Shards of Honor (Vorkosigan Saga #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: Shards of Honor
Series: Vorkosigan Saga #1
Author: Lois Bujold
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 222
Words: 80K
Publish: 1986

My eyes, my eyes, my manly eyes! Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh……

I didn’t realize this was going to be a romance. Of course, romance fans would cry out that their delicate feelings had been manhandled by all the science fiction, so both camps should be unhappy. I HATE when authors like Bujold pull crap like this. I almost rage quit the first time “his long eye lashes” were mentioned. Even as I’m writing this review I’m getting upset.

Bloody expectations. If I had known this had female wish fulfillment elements (like Mack Bolan the Executioner is male wish fulfillment) I would have been prepared, as much as I could be anyway. I do not want to read a book where I am in a woman’s head as she’s thinking about some guy and all her feelin’z. Spare me!

The story is still decent and I do plan on reading more. BUT! I will be putting on my man armor when I go to read future books so any “romanz thoughtz” bounce off and don’t stab me in the back. And I’m bringing a gun to that knife fight.

Bookstooge's Man Armor Mark I

★★★☆☆

From Wikipedia

Cordelia Naismith, the captain of a Betan Astronomical Survey ship, is exploring a newly discovered planet when her base camp is attacked. While investigating, she is surprised by a soldier, hits her head on a rock, and awakens to find that, while most of her crew has escaped, she is marooned with an injured Betan ensign and Captain Lord Aral Vorkosigan of Barrayar, notorious as the "Butcher of Komarr", who has been left for dead by a treacherous rival. During their five-day hike to a secret Barrayaran cache, she finds Vorkosigan not at all the monster his reputation suggests, and she is strongly attracted to him.

When the trio reaches the base camp, Vorkosigan regains command of his crew. He returns to his ship with Cordelia and her crewman as his nominal prisoners. She meets Sergeant Bothari, a career soldier with mental problems which he controls through adherence to rules and an attachment to a strong commander—in this case, Vorkosigan.

Vorkosigan informs Cordelia that upon their arrival on Barrayar, she will be free to return to Beta Colony; however, he asks her to marry him and remain on Barrayar as Lady Vorkosigan. Before she can consider his request, the crew of her ship, who have returned against her orders, join forces with Vorkosigan's rivals to "rescue" her. Cordelia helps defeat the resulting mutiny before returning with her crew to Beta Colony. During her captivity, she realizes that the Barrayarans seized the planet because the system it is in provides a way to reach Escobar. Escobar is a rich system with many "wormhole" access points and thus control over a lot of interstellar trade.

The invasion of Escobar is led by Crown Prince Serg Vorbarra, the vicious son and heir of Emperor Ezar. Now a captain in the Betan Expeditionary Force, Cordelia goes to Escobar in command of a decoy ship that distracts the Barrayaran ships on picket duty at the wormhole exit so that transport ships can deliver a devastating new Betan weapon to the defenders. She is captured by the sadistic Admiral Vorrutyer, who orders Sergeant Bothari to rape her. Bothari refuses, calling her "Admiral Vorkosigan's prisoner". Vorrutyer, Vorkosigan's embittered ex-lover, decides to do the job himself. As she fills a profound psychological need of his, Bothari kills Vorrutyer before he can do anything. Vorkosigan, having heard Vorrutyer is holding Cordelia captive, comes to kill him himself, only to find the deed already done. He hides Cordelia and Bothari in his cabin. In disgrace, he has been assigned a minor role in the invasion under the watchful eye of Imperial Security Lieutenant Simon Illyan, who has a brain implant that gives him total recall of all he sees and hears. However, he is required to report only to the Emperor, so he does nothing when Vorkosigan concocts a story that Cordelia killed Vorrutyer and escaped.

The new weapons enable the Escobarans to drive the Barrayarans back with heavy losses. Crown Prince Serg and his flagship are lost, as are all officers senior to Vorkosigan, leaving him in charge. He commands his fleet's retreat under fire. Cordelia overhears one critical fact and deduces that the entire invasion was orchestrated by the dying Emperor to remove his unstable son (via an honorable death in battle) and discredit the war party in order to avert a civil war after his death. When Vorkosigan no longer needs to hide her in his cabin, she is placed in the brig. When the ship is attacked, Cordelia is injured when the violent maneuvers toss her around her cell.

