What are you reading at the moment?

Remind me - what 'exact same thing' did Jason do as Alex that's making him take 'up the mantle of looking awesome on the outside while being rotten on the inside'?

And I loved the water God. He was hilarious!

I didn't think the third book was as good as the first two either, but mainly because there wasn't enough action.

 

Finished Neuromancer. It was alright, but after transcribing the first part of it, I can agree with many people and Gibson himself— it's definitely a "my first published novel" kind of book. In fact, if it wasn't the first notable cyberpunk novel, I doubt it would have ever earned repute outside of having some jazz-esque prose. It's more that it came out at the right time— 1984, IIRC, when the only real "cyberpunk" works out were Blade Runner and the short story that gave the genre its name, Cyberpunk. Then came Neuromancer with its morally bankrupt protagonists, exotic setting, ninja girl in leather, and eccentric prose. Nothing quite like it. And while the prose is pretty great to read and write, the setting itself has been Seinfelded so hard that it was difficult for me to really appreciate any of it because I'd seen it all before done better. There's been better cyberpunk books; Gibson just wrote this one first.

It's sort of like the Beatles or Black Sabbath, I guess. They were the first and came at the right time, so we casually say they are the best, but upon further inspection, there have been bands since them that did everything they did better. It's just that they have a specific style that's very hard to emulate properly— indie rock and stoner metal have been trying for years to little avail.


Anywho, I also finished reading (and partially transcribing) an erotic litRPG book: Gamer Girl Caught in the Game. And I'd like to say that I completely called that ending from the start. Since transcribing takes time (I could have read it in a day but it took me four days just to transcribe half the book; I breezed through the last half in about half an hour), I had a lot of time to run scenarios through my head, and one of the scenarios I guessed pretty early on was

Spoiler: Spoilers

"this MC is going to f**k and join the Big Bad"

.
Though to be fair, I also had other scenarios on the brain.
The story itself was fine. It triggered my realization that so much litRPG erotica is actually vanilla erotica set in cyber-fantasy worlds. You can barely get away with writing a successful fantasy erotica novel today if it's too vanilla, but change a few words and add a game system and you're good to go. No wonder harems sell.
Not very stat heavy in any regard either. In fact, the more I think about it, I don't think I recall reading any stats in the game. Stat blocks/character sheets, I mean; there are stats.


Next up is Life Reset: A New Era Online Book 1. I've heard good things about it and it has a very high average rating on Amazon, so I figured I couldn't pass it up. Coming in at over 700 pages (though double-spaced), I don't think I'll be transcribing even a fifth of this. Then again, I never intended to transcribe whole books; only enough to get a feel for the author's prose, characters, and style— depending on the length, it may be a tiny sliver for door-stopper novels (Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell) or the whole thing for short stories (The Dead by James Joyce) but usually it's just a fraction. You've got to do it three times for any particular passage/page so your brain actually understands it, but just writing it down once is like reading it three times.

 

I like the atmosphere. The whole thing, to me, read like an anime

The opening line, however, I love. That sets the tone for everything.

 

THIS POST IS SPOILERIFIC! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!


Alex is used a few times to mirror Jason. It's why in this one he sucked!

Everything Jason does is hailed as awesome even though most of it is illogical if you think about it.

As to the mirroring the one that comes to mind is this :-

Alex rounded up a bunch of slave NPCs and used them in a sacrifice ritual. The book harped poetics about the poor slaves and how "righteous" he was acting when it was all just for selfish ends. The book looked down on him because he preferred the malleable NPCs that followed orders to the players that had their own selfish ends to met


Jason's ship got attacked and when the sailors got scared wanting to turn back he didn't negotiate with them. He killed the entire crew and raised them as zombies so they'd follow his orders. Went below deck, found slaves being smuggled there. Killed them for his ritual. Then was happy with how malleable the NPCs are now that they are under his command.


It's the same thing but the tone taken is different. Jason is given a pat on the back for his actions while Alex is treated like human trash. This muddles things.


I liked the water god.... at first, when he was being an air head at least. But the whole thing makes no sense no matter how you turn it. The WATER god has zero water themes around him. The evolution in the title refers in part to him evolving the lizardmen from actual lizard... How is that water? And Sheep? Because nothing says water town with mermen and mermaids (yes this happened!) like sheep and lizards. I also hated the hints at him being devious. Random and coincidence doesn't equal smart.

 

Well, that's a ... creative ... interpretation. Thanks, gave me a smile.

 

Aaaactually, Gibson had already been writing cyberpunk a bit before 1984; both Burning Chrome (set in the same universe) and Johnny Mnemonic (where razor-handed Molly shows up) are from 1981.

Those stories, and others, were collected in a book also titled "Burning Chrome"; I recommend it highly to anybody interested in cyberpunk (or sci-fi at large) since several other short stories in that collection are undeniably cyberpunk too, but set in different universes. "Dogfigh" and "The Winter Market" are my personal favorites, and I'd rate them above everything else I've read from Gibson (all of which I liked a lot).

 

I recently read:Unsouled (Cradle book), by Will Wight. I absolutely loved it. I haven't reread them yet so we'll see how it holds up. However it's mythos is based more on eastern ideology than western. I look forward to watching where this series goes.

https://www.amazon.com/Unsouled-Cra...encoding=UTF8&redirect=true&ref_=ku_mi_rw_edp

 

Love this series. And it gets better with every book! Best part is it introduced me to the worlds of wuxia and xianxia which I've been exploring ever since.

