for me for another four years you’ll understand the Mysterious Ways of Master Bookstooge.

Needless to say, I think I’m fast approaching Maximum Nopeage for this series. But today is not that day!

★★★☆☆

From Fandom

Kinsey Millhone receives a contract from ex-con Alvin Limardo to deliver a cashier's check for twenty-five thousand dollars to a fifteen-year-old boy named Tony Gahan. According to Limardo, Tony helped him through a tough time in his life, leaving Limardo indebted. However, when the retainer check Limardo made out to Kinsey for four hundred dollars bounces, she learns that Alvin Limardo is actually John Daggett, a man known by all and liked by few, and recently released from a local prison. He is also a bigamist. His first wife Essie's fanatical religious views have kept her married to Daggett, while Daggett, in disregard of his marital status, underwent a second marriage to Lovella on his release from prison, whom he has subjected to domestic abuse.

In her search to find Daggett and get her money back, she discovers that he was found dead on the beach only a few days after hiring her. Through Daggett's daughter Barbara, Kinsey learns that Tony Gahan was the sole survivor of a family killed in a car accident caused by Daggett, for which he received a conviction on charges of vehicular manslaughter. Tony's been a wreck since the death of his family, rarely sleeping and doing poorly in school. He now lives with his uncle and aunt, Ramona and Ferrin Westfall. Also killed in the accident was a friend of Tony's young sister, and a boy called Doug Polokowski, who had hitched a ride in the car. Kinsey tracks down an ex-con friend of Daggett's, Billy Polo, now living in a trailer park with his sister, Coral. Billy introduced Lovella to Daggett. Kinsey finds out that Doug Polokowski was Billy and Coral's brother. There's no shortage of people with a motive for Daggett's death, but the police are classifying it as an accident.

Kinsey discovers that shortly before his death Daggett was staggering about drunk at the marina in the company of a blonde woman in a green outfit. She sets out to discover which of the numerous blonde women in the case might be the killer. She also suspects that Billy Polo is not giving her the full truth about his involvement with Daggett, a suspicion confirmed when Coral finally levels with Kinsey and reveals him to be blackmailing someone he suspects of Daggett's killing. The blackmailer murders Polo at the beach, using Kinsey's own gun, stolen from her car a few days earlier. Coral also admits to scheming with Billy and Lovella to rob Daggett of money he had come by illicitly in prison, not knowing that Daggett had given the money to Kinsey to pass on to Tony.

The police investigating Billy's murder discover a home-made silencer used in the killing. Kinsey immediately recognises the towelling used as padding as coming from the Westfall household, and Ramona jumps to the top of her suspect list. This means confronting Tony, who has given Ramona an alibi for the time of Daggett's death. In pursuing Tony, Kinsey realises Tony himself, dressed as a woman in his aunt's wig, was actually the killer. He was also the one who stole her gun, and killed Billy Polo, who had recognized Tony at Daggett's funeral. Killing the man who killed his family has done nothing to ease Tony's torment, however, and he commits suicide by throwing himself off a building in front of Kinsey, despite her best effort to talk him down.

Ivory Tower - MTG 4E

 

This was another card, much like Howling Mine or Black Vise, that I really liked the idea of it, but could never actually make it work. The problem is that cards in your hand aren't doing anything and you need those cards to be out on the field, doing something. Sure, it's nice to get a little life, but all it takes is one Goblin Rock Sled smacking you and your life gain is nullified. And if you have 5 useless cards in your hand, then you probably built your deck wrong.

I am sure some game genius could have built a deck and made this work wonderfully, but I was not that genius. So I know I tried this a couple of times and the deck always fizzled and never won me a game. But that was the whole fun to be honest, trying out strategies to see if you could get something to work. As long as you didn't take losing, personally. 

