Damon reads books

Book reviews I guess

[damonreadsbooks]

The Second Jungle Book

By Rudyard Kipling

Illustration by J. Lockwood Kipling

Mogli is a dick. And a bit of a monster, this book features him turning towards manhood and just like, fuck that guy.

A small list of Mogli’s Crimes

1. He put the skinned Shere Khan in the middle of Council Rock to show he was top predator

2. He starves and then has a village destroyed

3. He takes a item he was told not to take and causes the death of six people

4. By the time he is 17 the rest of the animals fear him so much they are scared to be on the same path as him and even Bageera lowers his head in deferment to him

5. He makes his wolf family of 40 fight a giant pack of around 200 Dhole (a feral dog I think)

This guy is just an insane maniac, but this book is great, there are three stories unrelated to Mogli, one is about Inuits near starving to death, one is about a former prime minister of India becoming a wondering hermit after believing he can achieve no more in his role and I feel that was the best story in the book and the third Mogli-less tail is about a jackal, a crocodile and a crane and sucks.

Overall this an enjoyable book where we see Mogli develop into adulthood and come to understand he needs to be with his own people and that a great journey, I mean he’s still a monster but the books great.

Solid 8/10

Also there are some fantastic illustrations by J. Lockwood Kipling, they go great as end pieces to the tales.

[damonreadsbooks]

Dark Justice: Dominion

Story by: John Wagner

Art by: Nick Percival

I’m gonna start with how much I love the art of this comic, it’s gorgeous and visceral, simply beautiful. The Dark Judges, especially Judge Death, have always been a favourite of mine with their freaky designs and creepy vibe.

The story is great, 3 Dark Judges (Death, Mortis and Fear) end up on a colony planet (which only intersects with other planets once a year for supplies) and just let loose with their own brand of justice. They decimate the entire colony, this story has no real hero, no one that can stop them, there is a protagonist, but she is just a normal human, no Dredd or Anderson, no Stallone or Urban, just a colony of norms and these dangerous amigos.

It’s good to get a comic where the bad guys win, and this book is fantastic 8/10

[damonreadsbooks]

The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins

Story by: Clint McElroy, Griffin McElroy, Justin McElroy and Travis McElroy

Art by: Carey Pietsch

This comic is the comic companion to the Adventure Zone podcast, my wife is a massive fan of the podcast and really enjoyed this comic, I’m not really a fan of it and I guess there is no reason for me to have read it but I did so because my Wife asked me to, she reads a lot of comics I ask her to read so fair is fair.

I wasn’t much of a fan of this comic, reading it was a bit of a slog, I didn’t like many of the characters but I did like Magnus the Warrior, he was funny. It seemed like it was filled with in-jokes but as I don’t listen to it they mean nothing to me so were a bit meh, I could shit all over it but that would be stupid as I’m not the books audience, it would be like shitting all over the Ghostbusters remake (which wasn’t actually that bad but the ending was shit) without having seen it. The art was solid but the story ran to quickly in the second act, I’ll give this a 5/10

[damonreadsbooks]

Memoirs of a Taxi Driver (Part 1)

By Errol Ballanty

I bought this off a cabbie whilst a bit pissed several years ago, the guy even signed it, but I won’t hold my breathe for part 2 as it doesn’t exist, for something called memoirs it’s mostly this guy’s rants about people drinking and things other cabbies have told him, it’s all a bit shit to be honest but props to the guy for self publishing this book. 2/10

[damonreadsbooks]

The Lives of Tao

By Wesley Chu

My first non-sequel on this site, this book is about an alien race with the stupid name of Quasling who are the kingmakers and kingbreakers of our history, sorta ethereal creatures that need a human body to survive and live symbioticly with. Each Quasling is millions of years old and most have inhabited some major historical people such as the titular Tao who was previously Ghengis Khan as well as being the creator of Tai chi. The race itself is split into two factions; the Genjix who want to leave earth at any cost including the destruction of all life on our planet and the Prophous who want to leave without killing us all.

Tao starts off in the body of a Bond-esqe character before having to inhabit the body of the overweight, lazy slob Roan, this leads to a heavy training montage with a lady named Sonia who is much better at him at literally everything. All this training makes him healthy and good at being a soldier in this secret war but still a whiny bitch.