 

Neeewts I think the author was thinking of newts when he made lizard men which is still inexcusable i mean atleast do the basic reserch to learn the difference between a newt and a lizard

 

Stratus Online

by

Drew Cordell


I haven't come a cross a litrpg like this in some time.

I'll admit that I gave up on it at the 50% mark. There is nothing bad here, I just don't know anything about said game, the MC, his group or the world around him even though I'm half way through this thing!

The entire first part is dedicated to telling you about a regular WoW like game that the MC is currently playing (regular player only not super man) and is now chucking in favor of beta testing Stratus Online.


I know more about that generic game at this point then I do Stratus... and it's being chucked after this part in favor of full immersion.

The team finally make it to the game in the title of the book at around the 40% point.

I still know nothing about this world or it's rules as from there the focus is on... on... actually I don't know, they seem to be running a D & D campaign set to randomize and whenever something is supposed to happen the MC is taken out of play for whatever reason.

You are told about the MC's financial situation in detail but nothing about the MC, like, at all! Same with the rest of the party so I have no idea what their personality is or anything.


Maybe it's me but I've been noticing this trend in Litrpg of hide everything about the world and the MC to create mystery and intrigue. To me this just says (I don't want to tie myself down or commit to anything because this is going to be a series so might as well keep all my options open, ALL OF THEM)

Even in the most generic rpg there are rules put down and must be followed, I actually feel cheated when I read these books because even when something is "hidden" it still follows a certain logic or path. It's hidden from the MC or the reader for now and he or we have to get it as the story unfolds and the character grows.

But in these books hidden = open check mc guffin to give the MC or the world whatever I feel like at that moment in time.

I might be too hard on this book as it's still readable and there is nothing wrong with it per say... I just can't find anything nice to say about it, I know nothing about the whole thing even though I've read over 150 pages worth of, well words!

 

Yeah, you’re really not missing much.

 

Awaken Online 3.5 - Apathy

by

Travis Bagwell


I generally don't bother with side stories but I've heard good things about this one.

Well, they were right. It's actually better than the main story.

It's the origin story of the water mage Eliza that the group met in book three and teamed up with (getting stuck with waterless water god in the process)

Now her personality and origin were clearly defined in book three as the straight A student with uptight parents. So much so that her life is nothing but study, study, study. You MUST become a doctor like us!

The book doesn't change that, rather it follows her journey from when she logged in as a noob to how she became such a powerful mage.

The answer?

The author recycled Jason's story from book one. Just add some herbology to the mix and seeing how the character is more likely to grind repeatedly rather than actually do something have the water god pester her constantly into action.


The book itself is a 5/5. It was fun, it was interesting and entertaining from beginning to end.

I would take away a star for character inconsistency. Like Jason the character doesn't have an arch, she goes from timid little mouse to murder machine in one page. Then flip flops between the two personalities for awhile. Mostly because this is more something you'd see out of Jason and his personality is being grafted on to her.


Again the parents are unrealistic. In Jason they couldn't be bothered to give him the time of day, here they micro-manage every second of her life and are painted negatively because how dare they not read her mind.



But seriously this one was fun and the water god was better showcased in it then he was in the main story. I would recommend giving it a go.

 

The Outsider

by

Stephen King

King doing what he does best, Scary campfire tales with a supernatural element to them.
In this book he takes the perspective of multiple people in the tale and yet the voices are so district that you always know who's talking and why he or she is thinking that.

It's interesting how King managed to turn something that at best would be a 500 word tale and at most a novella to a 560 page turner. I'll admit I had a very, very, VERY hard time putting this down and the dive into the vastly different psyches of the people involved kept it fresh.

Last year his book sleeping beauties was on my worst books of the year so I was a bit skeptical picking this up. More so because not much hype was made about it. Some anti-trump sentiments are there, Hell the sentence "Black lives matter" was in the very first paragraph! But it was like pepper on a meal. Just a bit and not enough to turn your nose up on the steak.

The thing is king tends to write timeless tales and this one had the under current of one but.... good god the product placement! This is Man of Steel levels of bad! IHop has to be mentioned every other chapter. When it's not then burger king or MC take it's place. Ipads are highlighted as if it was a sales pitch. It was just so out of place and stood out, Wonder if had some deal with these companies or something. Can writers do that?

Then there was the half regurgitated bits of pop culture. I don't mind them in self published books about gamers and super heroes. If written well they can be half the fun of the book. But in a story about the boogey man, one with stellar writing, it's just weird. Agatha Christie's Ms Marple must have been name dropped at least 20 times, it's not part of the tale they just name drop her and a few other characters from Christie's books... A LOT! and in the grand finale we close with the words "The odds are not in your favor" it's just weird.

 

Dammit now I want Burger King.

 

I'm almost finished with awaken Online: Catharsis, and I'm also reading Kafka On The Shore by Murakami
I'm really enjoying both, and I might start Sufficiently advanced Magic this week

 

DO it.

 

I mean, it's exactly what I expected.

 

A dush's power trip fantasy?