He Who Fights With Monsters 7 by Shirtaloon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This one hit me in the feels. Coming back home (to another world, not Earth where he ACTUALLY came from) was the best thing that could happen to him.

Except that people are shit everywhere.

The powerful still play games and they're never nice ones.

And nobody ever tries to understand where others are coming from. Like a returning world-savior coming back from the dead, having undergone a dozen soul-scouring experiences, who just wanted to get back to something light and normal and soul-healing--being forced in stupid regal politics out of none of his doing. And throwing him into the shit without realizing just WHAT they had grabbed.


What was healing about this book?

Friends. Trust. Faith. They made this book everything.

I love it.

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I Will Fear No Evil by Robert A. Heinlein
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

For what is VERY much a novel of its time, 1970, with free love, challenging normal family relationships, being accepting of all kinds of LGBTQ setups, or even freedom for age limitations (December/May relationships), it's a book that really ought to feel right at home with modern audiences.

Indeed, for a good 3/4 of the novel, it really would be. Just get beyond the first quarter of the novel and fly right into the whole SF true sex change (old man's brain in a young woman's body, trying to deal with social/sexual situations), and it pretty much flies. It's fun, free love, sex, and especially love, love, love transcending all boundaries. And I don't mean true love or monogamous love, but freedom to love.

It's a wild ride just so long as you place the novel in exactly its right place and time.



But in modern time? LOOOOL. I almost quit it over the opening sequences of the dirty old men oggling the young woman who, even though she was perfectly happy with it all, still felt... ugly and dirty because so many modern examples shows it to BE ugly and dirty. But this IS a character novel and taking it all on the cases presented here, it's actually rather sweet and accepting and it becomes a clever and honestly interesting take and condemnation of closed-mindedness all across the board.

Trans politics through the easy SF lens? Yep. All sexual politics m/f f/f m/m and everything else inbetween, challenging critics and readers through that easy SF lens? Absolutely. It's bold and fearless.

There's a LOT to love about this novel. It's also easy to condemn for the sheer creepiness of a few aspects.

Would I recommend this to anyone without this caveat? No. But with it? It's honestly worthwhile. Just problematic. :)

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He Who Fights with Monsters 6 by Shirtaloon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an appropriate time to quote a line from another property. "Earth--what a shithole."

It's encapsulated quite nicely in this volume.

Of course, when your home is a dumpling slowly being suffused with much too much soup, to the point where it'll frankly dissolve if it takes a single more iota of broth, you can't really judge much on the niceties, like how fine the bowl is or what kind of utensil you use.

This is just a nice way of saying the ends justify the means and the shit's already gone in the drink. But hey, we LIVE here. We know.

Or rather, we live in a non-magickified version of the shithole, but the underlying concept is the same.

I just wish we had our own hero trying to unsoupify the wonton. Alas.

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A Glimmer of Death by Laurell K. Hamilton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

So.

The good:

When it finally gets to the mystery of the magical ***** and its resolution, it's pretty decent. I'm invested and I feel inordinately happy to have something like this in the novel that resembles the previous private investigations/royal intrigue/fae novels that had been coming out so many years ago.

The bad:

It took a LONG time to get through all the toddler and fashion nonsense at the beginning. It took an even longer time to get through all the narrative-foreplay-less sex scenes that felt so horribly gratuitous I felt like I was plopped directly into the worst polyamorous-political nonsense cribbed right from the Anita Blake series complete with cribbed-reused-plundered plotlines from that series as well.

And it took SO DAMN LONG to move past it.

To be very honest, I was reminded of the very worst nonsense I wished never happened in the Blake series. Of course, I kept coming back because when the magic stuff and the fighting stuff and the plot stuff finally kicks in (when it isn't sex), it's pretty great. But this one?

I'm kinda sad I came back to Merry.

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He Who Fights with Monsters 5 by Shirtaloon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a weird one to review. It's not bad at all, but on reflection, it's just an on-Earth battle-fest with tragedy against reality eating vampires showing us that we're underwhelmed a good half of the time and utterly outclassed the rest.

It makes for good drama and a solid ongoing read, but there's a real lack of character building compared to the previous novel.

Of course, read together, it's hardly noticeable. Everything runs smoothly, and long, and fun.

So really, no complaints. :) Can't wait to squash these blood drinkers, though.

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He Who Fights with Monsters 4 by Shirtaloon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This one kinda hit me out of left field and no mistake. I knew it could always be a possibility, but this kind of thing rarely happens in a fantasy series. I usually ALWAYS see it in MilSF novels because that's when the victorious troops always seem to come back to Earth only to find it all messed up and now they have to use all their prodigious skills to clean up other's messes.

In fantasy novels, being the strange returner USUALLY doesn't happen until much later.

In this case, it's a strong balance between not being supremely OP and yet still having a comfortable time of it anyway.

Australia didn't know what hit it. :)

Very, very enjoyable.

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He Who Fights with Monsters 3 by Shirtaloon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A big turning point in this novel. It starts out innocuous. More team building, rehabbing Jason's reputation, getting stronger on a road trip, but it gets insane and the big baddie is challenged FAR earlier than intended. Again.

That's the thing about road trips. They sometimes end disastrously.

And that's why I think this one seriously elevates the series for the first time. It was really good before. Now it's starting to get deep.

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