A Divided Duty by Seanan McGuire
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

All right, I have to admit this is a LOT better than the previous Daye novel. I don't have to start screaming that Toby is acting like a completely befuddled moron again. Or that she's utterly ignoring the good advice of the people who love her.

This one just happens to be a pretty great tale about saving family. Or if not ACTUAL family, it's close enough as to make no odds. And if it comes with a bunch of baggage from 19 other novels, at least we have a moral compass to follow and some blood magic to keep the truly bad shit from getting that much worse.

But you know what I like most about this novel? We're returning to the land where we need a candle to light our way. And for those of you who still remember the series, that particular book is a true highlight.

Toby, with a ton-more Fae blood in her than before, with the authority of the Fae Court and a more loving position with the Sea Witch, is in a position to do a lot more good than before.

Now, if only the Fae would just stop the whole generational cycle of abuse. Please. Damn.

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Silver and Lead by Seanan McGuire
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The good: Auntie is always a breath of fresh air and claw. The mystery is fairly interesting, at least at first.

The so-so: Toby is... getting a bit annoying. Being pregnant doesn't explain how so very often she gaslights Tybalt. And no, wanting freedom after going stir crazy is not a valid excuse to throw good advice out the window, even IF it is a REALLY REALLY old trope for tv and movies and churned books.

I guess I'm a bit more than annoyed. Characters who have shown brains in the past and who have gone through a TON of crap and supposedly learned from past mistakes should NOT be doing such blatant stupidity not just once, but three times in one novel. Often specifically because her husband JUST wants to protect her and is worried about his wife who is 8 months pregnant. And is getting targeted by political crap. And has long-standing enemies still free and acting suspicious.

Okay. I guess I'm very annoyed. I know we're given Toby's PoV and reasons and they seem very valid and all but she keeps on getting captured and poisoned and threatened and gets her head bashed in but it's all OKAY because a Knight and she's important and the Queen expects her to be above and beyond so that's all the reason she needs to have to be stupid as hell.

Toby. Seriously. It IS okay to slow down for half a second and if you can't, GATHER YOUR TROOPS and STOP GETTING MIND-FUCKED. Again.


But the good? I'm still invested enough in the series that I can get this emotional over the stupid decisions instead of just dropping it.



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Home Sweet Home by J.R. Mathews
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Absolutely beautiful. So much happens. I love Mathews' writing.

This concludes this particular series and while I was pretty much enthralled from the start, I was truly amused and thrilled by the utterly bonkers power levels we got to by the end. Sure, we get to god-levels in LitRPGs all the time, and MANY of these substitute for mental health manuals almost automatically, but not ALL of them pull it off.

We went from baby god to beastly in this book, but what was most amusing was the pure enjoyment the character (and I) had with all the different kinds of power-enhancement schools, be it card-making, divinity, cultivation, chaos magic, or even System-like adventuring. And being chased by hard-hitting gods the entire time, getting pissed off that you're screwing up all of history, was just great spice.

But really? The novels are about friendships. Letting people in. Letting go of your preconceptions and the past, or perhaps letting go of the future. Indeed, a lot of it was all about letting the present happen, letting those who love you be there for you.

But written large. Fantastical. Timey-wimey, illusion-heavy, phased reality, gorgeously diverse storytelling. With dimension-hopping spiders.

And the cutest mimic ever.



Truly great stuff. Rich as hell.


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A Trek Through Time by J.R. Mathews
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wonderful. Very light timey-wimey stuff, but perfectly aligned to service a great story.

If the first novel was packed with great plot and progress, this one took a more steady turn to cultivation. It didn't go ALL OUT into the progression/regressor direction, but it had enough of both to keep us on our toes. Especially when it came to killing the gods that kept coming to kill him. :)

Yep. This is a light, easygoing, friendship-building novel that includes killing gods.

And I'm all for it. Stuck in the deep past, surrounded by old, doddering old gods and upstart new gods, and the cultivators that keep all the gods in check... a new power has come to the world. One with cards. :)

Muahahahahahahahaha what a delightful mess. And it's genuinely heartwarming, too. Jake's magical market is thriving.

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Jake's Magical Market by J.R. Mathews
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was extremely impressed with Nova Roma, so picking up Mathews' other series was a no-brainer.

I was immediately impressed with the easygoing and laid-back personality and was amused by the card-based magic system I'd grown to love in All The Skills, but what really sticks with me is the amazing variety of plots, locations, characters, reversals, power-ups, and eventual massive last reversal.

I am used to something on the level of maybe half as much happening in another LitRPG of the same size.

