The Kindle Unlimited DNF Gauntlet for November, 2024
I decided to try out a Kindle Unlimited subscription. KU is like an all-you-can-eat buffet, and like all-you-can-eat buffets, I discovered I really can't eat that much. Some people read a book every day or two; I typically take a week or more, and so it's hard to read fast enough to make the KU subscription worth it. So I decided to take a different approach:
DNF!
I very rarely Did Not Finish-tag books. If I paid for it (and sometimes if I didn't), I want to finish what I started. So I'll finish books I'm not really enjoying, if only to write a scorching review. The only time I normally DNF a book is if it's so spectacularly bad that it's making me crazy (and not even in an entertaining way), or if it's so boring that I can't wait for it to be over.
But for my KU reads, I've decided I will sample widely and DNF as soon as I'm not really feeling it. I will give books I wouldn't normally read (or pay for) a chance, including from self-published authors. I'll try out a book that has an interesting title or cover. I even tried a few books pushed at me by Facebook or reddit. (Facebook might now have a slightly skewed view of my reading habits after I made the mistake of checking out a harem novel. And boy does FB know I was car-shopping recently...) And I won't make myself keep reading if I'm not really looking forward to the next chapter.
So below, I present my KU books for November. I will emphasize that the fact that I didn't finish most of them does not mean they are bad (and some of them I might come back to someday); they just weren't good enough to make the cut. They have to be good enough to replace one of my already limited reading slots, so sometimes I'm just giving it a few chapters and then bailing. The occasional book I do finish, I will note with a link to my complete review.
Dungeon Crawler Carl, by Matt Dinniman
I actually finished this one. Review here.
Freelance on the Galactic Tunnel Network, by E.M. Foner
I gave this one more grace than I normally would, and finished it. Review here.
Arrival of The Moon Hare: An Apocalyptic Progression Fantasy, by Duyu Wander
Fear hinders one's potential.
A sinister presence delights in Rinyv's torment, relentlessly pursuing and killing her the moment she turns fifteen. Now, having encountered death four times already, the girl is living her fifth life hoping to alter her fate and put an end to this endless cycle of suffering.
As the terrifying age of fifteen approaches and chaotic events lead people down the path of despair, Rinyv can't help but do everything in her power to overcome her trauma and grow stronger.
The looming strides of death draw near, and Rinyv appears to hold the key to saving not only herself but all of mankind. Fortunately, armed with the knowledge of her past lives, continuous training, and a giant pair of scissors found on holy ground, she is no longer a powerless, naive young girl.
DNFed at 6%.
Once I finished my bath and changed into my daily attire, I rushed to the mirror to drool over my new body for the hundredth time this year. My wavy dark hair with white streaks, along with my strange red eyes and the few freckles underneath my eyes evoked a feeling of uniqueness that I totally cherished.
My slim body fit nicely even in the smaller-sized clothes, making almost any style accessible to me.
This is a progression fantasy that got its start on Royal Road, and I thought that was a pretty whack cover, and an interesting premise. The protagonist (named "Rinyv") has to keep being reincarnated over and over again, with full memores of her previous lives, and is murdered each time she reaches the age of 15. It's like a cross between Beetlejuice and Groundhog Day. Could have been intriguing, but it's not just well-written (I think the author's native language might not be English), and the 14-year-old girl literally drooling over herself in the mirror and constantly talking about how much she loves being hot and slim (the opening chapter features her living the life of an ugly fat girl who gets beaten to death by her PE teacher) was, uh, kind of creepy.
In the first couple of chapters there are hints that she's being stalked by some kind of supernatural hare who's responsible for all her suffering. The setting is weird, a sort of anime-version of Japan but with completely different names to make it a not-Earth.
Interesting premise and the author is obviously dedicated, but this was fanfiction level (not good fanfiction) trash.
My Outcast State (The Maauro Chronicles Book 1), by Edward McKeown
Three alien machines descend to the asteroid base of their enemies. The ensuing battle is short and savage. The lone survivor hopes either for rescue, or for another chance to engage its enemies. It will be a long wait… Wrik Trigardt ekes out a living in the Kandalor system with his small ship, Sinner. He is caught between his failed past and a grim present in service to the local crimelord, Dusko. An expedition to the Rift Asteroids promises better days, but when the well of time is disturbed no one can say what will surface. Set in the same universe as the Robert Fenaday/Shasti Rainhell stories, but decades later, My Outcast State begins a new cycle of exploration of Confederation Space.
