Making Friends by Erin Ampersand
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's decent, but I need to stress one little fact: these are more like post-apocalypse novels than LitRPGs. The few chosen abilities as you gain experience are absolutely LitRPG, but the total feel of this is a lot more Walking Dead than DCC, and none of this is even close to my initial thought that this would be a bit more humorous, with the whole idea of super powerful young kids saving their mom or something along those lines.

Making Friends, as a title, is more about getting along in a new, angry community. Not quite the tongue-in-cheek I wanted. Alas.

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Azarinth Healer Book Seven: A LitRPG Adventure by Rhaegar
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Exploration and alliances, one adventure at a time.

This is pretty much a cozy adventure that just happens to feature a lot of bodily damage quickly regenerated and a bunch of hidden god-like powers among unsuspecting strangers. But the cozy bit is what makes it really nice. After all, it's the friends you make after beating the shit out of them that really matter. :)

Still a fun series. Relaxing, strangely enough, with a friendly elder god tree, a pissed nature dragon, insane pixie Shadows, mech-loving dwarves, shy 4* arch lichs, and a god-like brawler with truly easygoing nature.

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It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over by Anne de Marcken
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I consider this an intellectual exercise. A conceptual, sometimes emotional reflection on loss and self-sacrifice to an idea wrapped up in post-zombie-apocalypse wrapping paper.

It's a poem. It's an epigraph.

It's also like a last gasp nod to traditional literary fiction and all its pretentiousness and deep depression as seen through a literal embodied zombie metaphor.



Of course, I could be taking it way too seriously.
This novella could ACTUALLY be a tongue-in-cheek metaphor for literary fiction, itself, as a zombie falling apart because its own center cannot hold.

You know what? I like that take even better.

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Time to Play by Erin Ampersand
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As a LitRPG, it's middle of the road solid for strict game mechanics interposed over a newly overturned life.

When I picked it up, I had the irrational idea that it was going to be hilarious as a mom slowly becoming unhinged as her kids of 9, 6, and 3 pick up powers in the attempt to survive the apocalypse. It just HAS that feel, or so I thought. Like Adventures in Babysitting. Or something similar.

But, alas, it isn't one for humor. Aside for the plushie AI, it's almost entirely a realistic-build with all the family-oriented stakes and normal neighborhood BS along with the up-scaling of threats and running out of resources.

Not bad, but I feel like it could have been brilliant... and wasn't. Alas. I'll still continue on for at least one more book, however, because who knows? It might get unhinged yet.

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Taipei Story by R.F. Kuang
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Place this story where it truly belongs: an examination of culture and growing up with an attempt to show Taipei (In Taiwan, for those who wonder,) in as real a light as can be attempted in a work of fiction.

It's very earnest. It's also full of educational woes as an American trying to learn Chinese and having a hard time of it, getting into very normal drama with friends there, feeling isolated and depressed, and just trying to survive as a fish out of water... all the while highlighting culture.

And it does a pretty good job as a cultural piece.

But overall? My enjoyment was fairly lacking. This, in particular, was all pretty universal, but this kind of traditional fiction character piece with an agenda is generally not my cup of tea. I can respect it from a remove, but alas, that's all I can do.



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Judicator Jane 8: A LitRPG Adventure by Brian Rouleau
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm almost done with this. In general it had a few smirk-worthy plays on the LitRPG genre and I admit I enjoyed the whole luck exploit and over the top stuff, but after the last book, I was getting tired of the whole steamroller aspect. And then this one was more than a little meandering and without real stakes... with just a handful of interesting ideas I would have loved to see developed, including the system-related stuff.

But it was just a bit too little, with not enough to keep my full interest. Alas.

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To Sail Beyond the Sunset by Robert A. Heinlein
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What a fascinating book on revisit. There's truly a ton of great things about it... and an extraordinary amount of culturally and probably ethically and morally problematic things about it in equal measure.

If you know, you know.

But if you accept the book as a truly groundbreaking SF that fills its pages with joy, acceptance, fearlessness, and a truly excellent amount of World As Myth worldbuilding that elevates stories to reality and jumps beyond the plain discovery stage of exploration and right into the heart of childlike wonder when it comes to time-and-worldline joy of discovery, this really IS the best of all novels.

It's healing, utterly charming, and a great capstone to Heinlein's career... and his last book before his death.


So, what's actually problematic?

That's just it. I'm my own Mrs. Grundy. My own hang-ups and opinions, biases, and they are in direct opposition with the insistence of Maureen Johnson, AKA Lazarus Long's mom. Or Lazarus, himself. But the fact that it is a true cultural norm and everyone is perfectly happy with the actuality of what is happening, it's hard for me to outright condemn it.

And that's kinda the whole thing, right? You show a society where it is truly natural and not a medical or cultural issue, where each and every individual is perfectly happy to go on like this, and they all have perfect freedom to be whatever they wish, and it really IS a true SF novel in every respect. Because it shows us an idea... and the real conflict is between the reader's preconceptions and the existence of a HAPPY PEOPLE.

Of course, our actual world keeps showing us the really dark sides of sex, power imbalance, slavery, injustice. And we keep getting enraged by pedophiles and molestation, for very good reasons. And the damage being done cannot even be quantified.

But then we have a novel of healthy people. The conflict is very real, very fascinating, and absolutely disturbing.

It's problematic to actually recommend this novel at all. But strangely, that's perhaps the best reason to recommend it. Not because it apologizes for the assholes of our timeline, but because it shows us that good people can do some very DIFFERENT things that is hard for us to approve of.

Does this say more about me than the author? Perhaps. I have a strong sense of justice and I draw very strict lines about what I think is right and wrong. I don't generally plop THAT bag of worms on a book review tho, because books are their own beasts and I have a great imagination and I am generally able to let them be what they intend to be. Like To Sail Beyond the Sunset.

I'll just say one thing. For an old man, Heinlein is TRULY one of the most SEXED UP PEOPLE in history.

Fascinating, no matter how you stretch it.

And now that I've gone through a re-read of all his novels, from the first to the last, I am quite satisfied. Some got better with time, some less so, but what a great writer. Challenging, but always super readable.

Bravo, Dean.

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