But more than all of that, I have grown to truly love this guy and his overall positive attitude, not to mention his mostly positive choices. Sure, some really questionable actions and choices ARE here, but I'm loving the conflicts.


I DID imagine that this was going to be a truly laid-back LitRPG based on the title, and it has a ton of it, but amazingly enough, it also has the full works. And more, on top of that.

A definite recommend.

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The Second Expedition by Tao Wong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have to say this is... decent. It still feels just like a long-running Kung Fu series, with a few enlightenment sequences to give us the true progression feel. The story is simple, with a few side adventures and reversals ending in the sub-arc that was the initial reason for the adventure in the first place.



I want to like this more than I do. It's ... decent. Not that exciting. Just solid. I may return to it sometime, but I keep wondering if it'll get truly interesting soon.

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Defiance of the Fall 17: A LitRPG Adventure by TheFirstDefier
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One caveat before I review this.

I actually enjoy wild, crazy tales that keep trying to one-up the crazy conditions needed to cultivate into ++++++ godhoods among a slew of other gods, while always realizing there's at least three whole grades worth of god civilizations ahead of you to kill as you cultivate.

The fact that this book just happens to be a continuation of a crazy fetch-em ancient dead civilization quest that happens to to suck you into memory-civilizations that you can loot and change to affect the future where you came from is just an added bonus.

Of course, if you're dunked head-first into this and you're unable to quite follow what ever the hell is going on at any moment, this MIGHT seem like a clusterfuck of religious gobbligook mixing Tao and Buddhist and countless void, chaos, life, death IDEA formations harboring massive amounts of iconic and archetypal powers that need to be fixed and fitted into massive soul-formations, then it MIGHT seem a bit... fucked.

BUT some of us like this crazy ass shit. It's pretty fucking creative. BONKERS. But creative. Turning already bonkers cultivation storytelling into OP OP OP bonkers cultivation storytelling.

And mad props to it.

Just consider this a quest for YOU, too.

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The First War by Tao Wong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While I do honestly prefer steady progression in novels like this as compared to pure chaos, I can admit when war and chaos can have its place.

Still, I DO prefer training and cultivation and breaking through personal barriers. I can't wait to get back to that.

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The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI by Cory Doctorow
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Cory Doctorow is pretty much the undisputed champion when it comes to distilling complex tech issues based on many lifetimes of work (nonprofit forums) and his native intelligence.

So what does this mean when it comes to AI and what comes after, let alone whatever a centaur is in relation to it, or wtf a reverse centaur is?

Ah, it's actually beautiful. Once you know.

A centaur in this context is anyone who uses a tech to improve your capability. Be it glasses or binoculars or anything that multiplies force, be it heavy machinery or artificial limbs or a spellchecker on your word processor.

In more hyper-focused context, a reverse centaur is someone who has given over the agency of use over to the tool. That would be like abrogating all your authority over to your glasses. Or to your artificial limb, asking it to tell you whether you ought to pick up a cup of coffee. Or asking your smart toilet whether or not you feel like peeing at any particular moment.

So what the hell does LIFE AFTER AI mean? Like, after AI has become our overlords? After we've Butlerian Jihaded them? In this case, it's after the AI BUBBLE has burst. AI isn't a bad thing. It's a TOOL. You can murder someone with your kitchen chair, but truly, most people just prefer to SIT on them.

So, let's get back to what this book is really about.

It's not a diatribe against AI. It IS a critique of the whole industry that seems hell bent on pushing AI on all the bosses and efficiency experts and CEOs who LOVE the idea that they can just fire all the work force in favor of AI. Or even more specifically, whether we're all being centaurs who use the positive features of AI to improve our ACTUAL work, whatever it is, keeping responsibility for every stage of its use firmly in our own hands, be it the original idea, the workflow, and the final product, or whether we're being forced into a truly shitty situation where the AI dictates the original idea, forcing us to fix its workflow, and forcing us to sign off on its final product.

You know... making us become the slave to the very tool that should have been here to help us.


Of course, my explanation isn't nearly as good as his. I'm barely scratching the surface and I'm not giving any of the great real-world examples of real CEOs running toward this bubble with horse-blinders on. Or rather, reverse-centaur blinders.

Because, let's face it, this massive influx of AI-everything at the very tops of all the techbro's companies is essentially a power-grab that ignores the real-world harm that will befall everyone. It's almost like they gave up thinking two or three steps down the line. Perhaps they gave up thinking altogether. Or perhaps they just asked an AI to do their thinking for them. Like a reverse-centaur. And now they they might be thinking that if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for all of us.

Because, I guess, there aren't any people on the planet who are able to think anymore.

But then, maybe, that's actually true.