Cordelia recovers in a prison camp on the same planet where she first met Vorkosigan. The camp inmates, mostly women, have been mistreated and in some cases raped by their captors. When Vorkosigan finds out, he summarily executes the commanding officer. Cordelia assumes command of the POWs by virtue of her rank and spends much of her time dealing directly with Vorkosigan. She informs him she knows the real reason for the Escobar campaign. She again rejects his marriage proposal because she sees what Barrayaran society does to people.

When the war ends, prisoners are exchanged. Vorkosigan has to deal with some uterine replicators – artificial wombs, each containing a fetus from a prisoner raped by a Barrayaran soldier; one of the fetuses is Bothari's. The Escobarans refuse to take them, so Vorkosigan arranges for their care and later adoption on Barrayar.

On her way back to Beta Colony, Cordelia is unable to convince a psychiatrist that her injuries are not the result of being tortured by Vorkosigan, and her fervent denials only make it seem she has been psychologically tampered with; she is suspected of being an unwitting Barrayaran mole. She fears that she will be interrogated using drugs and reveal damaging information about Vorkosigan.

She escapes to Barrayar and marries Vorkosigan. She also encounters Bothari, now one of Vorkosigan's father's personal guards and somewhat saner, thanks to better medical care. Bothari's daughter Elena is cared for by a local woman.

The dying Emperor Ezar Vorbarra wants Aral to become the regent to his grandson and heir, the four-year-old Prince Gregor Vorbarra. Aral at first refuses, but Cordelia convinces him to take the job.

Slave (Groo the Wanderer #43) 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: Slave
Series: Groo the Wanderer #43
Author: Sergio Aragones
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 24
Words: 2K
Publish: 1988

The misadventures occasioned by Granny Groo continue. Granny sells Groo into slavery and tells Rufferto (Groo’s dog) to guard Groo’s swords. Thus she gets rid of both Groo and Rufferto, gets some money and goes on her way unhindered.

There is a running gag (one among many) about Groo being called “mendicant” and going ballistic about it because he doesn’t know what it means but thinks it is an insult. Aragones leans HARD into that joke in the following panel. I laughed my head off:

Of course Groo and Rufferto (now Rufferto the Swordsdog!) are reunited. Considering Granny stole away, I am kind of hoping Aragones is done with her character for now and we get somebody new for Groo to interact with. We’ll see what future issues hold.

I thoroughly enjoyed this 24 page comic. I laughed, then I laughed some more and finally, I laughed even more. Aragones humor, while not exactly like mine, parallels it enough that he never fails to get a good chuckle from me. I always look forward to reading the Groo comic each month and I want to keep it that way. If I was in a weird mood, I could read 20 Groo comics in a row and have a Groo Month, but I know I would burn out and that is a fate I want to avoid at all costs.

★★★✬☆

From Bookstooge

After the debacle from the previous issue, Groo and Granny are chased out of town by an angry mob. Granny wants to recoup some of what she lost AND get rid of Groo. She convinces Groo she is going to sell him as a slave and then “save” him later, like she used to do when he was a child. She gives Groo’s swords to Rufferto and sells Groo into slavery. Without his swords, Groo is helpless. Rufferto is very proud of now being a Swordsdog and brags to all the local dogs, who laugh at him. Even as an unarmed slave, Groo gets into so much trouble that everyone wants to kill him and without his swords, everybody IS about to kill him. Rufferto shows up at the last second and gives Groo his swords and thus the tables are turned on everybody else. Groo and Rufferto are reunited in their proper role as Unstoppable Swordsman and Trusty Canine Companion. The issue ends with Groo wondering how Granny is going to rescue him since he already rescued himself.

