ONE PIECE 115 by Eiichiro Oda
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Finally getting to the semi-conclusion of the battle of the giants (not just Rocks, but the fantastic viking island of giants, themselves) was just as great as all the spoilers promised.

And the end? Damn it. Imu. Too many questions, never enough answers. And more questions on top of that.

Chopper? Super cola? Loki himself? All of it is just too cool.

I hate having to wait for another volume. ; ;


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Damned by Chuck Palahniuk
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm generally a huge fan of Palahniuk's dark humor, and this book is absolutely in that category.

As for WHAT this is, it kinda subverted my expectations in a great way.

Thirteen year old girl dies of pot overdose. Goes to hell. Yep. Now, if you think that's f**king dumb, just hold my beer. Hell is absolutely overflowing with dumb shit. And wait! For a limited time, you'll get to see what Earth is up to!

Yep. THAT is where your expectations should be. Oh, the great ironies. And great writing, too!

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Omelet Endgame by Dakota Krout
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It feels like a big conclusion because it HAS a huge conclusion.

I mean, by the illustration right on the book, we have it all! The utter and complete defeat of another race of people trying to wipe us out, total annihilation, by the tasting and eating of an omelet.

I personally thought that the illustration was a funny example of just a funny scene in the story, but nooooooooo. It's super important and life-changing. Indeed it is.


The rest of the novel is a decent LitRPG, level-ups by purchases, and making a new soda queen friend. Pretty standard fare. Peanut butter balls or sad doughnuts aside.

Not bad. Sometimes very funny.

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Sewer Skewers by Dakota Krout
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is not your momma's relaxing cooking Isekai. This is a grimdark crappy cooking slog in a hellworld that fortunately has a group of good kids working together to make their hero cook the best cook he can possibly be.

Spoiler: he's not a good cook.

But they NEED him. Bad.

Ah, the days of OP characters in murderhobo worlds... turned on its skillet.



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Local Heavens by K.M. Fajardo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I think I wanted to love this much more than I actually did.

But then, I blame my love of the original Gatsby for my somewhat lagging enjoyment of this.

Don't get me wrong. It's got a neat hacker subplot and it has standard SF trappings for this brave new world, so I should have just fallen straight in love with it. Perhaps. But this might just be a case of just enjoying the idea of the juxtaposition of two genres and not an actual "oh my god I just got torn apart by the conversation" like I was with Fitzgerald.

Instead, it's mostly all about sex and genteel betrayal. And not so much about class, new money, crime, or obsession. Although all those aspects are here.

I think I'll just say it's pretty faithful to the original even while it expands on it.

But to me, less really was more. Alas.

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Grilled Armageddon by Dakota Krout
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This feels like a grimdark LitRPG to me. The system is totally out to get everyone. Systematically. By the very rules of getting fed.

So, of course, cooking and having the ability to make clean food rather than resorting to cannibalism is really the only source of real power in this world. By design.

That being said, it IS pretty damn grimdark, despite the great puns and some of the other humor. Let's just call it an existential dark-humor book, shall we? With level-ups.

It is NOT a particularly feel-good book although I do like the characters. The fairly neutral and neutral evil characters. That cook. :)



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Navvy Dreams by H.M.H. Murray
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Good, sprawling space opera filled with hot space pilots, tragedy, intrigue, and all the seedy underbelly of the universe.

Honestly, this has a lot more going on under the hood than I usually see in space opera. Complicated plots, many characters, and even though the blurb is slightly misleading as to my expectations, the end product is, at its core, a big universe full of hard-survival.

It's pretty balanced, too, for storytelling. It's not light on wordbuilding and the characters are fairly fascinating. It makes me think of other long SF adventures, and it's a pretty comforting read because its familiarity.

I definitely recommend this for anyone hankering for a new space opera.

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