Do Androids Dream of Alien Smugglers, Galactic Heroes, Space Pirates, and Alien War? Freebooters on a Secret Interstellar Mission to an Extinct Civilization find a Robot Weapon on a Derelict Base. That’s right, nothing less than Alien Artifacts on a Mysterious Alien Planet. Rocket into this Science Fiction Spectacle of Sentient Races and High Adventure. Military Science Fiction Space Opera Romance has never been more fun!
DNFed at 8%.
The alien machine shuddered and its colors seemed to run and invert, almost as if it were turning inside out.
"What's going on?" I shouted backing away as the machine convulsed in a nauseating mess.
It did not answer but regained stability. Before me stood a girl: small-breasted and ivory-skinned. The nimbus of starchy monofilament hair had transformed into an impossibly long and voluminous cascade of blue-black hair that hung down her back and in bangs almost to her eyes. I looked into aquamarine eyes far too large to be human, over a petite nose and a tiny mouth. Then the perfect skin was covered in a skintight, dark-grey jumpsuit with orange panels on the torso and arms.
An AI war machine is trapped on a remote ball of rock after destroying its enemies. With no way off, it goes into hibernation. 50,000 years later, humans and other races colonize this part of the galaxy. A freelance pilot who makes his living running fortune hunters around the system looking for alien artifacts is hired by a hot chick whose large breasts are described repeatedly (I am not sure if anything else about her was described). They are double-crossed and ambushed by the local mob boss, and just as they are about to die, Maauro (the alien war machine) wakes up and slaughters the bad guys. Then she taps into the data on the pilot's ship and transforms herself into a waifu from his video games. They form an impromptu partnership and go to rescue Miss Big Titties.
Although leaning a bit heavily on the fan-service, this wasn't a terrible read and if I had bought it, I would probably finish it. It's tolerably well-written space opera, I just didn't think it was great.
Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use It, by Oliver Burkeman
The average human lifespan is absurdly, outrageously, insultingly brief: if you live to 80, you have about four thousand weeks on earth. That’s a pretty good argument for spending less time on Twitter.
Of course, nobody needs telling that there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed by our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, the ceaseless struggle against distraction, and the sense that our attention spans are shrivelling. Yet we rarely make the conscious connection that these problems of time management only trouble us in the first place thanks to the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks.
Four Thousand Weeks is a travelogue about this idea, combining first-person reportage and historical storytelling with excursions into philosophy, literature and psychology, and covering the past, present and future of our battles with time. It’s a book that goes beyond practical tips to transform the reader’s worldview.
Burkeman sets out on an unashamedly philosophical exploration of time and our relationship with it. Drawing on the insights of ancient philosophers, Benedictine monks, artists and authors, Scandinavian social reformers, renegade Buddhist technologists and many others, he sets out to realign our relationship with time - and in doing so, liberate us from its grasp.
DNFed at 27%.
One of the few non-fiction books I sampled. I liked Atomic Habits by James Clear and Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, and sampled this one to see if it had anything new or useful to say. It's basically a book about time management for people who don't like to manage their time.
Instead of offering methods or "life hacks" to manage your time better, the author argues basically that you should get real about the time you have left on Earth and how you want to spend it. Stop trying to chart, plan, and manage your every waking hour, and decide what's important.
This is a fine message, but it felt like an essay padded out to book length. I skimmed the rest and there really wasn't much more to it.
The Sword of Kaigen, by M.L. Wang
On a mountainside at the edge of the Kaigenese Empire live the most powerful warriors in the world, superhumans capable of raising the sea and wielding blades of ice. For hundreds of years, the fighters of the Kusanagi Peninsula have held the Empire's enemies at bay, earning their frozen spit of land the name 'The Sword of Kaigen.' Born into Kusanagi's legendary Matsuda family, fourteen-year-old Mamoru has always known his purpose: to master his family's fighting techniques and defend his homeland. But when an outsider arrives and pulls back the curtain on Kaigen's alleged age of peace, Mamoru realizes that he might not have much time to become the fighter he was bred to be. Worse, the empire he was bred to defend may stand on a foundation of lies.
Misaki told herself that she left the passions of her youth behind when she married into the Matsuda house. Determined to be a good housewife and mother, she hid away her sword, along with everything from her days as a fighter in a faraway country. But with her growing son asking questions about the outside world, the threat of an impending invasion looming across the sea, and her frigid husband grating on her nerves, Misaki finds the fighter in her clawing its way back to the surface.
When the winds of war reach their peninsula, will the Matsuda family have the strength to defend their empire? Or will they tear each other apart before the true enemies even reach their shores?
DNFed at 16%.
