Category Archives: other peoples’ stuff

Book Review: Bite Club by Rachel Caine

I knew it had to happen eventually in a series this long, finding a book I didn’t like. But I don’t just dislike Bite Club. I hated it. I actively loathe it, and I had to struggle to finish it. I’m now no longer at risk of reading the rest of the series one book after another. If anything, it will now be a struggle to read the books I’ve already bought. That’s how badly this book screwed the pooch. It’s so bad, my give a fuck meter plunged off the chart. The whole town could burst into flames and kill everyone, and I wouldn’t care. That’s a major league fuck up, y’all.

There’s a lot to hate, but the number one cause of this falling out is Shane’s first person perspective intrusion into the book. This series has ALWAYS been third person singular, and it’s always been Claire’s story. That’s why I liked it, getting the story from this outsider who’s slowly becoming a bad ass and building her legend in this town. So here’s Shane, most of his early intrusions going, “Hey, I’m a walking dick, you know? Let me tell you why it’s okay for me to be a dick. Because…well, because I’m a dick. Man, dicks are so awesome.”

NO. NO! NO! FUCK YOU, SHANE. WHY DID YOU HAVE TO OPEN YOUR DICK MOUTH AND RUIN THIS SERIES FOR ME?

And yes, there is a reason for his behavior revealed later, and yes, I guessed it early on. But having to read his stupid thoughts flat out ruined the book for me. Continue reading


Game review: Invisible, Inc. for Steam

I got Invisible, Inc. pretty soon after it came out of Steam’s early access based on glowing praise from Angry Joe. I was a little wary of it because it’s from Klei, and Mark of the Ninja didn’t impress me. But I figured I’d give this a chance because it’s got a very different game play method and seems to be better at allowing players to make it through the whole game without killing anyone. This can be a compelling selling point for me all by itself, so that was my main reason for picking this up.

The thing is, I played maybe three missions before realizing I’d made a tactical error early on and couldn’t continue my current game. I deleted the save file, and for several months I procrastinated getting back in for another attempt. I knew I should just push through because it is a pretty short game, and yet, I always found something else to distract myself with. But at long last, I’ve sat down with the game and given it a full spin. Was it worth it? Uh…well, yes and no. Mostly yes, and I admit I enjoyed this quite a bit more than Mark of the Ninja. But that ending…

I’m getting ahead of myself. Allow me to digress. Continue reading


Book review: Devil’s Paw by Debra Dunbar

Devil’s Paw is the fourth book in the Imp series by Debra Dunbar, and it’s both a fantastic read and a frustrating one as well. It builds on previous stories and makes Sam’s growth as the Iblis a major part of the plot. Angel Gregory shows up with another drained demon, and with more victims piled up, including an angel. Sam’s got her hands full trying to solve this mystery while at the same time dealing with problems with Wyatt’s “half-sister” Amber. Sam has also managed to swing a deal with the elves to find Wyatt’s biological sister, Nyalla, and free her from a life of slavery in Hel. On top of all this, she’s still got a stack of paperwork to fill out over the humans she’s killed in the past.

Most of these subplots fall by the wayside without resolution because the mystery of who is draining demons and angels must be solved before someone tries to frame Sam as the culprit. (These problems are actually covered in spin-off books in the series, but I haven’t read those yet, only the blurbs.) Sam and Gregory go globe hopping to track down a suspect, and while Gregory is satisfied to call it a closed case, Sam goes off on her own to keep looking for the real mastermind behind this plot.

This is where things get frustrating because there’s a recurring trait in that Sam never really takes anything seriously until she’s half dead. It’s all fun and games until someone’s soul is disintegrating, you know? That’s been the case several times before, but this time around, the way Sam stumbles into this mess and almost gets herself killed had me groaning, “how do you even survive a week?”

The book concludes with something of a cliffhanger, and yeah, I’m very much invested in seeing what happens next. But I sometimes wish Sam’s slow growth would eventually include an improved survival instinct.

Anywho, I give Devil’s Paw 4 stars, and I’m looking forward to Imp Forsaken.


Game review: Fallout Shelter for Android

Let me begin this review with a bit of full disclosure: I do not like Bethesda games. I’ve given almost all of them a try because my husband buys them, usually even multiple copies so he can have one for his computer and one for our console. So yes, I give their games a trial run, and each time, what amazes me most of all is how very little effort they put into anything they do, and how very rabid the fan base responds to their games. “Game of the year!” they cry, despite the fact that a dozen other candidates come out with better graphics, game play, writing, stability… *takes deep breath*

So anyway, hubby found an app called Bluestacks that allowed him to download and play Fallout Shelter on his computer, and after playing it a few days, he said I should check it out. I watched him play, and because I’d been standing behind him for nearly an hour, he said, “It’s kind of hypnotic, isn’t it?” And it is, so I decided to download it and give it a try. What I found is a game that I simultaneously like and loathe at the same time. All the reasons I hate it can be summed up in the same way, that it’s a Bethesda game, and like all their games, they put just enough effort into it to make sure it didn’t crash constantly. But beyond that? Beyond that, it’s a wonky piece of shit.

