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Once again, all the books I read with my KU subscription in the month of January, 2025.
I keep digging for gold amongst LitRPGs, and finding lead. I tried a Western and some SF, and found one hit with evolved octopuses.
DNFed at 15%
I occasionally like a good Western, even if the genre has mostly been dead since the 70s. There aren't a lot of new Western authors, and rarely do they get any buzz. Peter Grant is an indie author who seems to mostly write SF but also Westerns, so I sampled this start of a series.
Walt Ames is a former Confederate soldier trying to get home. The war has just ended which means word hasn't even reached the entire country that the South has surrendered. In the first chapter, Ames is ambushed by "bushwackers"; pro-Union guerilla fighters who are sniping Rebs in a Kentucky valley. It would be more accurate to say Ames ambushes them, since he listens in on them, figures out what they are up to, and guns them down first. In fact, they are a family, and Ames first kills the father, then as the teenage son pleads for his life, Ames kills him, and then when his (now-widowed) mother shoots at him, he kills her. (Supposedly he didn't know it was a woman when he shot her and he feels a little bad about it, though he clearly heard her calling to the two men earlier, so who else would it be?) And after he overheard them talking about how the older son will be returning soon, he waits for the older son and immediately murders him.
The bushwackers aren't depicted in a good light (they are clearly lowlives and little more than brigands themselves), but the setup reads like a Confederate revenge fantasy, and I really didn't see much to like about Walt Ames. He then returns to his family farm, to find his mother and older brother are dead and his sister is engaged to a Yankee officer. Ames meets the pretty schoolmarm, agrees to accompany her to St. Louis, and heads west for a new life.
It was okay, but the story so far is simple, the dialog stilted, and anything involving the war is glossed over, so I just wasn't that interested in Ames's continued adventures.
DNFed at 5%.
This kept getting pushed at me on Facebook and Twitter, and it had a nice cover and blurb.
It's a very YA book, about a girl in a British boarding school in Kyoto. There's an opening scene with a mysterious shadowy figure shadowing about. Then there's an assembly at the British school where the students are all shown the MacGuffin (an ancient Japanese koto) on loan from a museum. An apprentice Geisha plays it for the students, they get a lecture about how it's very ancient and valuable, and someone asks if it's true about the "rumors" that the koto is cursed. Dundundun! The main character (a so-far generic teen girl) is sitting in the auditorium thinking too-cool-for-school teen girl thoughts.
It reads like the setup for a Scooby Doo mystery, and the writing was about that level. Did not grab me.
Made the cut! Full review here.
DNFed at 5%.
I'm about ready to give up on Litrpgs (except Dungeon Crawler Carl).
The writing of this supposedly well-regarded series was competent enough, but bland and juvenile. The protagonist is a fighty girl who likes punching things but is studying medicine. Then bang, she is isekaid to a fantasy world, and has the usual "Check stats screens" as she fights some mooks. So far the plot is just that — girl get zapped to a fantasy world and becomes an RPG character. That's it.
I guess these kinds of books are crack for a certain kind of reader, but despite being an RPG fan and a fantasy literature fan, it's time for me to admit that the circles do not intersect for me.
DNFed at 3%.
This book seems to have a small but dedicated following and received some buzz with its lyrical, dreamlike setting. It's a very creative work of dark fantasy, but suffers like a lot of books written by an author who has painstakingly constructed a fantasy world completely unlike ours: the characters, the society, the world, the magic, are all so bizarre it takes a while to settle in and figure out what's going on. And after a couple of chapters of dense prose just beginning to skim the surface of the world, I... was not interested.
Sybilla is a young woman whose family was targeted by the priestly Intercessor class, whose objective seems to be to suppress anyone who is too emotional or passionate. There is a lot of psychic religious mumbo jumbo. Sybilla embarks on a revenge quest. I found it confusing and slow-paced. Maybe I didn't give it a fair chance; the story seems to have potential and probably deserves a more serious reading than a quick Kindle Unlimited skim, but my KU skims are like that: grab my attention quickly or I will move on.
DNFed at 5%.
So this was like the most generic, paint-by-numbers YA SF ever. Spunky cute girl who's the bestest pilot ever even as a teen lives on Mars, always getting in trouble because she's just too feisty and independent to follow orders. The first chapter is her borrowing one of the Mars colony's fliers to go pilfer some polar ice for her mother. Her flier encounters engine troubles on the way home, she disobeys orders to eject because she knows better than base control and thinks she can land it, which of course she does, but now she's grounded. Man, adults are such buzzkills!
