Wasprider's Random Reviews

[wasprider]

I'll be reviewing various things. I'll start with a not so good book.

Review of Succubus Lord (I) by Eric Vall

This story is frustrating. The basics of the story is a hooker with a heart of gold played straight along with a hearty dose of super special protagonist. The sex scenes are sort of IKEA erotica, the girls spend more time sleeping in the back of the car than they do talking to him. His power is supposed to grow with his intimacy with them, but there seem to be something like four sex scenes and as mentioned, there isn't much intimacy.

The author puts in some real effort with his latin and with his Ars Goetia research. And possibly some effort into the seven deadly sins, though he appears to be going by the current superficial definitions of the sins.

His roomie is an immature jerk who starts engaging in less destructive and nasty stuff as he goes along. The roomie is also completely emasculated by his demon transformation.

He put in real effort at the end of the story for the last fight. The succubi develop some actual independent characterization.

The MC is poor and winds up with a small fortune. He demonstrates plenty of poor taste and horny/generous shop keepers. Which is cute, and probably appeals to the target audience.

The target audience is almost definitely 15-25 year old males. And was probably serialized on some website, because the writing does improve. The last 20 pages of the book earned the second volume a skeptical try.

This book is only worth it to me because I have Kindle Unlimited, I would not pay full price for this. If you are a Patreon I hope you enjoy it, and that he's hitting your kinks.

 

[wasprider]

The Chained Worlds Chroinicles Omnibus #1 by Daniel Ruth

If you've read his fanfic, The Journey, this will seem familiar. He starts with Rifts and the rest of the Palladium Books worlds (not that I'm that familiar with them any more). From what I can see, Rifts, Heroes Unlimited, and Palladium Fantasy.

He introduces everything you need to know. You don't need to know much about the background, though knowing some of it will make it funnier.

The best part of his works are the casually and amusingly sociopathic characters. Almost all of the sociopaths are charming. He does sociopathic children quite well. And the authorities and friends are long suffering.

The MC looks like a karma Houdini, but that's not the case. He's stuck with increasing amounts of responsibilities, and suffers a lot to get what he needs. He looks out for his friends, and keeps his eye on the prize, while letting things unimportant to him slide. Of course, what he considers important and what normal people may consider important are different, and they happily ignore his concerns as well.

This is an easy and entertaining read. I read it on Kindle Unlimited, but I think it's worth its price. And I hope he gets around to finishing the story some day.

It looks like it was written in Word and exported as a E-book, which left lots of formatting issues. It also needs an editing pass. If you can over look those issues, it's still fun.

 

[wasprider]

Totally Spies Season 1

This cartoon action sitcom was a blast to watch. It is a cartoon Charlie's Angels (the TV series and the 2000 movie remake, not the 2019 movie remake). There are a bunch of references to Get Smart (the original TV series, which the Steve Carell 2008 movie pays homage to). And several callouts to to various action movies, I remember Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Tron, and Predator.

The writers, animators, and voice actors probably had a lot of fun with this.

Visually speaking, the girls are skinny California high school girls who spend a big chunk of time in body suits. And they spend a bunch of time falling and fallen over. There is actually a good diversity of regular outfits for the girls, and not badly chosen. The girls go to Beverly Hills High School and are delightfully and unabashedly shallow, and they are very rich. Their social lives suffer for their spying activities, but not too greatly, and they lose a lot of minor competitions in school life. The whole thing is really refreshing.

There is a running gag of them being dropped into their secret organization's headquarters or out of planes.

Clover is a blonde fashion and status obsessed girl in constant competition to get to the top of the social hill in terms of dates and adulation. Alex is dark skinned and dark haired, and I would guess enjoys sports. She hasn't really distinguished herself, but isn't as boy crazy as Clover, nor is she as smart as Sam, the last spy. Sam is a smart redhead who's at the top of her class in brains. Their school rival is Mandy, who is almost exactly like Clover except for her long dark hair, but a little more shallow and more willing to cheat.

I'm guessing the primary target audience was 7 to 13 year old girls. And a guilty pleasure for high school girls and boys.

The cultural insensitivity about what clothes are appropriate in public in various places is hilarious (Saudi Arabia and India), but it's all about dress up, so I'm only going to mention it in passing.

This was a French crew who came up with it. And kudos to them.

I watched on Amazon Video with Prime, so I don't know the price. But I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I will be watching the second season happily.

 

[wasprider]

Succubus Lord 2 by Eric Vall

This was much better. The pacing was better, the action was better, and sex was more interesting.

Glad to have read this because he really hit a better stride. I'm fairly sure he publishes it chapter by chapter someplace with reasonable feedback.

The author has a food fetish, which I can appreciate.

That said, there is something going on with Todd (the stoner roommate turned imp). And one more girl has been added as an occasional visitor to the harem. Still wish fulfillment fantasy, and less bad than the first volume. The prices are sort of arbitrary, and it works better if you think of it as a game world.

Still I'd only read this at $2 or less. And it goes for $5. I won't be reading the rest until I'm bored, stressed, and horny, so maybe later. And I'll only read it while I've got Kindle Unlimited.

 

[wasprider]

Totally Spies Season 2

Mostly solid continuation of the first series.

They made a bold choice with Alex, they chose to have her distinguishing characteristic be dumbness. They also added more athleticism to her character, but they made a mistake in not having her playing on teams or being proactive about being athletic. There is some good stuff where she does some winter sports, and enjoys roller skating.

That said, there is a single, annoying recap/filler episode.

There is some really good mocap (or more likely reference tracing) for the combat sequences, and it started pretty early in season 1.

Also, a quick search for merchandise showed me character T-shirts, but almost none of the gadgets/toys. Which I think means they didn't get a toy company sponsorship.

I got what I expected, and I enjoyed it.

 

[wasprider]

Greyhound

I am a shameless fan of naval fiction though I haven't actually read the Horatio Hornblower series (or Master and Commander), so take this review as coming from that point of view.

This is a naval movie set in WW2, staring Tom Hanks, and with a screen play by Tom Hanks. It is a very good showing.

Historically, it's based on a Fletcher class destroyer called Greyhound escorting a convoy across the Atlantic. The convoy is attacked by a wolf pack in the gap. It is a tense, fraught story. Several decisions are made, some are possibly mistakes, and the consequences seem to work out. The plot armor is flimsy, so you don't fully count on it.

