Book Review: The Dark Lord Bert, by Chris Fox

The title of this book caught my interest immediately.  After reading the first sentence of the book description, "How does a 1-hit-point goblin become the Dark Lord", I was intrigued further.  I didn't even bother reading the rest of the description (well, I eventually did AFTER I started the book).  After seeing this sentence, I thought that this story would be similar to Goblin Quest (great book BTW - you can find my review here).  It is, kind of.  Within the first two chapters I was having a great time.  The names of the characters, and some of their deities, are funny.  I can mention them here, as they already appear in the book description:  Crotchshot (name comes from his cursed weapon), Brakestuff, and the deity Knowsbest.  After reading chapter two, I felt this story is likely going to have a lot in common with The Guardians of the Flame series by Joel Rosenberg (reference here).  Of course, if this were the case, this had me wondering:  what would this make Bert?  After all, part of the story is told from his perspective.  Verrrryyy interesting.  I thought Bert's identity might be alluded to in the next few chapters, but even by the end of the story there are no additional clues.  Perhaps he's just an NPC?

What does a 1-hit-point goblin look like?  Well, at one point he considers a chicken to almost, but not quite, large enough to be his mount.  Much smaller than I was expecting.  I'm used to goblins being much larger, thanks to the Rankin & Bass production of The Hobbit back in 1977 - the goblins are much larger than dwarves and hobbits!  While I did play Dungeons and Dragons as a teenager, I don't think I paid much attention to how big most monsters were, so perhaps this size is accurate?

This is an interesting world, and the concept is definitely a mixture of other ideas - it's not similar to any one thing that I've read before.  There are elements of Guardians of the Flame, just not as much as I thought.  The main elements that are in common are role-playing, alighnment fulfillment, and party interactions.  Also, it certainly feels like there are elements of Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline - there are certainly references to Dungeons and Dragons, Star Trek and Star Wars, in addition to references to other fantasy works - Lord of the Rings most prominently.  There may also be elements of Neal Stephenson's REAMDE (not sure; I haven't read that one, but I have a vague idea what it is about).  Commonalities with these last three are interesting, as these are all science fiction novels.

Anyway, this was a fun, easy read, and you really find yourself rooting for Bert.  I'm definitely interested in hearing more about how this world works, as there is definitely an immersive role playing element to this story which is only hinted at.  Things seem setup for a sequel - one of the characters even mentions that this is likely.

If you like Dungeons and Dragons, you'll probably enjoy this one.

As always, I'm interested in hearing from my readers.  Have you read this book?  Are there similar works that you enjoy?  Please leave a comment!

Book Review: We are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor

I saw this book on amazon quite a while ago (many months at least), and it caught my interest, but I was hesitant to check it out.  I recently noticed that it had over 2,500 ratings, and the combined rating was 4.6 out of 5 stars.  So I decided to check it out - if it was good, it is the first book of a trilogy.

The basic story is about AI - sort of.  Really, a human mind uploaded into a computer to be an AI.  This isn't the first story of this kind that I've read.  A few other stories that include a similar concept of uploading a human mind into a computer include Heechee Rendezvous, by Frederik Pohl, and Mindscan, by Robert J. Sawyer.  There are many others that deal with interfaces between a machine and a human mind, but I personally haven't read very many about specifically uploading a mind into a computer - but I'm sure there are probably many others that I'm not aware of.  And, for the most part, in the story told by We Are Legion, the main character, Bob, isn't really an AI - the only artificial element is that he exists in a machine.  For the most part, his personality and memories are intact - he just doesn't have a body.

But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

This story is about Bob Johansson.  Bob has come into some money, so signs up for a service (with some of his newfound wealth) which will freeze his head upon death, and then be uploaded into a computer simulation when the technology exists, so he can live on.  Naturally, the story immediately takes a bad turn and Bob is killed by a car.