• All of My “Groo the Wanderer” Reviews

Lord of the Isles (Lord of the Isles #1) 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: Lord of the Isles
Series: Lord of the Isles #1
Author: David Drake
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Epic Fantasy
Pages: 681
Words: 199K
Publish: 1997

Ahhh, the 90’s. A mythic time when everybody and their brother was writing an Epic Fantasy series so big, so fantastic that it was sure to top the book charts and become immortalized forever. Jordan, Martin, Goodkind, Erikson, Weiss & Hickman, Cook and Williams, just to name the authors that spring to my mind. Us fantasy fans ate it up with a spoon and asked for more! Authors like David Drake took up the challenge and churned out their own epics, which nobody would remember, nor, in all honesty, should they.

The strength of the Lord of the Isles series was that Drake turned them out every 12-18 months. He wrote a total of nine books from 1997 to 2008 and he finished up the story. He gave us what we wanted and we got our fix almost every year, like the junkies we were. Bloody magical mayhem with main characters punching their way through a maelstrom of demons and otherworldly monsters. It was fantastic.

The weakness of the Lord of the Isles series was that Drake turned them out every 12-18 months. The action was fast and furious, but the characters were about as deep as cardboard. Stock, cliched phrases defined who the characters were. They weren’t people, they were tropes.

When I first read Lord of the Isles (the book, not the entire series) in ‘97, I loved it so much that my brother gave me his hardcover copy for my birthday. I was happy as a clam. As each book came out I enjoyed them even while realizing how shallow they were. I got my magical mayhem fix and that was all I was looking for. Once Drake had finished the Lord of the Isles series, he began another unrelated series and I realized he was writing almost the same story with pieces just moved around and I gave up on him. I had not recorded or reviewed that I had read the first three books in the Lord of the Isles series so in 2012-2013 I remedied that but stopped after book three as I then had all nine books in the series recorded.

Which brings us to 2025. I am always looking for books and series to re-read (you can see some of my reasoning in my old post “Why I re-read” from 2018) and I remembered how much I had enjoyed Lord of the Isles and so the whole series went into the tbr rotation. I also remember how wooden Drake made his characters though, so I decided to break the series up by interspersing it with the Dracule Files. I’d read three of the Dracula books, then three of the Lord of the Isles books, then Dracula, rinse and repeat. That gave me a break and I vaguely remembered the nine books being broken up, story wise, into three trilogies, so that would work out well too. Which FINALLY brings us to the actual review of this specific book.

I usually compare books to food. I haven’t done that in a while and I’m not going to do it here either. But I have found that I like to compare the books I read to other things that I have an emotional resonance with or against, depending on the book in question. This time I’m going to compare it to a music album I came across years ago. Gregorian: The Dark Side of the Chant. I’d say the album cover describes it well enough. It also describes this book.

There are six main characters who all meet in a small village, go their separate ways, have an unending stream of world shaking adventures and then come back together to have the biggest adventure of all. Then it is revealed that that was just the tip of the iceberg, so stay turned for the next book!

We get everything from cannibal eskimos to humanoid insectivores to slime liches to parasitic demon trees to literal demons and boy howdy, do our characters mow through them like they are on a rocket powered lawn mower.

The weakness I talked about before are all here, in smaller doses so for this book it isn’t intolerable. But it is why this will never get more than 4stars from me and I suspect that after this series re-read that I will not consider re-reading it again. I did debate about even re-reading the entire series after finishing this one book, but that streak of masochism I have buried deep inside of me decided to show up and so I’ll be reading the whole series, no matter how much I suffer. Much like the read of Neuromancer, this will be A Project and not just a read. But it shouldn’t be a hate read as I plan on ringing every drop of enjoyment out of the series that I can :-D Magical mayhem and demon guts all over the place has a special spot in my hard little grinchy heart, hahahahaa.

★★★★☆

From the Publisher

Into this world, as the wellsprings of magical power rise to a millennial height, a sorceress from a thousand years past is cast upon the shore of a small island. She has survived the cataclysm that destroyed the powerful empire of the Isles in her time. She finds herself in a small town far from the new centers of power, but among a small group who, all unknowing, will become the focus of a new struggle for dominance and magical power that will shake this world, and others.