The book is based on the book The Good Shepard written by C. S. Forester (the author of Horatio Hornblower). Most of pacing, tension, and technical details come from the book.

If you don't know what naval fiction is, and you want an introduction, this is a very good place to start.

If you like it, go read the original by one of the grand daddies of naval fiction, The Good Shepard by C. S. Forester. He has inspired lots of authors and copiers, among other things, The Hunt for Red October.

Refreshingly for a current day movie, the cast is approximately historically accurate.

Watched it on Apple TV+, and I don't think it is available anyplace else for now. I hope it will be made available on other services within a few months.

 

[wasprider]

Magic of Recluse by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

Yet another fantasy novel set with order versus chaos magic in a post apocalyptic world. Think Sword of Shannara or Wheel of Time.

It is better implemented than Sword of Shannara, it is also 2 decades newer. It's not the Wheel of Time, and I haven't gone as far in, so I can't tell you if it stays more focused. (Preliminary looking at summaries of further books seems to indicate other characters will take protagonist status in other books.)

Unlike the Wheel of Time or the Shannara series, this story only includes humans.

That said, the story is a bildungsroman, and the protagonist actually finishes it and defeats the first major foe in the first book. He winds up as an extraordinary practitioner of his magic through superior insight. Despite all of his accomplishments, he still has problems with his confidence and suffers from imposter syndrome.

It also has interesting takes on relationships. He gives up on a relationship where the girl was willing because he could not keep her safe. He gives up on another relationship because their personalities don't mesh even though he's had a crush on her for almost two years. And the person he does "settle" with wasn't his first choice, or even her first choice, but they are trying to make it work.

For a multi-book set up, completing a character arc in a single book is a bold move, and I'm in awe.

The writing is good, but not great. It didn't distract. I enjoyed it, and find it a refreshing change from a lot of the other similar stories.

 

[wasprider]

Totally Spies Season 3

TL;DR: They made some pretty big missteps early in the season, but ended getting back into the groove, adding recurring characters, and doing a capstone three episode arc that worked for me.

I started out not very happy with the season. They eliminated the mother characters and their individual houses and pushed them all into a single house. The amount of violence went up, and the males around started reacting with blushes and grins to the fan service shots (i.e. they fell over and landed legs akimbo). Jerry was sidelined a bit and Gladis (GLaDOS reference perhaps) took over handing out and explaining the gadgets and trinkets.

They were displacing Jerry and his sorta cool, sorta stuffy uncle thing they had going, and removing some of the other relationships. The first episode even had Mazie instead of Mandy. It was mess.

The reactions to their falling over was annoying. I took the falling over as pratfalls, and as long as they were wearing their bodysuits, not particularly sexy, no more than a Three Stooges pratfall. Most of their pratfalls out of their bodysuits were when they landed in WHOOP HQ, in Jerry's office. Jerry had always been a father and mentor figure, and watching him perv on them was weird when he's spent two seasons not perving on them.

They also increased the amount of violence, changed the character designs, and prop designs. All the titles became valley girl speak.

The casual outfits actually got a bit better, and the domestic scenes wound up with a slightly plumper character design (this probably meant that the sequences were farmed out to different team). No particular problems with the plumper character designs, the basic characters are almost annoyingly photoshopped fashion model shapes. What was more annoying was the transformation sequences they added, along with the ability to disguise automatically.

One of the charms of the first two seasons was their need to chose or obtain their disguises. Leaving them to improvise.

They actually characterized Alex as an athlete, which is a big step up from dummy. So that was better.

They wound up dialing GLADIS back, while still giving her a role. They also gave Jerry some good scenes of combat and coming to the rescue, to reestablish him as useful. I should note that he needs rescuing sometimes as well.

As a seasonal arc, the spies actually graduate to the next level. They introduce recurring villains. By the end of the season, they'd got their sense of fun back, and added a bunch of pathos that resonated with me (at least somewhat).

This season moved to Cartoon Network. And it looks like there was a bit of a writer and art director shuffle before they got their vision back in line. They lean back into the valley girl, mall rat thing, and as it seems to have worked, I have no objections by the end of the season.

 

[wasprider]

Totally Spies Season 4

Pleasantly more of the same. They made most of their big changes in season 3, and this one only had one big change.

The big change was to have recurring villains gather together under Jerry's brother Terrance in an organization called L.A.M.O.S. They're not completely lame, but the tone of the series is pretty much set by that.

More shenanigans, going all the way to the end where the mothers come back with very different character designs and tell them to stop being spies. Surprisingly, they talk to Jerry, and he does lay them off. The mothers are then kidnapped and the kids have to rescue them. Which they do, and then the spies are kidnapped in their turn and the mothers have to join up with Jerry and WOOPH to help them. And they do, everyone is rescued, the inconvenient people conveniently forget everything, and life goes on.

This is, surprisingly, one of the more parent respecting shows out there with empowered teens. I'm amazed, compared to Harry Potter or most American comic books (from the late 90s to early 00s), this is respectful to adults and parents.

Needless to say, I enjoyed it.

 

[wasprider]

Into the Dark: Odyssey 1 by Evan Currie

This was a frustrating product, but not directly because of what the author wrote. This was a Kindle Unlimited book I got with the free audible add on.

This was a mistake for me, and mainly for me. The narration was decent, and in isolation it was fine. My problem is that I read faster than the narration, even when running it at 1.25x speed. This meant that I could not read along. Perhaps next time, I'll run it at 1.5x or 2x speed.

When I lost focus, I'd pause and look back at the text. But I really had to just listen to the narration. Not a great experience for me.

In terms of content, the book itself was decent. I want to say that this was a book set in the author's world, and the first of the series, but probably not the first in the world. Despite that, he does a good job introducing the characters (I've seen much worse done).

This is a naval story set in space. Think Master and Commander or Horatio Hornblower. Several of the chain of command are American, but there are a lot of other nationalities sprinkled around for contrast.

There are some cliche's he leans hard into, and I don't think the physics of the aliens works properly (but it's no worse much of the other alien monsters).