He wakes, for lack of a better word - perhaps, he was turned on, would be better - to find that it is over 100 years later and he has indeed been uploaded into a computer.  He can't see, he has no appendages, in fact, he can't talk initially - he must learn how to again (of course, as a machine, it takes considerably less time).  The world has changed drastically - and not for the better.  He also learns that the extended life he paid for before he died has been voided - he is now corporate property, and a slave.

During his training, Bob learns that he is being groomed for something big, but they won't tell him what.  While he excels at his training, doing better than other candidates which were evaluated before him, he quickly learns that being an intelligence uploaded into a machine isn't all it's cracked up to be - there are potential viability problems, that I won't go into (aye, you'll need to read the book).  He eventually learns that he will be the AI portion of a Von Neumann probe (a self-replicating machine to be used for exploring the universe).  This sounds very exciting to Bob - if he makes it through the training.  The first part of the book focuses on this training, and before he knows it he is ready to launch into space.  He leaves at a time when all is not well on Earth, and global conflict is imminent.

The second part of the story deals with his tasks once he reaches his destination - an 11 year journey away at close to light speed.  Naturally, over the course of his journeys, he makes copies of himself - which has interesting and sometimes funny results.  Eventually, Bob has a "todo" list, which gets quite long with items that there is no real time to handle.  Sounds just like real life, huh?

As Bob and his copies roam the galaxy, they quickly learn that the universe is not a very hospitable place.  Furthermore, it is dangerous out there.  It turns out he's not the only probe that was successfully launched from Earth.

This was a great story, lots of fun, and very original.  Overall, Bob is a very interesting...group of characters, and they come up with interesting solutions for some of the problems they encounter.  Oddly enough, even AI's can be plagued by Murphy's Law.  I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy.

Have you read this series?  What did you think of it?  I'd be happy to hear from you - please leave a comment.

The War of the Worlds: A George Pal Classic

I remember when I first came across The War of the Worlds.  I was watching some Saturday afternoon TV when I was a teenager, and this was the next movie to air.  It looked interesting, so I stayed tuned, and it was great - this was probably in the early 1980's.  The film originally came out in 1953, and I have to say that the special effects are still amazing to this day.

I had known about The Invisible Man, by H.G. Wells.  In elementary (grade) school, the big three were:  The Invisible Man, Dracula, and Frankenstein.  I had not heard of The War of the Worlds, and was also not aware that Wells wrote this one as well. 

A handful of years later, I was introduced to old time radio - various companies made popular radio shows from the 1930's and 1940's available on cassette tape:  Abbot and Costello, Burns and Allen, Fibber McGee and Molly, The Shadow, The Green Hornet, etc.  Eventually, I came across the original Mercury Theater broadcast of The War of the Worlds that starred Orson Welles, and found it interesting that the live broadcast apparently fooled some listeners into believing the Earth was really being invaded by Martians.  The style of the program contributed to this - the earlier portion of it had sections of a radio journalist interviewing people at the crash site that would have sounded convincing enough.  That is, until you listed to the program further, and heard the narration of Orson Welles himself.  I remember the closing of the broadcast included an apology for alarming anyone.

While listening, I found it interesting how much the radio show differed from the film - it followed the book more closely (well, that's much easier on radio, isn't it?).  While I found it interesting, I also found it on the slow side, bordering on boring.  I prefer the George Pal film version much more, and I feel the filmmakers made some choices which make the story more effective from a visual standpoint (in much the same way that The Wizard of Oz differs from the book).

What were some of the things that made the film more effective for me?

The "manta"

First, the design of the alien ships.  Not tripods, like in the book.  The ships are shaped like manta rays, with the heat-ray as a cobra-like head on a long extension.  In addition to the heat-ray, they have skeletal beam weapons mounted on the sides (you need to see the film to know what this means), rather than the poisonous black smoke from the novel.  And, actually, these ships do kind of qualify as tripods.  While they appear to fly through the air, in certain scenes, you can see they are held aloft by three almost invisible "energy" legs.  The tripods also had tentacles for manipulating things, which are missing from the ships in the film.  When the heat-ray itself fires, it has a very scary sound.  A sound which clearly indicates that something bad is going to happen.

