So, just getting it out of the way. Skin Deep by Kory Bing is a comic about mythological creatures living in modern times. Why this is being referenced at the beginning of the post is largely due to the fact that I'm almost confident that today's book is at least partially derivative of the comic. So, let's start with the book's cover.
(Ed. No shit, while looking up a link for part of the review, I noticed that the cover of the first comic and the book are actually kind of similar in a way. http://www.skindeepcomic.com/archive/issue-1-cover/ )
Amazon thought that after my pre-purchase of the new Garrett PI and Sandman Slim books that I'd enjoy this one. I can see why it thought that, but unfortunately I can't agree with it entirely. The book had promise, but was handled with all the grace of a drunken prom night grope and all the subtlety of a car crash off a dam. After the jump, we'll be reading The Silver Token by Alan R. Marble.
So to start things off. The original draft of this was a train wreck in which I uploaded pictures of the comic with links to the appropriate page to somewhat reinforce why I think this book took more than a few ideas from the comic. I scrapped that long before it turned into a mess like the Hungering Saga review. Unfortunately, Tumblr ate most of my revised version when I posted it. Learn from your mistakes and all, this one's backed up, whether that's good or not really depends on how entertaining I am I guess.
Onto the book proper though. Jonah's our main character and he's an insufferable prick. That's me being nice. The book opens with him being lethargic, then bitching, then being lethargic and bitching. I understand WHY this was done. He's supposed to feel out of place, he's supposed to be something of a loner. There's a better way to handle this and it would aleviate some of the problems early in the book in that we have to spend a lot of time alone with Jonah. A few pages in, he finally decides dicking around in his apartment isn't the best way to spend his day off and he decides to ride his motorcycle. He actually talks that he's called names because he doesn't drag his knee. I'm inclined to believe he's called squirrel, squid and hey you fucking idiot because he's incompetent personally. Trust me, this hatred is warranted, not just because I'm a misanthropic.
He gets to the coin shop and this place is locked down better than the gun store I shoot on the range at. The guy locks the door down and they talk about coins where Jonah finds his plot macguffin that's a plot hole in and of itself. We'll get to that. So, a guy shows up at the door and coin geezer doesn't like his look so he buzzes the guy and tells him to piss off. Being a slab of meat, the badguy punches through the glass. Jonah gets the hell out after watching the guy choke the old man. He calls the PD, then gets picked up as the prime suspect. They say he broke in and tried to rob the guy, nevermind the punched INWARD glass, the obviously defensive shots fired by the old guy's gun and numerous other minor plot holes that really kind of drag you out of the scene if you know anything about the criminal process, corrupt or not.
He gets sent home and told he can't leave the county since they've got no alibi. The bull drake (spoiler) smashes into his house, then he's rescued by Rebekah. If I type Rebecca later, sorry. She slams through the wall, drags him to a truck and they drive off with him bitching about the police. I'm pretty sure if they think the guy's going to blow up his own apartment to leave, they've got more issues than all the funny stories out of Florida hinted at. They escape the state of face eating druggies and various other doses of hardcore stupidity and stop for breakfast where Rebekah eats a metric ton of meat, causing Limp-Wrist the Aggravating to stare in awe. Then they drive, he bitches, he sleeps, he bitches, then he bitches while they pull into a city. We meet Abe, Abrahim, big gold dragon, greedy, Arabic and bald. He wears suits and smokes a cigar. He changes his name a lot. I think we're done.
They discuss that Jonah's a dragon, but he's in denial, which is fine, but he sniffles and whines so much that I found it hard to really care. Then they're attacked before he can jump out a window to prove he can fly and they escape after Rebekah's thrown through a van. Literally. They drive to the next location, which is trashed and the person they were supposed to meet is gone in an obviously violent fight. They sleep there in a show of... some kind of logic. It makes enough sense in book I guess, though considering the next part, not really. They start driving the next morning where they're run off a bridge over a dam by the same Bull Drake from earlier. Jonah flies to safety, wakes up in a hotel room wearing silly clothes and staggers to get food. He meets Rebekah, they start talking, they start getting naked, then he makes an ass of himself. Between the bipolar reactions of Rebekah and Jonah's self-loathing, I started re-reading Sandman Slim to get a healthy dose of anti-hero fish out of water that doesn't make me want to strangle someone.
Returning to the book the next week, they're sulking as they drive once more. Then they get to the hideaway where Jonah starts bitching some more. I'm actually cutting down to how many times he bitches by the way, you can probably double the count for a more accurate estimate. He suggests they stop fighting, pissing everyone off with his talk of surrendering. Then it's training time where a dragon tries to light his ass on fire. Rebekah is revealed to be his training partner and there's more awkward 'romance' or whatever passes for it, then they find out an elder was kidnapped.
So they walk into a trap so obvious even captain chucklenuts, Jonah notices it. This bodes well as they plow into it. Then, oops, betrayal by the creepy uncle sort of guy and Abe. Except Abe's not a badguy and he's playing the double agent and wants Jonah's help since they think Jonah went full retard traitor too. The escape after he panics and shifts into a dragon, then a bunch are captured including Rebekah because fuck the rest of them, they're barely named characters.
So the final chapter is the, "Oh wait, the badguys are bad, bollocks." chapter and the traitor finds out he messed up, then redeems himself, sort of. Then they're attacked by brain washed dragons and eventually most of them are saved. They fly off, nothing really changed other than reduced numbers and a half baked romance between our festering idiot and his new girlfriend.
So, the book, it's got it's issues. Like so many books before, the characters needed to be better developed. I'd entirely toss Jonah and find an actual main character and not his sniveling sidekick. Rebekah was bipolar, switching between almost human carnivore and raging bitch and credit where it's due, it confuses the hell out of both Jonah and the reader. Abe was the only other character really given face time and he was probably the closest to interesting, cliched double agent plot aside. An adaptable gold dragon that toys with his name and seems willing to roll with the punches. Most of this is hinted at though and never really brought up so instead we're left with rich drunk lawyer uncle. I hated Jonah. It's really that simple.
So, I've hinted at it a bit, but I didn't go into detail. Why am I convinced that the comic took ideas from Skin Deep? Well, we have a whiny human sort of drifting lethargic through life who finds a strange, small token that quickly changes her life, she has strange dreams after touching the plot macguffin,
where she finds out that she's not entirely human, wishes she could go back to before she found out, is chased by a large, seemingly unstoppable enemy directed by entities that are well known, but not well known.
There's a bit more, but I think it'd be more fun to actually read the comic, I enjoy it well enough. For the book? It's aggressively mediocre. More could've been done with both the plots and the characters. He actually described the dragons in book by color and at one point, 'the most generic thing I could think of when I thought dragon' or something very, very similar. Better villains would help, starting first and foremost with actual motivation. Fixing plot holes or at least explaining them would be nice. The Token? It's supposed to always find his way back to him. Unless it's explained and I missed it, just give it to one of the super mooks, they'll drop it and then they can go into hiding safely. And it's repeatedly said that even throwing the token into the ocean, it would eventually find it's way back so there's no real excuse. It's Amazon score is a half star higher than I'd give it, but a 5/10 really is about right.
Chance in Hell - A Case Study of the Gary Stu in his unnatural environment
So, the main character, Chance? He's a bland, generic, annoying and a blatant Gary Stu. Not one, but two supernormal chicks that want to jump his bones, chased by everything that goes bump in the night, transgressions entirely ignored, never in need of cash and able to ignore mind control. What, you thought I was kidding?