The background seems to be that Russia and China combined to fight a war against the US and Western Europe. It was a really messy version where neither side could consistently defend against deep strikes. They were saved a flight of fighters equipped with neural interfaces and counter-momentum MacGuffins that allowed them to accelerate and turn like nothing else. The leader of the flight gets promoted to space navy captain for their first interstellar space ship using a tachyon based tunneling drive.

They jump out, find the aftermath of a giant space battle with a single survivor. The survivor is human. They attempt to drop her off, only to find the bad guys attacking a second planet. They blow away the attacking "cruiser", and scan the planet, only rescuing a small contingent of people. But they find out that the surface is infested with giant monsters that are tearing every human structure down. There is a language translator who can figure out a translation from scratch within a few hours, the translation he come up with can be turned into a real-time computer translation program that can run on the marines' power armor. Did I forget to mention the power armor?

Anyway they get to a regional capitaland drive off one of "cruisers" attacking the planet after they see an attempted planetary cleansing (since the defending ships are destroyed). The retreating ship calls in reinforcements, and a massive space brawl starts. He switches from using direct attack to stealth attacks that are supposed to mimic submarine tactics.

The space combat is well done. In fact, I'm hard pressed to think of better basics in most of the stuff I've read recently. I don't understand the conceits of why the aliens are so tough, but I'm sure it'll be explained in the next volume.

The writing is decent, with some subtlety. Not everything is spelled out, and it's not clear when or if romance will be introduced, but I've got my guesses.

All in all, some of the better recent naval writing I've seen.

 

[wasprider]

Papa's Pilar Ernest Hemmingway Marquesas Blend

This is supposed to be a blend of Dark Spiced Rum finished in various whiskey and bourbon barrels. Overall, it didn't work for me.

The dark rum smelt delicious. However, when I first opened the bottle, the flavor didn't match the smell. The whiskey added a bit of roughness, which is something I put up with for the rest of the flavors in a whiskey, and not a main draw for me.

The end of the bottle removed some of the harsher notes and increased the amount of the flavor I enjoy, and makes me willing to try the dark rum directly.

For reference, I like dark spiced rums, Kraken is a favorite. I've drunk Bacardi 151, and it's interesting once or twice, but not actually that tasty. I also like a coconut rum with pineapple juice as a really simple cocktail (sometimes known as a Panty Ripper).

I also like Highland single malts, and the occasional Islay single malts as well. There's plenty of approachable Japanese whiskeys. I've been working my way through bourbons over the last couple of years, but have no particular recommendations. I'd actually want your taste preferences before recommending one. And I haven't been keeping detailed notes.

 

[wasprider]

The Heart of Matter: Odyssey One 2 by Evan Currie

TL;DR: This is a good sequel, an excellent blend of action and world building. Short on some of the romance and betrayal I've come to expect from the new Battlestar Galactica, but this is an action/naval story and a different genre.

Spoilers follow.

This is a good sequel. The thermodynamics of the bugs did bug me and the MC in the story brings it up as an issue. A partial answer appeared. And it sounds like the author plays Stellaris with the Gigastructural Engineering mod. (Though going by the date of publication, he was working on the books before Stellaris was anything more than an idea being tossed around.)

One quick note about the narration. I set it at 1.5x speed as my best compromise. Since Kindle estimates my page reading speed, it came out to just over 9 hours of page turning time, but the narration speed showed just about 13 hours of listening time. Assuming that was the length of the book at 1.5x speed, you can see why I was so annoyed when looking at the screen. In this case, I just stopped looking at the screen unless I missed something.

Given the amount of praise given to the MC who is a US Marine aviator who worked his way to become a space navy Captain, I would have thought the author was a Marine. But it turns out he's a Canadian with an IT degree who works in the lobster industry.

I have some quibbles about the characterization of the female characters. They come off a bit flat. But I can say that about a lot of the less focused on characters. The captain, the XO, and the leader of the flight group are the best characterized.

The translator seems to have dropped off into a black hole.

He's replaced by green berets training people on the planet of the other humans (the Priminae). There is an ambassador from the Confederacy to the Priminae as well. There's stuff happening here, and

Eric Weston goes off and finds that the Drasin have built a Dyson cloud around a star. The Drasin are also apparently controlled by something in ships similar to those of the Priminae.

The actual fighting is a combination of submarine, surface, and fighter combat. The timescale is appropriately stretched, and seems to account for some of the FTL and really high real space velocities visible.

The author did his research, and other than some (reproducible) MacGuffins around tachyons and mass reduction, the world feels largely hard sci-fi.

Central turns out to be a world consciousness. There is the question of where it originated and if it exists anyplace else. There is a strange "red band" that the Drasin mention. I suspect that the red band is not actually humans

Again, the space combat is well presented and convincing. No romance yet, and it doesn't look like it's going to happen.

 

[wasprider]

Homeworld: Odyssey One 3 by Evan Currie

TL;DR: The end had a twist that pissed me off until I got into the fourth book. So good news, it's well written enough to hold my attention into the next book. Better news, the plot twist was redeemed into something much less egregious within the first chapter of book 4.

The consistency of the technical background is some of the best I've seen in a while. Very little came completely out of the blue.

Spoilers follow.

In this book, the Block has cracked the Alcubierre equations and problems and figured out "standard" warp FTL which everyone uses. They head out towards the nearest "habitable" system. There they run into the Drasin and the accompanying masters of the Drasin.

The masters are members of some empire.

The Chinese don't have the same tech as the Odyssey. Their stealth is worse, and their FTL works differently than the Confederacy, and similarly to the Drasin and Priminae. They are decisive and blast their way out of the trap with the Drasin and make a break for home.

They attempt to be careful, but their detection range is far less that of their followers. They still attempt to be careful, but they are being followed home.

The Odyssey is sent to find them, and either destroy their followers or them before they give away Earth's location. The Odyssey has been equipped with transition cannons that can teleport nuclear weapons into the targets.

The Confederacy has only two FTL capable ships, and the Confederacy's method of FLT has much better strategic mobility, but less tactical mobility. And so the Odyssey manages an intercept. They blow away some of the pursuers, but realize that the downslope gravity distortion of the Alcubierre drive prevents direct communication from the front, and unless you can actually move FTL in conventional space, you can't reach them from the side. And since they're FTL, communicating from behind the doesn't work either.