As described in the novel

Second, the look of the Martians.  I the book, they are described as round creatures the size of a bear, with brown bodies, V-shaped mouths dripping saliva, disk-like eyes, and 16 whip-like tentacles.  This would have been immensely difficult to pull off in the film.  Instead, they had a bipedal figure, much like a man, but with very broad shoulders, skinny arms and legs, and a single large eye with red, blue, and green lenses.  Their fingers also ended in suction cups.  To me, this is a much creepier and disturbing design.

From the film

There are many other differences between the book and the film, but these are the ones that made the biggest difference for me.

A few elements which are missing from the George Pal film are featured prominently in the 2005 remake made by Steven Spielberg.  First, what the martians do with captured humans - they are certainly captured and carried in baskets behind the tripods.  Second, the fast growing "red weed", which we do see in the film, without any real explanation of what it is.  While these scenes from the novel are present, they are somewhat difficult to decipher what is really going on.

The War of the Worlds remains one of my favorite 20th century science fiction films - far superior to many films that were made decades later with incredibly inferior special effects and stories.  It wasn't until many years later that I learned that George Pal was responsible for many other classic science fiction films - The Time Machine, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, and Destination Moon (based on Rocket Ship Galileo by Robert A. Heinlein) to name a few.

If you have never seen it, you should.

Any other big fans of this film out there?

Book Review: The Farm, by Matt Moss

This book popped up as a recommendation somewhere online (I can't remember where), and the concept immediately appealed to me.  The blurb mentioned similarities to Lost, Westworld, and "many classic SciFi tales".  The concept sounded simple.  Five men find themselves as slaves on a farm.  They know their name, where they were born, and how old they are.  No memory of how they got there.  No memories of friends.  No memories of family.  But, as the story progresses, they learn that they do have memory of other things.  For example, if they were a scientist, they remembered science facts.

This concept reminded me very much of two things.

First, the TV show Persons Unknown.  A similar concept - a group of people find themselves in a town that they cannot leave.  There is always a barrier which prevents them from leaving.  While their memories are intact, they have no idea how they got there.  Unlike The Farm, there are no people in who are obviously in control - everyone seems to be in the same boat.

Second, the novel Seed, by Michael Edelson.  Fifty people wake up on a compound which they cannot leave.  Again, they have no memory of how they got there.  Great read - you can find my review here.

I never watched Lost, but I can say that some elements of Westworld are definitely present.

The men are forced to work the fields around the farm by two farmhands.  They are told to do as they are told and not to break the rules.  The farm consists of the fields, a barn, where the five of them will sleep, and a white mansion across from the barn, with a gated wall that they can't see behind.  The work ends up being plowing massive fields, in some cases the size of an American Football field, by hand with a hoe, and then eventually planting corn, also by hand.

Eventually, they learn that the farmhands have a boss - the landowner.  As the men continue to work, and learn more about each other, some strange things start to happen.  Also, the men notice that the farmhands start behaving strangely sometimes - mood swings, and other odd behavior.  Eventually, the main character, the slave named Cole, is invited into the mansion to meet the boss - and things get even stranger.

Things continue in this way until we learn what is really going on, which was a complete surprise to me - based on the path to get there.  The revelation is something that I have seen before, but this adds a fresh twist to it.

I wasn't aware of it when I bought this book, but this is apparently the first book of a series.  The Farm was just published in the last half of 2019, so it may be a while for the sequel.  I am interested in where things will be going.

This was a satisfying, quick read - finished it in only two days, since I couldn't put it down.  If you like the works I've mentioned above, you will probably like this one.

As always, I'm interested in hearing from my readers.  If you have read this book, I'd like to hear from you.  Please leave a comment.