My main impressions though, not too bad. It was a fluff read no doubts about that. If you're looking for something to burn time without requiring any thought you could certainly do worse. With that said, this book is far from good and in the same genre I think you'd be better off with something like the Cerberus Protocol. The book doesn't offer any surprises, doesn't offer any real tension and doesn't really offend in any one way. It's sort of the book equivalent of those magazines in your Dentist's office.
I gave a short overview of Chance and there's really not that much more to say about him. He's got an annoying brother, he got into vampire hunting because his girlfriend was eaten by one. His cadre of hunters got ambushed because they were idiots and caution is never welcome in stories, especially if they're to set up a Gary Stu's tragic bland past. His defining character traits are plot contrivances luck and a dedication to finishing jobs he's paid for.
Contestant number one for girlfriend is the werewolf alpha, Toni, I'd offer a spoiler, but if you can't figure out that the werewolf mentioned on the blurb is the cute Asian riding a motorcycle that smells of wet dog, you're reading the wrong blog there might be some problems. She's possessive and hates vampires. She's a rich girl doing rich girl things with a vaguely defined job. She's Asian. She rides motorcycles. Did I mention she's Asian? Okay, that's her character. If there was more, I wasn't paying attention. I will give credit for making her Vietnamese rather than Japanese or Chinese. That's a compliment right?
Contestant number two is a vampire. She's old, she's probably horny and she's inexplicably well connected and craving our Gary Stu. Her name is Megan and she died in the fifties. She borders on mary sue. I say border because she's really fairly bland. She has a witch friend named Lacey who uses blood magic and eats a lot. We're done here.
The story goes that Chance's group of huntards were out to kill some vampires and destroy something. They get ambushed and Chance almost dies to a troll in a botched handoff. He escapes, then steals Toni's bike at the sandwich shop the next day and meets Megan. He wakes up in Megan's house after being mugged, goes over his story and then bland happens. He steals Toni's bike a second time which she apparently thinks is enduring and they all figure out that Chance is immune to mind control from vampires.
The bad guy tries to take the magic urn back, we find out it's Solomon's Urn that holds a large number of demons and is a super weapon or.. something. It's vaguely dangerous at least. So they formulate a plan to use the Witch to banish the demons. Then the werewolf priest offers to exorcise it. Then we find out the werewolf priest doesn't like heathen witches and gets upset. Then the vampires decide they can't have two werewolf packs and a witch coven fighting over this and joins in. And there's a big gunfight.
There's plenty more in the book, but honestly it's basically filler and vague attempts at characterization that really don't stand out that much.
So, with all that in mind? I didn't hate the book. I think WoD's splat books are better and I kept getting the vibe that it was World of Darkness meets Buffy. It's utterly bland, but unoffensive and while not a good read, it will eat up an afternoon. For the price I got it at, I guess that's not a bad trade off. That said, I would only read if you're a fan of modern fantasy and half baked plots. I did pick up the second one hoping to see if it got better, or at least worse so I could make fun of it.
Metro 2033 - Stumbling in the dark. No really, what the hell's going on?
Today's book is Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky.
I'll be one-hundred percent honest with you guys, I still don't know what the hell is going on in this book. I kept putting it aside to see if it would all click with afterthought like, "The Cat That Walked Through Walls" did so many years back, but this one just languishes in that little spot of confusion and potential derision. So after the jump, let's read the book that has nothing whatsoever to do with the game and by extension I'm guessing only a passing link to "Roadside Picnic", it's Metro 2033.
As usual, we'll start with initial impressions. My initial impression is that I liked this book at first. It's got a good atmosphere and Artyom never quite reaches the point of being an annoying fish out of water. The characters he runs into tend to be rather... distinct, but as the book nears the midpoint, either they became too distinct and started feeling more like caricatures, which might have been intentional, more on that later though. The only consistent character through most of the book is Artyom himself and really he's the only one with a fleshed out character, which work well enough since we're following him through the Russian metro.
The book starts with a bit of backstory on Artyom showing that Sukhoi is his adoptive father. Hunter shows up, a Stalker (I see what you did there!) and more or less coerces him into doing his job in case he inevitably dies. He wanders out as he's told, on a mission to save the VDNKh from the Dark Ones. A meeting with Bourbon gives him a companion for all of a chapter or two, mostly through the next station and part of a tunnel before he snaps, spouts a prophecy and promptly dies. I'm not kidding about that either.
It's here that we meet Khan. Khan is the reincarnation of Genghis Khan and he assumes he's going to be the last reincarnation. He's a burger and fries short of a happy meal by the way. He tells Artyom that he received a vision from Hunter to help the boy and since Hunter is apparently bordering on Jesus he decided it was a good idea. Artyom then rotates between being entranced by the psychotic troll and contemplating how to best run from him. Their journey together ends after leaving a station where a man is shot for maybe carrying a plague, maybe because people are blood thirsty and maybe this was a hammer handed way of showing off the the potential brutality of both the people and the tunnels.
It's about here that my memory sort of jumbles this book, throws it in the air and giggles while shouting, "Confetti!" so if I get something out of order, sorry.
The station they arrive at is a nice place where Artyom spends some ammo to get a room, some food and a bed for the night, ruined entirely by the Nazis attacking. Artyom just flees with everyone else into the tunnels until he encounters an old man and a feral child. Helping the old man get his nitro pills, they stagger to the next station where they once more have to flee since the old man's been shooting his mouth off about the Fourth Reich. The boy's shot, Artyom goes berserk and kills someone and wakes up in a holding cell as a traitor to his people.
While in the cell he chats with a Muslim for a moment. Then he's rescued by the Che Revolutionaries, a cheerful bunch of sociopaths that decided to crash the Reich's party. They give Artyom a gun and some ammo when he leaves after a conversation about the evils of the Reich and how good a man Che was. Artyom thinks they're a bit off, but friendly enough. I think they're about as deluded as people are today seeing as how Che was an incompetent revolutionary, but that's a different point entirely.
Wandering the tunnels, he encounters two old men who have a chat that convinces him he has a destiny. That's it. Move along now, next set piece.
The next place he meets people where the water tastes funny and they've got a defective guard door which requires them to man the metro's entrance at all times to keep things from getting out of hand. Artyom notes how off everything is here and comes to the realization much, much later that the place is at least partially radiated. Since he was stripped of most of his kit, he doesn't have a passport and as such, can't get to his next destination. So a guard he met bets everything on a rat race that they inevitably lose, forcing them to shovel shit until Artyom gets pissed and walks out through the tunnel. Since he's quite literally covered in the stuff, he's left alone as he escapes, but then runs into the issue of it being a bad thing. So, he's rescued by a Christian cult that gives him clothes and a shower with foul smelling soap. Squishy.
He pisses them off asking barbed questions, flees into the dark and encounters another group where he finally manages to give his report after some time. A kid gets lost and they stagger up topside, shoot some deranged cannibals and their bitter old man priest, then they flee to another set of tunnels. Run into the people eating psychic sponge thing where the child and a few others die, all under the Kremlin. They find the missiles, then Artyom goes home, finds out the Dark Ones do horrible things to the people, either ripping them apart or subjecting them to Jersey Shore marathons turning them into brain cases that requires someone to chloroform them so they don't get too out of hand.
On the surface again, he is attacked by a flying monster, then rescued by a fire truck where they drive to a tower. He helps guide the missiles towards the mass of flesh that the dark ones use as a hive. He has a sudden view, realizing he's the chosen one (I'm not kidding) and that these things could've been allies if they could've communicated, which he supposedly could. Then they die.