I'm remembering a quote from Robert A. Heinlein right now. "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity." But then, if you rule out stupidity, all that's left is malice. And malice actually does fit the bill.

Mind you, this is just my own opinion, and isn't Doctorow's. At least, it isn't within this book.

Both he and I do think that AI can be a very good thing if it is used responsibly. If it is used for the betterment of each and every one of us. It is a massive time saver, a tireless worker, and does certain things SO much better than us. But it should not (and I repeat) should not be the one to actually THINK for us.

Every single one of us should take responsibility for our own thoughts. Period. If you give up that responsibility to your thinking-helper, then you've given up responsibility on your own soul. Again, my opinion. But then, why do all these powerful people want exactly that?


Sigh.

Either way, this is a very thought-provoking book and I can't say I disagree with anything in it at all. It's not a doomer book. It's a personal responsibility book. And a shine-the-light-on-the-bad-actors book. It IS a very worthwhile book.

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The First Stop by Tao Wong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Weirdly enough, I was kinda meh about the first book in this series and so I took a long break. And then I saw that he had other series and seems to still be going pretty strong so I thought... why not give it another chance, maybe the writing got better?

After reading the second book, I can't tell if the writing is better, but my tolerance for straight cultivation, Wuxia-style seems to be recharged nicely.

I had a pretty good time with this. School arc. A few expeditions. Relatively good progression. It's comfortable.

I can't say it's brilliant, but it IS comfortable. Like taking a long soak in an old-time kung fu movie, or rather, a full series. So, not bad at all.

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Shades of Forever by Chris Kluwe
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have a lot of things to say about this book, and most of them are good. It does, however, require a bit of mental adjustment, at least with me, before I get to the core of WHAT this book is and what it's trying to accomplish.

Without that adjustment, I'd mostly be trying to figure out what I just read. For example, it starts out like a post-post-apocalyptic story with lovecraftian under and overtones, firmly SF, but then it feels like I just stepped into a pretty good LitRPG, complete with an understated system to level up various skills and main levels, and THEN it becomes a hard SF complete with spaceflight and fleets complete with existential threats to reality, and THEN it becomes a tight little humorous, adventurous core of a novel circling and encircling health, healing, love, sanctuary, and being decent despite everything.

That's a lot to unpack.

And approaching it AS a story that's wild and genre-hopping and very aware of all the things it borrows while never losing track of its emotional healing core is ABSOLUTELY necessary.

No, this isn't a LitRPG although I was really excited in the direction it took with it. No, it's not a space opera, although I thought it was right on par with Sanderson's SF. No, it's not a YA lovecraftian humor, although I was rocking it when it ran with it.

But it was all of these things. And it was healing, too.

Ambitious? Perhaps perfectly in line with our current world and everything our nerdy sensibilities need? Very self-aware and damn well crafted?

Yes, to all the above.


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The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation by Cory Doctorow
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an amazingly clear, coherent, and even better, a SHORT examination of the problems and solutions revolving big tech in the internet.

What it is: a deeply detailed and reality-based distillation of decades of conferences and forums trying to combat the enshittification of the internet.

What it isn't: a glorified wah-wah bemoaning our state.

That's right. It's intelligent, no-nonsense, and frankly revolutionary. And this should come as no surprise to ANYONE if you know the author. The same author of Enshittification. Or the great novel Little Brother.


So, what's so big in this nonfiction work? What's so important? I'd invite you to read it yourself, but I'll give you a few examples.

How about Interoperability? Any time a company blocks third-parties from innovating a time-and-money feature as an add-on to an existing product, often burying said product, company, or inventor in legal shit for the purpose to said company's fear of losing their bottom line, that's a direct attack on interoperability.

Remember MS Office not working with ANY other kind of computer or software package in the market until Apple reverse engineered the BS just so people could USE it on their own systems? That is an example of fighting back against monopolies. Of course, when Apple outright prevents Android users from getting messages through to Apple's Iphone users, that's ALSO a monopolistic tactic. Preventing interoperability. And why? For profit. Force people to USE THEIR HARDWARE, or software, or ideological setup, or whatever-the-fuck-reason, despite the fact that computers are inherently INTEROPERABLE.

More examples include printer ink cartridge racket. Bricked cars. Worldwide stifled innovation stuck behind the inherent harassment of EULAS.

Who is it protecting? The company. Not the user. Not the repairman. Not anyone except the monopoly. AT&T is a huge example. But so is Intel, MS, Apple, Meta, Google, Amazon, and all the usual suspects. They are too big to fail. Why? Because the people regulating them are deeply in bed with the ones who run it. There are no third-party regulators. Impartial judges. And let's be real here. It's not a matter of being a subject that is too complicated to understand for laymen.