Tower Lord (A Raven’s Shadow #2) 1Star DNF@74%

 

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: Tower Lord
Series: A Raven’s Shadow #2
Author: Anthony Ryan
Rating: 1 of 5 Stars DNF@74%
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 638 / 471
Words: 239K / 176K
Publish: 2014

Due to some of the moral subject matters brought up in this story, I decided to dnf this book and to add Ryan to my list of authors to avoid in the future. I am leaving the synopsis unhidden so this post isn't just 5 words long :-/

★☆☆☆☆

From Fandom.com

The book follows four POV characters, each with their own separate plot lines that overlap and interweave to tell the story: Vaelin Al Sorna, Frentis, Princess Lyrna Al Nieren, and new character Reva Mustor. The chapters are divided into sections, each proceeded by a first person narrative recounting from Lord Verniers, the Alpiran Imperial Chronicler (much like Blood Song). Lord Verniers is in the captivity of a high-ranking Volarian noble, who commands the army attacking Alltor, and his wife.

Vaelin returns to the Realm determined to reunite with his sister and find his lost brother Frentis. After he disembarks from a ship, presumably from the Alpiran Empire, he encounters Reva, who is given the task of retrieving the sword of the deceased Trueblade, her father Hentes Mustor. Reva detests him at first, but gradually accepts his companionship and training when Vaelin tells her he knows where the sword can be found. She is confused as to why he trains her when she plans to kill him, but the blood song tells him it will be necessary later. They travel together until by complete happenstance, they meet Vaelin's old sergeant turned traveling minstrel Janril Norin and his wife, Ellora. They eventually reach Varinshold, where Vaelin finds his sister Alornis and Alucius Al Hestian, a former soldier and companion to Princess Lyrna, residing in his family's old run-down estate.

Vaelin attempted to keep his return to the realm a secret until this point, but he has no choice but to reveal his identity to petition for his sister and their family estate. He meets with King Malcius and his queen, who apparently is not of the Faith, and swears his loyalty to them. He requests the opportunity to search for Brother Frentis, however the well-meaning but weak King Malcius Al Nieren has other ideas, and appoints him Tower Lord of the Northern Reaches. Vaelin is initially tempted to refuse, but the blood song tells him to accept. After he consults with Alornis' master, the famed artist Master Lenial, and brief meetings with Brother Caenis (now Brother Commander), Aspect Tendris al Forne and Aspect Arlyn, they depart for the North, much to the reluctance of Alornis. Along the way, Vaelin reveals the truth about the Trueblade's sword to Reva, telling her he doesn't know where the sword is. He tries to convince her to leave her old ways and join them as a true friend and sister, but her internal conflict overpowers her and she flees, now armed with great skill in combat due to Vaelin's training. Alornis, who grew fond of Reva, is upset about this, but Vaelin soothes over her anger by telling her his complete history, including the details of his blood song and how it instructed him to let her go. In the north, Vaelin proves himself a peacemaker among the many Dark gifted people, despite his reputation and their initial uncertainty and hostility towards him.

We follow Princess Lyrna on her journey as an ambassador to the High Priestess of the Lonak. Her journey opens her eyes to many things, she meets a minion of the One Who Waits and finally finds proof that the Dark exists. However, she has countless more new questions than answers.

Reva, the orphaned daughter of the Trueblade, has been pushed to seek revenge for her father’s death, but after an encounter with Vaelin she begins to question many facts about her life. When she foils an assassination attempt on her estranged uncle, the Fief Lord of Cumbrael, she finally breaks from her past, and finds a family and a future as heir to the Fief Lord.

And finally, Frentis is in fact alive, and finds himself magically enslaved by a mysterious woman on an assassination spree all across the world in preparation for a dark purpose. The purpose is finally revealed when Frentis’s journey ends in the Unified Realm where he is forced to kill King Malcius, triggering the massive invasion of the Realm by the Volarian Empire.

Vaelin learns of the invasion from his Blood Song, and gathers an eclectic army of North Guards, some gifted northerners, Eorhil horsemen, Seordah warriors, the remnants of the Realm Guard, and his old friends and former brothers Caenis and Nortah.

