What are you reading at the moment?

Zero Sight (Zero Sight #1) by B. Justin Shier. Picked it up based on good ratings and reviews on Goodreads and enjoying it a lot.

"Meet Dieter Resnick. Dieter is the sole child of an abusive single father, a perennial schoolyard brawler, and Ted Binion High's number one academic prospect. Dieter is terrified of staying poor. He has few friends and is absolutely obsessed with earning a college scholarship. He's also a latent mage--one of the few humans left that can bend the manaflows to their will.

Too bad no one told him. Now a boy is dead.

Meet Rei Acerba Bathory. Rei is a second year student at Elliot College, the premiere magical training academy in North America. She's also on an all-liquid diet. Rei acquired her odd speech and mannerisms living among her centuries-old kin--strange vampiric creatures that have carved out the Midwest as their playground. She can kill a man without blinking, but has a serious weakness for puppies..."

 

Despite the somewhat funny cover, it's actually not a bad book. Short! (so nearly finished in one day and probably will soon). However, it's actually been kind of interesting and eye-opening. Made me realize a few things and actually been helpful for me to realize that "15 minutes a day working on my book is better than 0 minutes"! Which is common sense, but sometimes sense isn't so common so it's helpful to have someone remind me.

 

Just read the Undying Mercenaries series on KU. It was amazing - 8 solid books of well written xanatos speed chess, basically. I also laughed loud enough to disturb my dog fairly frequently.

It’s available on KU and it got 5 stars from me.

 

(Re)Read The Jaguar Princess by Clare Bell. Excellent young adult fic set in the Aztec era about a ruler who wishes to find a god that doesn't demand the blood sacrifices that sicken him, and Mixactl, a young slave woman descended from an ancient race who, unbeknownst to herself, has the power to shapeshift into a jaguar, and how their fates intertwine. There is romance, but it's fairly light and not at all the focus of the story. The writing is rich with detail and imagery, and the conflict between Mixcatl's talent for painting and her beast's instincts is compelling reading.

Also cheerfully going through short story collections by Jack Vance and Henry Kuttner, and just started a book that's written from the viewpoint of a mutant bumblebee.

 

Ah! I really love some of Clare Bell's work. The Named Series (Ratha's Creature, Clan Ground, etc.) was some of my favorites as a kid. I should go re-read them some time!

 

I had to stop reading for the time being. I'm having trouble focusing for more than one chapter a day in my writing. I'm not sure the reading is the problem, but I gotta do something.

 

I actually painted the covers for the re-release of the Ratha series a few years ago. She's currently working with some artists and the publisher on a comic book version of the first book.

 

HOLY CRAP! You're THAT Viergacht?! Excuse me while I fanboy! I love your picture of Shongshar. One of my favorite characters of all time in the Named series and possibly ever!

 

So as an early Xmas present to myself (since I've been wanting to read through a series), I decided to grab "The Chaos Seeds" set of 6 by Aleron Kong.

I mean, he is a "big name" and one way I got introduced to LitRPG proper.

Honestly, I have to say, just on Book #1 so far, re-reading it after more than a year, and.... It's not quite as good as I remember.

 

It's either me or my evil twin Thanks! It was a childhood dream come true to get to do those illustrations.

 

Wow. Some great covers there, very nice work. I definitely agree a good cover can play an important role. I discovered my favourite sci-fi author because I was at a small airport bookshop looking for something to read in the sci-fi section, when Jon Sullivan's covers caught my eye. Now I have every book and short story ever written by Neal Asher - all thanks to that first cover I saw.

 

Reading the Viridian Gate series at the moment.

Good:
- Written well, reads easily, not too many distracting grammar/spelling/punctuation errors.
- Good balance of action and humour.

Bad
-There's nothing that really wows me or that makes me want to go: "Squeeee!"

I gave the first book 4/5 stars on Goodreads because I really liked it, and so far it looks like I'll give the second book the same. Good books, well written - but I'm not getting those Holy Shit moments.

 

I have a foolproof method of determining whether or not you’re an evil twin. There are two steps to the process:

First, check for a goatee. If you have a goatee you’re about 90% likely to be an evil twin (and 8% likely to be Doctor Strange, I guess, with a 2% margin for milkfat).

If you don’t have a goatee, then ask yourself this: where is your evil twin? If you don’t know who/where they are, or even if they exist at all, you are 98% likely to be the evil twin. Again, 2% reserves for milkfat.

See? Simple innit!

In other news, I really love the game The Last Of Us. On paper it’s everything I hate about gaming - tacked on multiplayer, a short playtime of around 10-15 hours depending on difficulty level (I have a system where I have to get at LEAST 60 hours of enjoyable single player content out of a game to justify the money I spent buying it new), over the shoulder third person survival horror, zombies, and scavenging/crafting.