This book seems popular on r/fantasy. Like many self-published books nowadays it got its start on Royal Road, and it won a self-published book content.
It wasn't bad; in fact, it was good enough to tempt me to continue reading. But I found the writing adequate at best, and the world-building killed it for me.
It's an Asian-inspired fantasy world with the main characters being not-Japanese samurai clans (but very much using Japanese culture, Japanese names, and Japanese language terms). They have magical/psionic ice powers, and the clan of the protagonists are stationed on a lonely peninsula with the job of "protecting the empire." The setting is strange, because it feels like a typical pre-modern fantasy world, but in fact they have modern technology like computers and jet fighters, which we just don't see much because the story takes place in a remote boondocks.
There are two main characters: Mamoru, a teenage warrior who really wants to prove himself as he goes through what is basically a Magical School training arc, and his mother, Misaki, who is hinted (as of the point I stopped reading) at being some bad-ass special forces warrior in a past life but is now living the docile life of a submissive housewife to Mamoru's cold fish of father.
Mamoru is forcibly paired with a foreign exchange student from fantasy not-Korea, who shows up to tell him that their entire history is a lie. (And one of the author's really odd and annoying decisions was to put dialog in italics whenever a character is not speaking their native language, which means all of Chul-Hee's dialog is in italics!)
I wanted to like this more, but I just found the writing and the characters not compelling enough to really make me want to find out what happens next.
Still Falling, by Martin Wilsey
DNFed at 11%.
Barcus is a working stiff looking for a good paycheck. When the Ventura and its crew enter orbit for a scheduled planet survey, the ship activates an automated defense system protecting the planet. Although the Ventura is destroyed in the attack, Barcus alone survives the harrowing fall to the remote planet surface. He struggles to remain alive and sane, and to discover why everyone he knew and loved on the Ventura was deliberately murdered.
Swinging between despair and fury, Barcus discovers that for every answer he obtains, there are more questions raised. Barcus is assisted by the Emergency Module, Em, his most useful tool. It is an Artificial Intelligence system contained in an all-terrain vehicle specifically designed to help him survive. Barcus soon finds himself in the middle of a planetary genocide of the local native population. He is unable to stand passively by as more people die, even if they are long lost colonists who fear "The Man From Earth" like children fear the monster under their bed.
Will Barcus ever find his way home? Will he find out who is responsible? Will his rage just burn this world down? Or will he find his soul in the eyes of a starving, frightened woman?
Still Falling is a sci-fi survival story. Barcus was a crewman aboard a spaceship doing a routine survey of a planetary system. It was shot out of the sky, and Barcus appears to be the only survivor. Fortunately, an advanced AI also made it down to the planet with him. Barcus and the AI learn that this planet was settled by humans from an earlier wave of colonization, but they have reverted to a medieval state. Barcus has an advanced suit of powered armor, plus his robot AI and a horde of drones, so they are basically godlike beings on this world.
Barcus encounters some marauders who are massacring entire villages. Flying into a rage, he slaughters the entire band of marauders and rescues the sole survivors of the village, a woman and a child.
There is a lot of internal monologue. Barcus is suffering PTSD and mourning his dead crewmates. It looks like the woman he saved is going to be a love interest. And the AI seems to have a hidden agenda. This could be interesting, but it actually reads as very dry and I just wasn't that engaged in the story. Part of it was that there isn't a lot of tension when Barcus and his AI are basically invincible and can mow down armies. I was tempted to skim ahead to see what the payoff is; this is apparently the first in a series.
This is a very techy book written by an engineer, so it goes hard on the SF elements, but it felt like a lot of self-published books written by smart people, well-written but flat.
Judicator Jane, by Brian Rouleau
Could you survive waking up alone in a vast and deadly desert?
Moments ago, Jane's biggest worries were unpaid bills and finding a job. Now, she must use all her cunning, along with her new, mysterious powers, to survive the desolate and scorching sands.
No food. No water. No answers.
Jane's battle for survival in this unfamiliar land has just begun...
Hunted by the savage beasts of the desert, it's only a matter of time before Jane either adapts to the world around her or ends up as another skeleton rotting in the blistering sun. But what chance does a modern woman have in the endless dunes, dressed only in her pajamas?
DNFed at 16%.
This was a LitRPG book, and like most LitRPGs it's the first in a series. I picked it because the cover looked kind of cool and the title sounded like maybe it's a female Judge Dredd chick going through a fantasy wild west...