The whole thing should appeal to me, as a lover of Heinlein's juveniles, but Jessamyn's ("Jessamyn"? Seriously?) personality so far is "hotshot pilot with a 'tude" and the description looks like it's going to be Generic YA Plot #4b. We've got the autistic brother for disability rep, we've got the feisty defiant girlboss as a STRAWNG FEMALE CHARACTAH! and she's going to have a romance with the bad guy's nephew. So, like, Hunger Games on Mars or something. The opening just wasn't that interesting and nothing about the writing grabbed me. Another "I wanted to like it but I didn't like it enough to continue."
DNFed at 3%.
This was another series that gets a lot of recommendations. It's up to 12 volumes.
The writing is dull and amateurish, aimed at about a 6th grade reading level (being generous). It's boring descriptions of Jake going through his day before suddenly waking up in a LitRPG world, and having some kind of an alien infodump to him about how he's now in an RPG world and he has to choose a class. Humanity has entered the multiverse. This is followed by several pages of descriptions of the various classes available to Jake, before he chooses one.
I yawned and DNFed.
DNFed at 3%.
It's better-written than the above LitRPG entries, but just as formulaic and boring. So like, I know the formula is "ordinary schmuck is iseakaied into a fantasy world and has a character sheet and shit," but do they all have to be so on-the-nose? Dungeon Crawler Carl at least does some worldbuilding so the "character sheet" is more than just something for the readers to track Numbers Go Up.
He Who Hunts With Monsters tries to start us out with a bit of humor, as Jason has to fight a bunch of low-level monsters like a "Vigorous Hamster" and an "Outraged Pheasant." But it wasn't that funny. Jason fights monsters. Jason loots monsters. Jason applies one of the piles of healing potions he's acquired.
I know, you're supposed to keep reading to get to the... good stuff? Where there's actually a plot? And a world we're supposed to care about? But this didn't do it for me.
DNFed at 11%.
Okay, so for my last shot with LitRPGs I tried a superhero one. Maybe it would be a little different than the usual "Wake up in a fantasy world and fight goblins and hamsters."
The writing was... okay, but "Lance Lawthorn" seemed like a Brett Easton Ellis character. He's a dude in some kind of tech startup, he flirts with his firm's marketing specialist and a hot Latina import, there's lots of kind of cringey dialog... And then a plague hits. A "shut down the world" kind of plague. This book was published post-Covid, and yet there was surprisingly little political commentary or realistic handling of logistics. Lance gets really sick, then his boss hooks him up with a mysterious "trial" vaccine that he has to pay $20K to get access to, when he's told he can't drink for 48 hours before taking it (and admits that he was drinking the previous night) he just grabs a needle and injects himself. The research lab throws him out on the street.
Uh, that's not how things work. That's not how any of this works.
Anyway, I was waiting for, you know, the superpowers. The litrpg. 11% of the way in, I guess we're almost there, but the writing was, once again, not good enough or the story interesting enough to make me care.
LitRPGs, it's not me, it's you.
My complete list of book reviews.
I keep digging for gold amongst LitRPGs, and finding lead. I tried a Western and some SF, and found one hit with evolved octopuses.
Brings the Lightning, by Peter Grant
When the Civil War ends, where can a former Confederate soldier go to escape the long memories of neighbors who supported the winning side? Where can Johnny Reb go when he can't go home? He can go out West, where the land is hard, where there is danger on every side, and where no one cares for whom you fought - only how well you can do it.
Walt Ames, a former cavalryman with the First Virginia, is headed West with little more than a rifle, a revolver, and a pocket full of looted Yankee gold. But in his way stand bushwhackers, bluecoats, con men, and the ever-restless Indians. And perhaps most dangerous of all, even more dangerous than the cruel and unforgiving land, is the temptation of the woman whose face he can't forget.
When you can't go home again - go West!
DNFed at 15%
I occasionally like a good Western, even if the genre has mostly been dead since the 70s. There aren't a lot of new Western authors, and rarely do they get any buzz. Peter Grant is an indie author who seems to mostly write SF but also Westerns, so I sampled this start of a series.