I truncated a good chunk of this book since it is a fun enough read and while parts of it get pretty damn stupid, the only parts that ever really pissed me off were the sections with Khan and the ending. Personally I'm of the opinion that he didn't actually communicate with the Dark One's hive mind, he just had a mental breakdown after his journey. Either way, the ending sort of sucked.
The characters are tolerable enough with only Artyom really having anything stand out, but the rest at least seeming human. Artyom himself is actually somewhat likeable, plot macguffin status or not, so that's not such a bad thing. The thing about this book is that for it's pacing, it still feels like it's dragging in places. The first half of the book is basically, "History of the World: Part 2" though wholly lacking in the humor department and instead feeling far too gimmicky. The book rarely explains anything and what does get explained either feels inadequate or too heavy handed depending. Artyom's hero worship of Hunter, but not of other Stalkers rubbed the wrong way at times, but that's definitely personal opinion.
Really, the book's worth the read. Don't expect it to be like the game in the slightest. I wouldn't expect it to be like STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl either. It has a fairly oppressive atmosphere, but I found myself never once worried that Artyom was really in any danger, exacerbated by the chat with the two hallucinations that he had a destiny or the appearance of Hunter in people's dreams when Artyom was written into a corner.
So, the final verdict on the book is that it's flawed, but still worth reading if not just for a different approach to the post-apocalyptic thing. I am rather curious if anyone out there has read the original Russian print and if they'd be willing to compare notes though. I get the distinct feeling that some things got lost in translation. Parts felt too short at times too, but that might've been the half-assed digital version I had picked up.
Overall, I give it a 7-8 out of 10 depending. Enjoyable to read, fun to sort out mentally, though doing so starts introducing flaws and problems, I never found them too frustrating though. The biggest thing I've got against the book is it's ending.
Today's book is one I finished a while ago. Wounded Warrior by Merrel Michael. I struggled writing the review then and I'll likely struggle now. The reason for the struggle is that I saw a lot of interesting ideas, a lot of things I actually liked the idea of, if not the execution, but a ton of flaws. This book came recommended by Amazon since I've got a bad habit of re-buying my Glen Cook books digitally so I don't have to keep chasing rogue copies down from friends and family. It's obvious the author took notes from Glen Cook and he even admits to it in his closing for what it's worth. So, after the jump, let's dive into a world with Mohawk Ninjas wielding swords, the British commanding lamp-headed Steamjacks and Insurgent Vikings.
So to start things off, there are three main characters of the book. The most interesting by far is the titular wounded warrior, which is the source of my biggest frustration with the book. He's not the main focus for far too much of the book. We're instead split between him, the Suicide Cain and a retired scout, assassin person turned nobleman. Of these characters, while I liked the idea of Cain, a mohawk ninja with a death wish in a world of guns is an interesting idea, I think he should've been used much more sparingly. Really, he probably should've been a background character or a character used far less often to set other things up. I loathe to use him since I think he's easily one of Cook's worst characters, but Raven comes to mind here. While I dislike Raven as your typical anti-hero, he did work to move the plot and he was used far less often than he could've been.
The nobleman, whose name I've had to look up is Jon Tauther. Where I think Cain should've been used less, I sort of feel as though Jon Tauther shouldn't have been used at all. I understand why he was used. He helps fill in some of the background information on the setting, establishing race relations and the like. This ties in with Conner, our wounded warrior being under used. We don't necessarily need all of that information right away and we especially don't need it spoon fed to us with a character having marital problems and borking his uh.. assistant I guess. He's not necessarily a bad character, but again, much like Cain, I feel like he'd be better used as a secondary character.
In these two characters' place, I'd probably have put the seemingly friendly Viking, whose name I can't find for the life of me, sorry. This way, we get to see the world's characters reacting to the stranger occasionally, filling us in on details we might need in a more passive manner while still keeping the story much more focused.
With that said, focus is definitely this book's absolute biggest flaw. It jumps all over the damn place, even from segment to segment. Cain is by far the most guilty of this. Conner's journey felt much more natural in it's progression, both on and off screen and towards the end of the book as it became more focused, I found myself actually wanting to finish.
So, let's take a look at the setting, the characters in a little more detail and what I think worked, what I didn't think worked and what I hope gets tossed in the next book.
Conner. He's the wounded warrior. He's short a leg after Afghanistan. We're introduced to him being tricked into an alien world that until he was booted through the door, he though was a video game akin to the setting's WoW. See, this is actually kind of a neat idea. You've got an intelligent, flawed character to work with in a setting he only thinks he knows. We get to skip the worst of the, "Where am I, who am I supposed to shoot at, how do I level up in this crazy world?" that can crop up in these sort of books. He's obviously out of place and confused, but it's set to a brisk pace. We get to meet the vikings of the north, the Imperial Army wearing British red coats and armed with crap rifles and... oh wait.
Time to jump to Cain. Yes it really is more or less that abrupt. Cain is a suicide. A mercenary that's wearing magical gear, has training akin to ninjas and can't break any of his oaths or die or his armor and weapon disintegrates. He's got all the personality of the character from the NES Game Codename Viper (IE None) so in short, he's Raven without Raven's redeeming factor of having a bridge fall on him.
Finally, Jon. Jon's got a kid who will be enrolling in the mage school. He's borrowed money from the leezards. The leezards are frowned upon for not being human, but they uh... well they borrowed money from them and are in their debt. This is a bit of a strange relationship, but there's some power plays going on so I'll ignore it until it either gets better or goes pants on head stupid. Jon is borking his assistant who wants to marry him, but there are political problems to be had. Jon's past as an assassin, scout, military sort with a magic knife is catching up to him, but that's not really touched on enough. He was either underutilized or.. should've been a background character earlier on, I'm not sure which yet. He has potential though. \
The setting itself? Steampunk on floating islands with armored ninjas and vikings. The golems are actually quite neat with witch light heads. Sure they're still golems, but the suggested imagery is a neat one and the fact that they're being adapted is nice. Logistics and other problems show up and when we finally get to Conner joining the Red Coats as a maybe spy, maybe turncoat to the vikings, we actually get to the good stuff. Shame that it's the last handful of pages. That's not sarcasm either. This book easily would've been rated much higher than, "Eh, it's okay" if more of it had kept that draw.
In short? There's a lot that could go right with this series. There's even more that could go horribly wrong with this series. The author seems like a nice enough guy, actually replying to the criticism on his Amazon page without sounding upset so that's definitely a mark in his favor. There were some noticeable grammar and spelling issues in the book, which combined with the scattershot feel of the plot and the issues I had, I'm somewhat convinced he didn't have a proper editor or his editor was sleeping on the damn job. Either way, a good editor would be a massive boon to the series and might propel it in the right direction.
Overall this is one of those books directly in the middle of the road in terms of quality. There's a lot of potential, there's a lot wrong. I'll read the next book to pass final judgement though. If you ever read this review Michael, I honestly do hope you can get this series in order as I saw plenty of influence from Glen Cook which is always a good thing in my eyes. Good luck.
(Edit: If you guys see bad spacing, funny looking words or bad code pop up, let me know. Something weird happened between hitting submit and actually hitting the main page)
And finally for a return to form, a book review and even better, it's a zombie book which is the mess that started this all. I'll repost the Feed review eventually, I swear.