They also realized that the downslope of the drive is a pseudo-singularity that traps a bunch of particles. If the transition down from FTL to STL (slower than light) isn't handled correctly, all the trapped particles will splash out in a lethal bow wave. The way they figure this out is by shooting an anti-matter projectile into the bow wave of an FLT Drasin ship, which causes a splash out from the singularity, and forces a crash transition. That crash transition causes a what's effectively a shotgun in front of the destroyed ship.

Either way, they don't manage to stop the Drasin or the Block FTL ship. Which means that the Drasin squad finds Earth. And now it becomes obvious that the Drasin have their own targeting priorities, and that they are looking for awakened planets. Which is something I suspected from the end of book 2.

The Drasin break their programming when they see Earth and send a signal back to the Dyson cloud base. Then they attack recklessly. The teleporting cannons blast a massive hole out of the attacking group, and that attack is stopped.

The masters of the Drasin are panicked that they lost control of a doomsday weapon, and make haste to the Dyson cloud. There they find that the Drasin have left, several thousand of them. The Drasin controllers run back home to report that the Drasin have slipped the leash.

The Priminae find out that Earth is going to be attacked by several thousand Drasin. The defenders manage to take out a huge chunk of the attackers with the teleporting nuclear weapons. Then they use the Block FTL ship as a shotgun to take out several hundred more of the Drasin in a single shot. They do a really good job of chewing them up, but there are too many, and the Drasin land on Mars and actually attack Earth.

The Earth manages to send off several of best engineers and scientists with the Priminae, but Earth is invaded by planet eaters. This is pretty well done.

The sense of stakes is well done. And the willingness to destroy Mars and have the MC make what looks like a suicide run to defend Earth, along with a good set of other characters made me think he might actually kill off the MC and follow up by destroying Earth as well. Starting with the shattered survivors working with the Priminae to destroy the remnants of the Drasin as they pound away at Earth.

Probably a bad idea from a commercial perspective, if the MC was written well, then removing the MC will drop interest in the story. Only maniacs like myself would be willing to continue on the author's bravery and quality of writing and world building.

 

[wasprider]

Out of the Black: Odyssey One 4 by Evan Currie

TL;DR: I was not happy with this book. It went into ground combat, and Gaia got introduced. The MC is obviously capable of functioning as a ground combat leader, and functioning for extended periods of time on naps of 40 minutes or less. Someone's been smoking too much marine propaganda. That said, they get back to space and the combat comes back into its own. Again, there is a refreshing lack of deus ex machina. I was satisfied with the way the book ended.

Spoilers follow.

Ground combat is done passably, but not well.

As mentioned at the end of the last book (review). Earth is invaded by the Drasin land drones and the high orbitals are controlled by the Drasin ships. The Drasin don't dump every thing down, and since Earth is well armed, the humans put up a good fight.

The MC is contacted by Gaia, but Gaia is restricted to information transfer, and cannot physically affect the world (much). The end of the previous book seemed to indicate that she'd pulled Eric Weston (the MC) out time and empowered him. She likes him and gives him hints when things are getting close.

It turns out that cities are massive concentrations of metal and rare minerals, and so the bugs are landed in cities. After a lot of effort the MC organizes the defense of NYC, driving the bugs out.

In the meantime, the shattered remnants of Earth humanity taking refuge in a Priminae ship building complex housed inside the corona of a red giant (don't ask), sign over all of Earth's tricks in exchange for ships built on a combination of Priminae technology with the teleportation and the teleport cannons, as well as the neural interface.

The Priminae are too nice and more than a bit naive, but I don't mind so them so much. They are building their own versions of the ships.

They send back the Earth ship that can teleport and stealth to peek at Sol. It's been a month and Earth is still fighting. The people stuck on planet have come up with a cockamamie idea of shooting the teleporting cannons from the surface of the Earth, which would run into problems of not being able to handle a deep gravity well.

Skip forward another two months, and the Drasin are still fucking around, and the humans are pushing them back. But not fast enough to deal with the uncontrolled areas, so the humans are planning to use nukes on their own turf. And they actually start doing so. At which point Gaia shows up and figures out that the bugs are showing up in the cities, but are consuming rare earth mines in out of the way places and that's where they're doing the majority of the damage. The nukes are redirected to those areas.

The new class of ships shows up, blasts most of the visible Drasin and takes over the high orbitals. The tide starts to turn.

Except it turns out that the Drasin ships have been busy consuming the outer solar system and have several thousand ships. Which is more than the ships can handle, even with their greater than 100 to 1 kill ratio. It turns out that the Drasin were ambushing them, and they bought it.

But the Drasin are coming in slow. In the meantime the MC is picked up off the planet as part of the second evacuation plan.

The MC has a brain storm. The Drasin are coming in slow because they're waiting for reinforcements for Earth. They want to clean away as much as possible. And they want to find the source, not just deal with one single planet.

He figures he can make a run for it, and pull the Drasin away from Earth by pretending to run for it, as they try to follow him to a destination. That will give the rest of the ships time to pick up more people and run the other way and use the teleportation drive to avoid being followed. And the plan sort of works, except there are too many of the Drasin to fully make a break out of the heliosphere. And the rest of the Drasin are going to take out Earth now that they think they have a way to track back to the source.

As a note, Gaia can reduce the interference so that the teleport cannons can be fired from the surface of the Earth. This may be important later.

Suddenly, the Priminae ships of the same class show up at the edge of the heliosphere. And since they're loaded for bear, but haven't expended their ammo, they actually have enough to take out the Drasin.

Cut to the epilogue, weeks or months later. Earth is safe, and they're going to start heading back out to find the Drasin and the people who were using the Drasin. The Priminae were defensive, but the Earthlings are much more offensively minded, and everyone understands that's necessary.

This feels like the weakest book of the series so far, and I'm a fair chunk into book five. That said, the actual strategy employed by the bugs was excellent, and almost succeeded despite some excellent fighting by the humans and really good guess work. It kept the tension of the story up through the entire second half of the book, and sets up the rest of the series to be a heck of a three-way fight.

My actual objection is the introduction of a lot of characters that don't seem likely to show up in this series and an extended section of MC fellation in the first half of the book. He's good enough without that section to carry the story.

Though given that the author has a separate series titled Archangel which is the name for the squadron of "fighters" that the MC lead during the last world war, this is probably all tie-in material.