Meanwhile, Princess Lyrna is taken captive by the Volarians like many of her people, but no one knows who she is because her face was badly burned during the initial attack. Thanks to her shrewdness and intelligence, and a surprisingly friendly shark, she escapes to the Meldenean Islands, where she and the Shield destroy the Volarian fleet.

At last Frentis has escaped his magical enslavement, and fights a desperate guerrilla war against the Volarians, during which he finally learns who is the mysterious Aspect of the Seventh Order.

The action culminates at the siege of the Cumbraelin capital Alltor, where Reva fights a desperate defence of the city against the Volarian host. Just as Alltor seems lost, Vaelin and his host, and Princess Lyrna and her Meldenean fleet, arrive and crush the Volarians.

As she walks ashore after the victory, Princess Lyrna is recognised as the new Queen of the Unified Realm. Now all she needs to do is free Asreal from the enemy, deal with the traitorous Renfaelins, and ultimately destroy the Volarian Empire and their ally the One Who Waits. At her side will be the ultimate warrior Vaelin Al Sorna, although he seems to have lost his Blood Song. What could possibly go wrong?

• All of My “Anthony Ryan” Reviews

Tower of Silence (Saga of the Forgotten Warrior #4) 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: Tower of Silence
Series: Saga of the Forgotten Warrior #4
Author: Larry Correia
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 374
Words: 132K
Publish: 2023

I have realized that at least for this readthrough of this series, none of the books will be getting higher than four stars. Correia is a fun author, a great pulpy author, but he’s no Rex Stout. Seeing Correia write outside his typical urban fantasy gunporn (ie, Monster Hunter International) does tend to show his weaknesses, that is, the characters. They are decent, they are not cardboard, but they are not nearly as real as Nero Wolfe or Archie Goodwin. The thing is, I wonder if I felt the same way about the MHI characters on my first read through of that series?

So I am still enjoying this series, quite a bit. It is furious action coupled with some very interesting world building that is fusing the traditional fantasy with hints of science fiction. The theology, which plays a vital albeit rather non-specific part, still escapes my grasp. I’m hoping by the end of the series that I’ll understand a bit more. Politics are playing just the right amount without becoming annoying at all.

By this point in the series, I’m definitely recommending it.

★★★★☆

From https://upstreamreviews.substack.com/

After the events of DESTROYER OF WORLDS, the casteless rebellion is scattered and the surviving characters have to make do without Ashok in their ranks. Thus we find them each engaged in their own plans as they wage a war for survival against the government.

Grand Inquisitor Omand Vokkan continues to put his plan into motion to eradicate the casteless and the representative government alike, seizing control of everything. We learn in a flashback that the Inquisition has had a demon in captivity for decades, which they harvest for magic and information. The demon will tell Omand the location of a certain “source” in exchange for all of the casteless being killed, as they are the blood descendants of Ramrowan, the ancient god that defeated the demons the last time they attacked the world.

The demon tricks an eager Omand into sending a band of wizards into a trap, where they accidentally activate a sleeping cell of insect-like demons that slaughter and destroy anything living, and are almost impossible to stop. Omand repays this betrayal with a trick of his own, allowing the demon to think that the casteless have been slaughtered, thus learning the location of the “source” that he’s after, north in the jungle. Upon hearing this the demon activates a spell to notify others of his ilk that it’s time to invade Lok again. Omand isn’t quite sure what, but the demons have activated a spell of some kind, and we learn in an epilogue that (perhaps) all freshwater in Lok—even hundreds of miles inland—has been converted to saltwater…

Ashok Vadal wakes up on the Isle of Fortress, imprisoned, half-starved, and on trial. The residents think he’s a false Ramrowan Reborn, something they’ve seen before, and while Ashok doesn’t lay claim to the title, he does perform several feats of superhuman strength that lead them to believe he’s the real deal. He escapes imprisonment and falls in with a local monk, Dondrub, who gives him the rundown of Fortress’s current political and religious divisions. The Isle is rich with technological knowledge but poor in other resources, especially for creating guns, which they’re known for. Dondrub shows Ashok the underground/undersea tunnel that Fortress smugglers use to get to Lok, but it’s occupied by a demon god. Ashok slays this creature and takes its head back to Fortress, deposing another false Ramrowan along the way, although Dondrub dies in the conflict.