So, today's book is by Craig DiLouie and came highly recommended. Then again, so did Feed, Down the Road and The First Days and we've seen the trainwrecks that the first two were here right? With that said, this book was much more enjoyable than those two, except for some very rough spots in the narrative. I swear to god kid, if you talk about your Space Marine army one more time I'm going to go mug a 40k player the next time I'm playing Warmach... right. Anyway.
This book follows a group of survivors after a disease called the Screaming seemingly kills everyone in three days and then they get up. It's in dire need of an editor, or at the least it needs to read less like a string of Family Guy jokes. The less said about Family Guy the better though. So, on point, a review after the jump.
First and foremost, I don't remember names in the slightest. This review won't be using them even if I could find them because to be completely honest, I couldn't remember their names in the books even after reading their backstories. They just didn't click. Hell, even after reading it, let alone after all this time, I can barely remember exactly what happened. What I'm trying to say is that this book's pacing is akin to tossing something in an industrial blender, hitting puree and ending up with an unidentifiable chunky mess.
With that said, I was pleased to see that for once, the US Military wasn't the badguy and they were even actively trying to help! Shock of shockers. The setting still had the typical post-apocalypse bandits and all, but it was honestly very refreshing seeing a military in these settings behaving like... well, like real people are prone to. I've always sort of suspected that the faceless, immoral goons that fill Down the Road's cesspool are a result of never having actually spent time with the men and women of any of the volunteer forces.
In the book, we have a Bradley and it's remaining surviving crew buffered by some surviving civilians. The troops talk about leaving them somewhere after they get them to anything resembling safe, but end up keeping them. The reasoning being that with a severely reduced crew thanks to what amounts to a suicide mission, they need the help. Then we get a flashback for one of the characters that talks about the collapse where everyone just fell over with blood pouring out of them. Three days later, the screaming happened.
As an aside, where do they get these unified names? I sure as hell wouldn't have picked the screaming as my catchall for it. The, "Holy shit! They're all doing it simultaneously, someone get my gun" probably doesn't stick as well though.
They then find a hospital and begin clearing it out after blacking out the windows and keeping things quiet for a bit. Smart thinking and honestly it's scenes like this where the book shines. Which is why he shatters it by flashing back to another character's life leading up to the screaming and the running horde of biting maniacs. Then we sweep the hospital and encounter a giant grub from the eastern plaguelands. It ends up requiring concentrated fire, almost catching them until finally the Bradley's cannon is brought about and turns it into goo. Then we get a flash back. Not quite that fast, but other than some idle bitching, literally nothing else happened after.
Then they're moving again. One of the crew is infected and suffering a lot of pain and eventually it gets so bad they stop at a gas station. Then where the guy was stung explodes with a killer monkey and we find out it basically ate it's way out and butchered the guy. It's... a mixed bag here. It just felt off and I can't quite describe why. It felt like something should have been done. Then we get a flash back. Then someone leaves and we get a flash back. Then we get a flash back. If you think I'm exaggerating, it's not by as much as you'd think. I actually ended up skipping a few flashbacks because I was more interested in the here and now rather than most of these characters in the past.
Of particular note was the kid, the youngest guy who spent most of his flashback talking about his Space Marine army from Warhammer 40k. Did I mention his Space Marine army from 40k made an appearance? Because his Space Marine army from 40k features plasma rifles that fire bolts of super-heated plasma at enemies in Warhammer 40k. 40k.
That's not an exaggeration. The kid's backstory was painful. The rest of the flashbacks ranged from mediocre to, "let's move on please", but his warrants special attention. This is bad. Even some of the reviews I found online in my research mentioned this particular part. It doesn't paint us geeks quite right, it doesn't paint the character in any kind of good light and it doesn't make any sense that a socially awkward moron should've survived this long. I'd call him Newt, but I'm sure he couldn't operate a zipper.
Finally they hook up with the military and a safe zone. The refugee camp is... well, like the book a mixed bag, but a better look at people than what I usually see in them. We've got good, bad, morally ambiguous and the stupid all blended together. It's like real life, but I don't have the option to opt for jail time for punching people that need it.
So, they go out on a mission to blow some bridges up using surviving armor and reinforced civilian vehicles. They accomplish their mission, but almost everyone dies after giant aliens show up and start saying funny, weird things that breaks any tension this FPS boss fight offers. I kept thinking of the Patriarch from Killing Floor and his cheese loving glory. This... got worse when we see one of the characters succumb to the infection and we find out they're a hive mind and see normal people as threats to the hive. I actually had mixed feelings on that too. I think it works on the surface, but again, there was just something slightly off in how it was handled. I don't know if it just wasn't elaborated on enough, if it was too late in the book or if it should've waited, but there it is.
So the wrap up. What did I think of the book? It's not bad. I don't think it's as good as it's Amazon ratings show, but I wouldn't feel bad in letting someone else borrow it if I could. With that said, the editor needs to get his head out of his ass and the author needs to talk to people about his characters a bit. I honestly spent most of the book trying to remember who was who. I didn't care about any of the characters except maybe Sarge. I didn't remember any of them except again, Sarge, and the kid that spent too much time talking about his Space Marines.
I think with a slightly longer page count, better characters and tightening the pacing, this book would be rated much higher. As it stands? Read it if you like zombies and it's on sale. Where it is now, there's good, but there's far too much bad.
Today's book was fun to read, but flawed, but fun. A quick read, if you're like me and game far too much, you'll recognize more than a few things. We have a Ranger in a scientific building where otherworldly beings found a way to earth. We then find out the Germans tried to summon them originally and they visit strange locales like sleepy villages with old fashioned architecture. If you read that as Quake meets Half-Life meets Doom meets Return to Castle Wolfenstein meets X-Com meets Ghost Recon or Rainbow 6 you're probably not too far off. Buckle in guys, we're reading a First Person Shooter after the jump.
We open with Captain Memphis Stone. A US Army Ranger of ten years who later admits he wasn't in combat. I'm honestly thinking I misread something somewhere on that one though. He's head of the security for the geeks in the Large Hadron Collider, leading an international team of red shirts. Erh, spoilers, though if you didn't see this coming you're reading the wrong website, most of them aren't even given names.
I'll give the author credit for actually researching the black hole part, it was very enjoyable seeing someone that did some homework before writing. There are parts I've got to question later, but those are more character quirks or nerding it out over one of the guns mentioned. So, while in the bar, things explode in the LHC and they're sent in to rescue the nerds. They enter and find panther demons that I honestly ended up reading as Displacer Beasts just for simplicity mentally. They're tough to kill, have a lot of numbers and are ordered around by a big spiky beast that would require the efforts of at least The Ranger or Blazkowicz to engage. The team is killed off and he's reduced to just his pistol near the bottom of the facility. He fights and sneaks his way until he finds an M4 with grenade launcher. The weapon's out of order, you're supposed to get the shotty first.
Seriously though, he sneaks out through the air vents, ignoring jokes about looking for John Mclane, Gordon Freeman and children and manages to escape. After using his magazine fed grenade launcher. On an M4's 203. I honestly wonder if the weapon wasn't originally written as the OICW or somesuch since that's the only mounted GL I can think of off of the top of my head with a grenade magazine. So, using Gordon Freeman's 203 MP5 he pushes the demon into a sealed chamber and gets out. He's then quickly drummed out of the military because his camera didn't catch any of the demons and his whole team is dead. It's a bit contrived, but between the Duffel Blog and what I've encountered in people, I'll buy it.
He joins the Cerberus team, an organization set up after they discovered the German ritualists summoning the Veil Creatures Extradimensional beasts. So The Ranger Captain Stone then runs a recruitment drive, picking up displaced special operators from all over the world with expensive backing giving him access to gear and jets and X-Com's secret bases underground bases for training and supplies.