Book Review: The Great Hunt (The Wheel of Time #2), by Robert Jordan

I enjoyed The Eye of the World enough that I ended up reading The Great Hunt relatively soon after (well, Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings in between).  The story starts off relatively soon after the last events in The Eye of the World.  Our group of adventurers is still in Fal Dara after Rand fought the Dark One, and the Horn of Valere was retrieved - along with a mysterious, broken piece of heartstone.  Rand continues to struggle with who he is.  He still very much dislikes the Aes Sedai, and wants nothing to do with them, and plans to run off alone, to protect those around him from any harm that could come from his wielding of the One Power and being driven insane by it.  While he knows that he and his friends Mat and Perin are ta'veren, he also thinks he is cursed with the ability to channel, and will eventually go insane.  He does not even remotely suspect he is the Dragon reborn.

Rand's plans are quickly preempted - the Horn is stolen, along with the dagger that Mat found in Shadar Logoth in EotW.  Without the dagger, the Aes Sedai won't be able to cure him, and he will shortly die.  And, the Horn has been stolen by a very dangerous enemy.  Both must be retrieved quickly.  And so begins the hunt.  Nynaeve and Egwene travel to Tar Valon to begin their training to be Aes Sedai.  And while all of this is going on, there is an invading army from across the sea.

In general, things are more fast paced in this story than they were in EotW.  We learn more about the Horn of Valere, more about the dagger from Shadar Logoth, and more about the invading army.  There are many surprising turns, and we get to see a few peripheral characters from EotW again.  Rand has several struggles that continue - his confused love for Egwene, his struggle to accept that he channel the One Power, his distrust of all Aes Sedai (and his desire to not be controlled and used as a false dragon), and his struggle to accept that Tam was not his father (and how did he come to possess a heron mark sword when he was just a farmer).

There were several surprises for me at the end of the story.  The realization of who the invading army is, their use of a'dam (a horrifying concept - you'll have to read the book to understand), and several other things that come to light (like, what is the broken piece of heartstone that was found with the Horn of Valere).

Overall, this was a better story for me, and I'm looking forward to finding out what happens next.  Of course, there are still some slow moments that get dragged out quite a bit, which I hear from others is a continuing issue with the series.  But, not too bad in this volume.

As always, I'd like to hear from my readers.  If you have read this series, I'd like to hear what you thought of this book and the series.

Book Review: The Way of Kings (Stormlight Archive #1), by Brandon Sanderson

This is the first book I've read by Brandon Sanderson.  It was highly recommended to me, so I bought a copy a while back but had not gotten around to reading it.  The same had happened with Richard Jordan's Wheel of Time series - I bought The Eye of the World and then never got around to reading it.  I recently learned that WoT was going to be an Amazon TV show, so decided to read EotW.  It was a little on the slow side, but I enjoyed it.  After telling a friend this, he said the Stormlight Archive by Sanderson was better.  So, The Way of Kings ended up being the next book on my reading list.

I have to say, the size of this book was intimidating.  At around 1,252 pages (mass market paperback edition), this was easily the largest book I've ever read - and I've read some big ones.  Battlefield Earth, Under the Dome, 11/22/63, The Stand (interesting that the last three of these are by the same author, Stephen King) - these are all at least 200 pages shorter in length.  The only novel which comes to mind which is actually longer would be War and Peace, and perhaps Les Miserables.

I found the first chapter, the prelude, to be very interesting - a few characters speak at the end of a battle against mysterious beasts, and they refer to many unknown things.  And then, the novel proper jumps more than 4,000 years into the future (kind of like EotW, but I don't recall an indication of how far into the future things were supposed to be - hundreds of years, at least, I would think).  The first chapter starts with an assassination which is underway, and it is pretty action filled.  And then after this, things slow down for a bit - but they remain interesting.