For The Hooded One, the most powerful sorcerer of all time, has also survived the ancient catastrophe he created. The peace of the small village is destroyed in an instant, and the young principles must set out on a quest to meet their destiny.

• Lord of the Isles (2013 Review)

Moonraker (James Bond #3) 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: Moonraker
Series: James Bond #3
Author: Ian Fleming
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 211
Words: 74K
Publish: 1955

Matt reviewed the movie version of Moonraker last year, and while I knew from his review that the movie and book shared almost nothing, I still had this idea of Bond going into space and doing something.

Not in this book.

A Nazi, who has hidden his old allegiances, has built a super missile that can reach anywhere in Europe from England. This is supposed to give England the upper edge and the government is just wild about it. Everything seems to be going smoothly until one of their two operatives dies. Bond replaces him and tries to find out what “might” be going on. Agent Girl and Bond bond over an almost successful assassination attempt on them both and realize the German guy and his 50-100 “scyenzetists” are nazis in disguise who are hellbent on sending a nuclear tipped missile into the center of London with help from the Russkies.

While this was fun, it was also the most ridiculuous thing I have read in a very long time. The English government is sinking tons of money into this military project and they only have 2 agents looking out for their interests? There was no oversite, no military presence double and triple checking everything? Bond and Agent Girl survive the rocket taking off and the superheated steam it produces by dunking themselves in cold water 10minutes before it happens? Plus some other things. I don’t mind ridiculous in many stories if it doesn’t take me out of the story, but those two things I mentioned just felt like hitting a brickwall while going 60mph.

I still enjoyed the adventure and it didn’t make me want to stop, but it did make me glad that I’m switching this series and Discworld every three to four books. I don’t think I could read more than three of these in one rotation.

★★★☆☆

From Wikipedia

The British Secret Service agent James Bond is asked by his superior, M, to join him at M's club, Blades. A club member, the multi-millionaire businessman Sir Hugo Drax, is winning considerable money playing bridge, seemingly against the odds. M suspects Drax is cheating, and while claiming indifference, is concerned as to why a multi-millionaire and national hero would cheat. Bond confirms Drax's deception and manages to turn the tables—aided by a stacked deck of cards—and wins £15,000 (about seven times his own annual salary).

Drax is the product of a mysterious background, purportedly unknown even to himself. Presumed to have been a British Army soldier during the Second World War, he was badly injured and stricken with amnesia in the explosion of a bomb planted by a German saboteur at a British field headquarters. After extensive rehabilitation in an army hospital, he returned home to become a wealthy industrialist. After building his fortune and establishing himself in business and society, Drax started building the "Moonraker", Britain's first nuclear missile project, intended to defend Britain against its Cold War enemies. The Moonraker rocket is an upgraded V-2 rocket using liquid hydrogen and fluorine as propellants; to withstand the ultra-high combustion temperatures of its engine, it uses columbite, in which Drax had a monopoly. Because the rocket's engine can withstand high heat, the Moonraker is able to use these powerful fuels, expanding its range across Europe.

After a Ministry of Supply security officer working at the project is shot dead, M assigns Bond to replace him and also to investigate what has been going on at the missile-building base, located between Dover and Deal on the south coast of England. All the rocket scientists working on the project are German. At his post on the complex, Bond meets Gala Brand, a beautiful police Special Branch officer working undercover as Drax's personal assistant. Bond also uncovers clues concerning his predecessor's death, concluding that the man may have been killed for witnessing a submarine off the coast.

Bond catches Drax's henchman Krebs snooping through his room. Later, an attempted assassination by triggering a landslide nearly kills Bond and Brand, as they sunbathe beneath the Dover cliffs. Drax takes Brand to London, where she discovers the truth about the Moonraker by comparing her own launch trajectory figures with those in a notebook picked from Drax's pocket. She is captured by Krebs, and finds herself captive in a secret radio homing station—intended to serve as a beacon for the missile's guidance system—in the heart of London. While Brand is being taken back to the Moonraker facility by Drax, Bond gives chase, but is also captured by Drax and Krebs.