If that were really the case, then we'd never have laws to protect food or water sources, chemical safety, munitions safety, or child safety in the internet.

The trick is to actually allow third-party judges, or regulators, be able to perform their jobs of separating the wolves from the sheep pens instead of hiring yet more wolves to wring the last drop of blood from all the sheep.

Make it unlawful to lawsuit good-faith innovators, and if necessary, use a third-party commission to see if it IS a harassment suit.

Allow any kind of equipment or software to be repaired on the open market and not held to ransom by the original dealership/monolith/extortioner.

The argument that a company is too big to fail is just a smokescreen for the fact that it has undergone regulatory capture. It has either bought the lawmakers or it has many people over the barrel with really shitty strong-arm tactics.

Sound familiar?

Change the rules. Fight the monopolies by fighting the connective thread. This isn't a strong-arm approach. It's a change of mindset.

We allow Facebook enshittify our lives precisely because of the network effect. We're forced to stick with an abusive company like Amazon because we don't have any good alternatives. But if we de-fang the anti-regulation rules, making it easier to leave, en-masse, without losing all our friends and family members IN the move, then all of a sudden, we're free to use other services that don't sell off all our information or pen us into algorithmic echo chambers. Right, Meta? It's fairly simple, after all. You just need to throw out harassment lawsuits. Let the monopolies lose. I'm not saying let bad-actors run roughshod, either.

I'm talking about having someone with true impartiality JUDGE the cases. You know, in the idealistic, original-use way that courts were DESIGNED upon.

Ahem. If there's a conflict of interest, then REMOVE the conflict of interest.

Of course, this little problem is QUITE a large problem in our reality. And that also can be fixed by a change of mindset. If we all said ENOUGH OF THIS instead of shrugging yet again, and work toward actually making it better, maybe it won't end in pitchforks. But then, I guess the Pitchfork Emporium also dreams of being a monopoly.


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BuyMort: Bull Market Mayhem: How I Cornered The Multiversal Monopoly (BuyMort - The Shopocalypse Saga by Joseph Phelps
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While I think the romance part is... um... subpar... the rest of the novel is full of some pretty great fighting and fantasy/SF action as Earth (TM) is being maneuvered by the greater universal capitalistic nightmare into mercenary engagements that should have broken us.

But it didn't break us. We're good at fighting. And there are a lot of people who are pissed at the greater universal capitalistic nightmare and love the idea that the newcomer might maybe want to tear it all down.

I like that part.

Of course, the whole universal capitalistic nightmare is RATHER a bit close to home. I can't quite say whether this is painful to read because it's so recognizable now, or that it's come to us too early, or it's come to us too late.

It's probably painful because it IS painful. I'm getting full DCC vibes here.

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The Thrice-Bound Fool by Christopher Buehlman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm sure there are a lot of Buehlman fans out there. Between Two Fires is one of my favorite books. Blacktongue Thief was pretty great, too, and this is a direct successor to that hapless thief, misheif-maker, fool.

I will mention right here that you shouldn't bother to read this if you're a plot-bound maniac. But if you truly appreciate JOURNEY, then I'm certain you're going to enjoy the hell out of this.

One damn thing after another. That's how I'd describe this. Crazy situations, fantastic dialogues, curses-a-million, and increasingly horrible results.

It's like watching a train wreck. With gods, goblins, slavers, princesses, and a very glib, sometimes fairly intelligent FOOL.

It's an experience. I would ask you, dear reader, to just sit back and enjoy the ride.



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1% Lifesteal, Book Four by Robert Blaise
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I admit I enjoy a great selfish-asshole to selfless-hero story. This one one took a LONG time coming and he obviously had plenty of reasons to stay selfish for as long as he was, but he's finally making and keeping friends who accept him for the cringy edgelord that he is.

It's nice.

It's just a shame that it had to take becoming a ruler of a city doomed to utter destruction, being offered an easy way out at the expense of the entire city, and having his tiny, tiny, malnourished conscience pricked just one time too many to force that change upon him.

And yes, there's a very fine line between order and chaos, sanity and insanity. So the real question is, can someone this batshit insane ever really BE a hero? Yeah. Jury is still out. Unfortunately, so is the judicator. That guy turned out to be rather decent in the end.

Fun shit, all told. Crazy. Utterly cringy. But fun. Should be the favorite book of all twelve-year-old boys in the world. :)


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1% Lifesteal, Book Three by Robert Blaise
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If we needed more proof that this is an ultimate edgelord tale, then rest assured, this particular novel will seal that particular pain-coffin.