The viewpoint changes between a handful of different characters, engaged in different areas throughout the world.  In some cases, a viewpoint character only appears a single time in the book - usually in one of the "interludes", and sometimes it will be a few hundred pages before you revisit a particular character again.

The pattern of storytelling is linear for most of the characters, but it isn't for at least one.  For example, for this character, we start in the present, then jump ahead eight months, then visit different periods some number of years in the past, and then ultimately revisit a critical event that spans a gap in the story for this user, finally revealing events the reader has been wondering about for hundreds of pages.

In many ways, this story reminded me of James Clavell's novel Shogun, where the author throws Japanese words at the reader that they are expected to remember them later on.  The same is true here, but in this particular case it isn't about language, it's learning about the world that Sanderson has built.  We hear mysterious names for all kinds of things:  Voidbringers, Spren, Heralds, Radiants, Soulcaster.  The list goes on and on.  In many cases, explanations are given for many of these things, but in others it's just the tip of the iceberg - I imagine there is much more to be revealed in coming volumes of this series (#4 out of ten is getting released in November, 2020).

The level of world building here is staggering - reminds me a bit of Neal Stephenson's Anathem, which, if I remember correctly, was MOSTLY world building, with not much meat to the main story, until things started to get really interesting towards the end.  But, The Way of Kings is interesting - all the way through.  Complex story lines that become related when you least expect it.  Incredible depth to the characters.  Interesting and varied cultures.  Surprises, shocks, plot twists, mysterious events - there's plenty of all of these.

I think the oddest thing is the Spren.  These were confusing to me for a while.  At first, they appear to be a manifestation of emotion, or in some cases, other things.  We do gradually learn that they are much more than that.  From things I've seen about the world of The Stormlight Archive, we are just starting to see the beginning of the magic system, which already appears involved, and will be getting more complex in later volumes.

This was a fantastic read, and a great story.  I'm really looking forward to continuing the series.  Highly recommended!

As always, I'm interested in hearing from my readers.  If you have read this series, I'm interested in what you think.  Please feel free to comment.

Book Review: The Eye of the World, (The Wheel of Time #1), by Robert Jordan

Let me start out by saying that my favorite fantasy series for many years (we are talking decades here) has been The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, by Stephen R. Donaldson.  I originally read this series twice.  The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant I thought was good, but not as good as the original.  I had the opportunity to re-read the entire series when The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant came out - so, 10 books in total - and re-evaluated my assessment of the Second Chronicles.  There were things I either missed or didn't appreciate the first time around - entirely possible since I was probably age 15 at the time.

Yes, I DID get started with The Lord of the Rings before starting Thomas Covenant.  But, it was never my favorite, for a number of reasons (IMO, very popular due to the fact that when it first appeared, there wasn't anything else like it).

I did manage to get through the books, mostly.  My assessment was the following:

• The Fellowship of the Ring started slowly, but was interesting, then reached a point when I thought I would not continue when Tom Bombadil showed up.  It reached the interesting point again when they reached the Mines of Moria.
• The Two Towers was very good, and I enjoyed it all the way though.
• The Return of the King was good through the destruction of the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom.  After that, things got so boring I just couldn't finish it, and I never have.

In my opinion, the movies by Peter Jackson were far superior - especially the extended versions.

Over the years, there wasn't much for fantasy that I was really into or enjoyed reading - until I encountered The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, which got better and better with every book.  This is still a favorite series, but I've become frustrated by the waiting game that has started establishing itself with multiple writers these days (George R. R. Martin and Robert Jordan fit under this umbrella as well - understood that Butcher has had some major life events the past several years, so I cut him some slack).  Books were coming out every 1 or 2 years, and were getting longer and longer.  When the next book in the series comes out, it will have been 5+ years, which is tough for a series with a complicated, ongoing story line.  Plus, he's writing a second series as well, The Cinder  Spires, which is a steampunk adventure (one of the better ones I've read), so this "waiting game" trend will continue.