This book was really good, the opening chapter with the spy was a bit naff but it got much better with Roan, I would highly recommend this to anyone solid 8/10

[damonreadsbooks]

The Final Battle

By William C Dietz

Another sequel, this book is part 2 of the Legion of the Damned series, another trashy sci-fi book but they are fun, the first chapter of this novel features a returning character from the last novel masturbating to the shitty life the P.O.Ws of a failed wannabe conquering race live on the ruined nuclear wasteland of her former home world, but the book isn’t just about sex although it happens a lot. I honestly wonder if writing bad sex is important to Sci-Fi writers and that may be why we haven’t heard of lesser known writers like Asimov and Shelley, not enough poorly written sex in I, Robot and Frankenstein but I digress, lots of sex in this book.

It’s actually about a futuristic version of the French Foreign Legion now filled with humans from across the galaxy, a handful of aliens and a bucket load of cyborgs with the brains of criminals and their victims given another chance at life. The P.O.W aliens (The hudarthans, that maybe be incorrectly spelt but the book isn’t in reach) have risen up again and want revenge but since the last war they aren’t just fighting humans they are fighting all the sentient beings in the Confederacy, which is currently under the presidency of an alien from a planet with much lower gravity.

The Legion is requested to save the galaxy once more but the President has some qualms, it would look bad if he sends a mostly human army to war when no other race is really sacrificing themselves in such numbers, but the other races suck, one is giant dunesque worms, one is currently in hibernation for a couple more years and another hasn’t even got a word for weapon they are so chill, so he decides to hire psychic and Telekinetic plankton which are actually super helpful.

The good guys win and things are good, this book was fun and not overly predictable but it felt kind of short. I’d give it 7/10

[damonreadsbooks]

I’m gonna do some reviews as I read

I dunno how serious I’ll take this, I’m also shit at grammar and bothering to proof read anything, but I do do a lot of reading and thought maybe I should do something creative with it, my reviews are my own and if you disagree with anything then remember they are my opinion and I don’t care

[damonreadsbooks]

Aliens: The Female War

By Steve Perry & Stephani Perry

I enjoy the Alien novels, they are trashy, ridiculous and almost all the ones I’ve read so far have been based on a comic I’ve then needed to go buy because I want to, often they are as good as the book, sometimes the comic is better.

This is the third book in the series, why start here? Why not? I finished this this afternoon in a single sitting, and it’s all fresh in my memory, there will be spoilers so don’t read this if you don’t want any.

Story so far, the Earth has been lost to the Xenomorphs, most of the inhabitants are dead, some fled offworld, some live on stations orbiting the world still receiving the odd transmission from those left behind. Wilks and Billie (formally known as Hicks and Newt before having to be renamed because Alien 3 killed them off) have escaped after being brought to earth by an idiot soldier who thought he could control the Xenomorphs.

And to the story, some people are having nightmares aboard these space stations including Rippley and Newt about a Super Queen on a distant planet, figuring that others are also having these dreams they get a friend of Wilks to hack the computer and see who else is having these nightmares and organise them into a team to hunt her down.

Their new gang of ten people who individually don’t matter go and grab the SQ (Super Queen) with minimum effort despite having to fight drones the size of a normal queen, they only lose 3 people and toss the SQ in the boot of their space ship and take her to Earth where they plan to set off some nukes to kill all the aliens on the planet. They plan to do this by dropping the SQ off and then flying to a hidden nuke base Rippley knows of near exclusively, the SQ summons all the aliens on earth to it before advancing on the nuke base, the base is busted up and the humans have to fix all the cabling before the aliens arrive they do so and shoot off into orbit and get ready to fire the Nukes on the Xeno Army annnnnnnnnd then the book ends, you don’t read of the boom or its carnage as the books ends before hand.

I know, you’re thinking this is a master piece but in all honesty it’s fun, I didn’t go into this expecting it to be the next classic, I mean it was written in 1993 and has less than 2000 reviews on GoodReads (my favourite site for tracking book read so far) a lot of people won’t have even heard of it but it’s just a bit of fun, it’s got all the bad Sci-Fi book tropes, it’s got bad sex scenes, someone hacks a government computer, hypersleep and a secret Android which all Alien books can’t go without (it’s Ripley) but it does the main job a book should do, it entertains and is enjoyable that’s why I liked it, so I’ll give this book solid 4/5 even if the main story was nonsensical