 

[wasprider]

Jura 7 Wood

Ah, the good stuff.

Jura is a Scottish island, like Islay, but this particular brand backs off the iodine and smoky peat notes that are the backbone of Islay single malts.

This is a fragrant, well balanced (and expensive) scotch. It comes off with a sweet aftertaste on my tongue. Lots of gentle spice notes and bits of flavor from other wines and sprits.

The 7 part of 7 wood means it goes through 7 different used barrels to pick up flavors.

For me it comes with lots of fruit notes and vanilla (from the bourbon barrels it starts in), followed with a touch of bitter.

 

[wasprider]

Doc Swanson's Reserve Straight Bourbon Whiskey Finished in Sherry Casks

This is a decent finished rye. Spoke to the saleswoman and got it at her recommendation.

I generally don't like straight bourbons, I find the rye to be really harsh on my tongue. She mentioned that it had the rye, and unlike many other sweet wine finished bourbons it has just touch of the flavor without being cloying or overly sweet.

I largely agree with her assessment.

For reference, my preferred sherry cask finished scotch is Glenmorangie Lasanta. I like it better, but this was a worthwhile experiment. (I heartily recommend any of the finished Glenmorangies.)

 

[wasprider]

Warrior King: Odyssey One 5 by Evan Currie

TL;DR: The main part of this book was nice bit of chemistry between Stephanos and Milla as they attempt to dodge the bigger ships. It's one of the best parts of the series.

This book introduces a more competent bit of the Empire military. The Empire sends a fleet to back track the Drasin horde. This a conflict between the next generation of Priminae ships with Earth transition cannons and actual serving military in the Empire using ships similar to the biggest ships the Priminae fielded.

The human contributions were tunable lasers, tunable armor, teleport guns, and ship teleportation. These are pretty big improvements. The teleporting guns bypass point defenses and in most combat situations, are next to impossible to detect. The teleportation of ships is a massive improvement in strategic mobility. The entire equation of

Eventually they clash, and they find out the way the cruisers are powered (twin singularities) means that the gravitic geometry means the teleporting bombs land in the singularity and don't do anything but add mass. And it becomes obvious that the Priminae and the Empire are pulling from the same design database.

There some random interesting world building where it's revealed that the Priminae split off from the Empire and took really good laser resistant ceramic armor. The Empire also mounts parasite craft on their cruisers. These parasites don't have the singularity drives.

That said, the extended flying dark scene with Stephanos and Milla is the majority of the book and the best written. They are the most sympathetic characters to me. The frame is tight on them because they're stuck on a two man ship for the majority of their scenes. I like their chemistry and the possible slow motion romance.

The flying has lots of tightly paced sections as well as medium paced segments and the obligatory slowly paced sections, but there the author can cut away to other people and perspectives.

The larger scale combat is one on one cruiser on cruiser combat and ends in a tie.

 

[wasprider]

Odysseus Awakening: Odyssey One 6 by Evan Currie

TL;DR: The combat is good. The strategic situation is excellently laid out. The opponents are competent, the win isn't overwhelming or clean. This is well done speculative and naval fiction from a technical perspective, and the characterization is well done. Unfortunately, there are too many characters, and I don't actually like the MC very much.

In this book the lone cruiser doing recon for the Empire makes it back to the Empire. The captain immediately gets blamed for incompetence, he fires back that the intel was inadequate. They decide to put him under suspicion and send him back out with the reconnaissance in force fleet.

The recon fleet is effectively a cruiser squadron of the closest Empire fleet led by a woman from the lesser nobility. She's pretty much topped out in the hierarchy without more honors or connections, and has largely made her peace with it. She's distrustful of the disgraced captain, but not completely dismissive.

What follows is the reconnaissance in force. They manage to destroy an older cruiser, and then almost pin one of the new ships against an inhabited planet. The Priminae captain of the new ship makes the hard call to run away, but flubs his running away by cutting too close. This engages a running battle, which gives the MC and his ship a chance to come in with reinforcements and make a fight of it.

He makes a few mistakes, but winds up disabled as the cavalry came in.

The Earth and Priminae ships are the single cruiser class. The Empire ships come in destroyer and cruiser classes. And here Earth pulls out their equivalent of submarines, these are based on the Odyssey, do not have a singularity drive. And these small ships use anti-matter projectiles and missiles like Odyssey did. In this case, they have the Alcubierre drives as well as the teleportation drives that the bigger ships have.

The Imperial cruiser squadron has something like 4 to 5 times as many ships, and teleportation is strategic mobility that they don't want to use where the Empire can spot them, since they realize that this isn't as big as the Empire gets.

The Empire lands a parasite on the disabled cruiser and they start making for the library to suck out information.

This works until a rescue mission finds the parasite and then there is a massive moving fight between earth marines and Imperial marines. They manage to disrupt the data siphoning but have to chase the withdrawing Imperials as they try to get out with the data they lost.

In this case, the singularity of Odysseus having been infected by Gaia, is awakening, and similar to Gaia, can interact with people and does. Odysseus then proceeds to overcharge all sorts of stuff and haunt the ship. The overcharging results in them blasting through the enemy formation by themselves, which is a move no one expected.

Odysseus acts haunted.

The Imperials are expecting the data dump, so they keep a fighting withdrawal. The data transmission is cut short, but they still get away with data.

The Imperials withdraw with a smaller percentage lost, but a much greater tonnage of ships lost.

The combined Priminae and Earth force limps back to their primary ship yard. Then they wind up isolating Odysseus because Odysseus is acting like a child and having that much power uncontrolled.

It becomes obvious that the Imperials didn't get the teleportation or teleport crystals, but they have realized that Earth is a single planet polity and have an idea of the layout of the Priminae space.

 

[wasprider]

Odysseus Ascendant: Odyssey One 7 by Evan Currie

Series TL;DR: This series does an excellent job world building and the space combat is excellent through the sixth book, and even through most of the seventh. This last one performs a mildly foreshadowed ass pull that allows Earth to threaten a Samson maneuver which causes the Empire to back off. Then the series stops. The world building has been relatively convincing, which makes it a shame that the series has not been directly continued. There is a related two book sequel series focusing on a more charismatic character, but it peters out and does not seem to draw to a good conclusion. I don't sympathize with the MC, or most of the characters with primary agency. For me that happened around book 4.