Walt Ames is a former Confederate soldier trying to get home. The war has just ended which means word hasn't even reached the entire country that the South has surrendered. In the first chapter, Ames is ambushed by "bushwackers"; pro-Union guerilla fighters who are sniping Rebs in a Kentucky valley. It would be more accurate to say Ames ambushes them, since he listens in on them, figures out what they are up to, and guns them down first. In fact, they are a family, and Ames first kills the father, then as the teenage son pleads for his life, Ames kills him, and then when his (now-widowed) mother shoots at him, he kills her. (Supposedly he didn't know it was a woman when he shot her and he feels a little bad about it, though he clearly heard her calling to the two men earlier, so who else would it be?) And after he overheard them talking about how the older son will be returning soon, he waits for the older son and immediately murders him.
The bushwackers aren't depicted in a good light (they are clearly lowlives and little more than brigands themselves), but the setup reads like a Confederate revenge fantasy, and I really didn't see much to like about Walt Ames. He then returns to his family farm, to find his mother and older brother are dead and his sister is engaged to a Yankee officer. Ames meets the pretty schoolmarm, agrees to accompany her to St. Louis, and heads west for a new life.
It was okay, but the story so far is simple, the dialog stilted, and anything involving the war is glossed over, so I just wasn't that interested in Ames's continued adventures.
A Curse in Kyoto, by S.J. Cullen
When a supposedly cursed traditional Japanese instrument arrives at the British School of Kyoto, strange things start to happen. A phantom geisha haunts the halls, a star student vanishes, and cryptic symbols appear across the campus.
For Jessica Hunter, a seasoned globetrotter trying to adapt to life at BSK, the eerie events are more than just schoolyard rumours. Teaming up with Kenta Higashi, a local boy with his own connection to the missing student, Jessica suspects a sinister force is at play.
As they investigate, they uncover a web of secrets, lies, and a vengeance plot tied to the instrument’s shadowy past. Can Jessica and Kenta unravel the truth behind the curse before it claims another victim? Or will they become the next targets of its wrath?
DNFed at 5%.
This kept getting pushed at me on Facebook and Twitter, and it had a nice cover and blurb.
It's a very YA book, about a girl in a British boarding school in Kyoto. There's an opening scene with a mysterious shadowy figure shadowing about. Then there's an assembly at the British school where the students are all shown the MacGuffin (an ancient Japanese koto) on loan from a museum. An apprentice Geisha plays it for the students, they get a lecture about how it's very ancient and valuable, and someone asks if it's true about the "rumors" that the koto is cursed. Dundundun! The main character (a so-far generic teen girl) is sitting in the auditorium thinking too-cool-for-school teen girl thoughts.
It reads like the setup for a Scooby Doo mystery, and the writing was about that level. Did not grab me.
The Mountain in the Sea, by Ray Nayler
Humankind discovers intelligent life in an octopus species with its own language and culture, and sets off a high-stakes global competition to dominate the future.
Rumors begin to spread of a species of hyperintelligent, dangerous octopus that may have developed its own language and culture. Marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen, who has spent her life researching cephalopod intelligence, will do anything for the chance to study them.
The transnational tech corporation DIANIMA has sealed the remote Con Dao Archipelago, where the octopuses were discovered, off from the world. Dr. Nguyen joins DIANIMA’s team on the islands: a battle-scarred security agent and the world’s first android.
The octopuses hold the key to unprecedented breakthroughs in extrahuman intelligence. The stakes are high: there are vast fortunes to be made by whoever can take advantage of the octopuses’ advancements, and as Dr. Nguyen struggles to communicate with the newly discovered species, forces larger than DIANIMA close in to seize the octopuses for themselves.
But no one has yet asked the octopuses what they think. And what they might do about it.
A near-future thriller about the nature of consciousness, Ray Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea is a dazzling literary debut and a mind-blowing dive into the treasure and wreckage of humankind’s legacy.
Made the cut! Full review here.
Azarinth Healer: Book One, by Rhaegar
Ilea likes punching things. And eating.
Unfortunately, there aren’t too many career options for hungry brawlers. Instead, the plan is to quit her crappy fast-food job, go to college, and become a fully functioning member of society. Essentially - a fate worse than death.
So maybe it's lucky that she wakes up one day in a strange world where a bunch of fantasy monsters are trying to kill her...?
On the bright side, ‘killing those monsters right back’ is now a viable career path! For she soon discovers her new home runs on a set of game-like rules that will allow her to punch things harder than in her wildest dreams. Well, maybe not her wildest dreams, but it’s close.
With no quest to follow, no guide to show her the way, and no real desire to be a Hero – Ilea embarks on a journey to discover a world full of magic. Magic she can use to fight even bigger monsters.
She’s struggling to survive, has no idea what will happen next, and is loving every minute of it. Except, and sometimes also, when she’s poisoned and/or has set herself on fire. It’s complicated.
