I manage 6 books in November, 5 audiobooks and a short little WTF of a story. I’ve been spending long days driving again (back to driving in September), so I thought this wasn’t too bad.
Water for Alien Were-Dinos – Rod Holder
This is a serious WTF short story. An alien, Alf-Khalan, needs water to power his ship during a battle. He sees Earth, and comes down to Jillian’s house. They have lots of sex. His spooge tastes like mint chocolate, and he sounds like a Valley Girl. He gets water. The end.
A serious “WTF did I just read?” book. That’s all I can say. Well, that, and it’s a good thing it was in Kindle Unlimited.
Deep Silence – Jonathan Maberry
This is the last of the original Joe Ledger series, and I was reading it in anticipation of Rage coming out. This one has the highest stakes yet, with machines that can cause earthquakes, and partial destruction of Washington, DC, before the big finale.
This book ties together a lot of the previous problems the DMS has faced, which is something I really like. The world is a scarier place that you’d think it is, and Joe, Top, and Bunny are elbow deep in trouble.
I think this was an excellent finish to the original Joe Ledger series. There’s some sad events, and not everyone makes it out unscathed, but there’s also a surprising lack of deaths. All things must come to an end though, and at the end Church disbands the DMS. That made me cry, because at the time, I didn’t know there was a new spin-off series coming. Once I found out, I felt a lot better.
Rage – Jonathan Maberry
Rage is the spin-off series called Joe Ledger and Rogue Team International. I have some rage about Rage. Specifically, the last hour of the audiobook. But I won’t go into that, because that would be spoilers.
Joe is heading Havoc Team, one of the three new Rogue International teams. The other are Chaos and Bedlam, which I think are perfect names. Joe has Top, Bunny, and Ghost, but also Andrea, an Italian communication and explosives expert, and Belle, who is the Angel of Death with a sniper rifle. The headquarters of Ruge, Intl are on an island in the Mediteranean, and are fucking awesome. Church has a flair for the dramatic.\
I enjoyed this plotline. Something’s causing people to fly into a rage an try and kill each other with weapons or bare hands, or whatever is handy. A video is sent to a handful of people, and then leaked, and as you can imagine, the world goes to hell over it. It’s a similar plot the the other novels, in that something big and scary is going to eat the world, but feels fresh enough for the book.
And the villians. Oh, the villians, Kuga and Daddy are terrible people, but so brilliantly written. They’re brilliant bad guys, and actually have the whole “are we really the villians?” discussion that amused me. I was able to guess who they were pretty quickly, but only because I recently re-read the previous series, and there’s nods to them in there.
My complaint about the book is the epilogue. I get why it had to happen, but it makes me rage. It also is kind of a stupid moment for Joe, because even I know that the character played in it wouldn’t have worked, if Joe had thought about it for a moment. I wasn’t thinking about it at the time, but it occurred to me later. I see that there needs to be continuing motivation, and the big bads need to be set up for the series, but I didn’t like it.
We are Legion, For We Are Many, All These Worlds – Dennis Taylor
I had seen these books on Audible for months, but I passed them up because the series name was “Bobiverse” and it just sounded dumb. Man, was I wrong. THESE BOOKS ARE AWESOME.
I could just stop there, but that doesn’t give any specifics. In 2016, Robert Johannson, or Bob, is rich. He’s just sold a software company for a LOT of money, and decided to cryogenicly freeze his head, so he can come back in the future once they can. To move the story along, he’s immediately hit by a car and killed.
He wakes up 117 years later, in the year 2133. Only, he’s not been revived into a new body. Instead, he’s been put into a software program, so he is an AI that feels he is Bob Johannson. He learns that he’s in a theocracy, and he’s been revived so he can be a servant to FAITH, the country he’s in. He quickly learns all the skills he needs, and finds out he’s going to be a Von Neumann probe, sent to a nearby star system to discover potentially habitable planets.
Bob does well, gets his ship, and takes off. There’s much excitement about his departure, including setting up the initial big bad of the series, the Brazilian Empire. While he’s en route to his star system, Bob sets himself up a virtual reality, complete with coffee and his cat. Once that’s set up, he starts dealing with additional problems, like the Brazilian probe.
I’d go into the rest of the series, but I’d be here all day, and it would spoil a lot of things. In the end, Bob does what a Von Neumann probe is supposed to do: he does replicate and make more Bobs. They have adventures, replicate, encounter other intelligent life, fight the Brazilian Empire’s probe, and many other things. It’s a great trilogy of books.
I loved these. I wanted more books once I was done with the third, they were that good. The title character of Bob is a good one. He’s a bit of a loaner, a serious geek, and has a good sense of humor. He seems like the sort of guy I would have played computer games with, or gone out to watch major league esports with. He has some anxiety, which I can relate to. But seriously, Bob is a nice relatable character.
Bob’s replicants are awesome. They’re all different. Riker lacks a sense of humor, Homer has 1000% extra sense of humor. Bill is a mad scientist sort. Mario is anti social, Howard likes to undermine jerkasses. Despite being clones, they’re all different. It’s awesome!
The worlds are neat, including a dual orbiting planet they end up calling Vulcan and Romulus, because Bob. (That’s a reoccurring thing in the books) One planet is all water, more than 600km deep. Another place they go is a gas giant. One’s all rocky, and Bill, the mad scientist type, spends years trying to terraforming it.