I have a long, LONG list of complaints about this game, but I should get out of the way the things I liked, which were strong enough to keep me playing until I finally unlocked the Nuka-Cola plant, the last room you can build in your vault. For starters, I like the basic premise of building your own vault and either luring in dwellers or convincing your people to mate and make new dwellers. I like the gathering of resources, and as my hubby says, it becomes hypnotic to just click on items as they become available, or to ding through the various objectives assigned for the rewards of bottle caps (the game’s currency) or lunchboxes (the random loot crate that can be won for free or purchased for real money. More on that later, and on why you should NEVER give money for these boxes.)

I like the graphics, from the cute designs of the dwellers and their enemies to the rooms in their three levels of production quality. I like how detailed everything is when you zoom in close, and I like how the rooms have a kind of depth and perspective that changes as you move around the screen. I like the goofy conversations the dwellers have with each other and how the same questions or comments often have multiple responses to keep conversations from getting stale too quickly. If all the game involved was gathering resources and watching dwellers interact with each other, this would probably be the first Bethesda game that I grudgingly called good. Continue reading


Book review: The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Buried Giant is a book I picked up based more on complaints than on praise, having seen a number of reviewers say this was nothing at all like Ishiguro’s other works. I have not read anything else by the author, but I do not consider a change in style to be a bad thing. I thought perhaps I might start here and later on read more books to form a basis for comparison.

Coming into this story, it begins somewhat ambiguous and hazy, and as I read on, I found that every single last character is an unreliable narrator. Part of this is explained in the story itself as part of the over-arcing plot. Part of it has to do with the roles two of the characters have to fulfill even as they speak to each other like allies and friends. Ultimately, this ambiguity and unreliable narration make for a slow and sometimes irritating read, because even as the characters confess that this time, they’re really telling the truth, you can’t be sure, and yes, it’s revealed that they’re lying once again. The ending is equally ambiguous and feels like just another lie, and so what seemed at first like a triumphant victory is instead a dreary opening to more and more tragedies.

This is not to say I did not enjoy the journey. All of the characters are interesting, and the setting in the times after the death of King Arthur is a welcome change of pace from my usual modern reading fare. But the hope I invested in the characters feels wasted by the ending, in which every good deed is done not to ensure peace, but to bring about more hatred and animosity between all people. And this elderly couple I’ve followed with some hope of resolution to their past is instead denied, their fates are left in the hands of yet another unreliable narrator.

“But the ending is ambiguous,” one might say. “It is open to interpretation.” No, it isn’t. The very early chapters establish the working routines of certain characters, and knowing their methods, it becomes quite clear the last narrator is lying not only to the characters, but to the reader as well. Thus, a story that begins in hope of redemption ends in destruction, death, and isolation.

Not every story has to end happily ever after, and I did enjoy the story, even if the ending left me feeling cheated. So I’ll give The Buried Giant 4 stars, and I can say for certain that this will not be the last book I’ll read from Kazuo Ishiguro.


Book review: More Than This by Patrick Ness

I need to begin this review with a warning that it contains spoilers for most of the book. Normally I hate to do this, but to talk about the parts that bugged me, I have to “go there” and cover the major plot points. So this is your only warning to skip this review if you want to go into this book and be surprised.

With that out of the way, last week, hubby and I went to meet a friend downtown, and he said he needed a travel book. So I suggested we go to the local Feltrinelli, which has a rather huge selection of books in English. While hunting for a new book, I saw More Than This, and even before I saw the title or the author, I read a blurb from John Green: “Just read it.” I do like John Green’s books, and I thought maybe he wouldn’t steer me wrong. So I bought the book, and I started reading while walking behind my husband and his friend. I spent the entire trip downtown reading, and when I got home, I dropped the other books I was reading for “just one more chapter.”

The first hundred and forty pages really sucked me into this story because after the main character Seth Wearing drowns, it seems like he somehow wakes up in hell. Each time he sleeps, he has flashbacks to his old life, and all of the characters in these flashbacks are interesting and helped keep my attention. Continue reading


Game review: Galak-Z for PS4

Galak-Z is a game I’ve been wanting to get from the first time I saw footage of the early alpha version, and I got even more excited when it was changed to a procedurally generated game, something that’s becoming one of my favorite buzz terms in gaming. So yes, this was a day one purchase for me, and…I want to like this game, even to love it, but my feelings are decidedly negative for a number of reasons.