DNFed at 5%.
I'm about ready to give up on Litrpgs (except Dungeon Crawler Carl).
The writing of this supposedly well-regarded series was competent enough, but bland and juvenile. The protagonist is a fighty girl who likes punching things but is studying medicine. Then bang, she is isekaid to a fantasy world, and has the usual "Check stats screens" as she fights some mooks. So far the plot is just that — girl get zapped to a fantasy world and becomes an RPG character. That's it.
I guess these kinds of books are crack for a certain kind of reader, but despite being an RPG fan and a fantasy literature fan, it's time for me to admit that the circles do not intersect for me.
The Way of Unity, by Sarah K. Balstrup
The Seven Lands of Velspar put their faith in the Intercessors, a psychic priesthood responsible for the purification of the spirit. Where passion flares, they soothe its intent. Those who cannot be soothed, are cast out, their spirits destroyed by fire.
The Intercessors are mystics of the highest order, but Velspar’s ruling Skalens believe their power has grown too great.
Surviving the Intercessor’s murder plot against her family, Sybilla Ladain rises to power. The Skalens come together under the banner of her grief, bringing the practice of Intercession to its brutal, bloody end.
Yet victory brings Sybilla no peace. In time, she will have to face the people of Velspar, forced to live in a psychically alienated world, and a band of rebels led by an escaped Intercessor set on her annihilation.
DNFed at 3%.
This book seems to have a small but dedicated following and received some buzz with its lyrical, dreamlike setting. It's a very creative work of dark fantasy, but suffers like a lot of books written by an author who has painstakingly constructed a fantasy world completely unlike ours: the characters, the society, the world, the magic, are all so bizarre it takes a while to settle in and figure out what's going on. And after a couple of chapters of dense prose just beginning to skim the surface of the world, I... was not interested.
Sybilla is a young woman whose family was targeted by the priestly Intercessor class, whose objective seems to be to suppress anyone who is too emotional or passionate. There is a lot of psychic religious mumbo jumbo. Sybilla embarks on a revenge quest. I found it confusing and slow-paced. Maybe I didn't give it a fair chance; the story seems to have potential and probably deserves a more serious reading than a quick Kindle Unlimited skim, but my KU skims are like that: grab my attention quickly or I will move on.
Saving Mars, by Cidney Swanson
Some pilots follow orders. Others just wing it.
Grounded for her Top Gun attitude, Jessamyn jumps at the chance to fly a covert mission to off-limits Earth and save her world from starvation. On Earth, the Chancellor keeps a dystopian peace through a competitive consciousness-transfer program, offering perfect bodies to those who toe the line. Pilot Jessamyn's orders are simple: get the food and get out, minimizing contact. But when the pilot's brilliant autistic brother is captured and charged with treason, all bets are off. Jess finds an ally in Pavel, the Chancellor's rebel nephew, but now she's got a choice to make: rescue her brother or save Mars?
DNFed at 5%.
So this was like the most generic, paint-by-numbers YA SF ever. Spunky cute girl who's the bestest pilot ever even as a teen lives on Mars, always getting in trouble because she's just too feisty and independent to follow orders. The first chapter is her borrowing one of the Mars colony's fliers to go pilfer some polar ice for her mother. Her flier encounters engine troubles on the way home, she disobeys orders to eject because she knows better than base control and thinks she can land it, which of course she does, but now she's grounded. Man, adults are such buzzkills!
The whole thing should appeal to me, as a lover of Heinlein's juveniles, but Jessamyn's ("Jessamyn"? Seriously?) personality so far is "hotshot pilot with a 'tude" and the description looks like it's going to be Generic YA Plot #4b. We've got the autistic brother for disability rep, we've got the feisty defiant girlboss as a STRAWNG FEMALE CHARACTAH! and she's going to have a romance with the bad guy's nephew. So, like, Hunger Games on Mars or something. The opening just wasn't that interesting and nothing about the writing grabbed me. Another "I wanted to like it but I didn't like it enough to continue."
The Primal Hunter, by Zogarth
On just another average day, Jake finds himself in a forest filled with monsters, dangers, and opportunity...
It was a day like any other when suddenly the world changed. The universe reached a threshold humanity didn’t even know existed, and it was time to finally be integrated into the vast multiverse. A place where power is the only thing anyone can truly rely on.
Jake, a seemingly average office worker, finds himself thrust into this new world. Into a tutorial filled with dangers and opportunities.