He starts by recruiting a German kommando who speaks like a California surfer dude. Eliciting memories of Stalker: Clear Skies' Freedom Faction, he joins up and follows the good Captain to recruit as Russian intel woman. She's the token female who gets captured and needs to be saved. No, I'm not joking. For once. Finally they get a toothless crazy SAS guy who's convinced they're there to kill him at his Scottish Bar locale. Again, I'm not joking. He's got a tinfoil hat.
So with our colorful squad of characters, we find out that the good Captain isn't familiar with combat and isn't entirely trusted by his team even though he's in charge, further aggravating things when he cedes field leadership to the more experienced guy. They do their first operation, throw the magic toolbox at a portal to the Alien Dimension Alien Dimension... wait.
Finally, we return to the LHC and they find out that the spike beast maulotaur Alien Grunt erh.. spiky guy is creating a ritual summoning circle and will be sacrificing the token chick. They're stopped, the day is saved and the organization is onto a career of stopping the Greys Veil Creatures Demons Forces of Cthon extra-dimensional entities.
So, it was a short, but fun read. If you've played enough games, you'll recognize more than a few tropes in play. So, while it's fun to read, don't expect anything really special. The characters are distinct and stand out in an A-Team meets Ghost Recon. There's at least a minimum of research put in which put the number of headscratching moments lower than what I've seen previously here. At 3.99 for the digital copy, it's fairly cheap too. Read this as a time killer, fun, light, easy to put down, easy to pick back up.
The Hungering Saga and Dark War - Wall of Text crits for...
Throughout these books I kept mentally comparing the Hungering Saga to Glen Cook's Dark War. In this review, I had originally intended to do a side by side comparison, but a mixture of general distaste with the first after a few points in the book and a lack of fine detail memory of the latter, it became a bit bloated. Rather than leave it unfinished, here's the unedited wall of text. As usual, spoilers are ahead, though they're fairly vague this time around.
Lowin is presented with this regularly, though in fewer shades of muddied grey. His implied trait of nobility. Having finished the last two books, it's still implied. Far from it, he's self-centered and purely motivated by his own needs. We're rarely shown him being truly noble and even then it's for comparatively short stretches of time within the book. Other times he's berserk, driven by the beast he's fused with. It's an interesting idea and sort of where I saw the ties with Marika of Dark War. This plot point struggles along vainly to the end where it's summarily dropped maybe twenty pages from the end. (It's a bit hard to judge, I'm reading from a tablet so my page numbers are a bit off). This is one of the major issues I have with the book. The parts that worked weren't given enough screen time. Towards the end of the third book repeated sex scenes popped up. Not saying, "Oh noes sex", but it really broke the flow of the book up and sort of felt like padding. I can't verify it mostly because remembering an exact page on a tablet's a bitch, but I'd swear at least parts of it were reused more than once too.
With that said, the second book was better than the first and the third was at least on par with the second, though there were a few questionable changes. And I had issues with how Lowin became king. It felt too neat. The very first thing that I absolutely was a step back was doing a mental wipe on Malice. Yes her name is still stupid and I still can't remember her 'real' name. She's regressed to a bounce sixteen year old girl. Which means that in all honesty, it's a new character, we're not looking at the same Malice that was actually given good development in book two. In my opinion at least, she should've just been killed, it would've been a less depressing end to the character. The other thing I didn't like in this book were plot contrivances. Lowin becomes king, just because. The lords all hate him because... they do. The book hints at him basically being a scapegoat, but because we're never shown this, only told, it rings hollow. The lords plotting against him aren't really given any sort of face time other than Lord Whatshisnuts and his young daughter and they're given maybe two pages of time. His advisor visible badguy Ethaniel, is both loyally helpful and an obvious badguy. He's been an obvious badguy since book two where he was working for Manipulative Badguy. He's supported by Snow who has pink eyes and white furred arms. She's not an albino. Tower, the big guy who doesn't talk much and is awkward, Not-Malice, Silver Eyed Woman whom I sort of remember being there, Silver, she was um... there and a handful of "Black Cloaks'.
I liked the Black Cloaks, though I found them under utilized and under explored, but that seemed to be a problem with a lot of the themes I saw and liked. They were an interesting mirror of Lowin's growing darkside, but as much as I expected it, nothing resembling introspection really showed up until the very end of the book. They weren't a part of it. He did talk to the spring green wolf that gave him her heart, the beast he de-limbed for himself and his dead plot macguffin. Sort of. The true antagonist of the book was... weak. They were quasi-undead looking, but not really, but they ate like the undead, but they weren't and they rode around with big black drakes and... they were a faceless horde with no development. They were like the demons in Doom with fewer fun ways of watching them splatter on a back wall.
So with all of that said, let's get into the books. As usual, spoilers ahead.
In book two, we pick up with Lowin, Malice, Kay and Mist living in the woods with their ghost in a box friend. Malice and Lowin go hunting, come back to find Mist in pieces and raped. Brutally. Because... yeah. I'll go ahead and confirm it for you, the ghost's the traitor because Occam's Razor would've told you as much from the get go.
Lowin and Malice are then given the message to report to the king if they want their daughter back. They show up to the king, Lowin's a twit and gets tossed in the Dungeon and Malice is.. um, sort of imprisoned? Much like other parts, this whole section is dropped for the single narrative. Oh and Lowin's in his cell for four years. It's implied he goes a little crazy, but it's not really brought up anymore. I know I'm harping, but seriously, this is another thing that could've easily been played with more than what it was. While there, he's visited by Tempest and acts like a scolded child when Tempest browbeats him about being a traitor. The king calls him a twit and then, Silent lets him out all of a sudden. In writing this, I'm reminded of Marcus Fenix being rescued from the gulag by Dom, except Dom at least gets character development. Sort of. The reason is, the Hungering are attacking and they've overrun the castle and King Lucidil has decided the twice traitor would still be useful. Yes he's arranged it all and yes he's got Lowin's daughter. Except she's been mind wiped and think she's his daughter and.. this was actually a moment that felt strong. We saw both Lowin and Malice actually being forced to try and cope with a shitty situation gone worse. So that means obviously it's time to look at Dark War.
In Warlock, we find Marika has been keeping to her studies, staying to herself when she's not required to be out of her room. The only two people she spends any time with normally are her two packmates. They talk with her, commenting that they're worried about her, worried that she's becoming something else. They're worried that she's upset about the things said about her. In short, they fill in for her family, which it's shown she pretty desperately needed. Early on, we're introduced to her teacher, another person who dislikes her solely on the grounds that she might be the end bringer. She's taken out for a flight, find places overrun and fall back to report it, assuming it was the cannibals. We're shown strange tracks and part of the book is investigating the situation at hand. We further discover that not all males are mentally defunct and cowardly as hinted by the first book with the Merchants. We further find that they've got fairly advanced technology. Here's the only friend outside of her pack that Marika actually had. She makes this friend by being an impulsive twit like usual, climbing all over one of their flying machines. This being Marika, we as the reader know it's because flight fascinates her. In book, they just know a witch is climbing all over their machine and she almost sparks a guild war. She's reprimanded, she learns things and she makes a friend and none of it was shown off screen.