Seriously.

But still, TLoU is easily one of my top 5 games of all time. The storytelling, the directing, the writing, the plot, the voice acting, the pacing, and the characters just brought it all together and made for some of the most memorable gameplay I’ve ever experienced. I won’t spoil it for anyone since there are a few twists and turns that absolutely deserve to be played through blind, but from start to finish it was a constant series of heavyweight punches direct to my feelsballs.

I call this phenomenon - the one where a certain je nais sais quoi brings together a bunch of things I hate and turns it into something I love - “The Last Of Us Effect.”

I just finished the book The One Who Eats Monsters. By rights I should have hated this book - it’s modern urban paranormal fantasy YA romance schlock with a twist of “dark and edgy”. Basically, think beauty and the beast (the tv show from the 90s with Vincent and what’s-her-name, not the Disney cartoon or the original fairy tale version), except dark and edgy and angsty as only teenagers can be. Also, lesbian.

I normally hate romances, urban paranormal, angst-ridden teenage drama, professional damsels in distress, and lesbian-for-the-sake-of-being-lesbian but for some weird reason all that shit I hate got tossed into the literary blender and combined into a smoothie that actually left me wanting more.

Probably because the humor worked. There were a number of times I laughed out loud because the author has a really good sense of how to turn social awkwardness into comedy gold. Still, it’s only a better love story than twilight because it’s literally not twilight.

But there is an awful lot of stalking in it. Justifiable by circumstances, but still.

Anyway, I recommend it. Without the humor it would only have merited 3 stars, but with the humor it got a 4 from me and it’s a book I won’t soon forget (partly because it’s a genre mashup of a bunch of genres that I hate).

 

I'm trying to grow a beard and at the moment I have muttonchops and a goatee but for some reason the hair won't grow in the connecting area - does that count?

 

My beard reaches the bottom of my sternum so you’ve a long way to go yet, beardawan.

But some people just can’t grow beards. S’why there’s a second step to my process.

 

I've been growing my beard for 21 years... Don't even have stubble, lol. Just one small hair that doesn't go past 1mm

 

*sigh* Don't I know it.

 

Dungeon Calamity

Book 3 in the divine dungeon series.

At first I felt a bit cheated by the book. too many godlike characters pop in. mcgaffin a problem/solution then pop out. Then there were the cheap cliffhangers at the end of the chapters, The build up was cool but the pay off was meh at best.

There are two major battle scenes. the first one close to the middle of the book was pretty epic. Infact that should have been the finale!!! the second was the finale which was.... errr ok I guess.

The idea is solid, the ending packs a punch and I will be keeping tabs on the writer however this installation is the weakest in an awesome trilogy. The puns are bad but not bad enough to be good, the character's stopped acting according to their personlities because "plot" and it just felt a bit forced.

Would I recommend it? Yes, the fact is that it is a very solid read and lots of fun. It just got graded on a curve the previous books in the series set.

A 3.5 out of 5 stars from me and an extra 0.5 stars for that ending bring it up to 4 stars.

 

Mean girls memes ftw.

 

So Finished up Chaos Seeds #1, onto Chaos Seeds #2.

So far....

The MC is kind of...random and dumb? One, we know nothing really about him as 'the human James' except apparently he misses fried chicken and boxers. And he knows a lot of pointless memes. So that's kind of dull.

I'm also a little creeped out that he knows he's in life, not a game, and is completely okay with shoving knives into people's eyes and stuff. Even if they're evil, that shows a level of creepy that's unsettling for me.

Also, hurrah for getting the village randomly and all, but why is he suddenly so super obsessed with making a kingdom? Like the whole book just turns to that and there's no real...prompt? No reasoning? No "the imp told me it was my job/destiny", just some kid's random obsession with being a king basically and making sure everyone knows he is the Master.

That said, it isn't a terrible book. I just could have gone with a bit more direction into why the MC is doing xyz and I would have liked to see a bit more background than "This is so much more awesome than my life so it is my destiny!" and never another thought apparently given about any loved ones or family left behind or anything at all. Like I totally missed he was from "the future" the first time because I've only been glancing at the dates and was like "oh, 2037", but he's making meme references from 5-10+ years ago in "now" time? What is up with that? However, the writing style is good, the way he puts in the 'game' information isn't bad, and the fight scenes are actually normally not too bad at all.

So I'd give the first book like 3.5 stats/5. Not the most amazing thing I've ever read and I could stand a more 'real' MC, but so far I'm enjoying rereading it after over a year.