His new reality should breed fear and concern. His fellow coworkers falter at every turn. Jake, however, finds himself thriving.
Perhaps... This is the world Jake was meant to be born in.
DNFed at 3%.
This was another series that gets a lot of recommendations. It's up to 12 volumes.
The writing is dull and amateurish, aimed at about a 6th grade reading level (being generous). It's boring descriptions of Jake going through his day before suddenly waking up in a LitRPG world, and having some kind of an alien infodump to him about how he's now in an RPG world and he has to choose a class. Humanity has entered the multiverse. This is followed by several pages of descriptions of the various classes available to Jake, before he chooses one.
I yawned and DNFed.
He Who Fights With Monsters, by Shirtaloon
Jason wakes up in a mysterious world of magic and monsters.
It’s not easy making the career jump from office-supplies-store middle manager to heroic interdimensional adventurer. At least, Jason tries to be heroic, but it's hard to be good when all your powers are evil.
He’ll face off against cannibals, cultists, wizards, monsters...and that’s just on the first day. He’s going to need courage, he’s going to need wit, and he’s going to need some magic powers of his own. But first, he’s going to need pants.
After cementing itself as one of the best-rated serial novels on Royal Road with an astonishing 13 million views, He Who Fights with Monsters is now available on Kindle.
About the series: Experience an isekai culture clash as a laid-back Australian finds himself in a very serious world. See him gain suspiciously evil powers through a unique progression system combining cultivation and traditional LitRPG elements. Enjoy a weak-to-strong story with a main character who earns his power without overshadowing everyone around him, with plenty of loot, adventurers, gods and magic. Rich characters and world-building offer humor, political intrigue and slice-of-life elements alongside lots of monster fighting and adventure.
DNFed at 3%.
It's better-written than the above LitRPG entries, but just as formulaic and boring. So like, I know the formula is "ordinary schmuck is iseakaied into a fantasy world and has a character sheet and shit," but do they all have to be so on-the-nose? Dungeon Crawler Carl at least does some worldbuilding so the "character sheet" is more than just something for the readers to track Numbers Go Up.
He Who Hunts With Monsters tries to start us out with a bit of humor, as Jason has to fight a bunch of low-level monsters like a "Vigorous Hamster" and an "Outraged Pheasant." But it wasn't that funny. Jason fights monsters. Jason loots monsters. Jason applies one of the piles of healing potions he's acquired.
I know, you're supposed to keep reading to get to the... good stuff? Where there's actually a plot? And a world we're supposed to care about? But this didn't do it for me.
Forced Evolution: A LitRPG/Gamelit Adventure, by Lazybaker
In a world ravaged by pandemic, one man's desperate quest for survival unleashes powers that could save humanity – or destroy it.
Welcome,
To Lance Lawthorn's apartment, where he was reassessing his existence, when a cosmic event shattered the ancient barrier that had long shielded Earth from mysterious energies. In an instant, his world—and every living being within it—was bathed in a magical force that humans were never meant to endure.
He had only wanted to break free from his nine-to-five routine and start his own business. Instead, he got his superhero origin story. While the world wrestled to adapt to its new normal, Lance struggled to get used to his enhanced strength, enhanced speed, enhanced senses, and a whole lot of problems he wanted nothing to do with. Now, he must navigate a world where power is measured in stats, and the line between hero and villain blurs with each skill gained.
DNFed at 11%.
Okay, so for my last shot with LitRPGs I tried a superhero one. Maybe it would be a little different than the usual "Wake up in a fantasy world and fight goblins and hamsters."
The writing was... okay, but "Lance Lawthorn" seemed like a Brett Easton Ellis character. He's a dude in some kind of tech startup, he flirts with his firm's marketing specialist and a hot Latina import, there's lots of kind of cringey dialog... And then a plague hits. A "shut down the world" kind of plague. This book was published post-Covid, and yet there was surprisingly little political commentary or realistic handling of logistics. Lance gets really sick, then his boss hooks him up with a mysterious "trial" vaccine that he has to pay $20K to get access to, when he's told he can't drink for 48 hours before taking it (and admits that he was drinking the previous night) he just grabs a needle and injects himself. The research lab throws him out on the street.
Uh, that's not how things work. That's not how any of this works.
Anyway, I was waiting for, you know, the superpowers. The litrpg. 11% of the way in, I guess we're almost there, but the writing was, once again, not good enough or the story interesting enough to make me care.
LitRPGs, it's not me, it's you.
My complete list of book reviews.