TL;DR: They make peace with Odysseus in time to detect the entire Imperial sector fleet heading to Priminae home world. They ambush it and pick away at the massive numerical advantage (over 400 ships versus 20-40), making them go more slowly. They pull out the stops on various weapons, especially their willingness to use anti-matter and missile/projectile weapons gives them a large, but not insurmountable edge against the Imperial sector fleet. In reaction, the Imperials realize that Earth has been putting backbone and trickiness into the Priminae. So if they eliminate Earth they can reduce the threat. So they do, and the fleet is forced to teleport directly into combat, and then they use their deus ex machina to blow up the sector fleet home port, and force a retreat. And then the story runs out, leaving the setting in a volatile place.

In this case, there's not much set up before getting into the plot. The sector military governor decides to smash the threat because there are internal affairs to worry about. He refits the ships with extra armor, looks over the data and goes for it.

Their first thrust is to go after the colonies in a straight line for the primary Priminae world. And they do. The size of the fleet makes their gravitic and tachyon signature easily detectable, since it is actually larger than the Drasin horde. The sector governor wonders why the directives came down to go after the Priminae so hard, and why they opened with the Drasin, which destroy garden worlds. None the less, he has a threat in his sector and he will worry about cleaning up behind up after he's done with the task in front of him.

The Earth faction pulls out all the stops, effectively making a competition of ways to deliver outsized amounts of anti-matter to the Imperial ships. They figure out grav mines to slam into the leading Alcubierre sink and increase the mass of the sink, hopefully creating a singularity and sucking the ship in. They figure out how to run drones behind a modified Archangel fighter to hit the ships. Fighters are much smaller and shorter ranged than the parasite craft, and are hard to detect and quick to move making them hard targets to hit.

They maul the incoming fleet for very few losses, continuing to withdraw towards the Priminae core world. However, the imperial fleet decides to change tack and goes after Earth on the theory that Earth is the backbone behind the new innovations and improved tactical and strategic sense. This catches the defending fleet off guard. And in a place where they don't have teleportation, the empire would have an insurmountable lead.

As it stands, Earth is stuck with a laser constructed and directed by the united command and constructed using tech scavenged from the Drasin horde. It takes out a huge chunk of the fleet, but it's not enough to stop them. The Imperial fleet is sitting over 30% casualties, and hasn't broken (mostly due to an approach to discipline similar to propagandized CCCP commissars).

The array is destroyed, but they've figured out how to enable a teleporting "laser" powered by a significant portion of the output of a sun.

The MC teleports directly into a Lagrange point with the entire fleet, losing a few ships in the process, and then fights for a while.

It's not enough. So he's handed control of the teleporting laser and uses it to burn the home port of the Imperial fleet and broadcast it. He then threatens a Samson maneuver. "Yes, you'll kill me (or my planet), but I'll destroy you too." Effectively MAD. I'm going to use this to render as many planets and bases of yours useless as I can while I run.

The leader of the imperial fleet expresses skepticism, and the MC burns one of their ships to prove his ability.

The Imperial fleet withdraws with an effective Mexican stand off.

Basically, the Imperial fleet is going to try to hunt down and either obtain, or destroy the teleporting laser. In the mean time things are in a stalemate.

The entire sentient planets thing is put on hold, and since this is the end of the series, never addressed again.

Does the Earth survive? Not fully answered. There are sequels, but they don't seem to do the same thin.

My guess: I think it was a planet that got miffed at the other planets and decided to trigger of the planet destroying war. The point was to destroy the sentient planets. Everything else fell out from that. Not that this will ever be answered.

 

[wasprider]

Totally Spies: Season 5

TL;DR: The spies graduate and go to college. There they do lots of the typical college stuff, trying to live in a dorm, sign up for classes, try to attend classes, get their "first" jobs, and deal with their standard shenanigans. At this point, I regard the show as a slice of life interrupted once per episode by being WOOPHed, getting restrained some how, and then winning the day. I am still enjoying this show, but it's probably running out of slack.

I still like this. I'm impressed that they graduated them from high school after four seasons. Then they went to Mali. U., which seems to be a pastiche of UC Santa Barbara.

They have to deal with signing up for classes, and then getting into a dorm and trying to live there. Somehow Mandy and her blonde cousin managed to get admitted to the same university.

The stuff proceeds as expected, though this time a lot of the shenanigans happen or or just off campus.

They do show how dorm living could be annoying only to quickly circumvent it by giving the girls a penthouse suite for the three of them on top of the dorm.

Them having to get a job at the college coffee bar and put up with the various pressures was actually interesting. It puts them in a very different dynamic, answering to a boss who's right there and asking for good customer service (which isn't a strength).

There's also a surprisingly touching attempted clumsy date between Alex and the owner?/manager? at the bar. That wouldn't be kosher, but the actual disaster of a date, and the attempts to impress are pathetic but written with sympathy.

It's obvious that some of the show writers have been to college, and know enough to poke tongue in cheek fun at the foibles of going to college.

 

[wasprider]

The Towers of the Sunset by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

TL;DR: This taught me a lot about what I can and cannot write. So this review may not be useful for you. That said, it's a prequel to the first book in the Saga of Recluce, and seems to define big parts of the setting for several of the following books. This is a story of forced closeness and falling in love, and fighting against all odds with lots of power to clear the way to survive. It's well done, in a style that is no longer current. It is also a story about love found in strange circumstances. If you've read older fantasy, this might be worth looking at the synopsis and reviews.

Summary:

The White wizards (Whites from here on in) of Fairhaven are plotting to take over and sideline the Black wizards (Blacks from here on in). The Whites are chaos wizards and Blacks are order wizards. And chaos excels at destruction and immediate effects. This is from the first story as well.

They manipulate a magical singer to sleep with the (female) leader of the West Wind Guards. These women (and exclusively women) run mercenaries over the whole continent and have maintained a balance of power by being somewhat inaccessible and able to go to the border of almost all the other countries. Think Swiss pikemen.

The resulting boy, Creslin, is sent down to an arranged marriage down in the plains. The first trip is weird, he winds up meeting the ruler of the place he's supposed to marry into and establishes that even though he's sheltered, he's got a sharp tongue and the ability to back it up with a blade. Someone steals his blood and does something with it.