Drax tells Bond that he was never a British soldier and has never suffered from amnesia: his real name is Graf Hugo von der Drache, the German commander of a Werwolf commando unit. Disguised in an Allied uniform, he was the saboteur whose team placed the car bomb at the army field headquarters, only to be injured himself in the detonation. The amnesia story was simply a cover he used while recovering in hospital to avoid recognition, although it would lead to a whole new British identity. Drax remains a dedicated Nazi, bent on revenge against England for the wartime defeat of his Fatherland and his prior history of social slights suffered as a youth growing up in an English boarding school before the war. He explains that he now means to destroy London, with a Soviet-supplied nuclear warhead that has been secretly fitted to the Moonraker. His company is also selling the British pound short in order to make a huge profit from the disaster.

Brand and Bond are imprisoned where the blast from the Moonraker's engines will incinerate them, to leave no trace of them once the missile is launched. Before the launch, the couple escape. Brand gives Bond the coordinates he needs to redirect the gyros and send the Moonraker into the sea. Having been in collaboration with Soviet Intelligence all along, Drax and his henchmen escape by Soviet submarine—only to be killed as the vessel makes its escape through the waters onto which the Moonraker has been re-targeted. After their debriefing at headquarters, Bond meets up with Brand, expecting her company—but they part ways after she reveals that she is engaged to a fellow Special Branch officer.

Hurr Jackal - MTG 4E

 

He'll not only eat your liver, but your face as well! THEN he'll steal all your chickens ;-)

Evil Triumphant (Dark Conspiracy #3) 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: Evil Triumphant
Series: Dark Conspiracy #3
Author: Michael Stackpole
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 269
Words: 95K
Publish: 1992

A very whimper’y end to this trilogy. It wasn’t even necessarily bad, it just was Stackpole writing a story he felt nothing for and so it was just a book he wrote to pay the bills. Sometimes you can’t tell when an author does that, but Stackpole shows his heart on his sleeve when it comes to his writing.

Overall, I am glad to have finally read this trilogy by Stackpole but I do wish it had had more heart.

Well, I can’t win them all I guess.

★★★☆☆

From the Publisher & Bookstooge

In this concluding volume of the Fiddleback Trilogy, the old saying that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," is sorely put to the test. Pygmalion, apprentice to the Dark Lord Fiddleback, has rebelled against his master and has established himself as a Dark Lord. To defeat him, Coyote and Fiddleback must join forces.

Pygmalion is not without his own allies. He has taken an apprentice, the god-man Ryuhito, grandson of the Japanese Emperor. Through him, Pygmalion horrific power is amplified. But the fires of betrayal burn within Ryuhito's heart, and his grandfather will spare no expense to get his grandson back.

Deceit, treachery and revenge boil together in this war of Dark Lords and their minions. Coyote and his aides, mere humans all, go to war with the Dark Lords to prevent the nightmare of... Evil Triumphant

Dead Lions (Slough House #2) 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: Dead Lions
Series: Slough House #2
Author: Mick Herron
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 286
Words: 104K
Publish: 2013

Another enjoyable ride on the Screwup Train. Herron (the author) kills off another character and I was rather surprised. I guess it means that none of the sub-characters are safe and I should expect somebody from Slough House to die in each story. That has the added benefit, for the author, of allowing him to bring on new screwups in each new book, even if they don’t play a big part. They are new fodder.

Also on the plus side, River Carter also plays a much smaller part. He’s just one among the 5 or 6. I was able to handle that.

★★★✬☆

From the Publisher

Now the slow horses have a chance at redemption. An old Cold War-era spy is found dead on a bus outside Oxford, far from his usual haunts. The despicable, irascible Jackson Lamb is convinced Dickie Bow was murdered. As the agents dig into their fallen comrade's circumstances, they uncover a shadowy tangle of ancient Cold War secrets that seem to lead back to a man named Alexander Popov, who is either a Soviet bogeyman or the most dangerous man in the world. How many more people will have to die to keep those secrets buried?