First, I should cover what I like, and there is a lot to cover. Obviously, the graphics are fantastic, with the backgrounds being so pretty, I had to stop and stare at them on many levels. The ship’s design is also great, and all the enemy designs and the levels themselves are worthy of praise. There’s environmental hazards that can harm or hinder you, but that can also be used to trap or kill enemies.

The combat is gleefully varied, and there’s no one right way to approach fights. This is especially true after you get to the second season and unlock the mech transformation. Then you can choose to dogfight up close, take potshots from a distance while flying backwards and using juke to fly over the enemy’s bullets, use the robot’s grappling hand to grab enemies and slash them with a sword, use the same hand to throw explosive objects, or use the mech’s shield and sword to hack an enemy up close and personal-like. There may be many more methods to dispatching enemies that I don’t even know about, but those are the options I went with depending on the type of enemy I was facing and the number of enemies onscreen. It’s even possible to not fight at all and go all stealth on missions. There’s no one right way to play the game, just the way that feels right to you. That’s awesome. Continue reading


Game review: Diablo III: Reaper of Souls -Ultimate Evil Edition for PS4

Diablo II was one of my favorite games, and long after it came out, I was willing to come back and sink another couple hundred hours into playing through the various acts. I got even worse once I discovered character editors that would allow me to build the ultimate badass without having to grind for the right equipment.

But when Diablo III first came out, I downloaded the demo and walked away feeling dissatisfied with the changes made to it. When the game was released on PS4 under the extremely long title Diablo III: Reaper of Souls – Ultimate Evil Edition, several reviewers said that this was the version to get, with further claims that the game felt completely different from its initial release. I was tempted by the fact that the console version didn’t have to always be online, and I found it on sale on the PSN store for almost half off.

I initially planned to wait to review this until after I had tried all the modes and difficulties. But after completing the full five acts with two characters and making several more runs with the other classes, I’ve reached a point where I can’t make myself play it anymore. It’s not a bad game, I suppose, but to me, it’s boring even on higher difficulty settings. Continue reading


Book review: Ghost Town by Rachel Caine

Yes, it’s another Morganville Vampires book review. For me these things are like text crack for so many reasons, but chief among them is that the series creates a world where vampires are well aware of their outnumbered position and are cautious to avoid being hunted to extinction. One thing that’s been a pet peeve of mine with the stereotypical vampire story is their indiscriminate killing sprees combined with the “What is this thing?!” trope. If a vampire left half as many drained, fang-pocked bodies lying around, there’s no way vampires could be a well kept secret, is there? And yet, the tired trope plays out over and over in horror.

But not in Morganville. Instead, the vampires have created a town where they rule silently over a population of humans who can’t leave thanks to a barrier created by a computer system augmented with a vampire’s brain. Or rather, that’s been the case for a long time, and in the last two books, the vampire brain who ran things went crazy and tried to expose the town with the help of an overly ambitious human. Ada, the vampire running the barrier, was rebooted, but ended up killing herself, leaving the town exposed.

So at the start of Ghost town, Claire is tasked with the impossible, creating a barrier to protect the town without using a brain. Myrnin, her vampire boss, helps her to craft a new system, but soon after it goes active, people begin going crazy. The machine affects both humans and vampires, and soon everyone is losing their minds, even elder vampires like Amelie. Claire must find a way to shut down the machine, a task made even more difficult because Myrnin has also lost his memories and has reverted into his former maddened state. Continue reading


Visual art: Alexander Jansson

Here’s yet another artist I’ve found on Facebook, which is becoming my site for finding pretty/weird things to admire. (And you thought it was just for cat pictures.) This particular artist’s site also brought me an update I didn’t expect in the form of a book cover for the next John A. Lindqvist novel. (SQEEEEEEEE!) It’s called Himmelstrand, and from little news I can find online, the English title should be We the Infected. Definitely looking forward to getting my hands on that whenever it comes out.

You can check out his portfolio and bio at http://www.alexanderjansson.com/

In other news, yes, I know my updates are real slow these days. I’m trying to stick to editing during my waking hours. I’ve just finished editing In the Mouth of the Wolf (Alice the Wolf book 3) and have sent it off to my beta reader. I still have to work my way through books 4 and 5, and then I have to get the last Sex Doll novella edited and emailed to the beta reader.

I am currently playing Witcher 3 and Diablo 3, but I don’t expect to have a review for either for quite some time. Sorry about that. But there should be another book review in a week or so. (Another Morganville Vampires book, big shock.) Eventually, I hope to get to more frequent updates, so I hope you’ll bear with me during this slow update period.