In The Hungering Saga, Lowin goes berserk and kills things. Then... he goes berserk and kills things. Then he erh... well tries again, but he has to protect Malice because she can't see glowing blue fire of doom right in front of her and loses an arm to protect her. Then he goes berserk and kills a lot of things and the enemy retreats. No, not because of him for once. He's regarded by the people there as a hero and he passes out. When he wakes up, he finds out his daughter was traded to the Hungering to keep them from overwhelming the population. Lowin then goes berserk and kills again, though this time with Malice almost dying to Lucidel before it happens. On Malice almost dying, earlier when Lowin turned on System ID, he almost killed Ell-.. erh Malice. Sorry, Xenogears flashbacks.
The book ends with Lowin becoming king. No, I don't know why. I re-read that chapter a few times and I still don't know why he was arbitrarily chosen to be king. Captain of the Guard, advisor, meat popsicle, sure. King? Eh...
Marika on the other hand has been given her chance to fly and even finds out that the most powerful of her ilk can fly into space. So, once more Marika has a goal to work towards even as the world rapidly degenerates around her. The rebellion is gaining power, they've got a strange device that shuts off their powers and Marika's killed another teacher. This time it wasn't purely out of revenge, though that definitely helped. She was protecting her brother who just so happened to be with the Rebels. She doesn't quite connect in her head that it was said that her generation had powers, not just her. It was further hinted that a male had powers and she lets him go. Normally I'd call poor use of foreshadowing, making it so obvious, but here it instead hints that Marika's still in over her head even as she thinks she's in control. It wouldn't work if she hadn't spent most of two books trying to take control, thinking she had it even as she had next to none in reality.
This is where the two books differ as much as they feel similar to me. Marika thinks she's got control, but has none while Lowin thinks he's got no control, but everything falls into place for him. In Marika's case, she does get what she wants, but it's through hard work and manipulation, time honored traditions in her society. Lowin litterally has it all fall on his lap. Pardoned because the Gear-... because it's needed. Rescued at the last minute, tapping into System ID and blowing things apart even with one arm. This guy's the touch of death and not just to his enemies either. Friends, family, everyone dies around him and rarely for any meaningful reason. He loses the fight to the intelligent spring green wolf. She decides to give him her heart anyway because he'll be important. His plot macguffin, she felt it was right because he's important. Freed from prison instead of executed for being a traitor to everyone? He's important. How is it that Harry Potter can't catch a break after saving the school five times, but this twit betrays everyone around him and everyone still kisses his ass?
Ending book two of Dark War, Marika has killed another mentor, this one antagonistic, but not nearly as much so as the others in order to save her brother. It's obvious he's the warlock, but it's also obvious she's making a mistake out of sentimentality. So, in the book, she's killed another, is finding herself more entrenched in the politics she said she hated and seems to be losing more and more of what little grip she had. She did make a new friend though and it's a much needed bright spot in a rather dreary series.
Picking up in book three of the Hungering Saga, Lowin's the king. He's got the political savvy of our last couple of presidents, though that's definitely giving him too much credit. People actually liked our presidents for some reason. He trains with Snow and we find out that Malice has been labotomized. This. This right here? This is by far the biggest slap in the face the book offers. He took a character, one of the few, that he had built up and destroys everything except that she's a pretty red head with wolf bits stuck to her. No more duality of character, no more calculated counterpart to Lowin's dumb assery, it's all gone. As frustrating as parts of the book had been, this right here almost made me put the book down unfinished. I even had the next book all lined up and ready to go. Don't say I never do anything for you three readers out there, I finished it through determination to attempt at being dry and witty for the internet.
So, Malice, the serious minded counterpart. She's a 16 year old airhead. That's it, that's her entire character. A horny one, I forgot part of it, which tells me I'm intentionally blocking things out again because the sex scenes in this book felt entirely like awkward padding. I think I joked about it above, but if I didn't know any better, I'd swear at least one scene was literally copy and pasted to another. She trains too and she's not supposed to be as good. Her plot amnesia has kicked in and the woman who was a SOLDIER before joining the knights can't remember how to fight and wears pretty sun dresses because she was a happy person before. I think she was a member of the Girl Scout's secret military wing, the little bastards that extract revenge on those who would steal the cookies. Or something.
He deals with a noble who wants him to marry his daughter by being a prick. The noble decides he wants to be king anyway, so Lowin throws his hands in the air, says, "Fuck this noise" and leaves after making sure he ruins the country for years to come purely out of spite. Our 'noble' hero ladies and gentlemen. He goes south with the last surviving knights, some of the black patch drones and... it's implied there are other soldiers, but then they're also black patch, but there might have been real soldiers, but... fuck it.
The come to the town where his castle is and they're told they're traitors and blah blah blah. Nevermind that as the King, it's a little hard to betray your own country, monarchy and all. Rather than attacking the obvious traitor, he organizes a night raid, walks in and forces a surrender. Okay, actual thought and for once I actually agree with the outcome. These are after all supposed to be super soldiers. Why the knights on the wall didn't have countermeasures... well, I blame rampant stupidity.
They free the plot macguffin elf lady of the book, go to the docks and explode. The survives of the exploding fire get on a boat and they're gone. As they're crusing along, the black patch gets their memories back. Sort of. Well, not really, but sort of. They start humping, the women taking control because they control the humping and... I can't take this seriously. It's too contrived.
Lowin goes System ID again and kills a bunch of them, leaving his sword there. They decide, "Oh shit, he can kill things, he's still in charge for now. But you'd better behave!" because um.. rampant stupidity.
They get attacked by a sea beast, Lowin grows gills and they fire the broadside Yamato Cannon.... erh, they fire a giant cannon completely unrelated to Starcraft, scaring it off. Nevermind that with the damage they'd caused the thing probably would've lost the ability to float for all it's holes. The ship is wrecked in a storm and they're picked up by the hungering. They leave the ship and crash. Again. Ethan binds captain Amazing to another person who totally isn't his daughter because he's totally a good guy guys. Then Lowin tears off the wings and they talk. They find a standing Stargate that goes nowhere, making it a great garbage disposal that will in no way come up again.
They're ambushed, Ethan ends up dead, but he gets his brain back long enough to apologize. The plot macguffin, having lost her use is also dead. Malice sort of half-remembers the other plot macguffin and a battle, but nothing else. She's still a childish twit. They go into a mountain, encounter the leader of the Hungering who says he was just a curious traveler whose children were mercilessly killed so he got revenge or something. I'll be honest I stopped paying attention entirely. He's killed, Snow sacrifices herself to save the Plot Macguffin solely because Lowin won't fuck her and we wrap with them leaving and living with the Black Patches who are more than happy to see them, happily ever after.
In Dark War's book three, Marika finally gets to go into space, having been training for it. She gets to finally do what she's been wanting which is solely to explore. She even visits other planets and encounters a strange alien race after having found one of their space stations. The aliens are bizarre and she feels as though they'll grasp at her power much like her own people would, so she flees. She finds another planet with a strange thing orbiting it. She returns home, realizing that the rebels are using alien technology to equalize the playing fields. She's still proving to be unpredictable, using a rifle in combat when most witches use their powers only. This is a recurring theme and one that racks her a few kills regularly. She returns home, plays politics, then decides to get the hell out again. While setting up on the planet near the station, she encounters more of the aliens, but discovers these are different than the first group.