Honestly, I find it RATHER cringe, but it's still a self-aware novel that leans into it and even addresses the cringiest aspects, going even so far as to try to rectify all that poor mental health. Pain and suffering and just wanting to go all cold-blooded serial murderer on tons of irredeemable ass hats as opposed to white-hatting it by defending yourself or others? Yep. Embracing insanity? Yep. Half-assing redemption? Yep.

Totally cringe.

And yet.

The power fantasy is cranked up to 11. Progression, equally so. Interesting characters and enemies? In abundance. New locations to slink away, hide, only to be forced out of hiding in a spectacular fail? Oh, that's a gimmie. This character has all the subtlety of a dumpster fire. But he tries. And he even got 1.5 haircuts throughout the entire novel. Props. I guess. :)

And am I still having fun? Yep. Hey, all you other brotards out there, you wannabe edgelords. I have a message for you. You can either hold this novel up as a badge of your own mindrot, or treat it like the WARNING that it really is. It's entertaining, but damn. It is not a goal for any sane person to hold as a standard.

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1% Lifesteal, Book Two by Robert Blaise
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm really not looking to see anything more than the birth of a true edgelord when it comes to these novels. So far as I can see, everyone is shit, betrayals are all that can be expected, and therefore, the greatest good will come from the salvation of a blood god. Blood for the blood god.

I mean, don't get me wrong. I absolutely love when these novels have our MC try to get better, find a little peace, try to open up a little after all the torture and pain and MASSIVE trust issues he's developed in his short life.

But like with the horror of Pandora's Box, it's not the chaos that comes forth that's the true horror. The real horror is always the Hope that follows. How does one go on? You survive one nightmare scenario after another and finally seem to take one, then two steps forward, opening up to others, getting a place to stay after being on the run for so long, but then cultists happen. And heroes and soldiers happen. And vigilantes who don't understand shit happen. And all the while, the uber-powerful still get away with anything they want to get away with while the poor and the weak get swept under the rug.

Yeah. I guess it IS time for the blood god.

Enjoyable for exactly what it is. I'm not looking for anything more than this. Catharsis. As LitRPG.

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As We Fall Through Time: The extraordinary tale of time travel, betrayal and a love that echoes through the centuries by Claire North
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I went through several evolutions as I read this, but with one caveat: I've always trusted this author to do right by me, no matter what the subject or genre or weird direction they take me. I just sit back and enjoy the ride.

And this one wasn't my cup of tea for a grand stretch, but I trusted the author and the author didn't lead me astray.

My original complaint? Well, for a time-travel novel, it was truly stuck on the romance bit. This shouldn't be a surprise, going by the title, but it was slow going, eventually evolving into a tragic mystery and then into a more mundane mystery and then into a cataclysmic mystery that eventually resolved into a huge, rather brilliant novel that connected all the pieces together AND rather blew my mind at the climax.

And things that are eventually revealed tickled me seriously. With no spoilers. The PoV changes are what do me in.

I'm still laughing.

And yet, this isn't a comedy. It's about as serious as serious can get and it has the emotional gravity of a very different kind of novel. And I love every moment of it.

Now. After getting through what I thought were the slow parts, the parts I scoffed at, it all comes together, wonderfully, and I even cried.


Ahem. And once again, I'm forced to repeat that I must trust certain authors. Explicitly.


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1% Lifesteal, Book One by Robert Blaise
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So, this is a rage-inducing setup to create the perfect edge-lord. Poverty, betrayal after betrayal, hardship, torturous body-horror, and many insults after injury on a never-ending cycle, it really sets us up to root for watching our MC plow through everyone and everything.

Yep. It's a blood for a blood god kind of book.

So, of course, it's amusing to see that this 1% lifesteal ability is just an underestimated ability that everybody discounts because it IS so weak. You know, assuming that the wielder isn't punching WAY above his weight class.

And by the end of this book, guess what he's doing? Muahahahahahaha. Of course, he had to go through multiple hells to get there. But every edge lord has their origin story.

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Paris by J.R. Mathews
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I feel like I've got four novels in one and I love them all equally. And on top of that, they keep intersecting with each other to create a much, much bigger story than any of them on their own. And then we get the great feeling like each character is living life on their own special cheat code that is never so overwhelming that there's always a new challenge that's actually challenging.

Be it assassinating an Egyptian god, or building an empire to supplant the powerful French monarch, live a life in a French Hogwarts, become a monkish underworld kingpin, become a dragon warrior, or preparing for war on four fronts, including Outsiders, Earthly titans, a pirate empire, and the French.

It's kinda funny that the French front is actually the most dangerous. But that's what you get when it comes to Medieval alternate history magic systems. :)

Great stuff here.

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