However, The Dresden Files differs from Lord of the Rings and Thomas Covenant - it's not "high fantasy", it is "urban fantasy" - it takes place in modern day Chicago, not in an invented world.

As a side note, I also enjoyed the Codex Alera series by Butcher.  The first book was amazing, but the books continued to get larger, and I found by book 5 (Princep's Fury), things were getting long winded and the story wasn't as interesting - I have yet to read the final volume.

Shortly after encountering Dresden, A Song of Ice and Fire was recommended, which, like Codex Alera, started off well enough, and the action continued through book three, and then the waiting game started for the final books.  I didn't finish books 4 and 5 (which were originally 1 book - the action all takes place simultaneously, but there isn't much action).  Similar to Lord of the Rings, the HBO production was better, even allowing for the disappointing final season.

Anyway, I've known about The Wheel of Time practically since it first appeared, but most people I knew at the time did not really count it as fantasy (as can be noted from earlier paragraphs, I've since learned that there are many sub-genres of Fantasy), and over time, many of the books were disappointing to fans, so I had a tendency to avoid these books, especially when it looked like Robert Jordan would not be finishing the series.  Brandon Sanderson was selected to write the final book, which ended up becoming three books.

This latter item was a big red flag for me.  Both A Song of Ice and Fire and The Wheel of Time were originally envisioned as trilogies - now the former is expected to have seven books, and The Wheel of Time, now that it is concluded, has fourteen volumes.  At the time, my concern was that both series were heading in the same direction, and neither would actually be completed.

But, a few people had advised me that the early books were quite good, and somewhere in the middle the story grinds to an absolute halt, with some number of books not really contributing to the main story, at which point many people just gave up.  I've also been told that the conclusion, mostly written by Brandon Sanderson (based on notes from Robert Jordan), more than makes up for it.

Well, I decided to give the series a try.  I bought the first book...and then it sat on a shelf for years and I somehow never got around to reading it.  Now that Amazon is making a TV series out of it, I decided it was to try reading it.

My initial reaction is a mixed bag.  The writing is good, but the pace is a little slow - at least 60 pages until something remotely interesting takes place, and then for a 150 pages the main characters are fleeing, occasionally with some interesting facts revealed.  The biggest detractor is the descriptions - three pages to describe what a village looks like when the characters enter it is a bit much for me - and my understanding is that this gets worse in later volumes.  I've heard rumor that these books could be cut in half with the amount of rambling description which is really unnecessary.

There were a few odd things.  One chapter started off with a few pages that took place in the present, and then the rest of the chapter was a flashback, from the end of the previous chapter that dealt with these characters up to the present.  This was a very odd flashback, and seemed unnecessary, given the linear flow of the rest of the book.

I also found it strange that the author decided to split the central characters, who were all traveling together, into three smaller groups, and then spend five whole chapters on the flight of two of the characters, while not adding much in the way of story progression - just the characters running from town to town.  I believe this accounted for close to 100 pages of story.  For the most part, a single chapter covered the same span of travel for the other two groups of characters.  This just seemed an odd choice to make.

Anyway, once I was about two-thirds of the way through, the characters all came back together, and the story picks up pace, and we start to learn more interesting things.  At this point, there were several surprises, and the story did not take the direction I thought it would.

I had a "what the hell happened" moment during an encounter near the end of the story.  Perhaps this is just the author trying to keep things mysterious, and maybe we'll learn more about what really happened in later books.  We'll see.

Overall, despite the slow places, I did enjoy the story and it held my interest - enough that I had a strong desire to read the second book.  I will stick with it as long as it keeps me interested, and when it slows down too much, I'll re-evaluate whether I continue.

I know that many people have read this series over the last 30 years - I'd be interested in hearing from others who have read this book and the whole series.  Please feel free to leave comments.

If you are looking for an interesting read, while slow at times, check this one out.