Wasprider's Random Reviews

Succubus Lord by Eric Vall

Wasprider

Active member
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.
 
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The Chained Worlds Chroinicles Omnibus #1 by Daniel Ruth

Wasprider

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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.
 
Totally Spies Season 1

Wasprider

Active member
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.
 

CarlManvers2019

Writers Blocked Douchebag
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.

Been more than a decade since I watched that show, glad to know people still remember it
 
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.


Ah totally spies, that fetish show that managed to appeal to the mainstream public and proved their are no bad ideas, just bad execution. Honestly if you want to watch the whole series I think it's available on the official youtube channel along with the movie. Got a love hate relationship with it myself. It's not aged well and honestly the big drawback is the 3 characters themselves. Clover despite being the most stereotypical is surprisingly the most tolerable character and the one that sounds the least like she's on helium
 
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Wasprider

Active member
Ah totally spies, that fetish show that managed to appeal to the mainstream public and proved their are no bad ideas, just bad execution. Honestly if you want to watch the whole series I think it's available on the official youtube channel along with the movie. Got a love hate relationship with it myself. It's not aged well and honestly the big drawback is the 3 characters themselves. Clover despite being the most stereotypical is surprisingly the most tolerable character and the one that sounds the least like she's on helium

Sort of. There are good concepts and bad concepts. This was a take on the magical girl genre, except they set it in Beverly Hills and called them spies. They also made them slightly boy mad highschoolers. Then they added a lot of slapstick and pop references. They had a lot of fun with it, both in costume design and random WOOPH scene transitions usually involving them falling.

My biggest complaint so far (halfway through season 2) is that they didn't establish Alex's character or distinguishing points during season 1, and are having trouble getting her to stand out. And since she has 1/3rd the lines, it is eventually going to fall apart.

From the perspective of it being a happily warped magical girl show, the only thing that comes close in recent memory is Binan Koukou Chikyuu Boei-bu Love! (Handsome High - Earth Defense Club Love!). And that was years after Totally Spies.
 

CarlManvers2019

Writers Blocked Douchebag
Honestly, weird how there were flaws in the stuff I liked more than a decade back that I never noticed

Growing up really does make you notice stuff

Say, ever remember Martin Mystery?
 
Succubus Lord 2 by Eric Vall

Wasprider

Active member
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.
 
Totally Spies Season 2

Wasprider

Active member
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.
 
Greyhound

Wasprider

Active member
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.
 
Magic of Recluse by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

Wasprider

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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

Active member
Say, ever remember Martin Mystery?

Sorry. Just really noticed this line. I have not watched this. I haven't been watching American TV cartoons a while, so I completely missed this (and Totally Spies).

The only reason I know about Totally Spies is R34 stuff. (The same with WinX honestly, and I haven't watched that.)

Was Martin Mystery a good show?

Have you seen it anyplace (legitimate, and for no marginal cost)?
 

CarlManvers2019

Writers Blocked Douchebag
Sorry. Just really noticed this line. I have not watched this. I haven't been watching American TV cartoons a while, so I completely missed this (and Totally Spies).

The only reason I know about Totally Spies is R34 stuff. (The same with WinX honestly, and I haven't watched that.)

Was Martin Mystery a good show?

Have you seen it anyplace (legitimate, and for no marginal cost)?

Used to watch it on Disney alongside Martin Mystery when I was much younger, they even once had a crossover episode

 
Totally Spies Season 3

Wasprider

Active member
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.
 
Totally Spies Season 4

Wasprider

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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.
 
Into the Dark: Odyssey One 1 by Evan Currie

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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.
 
Papa's Pilar Ernest Hemmingway Marquesas Blend

Wasprider

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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.
 
The Heart of Matter: Odyssey One 2 by Evan Currie

Wasprider

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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.

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.
 
Homeworld: Odyssey One 3 by Evan Currie

Wasprider

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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.
 
Out of the Black: Odyssey One 4 by Evan Currie

Wasprider

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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.
 

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