Bookstooge's Reviews On the Road

Thursday, February 23, 2023

‘Til Death Do Us Part! (Web of Spiderman #1) ★★★✬☆

Title: ‘Til Death Do Us Part!
Series: Web of Spiderman #1
Writer: Louise Simonson
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 25
Words: 2K

This particular Spiderman comic takes place after the Secret Wars (where all the super heroes went off world to fight for/against aliens and got lots of cool tech). Spiderman had gotten a black suit that enhanced his powers but once he came back to earth Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four found out it was a living symbiote and was trying to take Peter Parker over. Reed drove it off with a sonic gun and Parker thought they had it safely locked away.

All that info? They convey in 2 pages. TWO!!! No shilly shallying, no filler, just in your face info dump. That’s how it should be.

And with this comic the suit escapes and tries to take Parker over again. While he’s being attacked by a group of super villains. He fights off the villains but can’t make it to Reed Towers to get help from the Fantastic Four, so he manages to get under some really loud bells and the noise drives the symbiote away. It appears like the noise is enough to actually destroy it and that is where the comic ends.

This was originally published in 1985 or ‘86 which was when Spiderman was really beginning to take off as a comic book hero. He had several comics dedicated to him (Amazing Spiderman, Spectacular Spiderman and now this Web of Spiderman) and seemed to be doing well.

I enjoyed this even while it was just too short for my taste. But I definitely want to keep reading. How long I keep reading, well, that’s an entirely different question :-)

★★★✬☆

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #14 ★✬☆☆☆

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

Wednesday, February 22, 2023

Majestic ★★☆☆☆

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.

★★☆☆☆

Tuesday, February 21, 2023

Universe 2 ★★★☆☆

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.

However, I still wasn’t 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

Monday, February 20, 2023

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.

★★★✬☆

All My “Ciaphas Cain” Reviews

Sunday, February 19, 2023

The Void War (Empire Rising #1) ★★★✬☆

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 (Booooooooo!). 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

Friday, February 17, 2023

Latency (Hunter Bureau #2) ★★☆☆☆

Title: Latency
Series: Hunter Bureau #2
Author: Blaze Ward
Rating: 2 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 197
Words: 62K

When I read and reviewed the first book, I mentioned that there were key words or phrases that usually only came from a political side that was completely opposed to everything I stand for in terms of morals, principles and guiding principles. So instead of either brushing it off or making a mountain out of a molehill, as I was reading, I just highlighted stuff that caught my eye. That’s mostly what this review will contain, is quotes from the book. I am not trying to provide context within the story or anything like that. I’m planning on hiding it all behind the Details code so you don’t have to read it if you don’t want to.

Location 147: (speaking of handguns)Greyson’s grandfather had had something like that, demilled when the aliens decided to make humans safer.

Location 378: Back when the US was a thing and had an army they liked to sic on weaker nations.

Location 611: be allowed

Location 726: And they hadn’t done androgynous in those days. Being less than stridently hetero in the late 20th Century was an invitation to get beat up. Fucking barbarians.

Location 793: The bits that were left were generally the ones the Army had found useful as tools. Deliberate cruelty. Premeditated self-defense.

Location 972: Universal Basic Income kept people from starving,

Location 1184: Mostly, ex-special forces, so knuckleheads who liked to solve problems with extreme firepower.

Location 1332: Honest men got no reason to bolt,

Location 1904: Superfast trains had already worked in other countries because the governments had been able to get right of way. In the old United States, NIMBY had delayed everything for so long that it was never economical to actually build. Not In My Back Yard. Then the middle-class bastards had the audacity to complain about bad roads and crowded….

Location 2135: Greyson was just old enough to remember the great awakening in this culture, when everyone discovered that there were more options than white-bread hetero. Folks like that had always been there, but for the longest time the power structure in his country had come down hard on anyone deviating from the strict party line, both legally as well as socially.

Location 2277: would still be the rest of his lifetime and maybe all of Rachel’s before the planet started cooling down again, but hopefully they’d managed to save it in time.

Location 2686: Back in the bleak days of a War on Crime that was a thinly-veiled War on Black People that had started before 1618 and never really been forced to subside until aliens landed and threatened to crack heads together.

Location 2849: Sandwiches he brought from home instead of lunch out.

Location 2927: where a young white boy like him had had no business being.