With the tunnel cleared, Ashok returns to Lok, just in time to learn that an enemy house has found the casteless rebels and is about to annihilate them. He rushes into battle and finds their champion, a new black steel swordbearer named Akerselem. They duel, and for the first time in his life Ashok is almost equally matched, as Akerselem’s sword gives him the same knowledge and skill that Angruvadal gives to Ashok. In the end Ashok triumphs and cuts off Akerselem’s sword arm, defeating him, and ultimately taking up his sword for himself. Once again Ashok has an ancestor blade.

Keta, Keeper of Names, continues to lead the casteless rebels as their priest, though the situation continues to worsen. He does his best to fend off Akerselem’s forces at the rebels’ hiding place, and while he’s just a man, he dies heroically against a black steel swordbearer, leaving the descendants of Ramrowan without a spiritual guide.

Javed, an Inquisition spy planted among the rebels, has been feeding information about them to Omand. When two young hunters find him communicating with his master, Javed kills them and hides their bodies, though the act shames him and he eventually struggles with his loyalties. At the end he’s visited by Mother Dawn, a traveling demigod who takes the form of witches and other things, to tell him that her loyalists (the rebels) need a Keeper of Names. He is to fill the void that Keta left behind. The rebels know what he did though, so this will be no small hurdle to overcome.

As for the prophetess Thera Vane, she continues to lead the rebellion though she misses having Ashok at her side, and she has to make do with lesser assets. One of her more key discoveries is that the mute and damaged children she rescued from the House of Assassins are actually capable of magic, and are slowly coming back to their senses. She’s able to nurture them back to sanity and they make powerful contributions to the rebels’ efforts, helping to destroy aqueducts that deliver water to their enemies. Near the end she learns that Javed is a traitor, and she sows doubt in him that he’s on the right side. Her part of the story ends when she’s captured and swept away to be put on trial, only to be intercepted by Dhaval Makao, a man she ran away from years ago…who is her legal husband.

Once again, the fates of warrior Jagdish, scholar Rada, and protector Karno are intertwined. Jagdish is now a high-ranking officer in House Vadal, which faces border invasions from Akerselem and his new army. House leader Harta Vadal wants Jagdish to face Akerselem in open combat with the hope that somebody will kill him and Vadal will once again have an ancestor blade. (As a reminder, their sword was Angruvadal, which was lost when Ashok was exiled in book 1, and later shattered.)

Rada, meanwhile, communicates from time to time with the black steel mirror that she carries, gifted to her by her late mentor. While made of the same material as the ancestor blades, it performs differently, opening a communication channel to a powerful entity loyal to the Forgotten Gods. Rada and Karno accompany Jagdish and a detachment of his soldiers on an expedition, only to come across the band of wizards that Omand unknowingly sent into a trap. Several of Jagdish’s soldiers are killed by the demon-insects, which almost overwhelm Karno, and nobody escapes unscathed. Rada appeals to the entity in the mirror, who isn’t overly concerned with the humans and their quest, until Rada explains that saving them means they can be useful to the gods later.

The mirror then summons up a force field around Jagdish, Rada, and the other survivors and fires a superweapon from somewhere unknown, obliterating all of the demon-insects that were trying to kill them.

When they report their findings back to Harta Vadal, he wants to know if this super weapon can be conjured up again and controlled. Rada is more worried about the demon insects and the affairs of the Gods, as things continue to intensify.

Lord Protector Devedas has a diminished role in this story, but he’s not out of it. Riding high on a wave of popular support after defeating Ashok, he only becomes more useful to Omand and his scheming. When the time is right for a perverse act of governmental subversion, Omand calls for all power to be concentrated in Devedas to deal with the rebel crisis, under the condition that Devedas will of course give up his power once the problem is solved.

In conclusion, this story covers a scattered cast of characters who do their best to move toward their group goals even without being able to rely on each other