Here, we find out the aliens are humans and the first group she encountered had been a splinter group of extremists. I want to say something like communists, but it's been long enough that I'm probably remembering wrong, but we find out they're fighting eachother. Marika makes friends with these humans, again seeming happy for the first time, truly happy for the first time in a long while. Up until she gets word from home that two of her friends have been kidnapped. She flies back in a rage, ranting that all she wants to do is explore. That's it. She gets back, finds out that two of them have been killed by the rebels. She goes berserk and smashes into one of their ships. She tortures the Captain who basically laughs at her until she starts mutilating crew. This is the first time we really see Marika's inner hatred just let loose. Truly let loose. She begins nuking the bunker, quite literally until the Warlock gets on the comms and begs her to stop for the sake of the planet. I want to say she launches one more bomb out of spite, then recovers the bodies and has them taken care of. She then gathers all of the surviving witches and tells them, "You either kill me or I kill you all. I'm tired of it". She wryly notes, either she survives and cuts away centuries of stupidity, or they kill her and finally realize they need to be working together, not screwing eachother over.
So they're all dead, she's nuked the planet, repeatedly and causes all sorts of other problems. Having destroyed a good chunk of the societies, she goes back to the planet she had been cultivating. There she finds out the humans have been told they have to leave, the other faction having gotten the upper hand in either politics or some other means. So, Marika has lost even more friends. Isolating herself for years, she soon finds people seeking her out for training. It turns out most of the younger crew doesn't fear her and wishes to learn.
The book ends with her ritual suicide before being sent out into space adrift. It's really a rather downer ending to the book, especially when you realize that it was one of the first true choices she was allowed in the trilogy.
This is what sets the books apart from the Hungering Saga. Her actions DO have consequences. She DOES realize when she's screwed up. Despite all of her power and machinations, she still finds herself helpless and controlled by others. When she finally snaps, it's tragic. It's reminiscent of Vash in Trigun finally being forced to kill someone. You know it's needed, you knew it was coming. It doesn't mean it's a happy situation and you know it's going to have further ramifications. A lot of the story was foreshadowed. Even more was hinted at in their personalities. Marika's penchant for exploring and using brute force rather than subtlety. Her brother's sly nature and eventual position as a warlock. Her limited number of friends, all of it is more or less laid out for you to sort out without pounding you over the head with it. The few times you see her happy are legitimately nice moments in the book that makes it even worse when those friends are killed. You actually liked those people and they're shown to support her even when they don't always agree with her. Yes, they actually do go out of their way to note when she's being stupid.
Lowin on the other hand is said to be noble. He spends most of the first book dazed and confused with this trait showing up exactly once. Matter of fact, he backstabs a guy a few chapters later. He's a blatant Gary Stu, which... honestly makes it ring even more hollow. People automatically will help him out on all sides, even ignoring betrayals. He's tossed on his ass into a dungeon, then suddenly he's let out instead of executed. Sure he made a deal, but... they gave up on it two months in. I would've had him beheaded the minute I realized he was still a dangerous traitor who had no value anymore. Everyone around him either wants him dead because... plot. Or they want his powers for plot. Far too many characters are there solely to parrot this sentiment. The few characters we're given actual characterization on end up dead, brain dead or turned out to be lying through their teeth.
The author has stated that since the whole series is from Lowin's point of view we're missing a few things. This... would work better if the book was longer and we saw more consequences of him being an utter spaz. The Black Company, also by Glen Cook plays with the same idea. Each book is representing stories from the in story Annals. This means that the different writers have different ideas of what's important and what should be noted. We also see hints of the literary agent idea, where Croaker presents himself as being in places he couldn't be, but if written like other points in the book, most likely represent other members of the company being supplanted for narrative. Considering Sleepy and Murgen don't do this, it's highly likely that this is the case.
I will say the books weren't bad and I could easily see some people enjoying them. That said, they're not good, but they got better in the middle. I wouldn't mind reading the next series from the author to see if he improves at all. Maybe this will be like going from The Butcher Bird to Sandman Slim. I haven't touched another book in the first series, but by the same author I'm happily awaiting Devil Said Bang. and Pfaff, if you ever read this, I saw your FA page after doing some searching. The people on your shouts aren't doing you any favors, much like a number of the people on the Amazon listing. I actually quite applaud your reactions to the negative comments in asking for more details and offering a chance to read the next books you release. I think that's part of the reason I'm actually willing to read the next books. And seriously, how do you say Pfaff. Again, my last name's bad enough that this isn't a joke, well, a mean spirited one anyway. I'm just curious.
Writer's Note: I sort of lost drive for writing this review. It's a big one and I probably should just excise the compare and contrast of Dark War, but, that's a seperate problem. The review after this one will be Book 1 in the Night Angel trilogy. Stay tuned for The God, assassins silly names and jumbled plots. It's a fun read though. System ID is a reference to Xenogears in which the character's sociopathic killing machine alter-ego is named Id and can be toggled late in the game by a magic wristwatch, making the MC into a rampant killing machine.
Today's book is "The Noble Fool" by Heath Pfaff. As an aside, how the fuck do you say that last name? I've got no room to make fun of last names with the one I've got, it's an honest question.
This is going to be a different sort of review because I'm actually going to compare this one to The Dark War Saga by Glen Cook. It's probably an unfair comparison, Pfaff seems like a nice enough guy getting into writing and Cook's been around longer than I've been alive, but there's some parallels to be drawn here. Sorry if today's review is less vitriol filled.With that said, both feature kids who shouldn't really amount to world changers suddenly filling the role. Both are blatant Mary Sues, but in the case of Cook's Dark War, it's handled in a very bleak manner.
Spoilers ahead, you've been warned.
The Noble Fool, book one of The Hungering Saga tells the tale of Lowin. No I don't remember his last name. It's mostly moot because about halfway through the book they start calling him Noble because it's supposed to be his character trait. It's... an implied trait to say the least. He starts out working as a scribe or librarian, something distinctly non-combatant. It's even mentioned when he starts training, "Hey I've never done this shit". Well, paraphrased anyway. Along the way to his training, he gives a bit of backstory on the world, mostly about clutching a blue ball. They're attacked, he's badly hurt and the writing tanks a bit as they sort of do this bizarre looping thing with the description of it. He wakes up in his room, finds out he's something of a prisoner and you get a bit more exposition. You find out 'the bound one' his sudden girlfriend is rare since she's the opposite gender and love and love and maiwwage. Well, not so much on the last one, but Princess Bride's absurdity definitely came to mind very quickly. He heals up, starts his training with a woman named Malice (Get used to silly names folks, we've had Tempest and Silent as well). I'll give the writer a pass on the silly names, mostly because Cook likes attaching silly names to military sorts. Of course there, they don't pick the names out and they're rarely flattering, but we'll get to those books much later.
So remember how I said Lowin was a librarian? The book leads you to believe that he was too. He gets his ass thrashed, he's worn out, he's battered and he's verbally abused by Malice. He didn't succeed anywhere. Except that we find out he did and the only person that's ever done better than him was Malice in her training. She was a trained soldier before showing up. Don't let the logic snap back too hard there, you'll hurt yourself. This was the first point in the book I was legitimate frustrated. I'd gotten through the clunky intro and found something I was genuinely happy about, an unskilled main character getting his ass realistically kicked only to find out, "Oop, nevermind". Pushing that aside, he continues his training with some various abuses. He then borks Malice because she sees something in him or something... I don't know. Mist slashes his face up in frustration and he's all stitched up, then he borks the Bound Girl Kae.. Kay.. MacGuffin. There we go. That might seem unfair, but she literally exists to move the plot and does little otherwise. During this time, we find out Silent went missing as well. Finally, he finishes his training and we find out that in order for him to get his Gary Stu on, his Plot MacGuffin has to be sacrificed so her eyes can be put in his head. This is actually a decent idea with the themes of becoming a monster. Unfortunately, we don't get enough of this sort of work. He becomes embittered by the action and becomes a recluse. We'll stop here for now and move over to Dark War.