Location 2951: But then, most men didn’t know how to deal with a woman who was tougher than they were, and probably smarter.

Location 3206: If Greyson had shown some of his otherwise private political leanings with the places he had mailed his packages, that was between him and God. And God supposedly loved everyone, so Greyson figured he was on safe ground</details>

I read to the end of the book and with all of those quotes decided that I won’t be reading any more by Mister Blaze Ward. Now I just have to figure out what I’m going to replace this series with. Choices, choices, choices.

★★☆☆☆

Mirrors (Book 1)

Thursday, February 16, 2023

Mansions of the Gods (Asterix #17) ★★★✬☆

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: Mansions of the Gods
Series: Asterix #17
Authors: Goscinny & Uderzo
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Comics
Pages: 53
Words: 3K

Caesar has the VERY clever idea of surrounding the Gaul’s village with luxury roman apartments and thus subsuming the Gauls culturally. He sends his best architect and a whole galley of slaves (former pirates) to cut down the forest and build the Mansions of the Gods.

Of course, the problem is that the Gauls can regrow trees overnight, beat the stuffing out of the roman soldiers AND give magic potion to the slaves. Not even this though is enough to overcome Caesar’s plans and a mansion is built and tenanted (even if it’s that or the circus maximus!). When Cacofonix the bard empties the building of regular tenants, the soldiers move in and then the Gaul’s attack en masse and destroy the building. The architect gives up and the gauls replant the forest over the ruins.

I thought the idea was quite a workable one (culturally subsuming a small group of hold outs) but it can take generations. The Amish are a good example. They have held out (and continue to do so) against modern civilization, but as a group they are slowly shrinking and are being forced to make changes simply to continue to exist.

Goscinny and Urderzo make this a quick, funny event and everything turns out ok for the Gauls this time, but my cynical adult self realizes that what was proposed here is what would eventually happen if this were real. Since it is NOT real however, I can laugh at Obelix accidentally planting a magic acorn in the middle of Asterix’s house and them all eating dinner 100 feet up in the air :-D

★★★✬☆

All of My “Asterix” Reviews

Wednesday, February 15, 2023

The City of Water, Water Seven (One Piece #34) ★★★✬☆

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 City of Water, Water Seven
Series: One Piece #34
Arc: Water Seven #3
Author: Eiichiro Oda
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Manga
Pages: 230
Words: 10K

The Straw Hats win the Davy Back Fight and sail on to the island of Seven Waters where there is a whole city of shipwrights to work on the Merry Go. The shipwrights show their power and the Straw Hats convert all the gold into ready cash and immediately start having robbery attempts on them.

While the end of the Fight was stupid, the introduction to the shipwrights was as madcap as I could want in the One Piece world. And Luffy’s response was just what I would expect from him, as evinced by this panel:

I now have higher hopes for this Water Seven arc than I did when it started out. That makes me happy.

★★★✬☆

All My "One Piece" Reviews

Tuesday, February 14, 2023

Conan the Defender (Conan the Barbarian) ★★★✬☆

Title: Conan the Defender
Series: Conan the Barbarian
Author: Robert Jordan
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 193
Words: 65K

This is a direct sequel to the previous Conan book, Conan the Invincible. More in terms of characters than in plot. Conan gets together with the prince of the bandits from the previous book and they go to some city and try to earn gold as guards. There’s a revolution brewing and a sorcerer is the prime mover and shaker and Conan works out said sorcerer is using the revolutionaries (who are the spares of rich royal families and thus have nothing to do) as patsies. When he reveals they get all butt hurt and toss him out. He goes to work for the king and runs across the Queen of the Bandits from the previous book. He also comes into conflict with the sorcerer and with wit and mighty thews bests him. Everyone realizes Conan was right about everything and peace reigns supreme. The end.

My goodness. Jordan knows how to write some pulp here. If I had been in a more scathing mood I’d probably have trashed this 6 ways from Sunday. But as I was rather raw inside at the time of reading, the simple hack, slash and bash of Conan outpowering everyone was like a balm upon my heart. Conan’s ability to literally cut his way through any and all problems is what I WISH I could do today. Sadly, it just doesn’t work that way. And it really doesn’t work that way for little chubby bald guys who don’t like people ;-)

This stuff is pure wish fulfillment and I enjoy it as such.

★★★✬☆