Sobral City by Always RollsAOne
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This still has wonderful pacing and I'm thoroughly enjoying the writing as a whole. As a fantasy that resembles High Fantasy while being a thoroughly LitRPG tale, complete with soldierly comradery, gritty action, AND sneaky, if limited, OP magic, it is highly amusing a real page-turner.

It's satisfying me on so many levels. It feels like a long haul that I could read forever, and that's the very best kind of book there is.

It doesn't hurt that this underestimated guy keeps on killing WAY above his pay grade and still doesn't want to attract any more attention than necessary.

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A Soldier's Life by Always RollsAOne
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A lot of people recommended this series, but I was skeptical. I mean, Roman-type LitRPG, with a focus on fighting rather than the normal OP always-magic-leaning types?

Consider this my apology. The writing is excellent and the pacing is fantastic. The plot is wonderfully varied and the directions consistently surprise. And while our MC DOES have the potential for quite a bit, he's extremely limited with MP, so the restraint is actually rather beautiful from a story-view.

And there's the obvious need to keep it all secret or his essence will probably be the Emperor's snack. Details. So, a lowly soldier's life it is.

As I was reading it, I was reminded nicely of the Recluse Saga by Modesitt. A balance of soldier-life and magic and steady progress and remarkably little true angst, just hardship.

It's extremely enjoyable. It caught 100% of my attention. Great escapism.

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A House Reborn by Mark Arrows
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well, I wanted to like this more than I did.

What I did like was the tech and magic and a bit of the exploration of it. What I didn't really connect with was the whole clan stuff nor the baddies of the book. It was just okay, but rather generic.

Paradoxically, I miss the deep exploration and the mystery and the machines which took up the majority of the first book. This one was... building a legend that I didn't quite believe? Alas.

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Fearless by Jack Campbell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While this is pretty solid for a MilSF, packaging an old-timer defrosted to deal with the young whipper-snappers who no longer know how to point a gun in the right direction as a space-opera, I'm afraid it's just becoming a bit... dull to me. Especially when another old man (or rather, another young man out-of-time's-waters) comes out to butt-heads with another old man in different clothing.

I mean, what are we trying to say, here? Old ways are best? Okies. New tech is just meant for old hands. Got it. Isn't this supposed to be warfare, though? Innovation... ah well, innovation is only true for the best generation. Right?

At least, that's the lessons I'm learning. And it's... kinda dull.



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BORUTO―ボルト― 8 ―TWO BLUE VORTEX― by Masashi Kishimoto
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's a bit more annoying than usual to have an incomplete story arc for this volume. The action ramps up and the conspiracy is almost blown and now, everything seems hopeless.

Grrrhhh.

Okay. Must wait longer.

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BuyMort: 30,000 Leagues: How I Merged to Become Nu-Earth Affiliated (BuyMort - The Shopocalypse Saga by Joseph Phelps
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I remember the previous book being less good than the first two and I couldn't quite place my finger on it. But now? The fourth helped me figure it out.

It's the scale. I tend to get more and more invested in a series as long as there's a sense of real location no matter how big the scale actually is. In this case, we're all over the Earth because it's all-out consolidation time and the survivors need to prevent further corporate takeovers of the market that is the biomass of our poor planet.

I didn't mind the whole Kraken or Beholder angles, but even those battles need to have decent anchoring and I thought proper emotional anchoring was kinda up in the air. Sure, we have Molls and protecting his massively-expanding community and refugee affiliates (read aliens), but I'm missing the whole WHY does he fight so hard, too.

I want to love this. I really do. It's close enough to Dungeon Crawler Carl to generally be right up all those DCC lover's alleys. But aside from the whole capitalistic nightmare vibe (which is great) I'm just hoping it grounds itself a bit before hightailing it right out of the system to brand new markets.

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The Society of Unknowable Objects by Gareth Brown
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Well now. I guess I had some high hopes for this book or something. I'm not saying it's bad, but it wasn't quite as interesting as I hoped it'd be. It's a throwback to old treasure hunting with mildly ominous magical artifacts as the goal. With a slightly uninteresting villain.

And as a kid, I used to stay up late watching Friday the 13th, the TV series. I loved the hell out of that, and that was definitely as a stupid kid from a stupid kid's PoV, and yet, the memories of THAT was probably two times better than what we get here.

It's probably just a me thing. I guess I wanted to be more than minorly, just slightly entertained.

And perhaps I am just expecting a bit too much out of magical realism. The realism should ground it, but the magic should massively elevate it. In this case, the realism is just a bit aggravating and the magic is rather ho-hum.

Sorry. It's me, not you.

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