The first book in Dark War is Doomstalker and yes both names are sort of bad. We'll ignore that. The main character is Marika, a young girl in a tribe of savage... furry critters. Par the course of Glen Cook, you're given enough details to know she's not human, but not much beyond that. Pick your favorite anthropomorphic critter and call it good. We find out she's the pack leader's daughter and that males are expendable in this world. Literally, they're used as trade commodities to get them the hell out. They're presented as cowardly and stupid. This IS a plot point and one that lays dormant for a while. Marika is the sort of kid that likes to leave safety behind to explore. Again, keep an eye on that trait, it's important. She's had weird dreams of attacks coming and monsters. It's hinted she might be visited by the Sisters and taken away which is why the tribe tries to get her to hide it. The winters are getting worse and worse and they're afraid some tribes might become desperate and degenerate to cannibalism. We get a few chapters getting to know Marika and her 'brother' as well as the old lady that wants them all dead because they'll bring doom to them all.
Much like "Noble Fool" bad shit happens, starting with the elder being pushed off of a cliff and killed. Some think it was Marika, but no one can prove anything and it's just called an accident eventually. Then the camp is attacked and pretty much everyone is killed. It's given in Cook's usual, just enough detail for your mind to fill it all in with not enough detail for anyone to come up with the exact same imagery. Everyone but her is dead. She's not sure how it happened, but she goes about burying as many people as she can while looking for her brother, never finding his corpse. She's eventually picked up by the sisters where she finds out that she is in fact a power user and she makes her way to be trained.
Back in Noble Fool, Lowin's healing up from his ordeals of demi-human sacrifice and eye gouging. The place is attacked and he stumbles around, trying to get his eyes to work, finding that they're too sensitive and that he's got to keep the gauze in place leaving him very exposed. A monster shows up, then dies and he's rescued. He wakes up and talks to the new guy, Weaver. Weaver tells him it was an ambush and lots died.They're to walk down to a rally point, waaay the fuck down south beyond the borders for their kingdom. Hands up if you see the plot twist coming. All of you? Alright, hands down.
They make their way south and Lowin notices that Weaver's not as nice a guy as he seemed at first, potentially killing two randoms in a fit of rage. Honestly the guy's kind of a dick even when he's being nice. I'm.. not sure if it's intentional or not yet. Silent pops up, talking. Most people assumed he was mute, it's actually that he wasn't allowed to talk. He's called Silent because of his ability to be the scouting sort. Why he's not called Ranger, Pathfinder or something that actually hints at his specialty is up to you lot. They stop at a castle, Lowin frees a slave girl in exchange for an oath to Weaver and then they leave. They make their way further south, passing through snow fields. Lowin is suddenly alone and has to fight a super beast. He maims himself to kill it, then they chop off his arms and legs to replace them with the beast's, hence where the other knights get their animal bits from. Funny enough, it's not losing all four of his major limbs that makes him pass out though. It's when they lop off his ears and replace them that he passes out. They drag his ass along where he's deaf. No I don't know how losing your outer ears makes you deaf, just go with it. His hearing comes back and he hears exposition when he's not supposed to. He finds out they did it intentionally to test him. He bitches and moans (I still think a better name for him would have been Whiner, Cringer, Howler.. wait those last two are Glen Cook references, shit) Then he finds out, oh, Weaver's a traitor and he is too, because... um. He is. So there. He's then sent north with Brutal, (No cookies for guessing about his name) and Silent.
Over in Doomstalker, Marika is introduced to civilization. Literally. She's amazed by the buildings and technology. We're also introduced early on that some things in technology interfere with their powers. She finds out that she's one of the strongest users to come through in years. So powerful, they think she might be the reincarnation of the woman that brought the end of a great civilization. They call her various things, most of which are hurtful and Marika's quite bothered by it. She dislikes her teachers, the people around her and vows she'll change how things are done when she's able to. She'll do it without blowing them all up too! She's bright, she's hopeful and she's largely friendless except for two surviving hunters from her tribe. Her teacher dislikes her, being one of the most vocal about Marika being what amounts to the anti-christ in setting. She finishes up her training and finds out her teacher tried to kill her, taking the test too far. Marika gets her revenge and we get the start of the inherent darkness in Marika. She's by far the nicest person in the book, so watching her slide towards it is one of the key features. It's actually quite tragic watching a young girl slowly become bitter and hateful towards the people solely because she is that good.
Marika finds out that she's easily strong enough to use the flying boards and decides that's what she's going to do, she wants to fly. She wants to see the world from on high and travel the world and as such actually begins training towards that, deciding that since she wants it, she'll play nice for the time being.
Lowin begins his journey north. We get desperately needed character development for his companions after finding out his Plot MacGuffin is still alive. The boat's attacked by a Leviathan. Or a tentacle beast or something, conveniently after they talked about such beasts. Silent is lost on the ship and they begin walking north after arguing about going back. They get a ride on a ship which is also attacked, this time by the undead with a giant undead beast as their boat. It spits blue goo that melts shit. The fight then ends when they miss Brutal. No I don't know why and it's never really brought up again so far. They get to a bridge, attack it, then they meet Malice in a fight and Lowin kills Brutal because he's fucking Malice and not him. It's said it's because he trusts Malice, but I know the score.
They then make their way to the manor, sneak in, get caught, escape with the help of wisp and find out that the Plot MacGuffin was pregnant which is why she's alive. A guy's ghost bound to a bone sliver guides them out and they make their way into hiding. They build a cabin with their swords and bury the girl after she gives birth to the new plot MacGuffin, a daughter. Lowin writes about his grief and the book ends.
Marika's story ends in the first book with a ritual, bringing her into the sisterhood fully after she decides that the only way she'll get to fly is by doing so. They ritually sterilize her and we see the first moment of... things not working out like she thought they would.
As the Dark War series goes on, Marika gets more and more dumped on her. Her story is NOT at all a happy story and even when things start to look up, they almost always end up turning sideways. It's absolutely heartbreaking later in the books when you look at the bad things happening to her and how she tries to cope with it until she finally snaps and becomes the monster they kept telling her she was. This is how you do a Mary Sue if you're going to, though by the sheer amount of emotional trauma and bad things happening, it sort of breaks down the Mary Sue part of her, which is that she's absurdly powerful. She trained for it too, it's shown that she studies, that she tries her best and that she's isolated from the others.
With Lowin, we're told one thing and another happens. We're told he's not good, then it's shown that he's one of the best. This happens over and over and is easily one of the most frustrating parts of the book. Yes he makes mistakes, yes bad things happen. Too often though, we're not given enough time with the other characters to really give a shit when they die or bad things happen. When his daughter is kidnapped in the second book, you just don't care. You don't know her. You barely know Malice and you don't know Mist. Lowin's a twit so you don't want to know him.
The book isn't terrible, but it's got too many flaws to be called good. Once again, this is a book where I think more pages would've been beneficial. More characterization, more showing and not telling. In Doomstalker, the book's not one of Cook's best though it is one of my personal favorites for it's themes. It's even lighter on description than usual and Marika CAN be a bit grating early on, largely because she's a traumatized child with super powers. She gets better as it goes along and she grows up though. Lowin... isn't showing this development.
Tune in next time for Warlock, Book 2 in Dark War and The Vengeful Malice, Book 2 of the Hungering Saga.