Once he makes it back home he's told that the deal has been finalized. He disagrees and escapes his escort. He makes it down and wanders into Fairhaven with a caravan, where he finds out that singing is licensed because music is too much order for the Whites. He also establishes that he can control the wind.

The Whites actually find him, knock him out and put him on road construction duty, which is effectively a death sentence. While he's on road duty, a couple of healing Blacks get him recovered enough to break free.

He runs off and gets to the court of his betrothed, Megaera, killing a lot of White guards and a couple of White wizards on the way. He finds out Megaera is a gray mage who has been bound in iron and blood to him (remember the blood drawn before). She can read his thoughts and feel what he feels.

Somehow he manages to be appointed co-regent of a largely empty island controlled by the ruler of his betrothed. They make it there, and he establishes that he can control weather all the way up to storms. He uses the storms to sink White aligned ships chasing him.

They land and find a very poor area. They have some initial budget coming in from their sovereign, but the Whites keep attacking him and they make a move to remove his trade routes.

They then use the altered weather to blame him for causing droughts and fires (which it turns out the Whites are setting themselves) to attack him in propaganda. This winds up restricting his options further.

In the meantime he's getting on with his bound betrothed like a house on fire. She resents that she never had a choice to not know about him. That she's in a bad position because of him. He lusts for her and she throws that in his face as often as possible. He does his best to give her space and not think of her that way.

The Whites blow up the leader of the West Wind Guards and effectively start eliminating all opposition they can find. This causes an extra surge of refugees to Recluse.

Indeed that's the background plot. The Whites are attempting to push Recluse past what it can effectively support, pushing it into chaos and societal breakdown. And he's forced to work hard just to keep up, and with the trade embargo in place, he is forced to resort to things close to smuggling and extortion to gain enough supplies while building up infrastructure.

He modifies the weather permanently to leave Recluse with enough water. Which is really scary.

Eventually they have sex someplace between the middle of the second half and the end, but it's written obtusely enough that I suspected but wasn't sure till ten chapters later when Megaera mentions nausea and the Black healer confirms that she's pregnant. This is a story about love found despite the crushing pressures of an arranged marriage and really cut throat politics.

The Whites mount a massive attack coercing and convincing other people to join. Creslin uses his magic till he blinds himself (not clear if it was permanent or not). By this point he can sort of sense things through his wife.

Discussing Writing:

This feels almost like in media res on the scale of books instead of chapters.

This story is written with lots of tiny chapters in a shift in style from the previous book in the series. Most of the scenes are set further apart as vignettes in a long life. Deliberately written that way to allow him to cover what feels like 10 years.

Large sections are written in close style with longer chapters. Mostly early on to establish the character and setting.

The writing of the sex is a bit obtuse to be suitable for 11-12 year olds. It's actually done quite well, and not as graphic as Anne McCaffrey did. (From what I hear, Anne McCaffrey is tame compared to the current YA writers targeting females.)

The way the extended time skip sections are done make me jealous. There's just enough emotional description along with a description of the surroundings and actions to make it work. It's short with the description clothing or people, as most of this kind of fantasy and sci-fi does.

Given that this was my jam, and what I chose to read back when, I've got these problems but worse. I wish I could write this well.

It's also pretty obvious that he wrote a timeline and outline for this epic/shared world long before he started on the first novel. I'm just in awe.

 

[wasprider]

Totally Spies: Season 6

TL;DR: The satire became more pointed and less general. That made it good, but limited its appeal. It's much more of its time, and makes fun of smart phones and social media. I'm glad they did it, and I'm glad they only did one season.

This is a sillier season (yes, they managed it somehow).

The colors are more saturated. The OP changed. There are more poses. The eyes are larger and more anime. SD characters were used much more frequently. WOOPHing is now even more physically improbable and they lean harder on the fourth wall.

There are a lot of punny names, and they are on point. Most of them aren't mean spirited, and don't make me laugh at the characters, but rather at the pun. Stand outs are Feline Dion (Celine Dion), Jason Wiebler (Justin Bieber), Rad Smitt (Brad Pitt), etc..

They almost approach having the girls graduate to being individual spies, but they back off from that by the end of the episode.

Really, this series suffered from a criminal lack of merchandising. Heart shaped backpacks and "com powders" would have been great for little girls (in my head, I'm not a mom making purchasing decisions for a daughter). Cat suits might have been a harder sell, but that's what teenage fans are for.

 

[wasprider]

Totally Spies: Movie

TL;DR: Only necessary to establish Alex's pet in season 6. Only watch this if you want more Totally Spies.

I watched this in the wrong order. I should have watched this before season 6.

That said, nothing important really happens. It is the origin story of the spies, and is only useful for canon compliance when writing fanfic.

The spies run into problems trying to balance life and spying, but since this is a prequel, they don't do anything with it except to mention it. Mandy is meaner. And frankly that's all the substance there is to it.

It uses the more saturated colors of season 6, and the basis of the new character designs.

Cute, but unnecessary. Enjoy it for more spies.

 

[wasprider]

Kindle Unlimited

TL;DR: This is a trap as you grow older and get more selective. It's fine for comfort reading, but can ruin your overall reading experience.

Kindle Unlimited is an interesting idea. It drops the marginal price of trying a book to nothing and just charges you the subscription. However, like all successful subscription services, it should make bank on most people consuming a lot less than they actually pay for.

This means that unless you are a voracious reader of the Kindle Unlimited catalog, you are overpaying.

That brings us to the second problem, quality versus quantity. The quality of KU books is execrable. There are some truly excellent authors who are KU only (often in niche genres). There are lots of good authors, again in niche genres. But there is an incredible amount of utter crap, even if they do have more erotica for males. (There's a bunch for females as well, but written erotica for males has been a niche market, mostly served by various web forums and news groups of dubious provenance.)

In my reading life, I'm trying to optimize a combination of enjoyment and thought provocation over time spent. Money is a concern, but not necessarily the primary concern. My time is more valuable to me now. Being buried under recommendations for comfort reading is actually annoying. It's a buffet where the all the dessert is up front, but the really satisfying food is scattered on a back table.

I used to love the amazon feature for people who bought this also bought this, and that was a good way to browse for recommendations, especially when people actually paid for it. Kindle Unlimited has ruined those recommendations by recommending cheap stuff in many circumstances, when I'd prefer something better.

Is there a solution? Not really. Find a few reviewers who have reviewed a book you like, see if they can explain what they liked and why. If those reasons match up with yours, look at their other reviews and see if you can find something that is similar to that book and read that as well. Otherwise, you're looking at a slush pile (AIUI, an industry term for unreviewed works submitted for publication).

 

[wasprider]

Jura Journey

This is an easy drinking lightly peated single malt scotch.

Not as fragrant as 7 Wood. Pretty much as described, with a long subtle tail. Vanilla sticks out, and there's a bunch of other flavors. You can see the label and try to pick them out, but for me there are very slightly floral and fruity notes along with some spices. But the spice notes are mostly informed by the smokiness of the peat combined with the floral notes.

Not too challenging, but not as flavorful as some other scotches.

 

[wasprider]

Charles Krug Pinot Noir 2013 Carneros Napa Valley

This is a California Pinot Noir as opposed to an Oregon Pinot Noir or a French Pinot Noir. Which means it's far less robust than an Oregon Pinot Noir but more robust than a French Pinot Noir.

2013 was supposed to be a decent year for California (most of the West Coast of the US). I haven't tracked the vertical, so I can't compare it. That said, it's a good solid California Pinot Noir.

It's got the tannins and acidity of a Pinot Noir. I would say a good fruity nose for a pinot, with hints of berry. And stone fruit at the head fading to tannins in the tail. The tannins come off the tongue easily without leaving your tongue itching or dry (as the case often is with Oregon Pinot Noirs).

I enjoyed it.

But my palate for wine has been fading over the last few years, just for a lack of practice.

If you are going to develop a taste for alcohol, keep in mind that wine is the most expensive habit to develop. Whiskey, bourbon, beer, and even cognac (single bottles of which can cost over $3000) are cheaper. However, there are lots of decent mid and low cost wines which you can enjoy perfectly well, this is one of them.

 

[wasprider]

Charles Krug Napa Valley Generations Estate Grown 2013

This is a decent red blend, should pair well with most food.

Unfortunately, I was drinking wines that challenged me instead of just enjoyable wine. This did not challenge me. It was pleasant enough.

There is a nice hit of tannins at the tail of the palate, but otherwise, there isn't a long tail. Which is good for a table wine, you want it to fade out quickly after lifting the fats off your tongue so the oils and fats in the food can hit the relevant taste buds again.

My memory of when I tried it at the winery remembers more bright fruity notes up front. It's my fault, I didn't store it well, and I probably should have drunk it by the end of 2018 (or probably earlier).

 

[wasprider]

Suntory Toki Whiskey

TL;DR: Straight down the middle whiskey with a mild sour note.

This is a basic and cheap whiskey by Suntory. Cheap in this case does not mean bad. Not many complicated notes, but easy drinking and not distracting.

Probably aimed at making a good whiskey sour, which seemed to be a popular drink in Japan. Not my favorite cocktail.

 

[wasprider]

The Magic Engineer: The Saga of Recluce 3 by L. E. Modest, Jr.

TL;DR: This is continuing to fill in blanks from the first published novel in this series. And as with the second novel, it is a complete story in itself. The writing is excellent, and the writing about relationships is less obtuse, now that I'm familiar with his style. The style itself is a fantasy epic of the old school, and well written for the style. If you've read the first couple of books and enjoyed them, this will continue to satisfy.

Technically speaking, I'm impressed by how the author approaches passing time. The chapters are generally short, as is his style, but each chapter transition is a time skip, a changed character perspective and/or a change in location. This way he can step through large amounts of time and events quickly.

This does lose indulgence and emotional resonance, but works well for very focused male characters who are a bit socially maladept. And coincidentally, that may be the reachable ideal image of much of the target audience. Basically, smartish sci-fi nerd boys in middle-school through college.

Plotwise, this is the man who created the invisible black ships of Recluse. He is exiled from the island as a late adolescent with his childhood crush (who doesn't return his feelings), and is stuck in a land where the white wizards are getting more powerful and vicious. They seem to be proceeding in their plans to terraform the continent/planet by raising another mountain range and bring all the other non-chaos aligned nations under their thumb no matter how many people they need to kill. (And they want to kill a lot of people aligned with the other side.)

The boy never does get together with his childhood crush, who prefers men of action. He winds up working on his passion, which is machines in an out of the way place. He does wind up with an older woman who worked to trade his goods and shows him around.

The white wizards wind up realizing that he's an order nexus and extend great effort to kill him. This doesn't mean they're dumb. They wind up conditioning the woman to attack him. Which she does, but she's not doing it fully willingly, and he manages to defend himself. It takes them lots of time and effort to make it work out.

In the meantime, he's been working on mechanical devices and healing skills. Slowly refining his concepts and selling his experiments as toys and curiosities.

At the point the white wizards finish taking over or coercing most of the other countries, and they point their alliance to destroying the country in which the eventual creator of the black ships resides. This puts him on defense and he turns his skill in crafting to creating tools of war and destruction. Working on a direct weapon of destruction is next to impossible with his alignment to the black. However, making tools that excel at cutting is not necessarily directly destructive.

He helps hold the white wizards off long enough to plan and pay for his escape, and to reduce the prestige the current leader of the white wizards. He does pay a price for enabling violence, and winds up mostly blind as his predecessors did.

The escape happens, and he winds up back at Recluse and is allowed to create a harbor and build his ships. He also introduces the concept that a concentration of black leads to a concentration of white (and vice versa, probably). Recluse being a huge concentration of black, effectively enables Fairhaven. He builds his ships and uses them to destroy the fleets that the whites send against Recluse.

Well written and emotionally compelling, even though I'm not actually in the original target audience. (My guess is 13-25 year old males.) Excellent for geeky, socially awkward guys.

 

[wasprider]

Basil Hayden's Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey

TL;DR: Damn fine bourbon. Nothing too complex, it's a bourbon not a single malt. But it's a very good bourbon.

Plenty of rasp and spice on the tongue at the first taste, but it's not overwhelming. Fades into caramel and vanilla, and tails off with a bit of oak.