It's not. Jane is a nice girl who just got laid off from her software testing job, and she wakes up in a desert world where a "system" pops up info dialogs telling her to assign her stats - in other words, she just wakes up in a LitRPG fantasy world, with no explanation. At the point where I stopped reading, there was still no explanation. While I get that this is typical of LitRPGs, I need to be given some kind of background, some reason why someone suddenly gets Isekai'd from our world to Random RPG World.
The gimmick in Judicator Jane is that since she's a software tester, she spends some time exploring the selection menus, and figures out how to zero out her hundreds of default skills and reassign the points. So she basically dumps everything (all 630 points!) into Luck. She is now a normal human with no skills and God-level Luck.
This is kind of entertaining as it results in giant scorpions accidentally stabbing themselves and demon lords literally tripping and impaling themselves on random spikes in the ground as they try to attack her. Each time she earns a gazillion XPs, most of which are discarded as she only gets enough to move up to the next level, but when she gets to pick a class, her Luck once again lets her choose from three Legendary classes, so she becomes a "Judicator."
This book is an example of everything good and bad about LitRPGs. It's light and entertaining reading and if you just want literary popcorn, watching the character move through a LitRPG world with stats going up and encountering a new critter in each chapter, it requires basically no thought.
Unfortunately, it's just an uninteresting story with an uninteresting protagonist. Jane has no personality, and just wanders through a desert until she encounters a fortress full of demons, and there is still no sign of a larger plot or setting or other characters of interest. The writing was fine but nothing special, so I just wasn't interesting in reading more about Lucky Jane.
To Find a Tall Ship, by A.G. Thompson
Sachi Takahashi, not yet nineteen seasons old, is in deep trouble. She’s just killed the only son of the lord of corrupt Clan Ishikawa, a man who will spend weeks torturing her to death. Now she must flee her homeland. But Clan Ishikawa reaches throughout the Empire and into other, nearby nations.
So she must seek a ship on which she can hide until it reaches her goal, the nearly mythical Kingdom of Montagar, on the other side of the world. A place beyond even the reach of her clan lord’s thugs and murderers.
She had to find a tall ship.
DNFed at 43%.
You'll notice I got almost halfway through this one before bailing. To Find a Tall Ship wasn't bad, but it tries to be a little bit of everything. We start out with Sachi Takahachi, who is the adopted daughter of a Japanese ninja clan who's just killed her violent, sadistic cousin and thus must flee for her life. She's not actually in Japan, though - this is what appears to be some sort of alternate fantasy world, with a fantasy Japan, fantasy England, fantasy Russia, fantasy Spain (complete with Inquisitors), all basically historical analogues with the serial numbers very lightly filed off. At first it resembled Taylor Anderson's Destroyermen series.
Sachi sneaks onto a "Kolbian Republic" frigate. The Kolbians are the fantasy British in this world. After stowing away for a month, she is finally discovered, whereupon a will-they-won't-they romance develops between her and the dashing Captain Blaine.
Then we get POV chapters from several other characters. First, there is the "Confederal" officer in an orbiting space station waking up from hibernation.
Wait, what?
Yes, we learn that this is actually an alien planet that was once colonized by humans from earth, but there was a huge war with apostrophes-in-their-names aliens who were defeated by a moon-sized battleship, which disappeared and left the human survivors behind for the next 9000 years. So the humans who colonized the planet previously have (roughly) recreated Earth's history several times while forgetting their origins, while above, spacemen silently watch and monitor them, and there are also some bad guys who are keeping the humans on the planet below from ever achieving a proper technological civilization.
Sachi somehow is connected to an AI, which lets her do things like call down an orbital strike on a giant sea monster that's about to eat their ship.
Then there are the chapters with the pirates, where we learn that this world also has actual magic-using elves and dwarves and sorcerers.
So... that's kind of a lot to throw into one book, and I felt like the author just wanted to recreate some multi-genre RPG setting. The writing was okay, but the dialog was very unrealistic, the thought processes of the characters entirely too modern at times, and while my Japanese is far from fluent, I have some doubts about the Japanese phrases Sachi spouts at times.
"Please, no," she muttered to him, half-delirious. "Not the whole crew. There's just me. Let me stay with the Captain. I could be ready anytime he wants me. Or m-m-m-maybe, you could just share me a little bit, the Captain, you, Master Fleet, maybe Master Caplin, he's nice. Mister Bosun, too. I could be good, very good for just a few, but not the whole crew. Please, Ancestor Spirits, please don't send me to the galley to service the whole crew. I don't want to be locked into a crib." By the end of her outburst, she was holding onto Doctor Hoff's coat, trying to kiss him. "I'll be so good to all of you, just please not a crib, kill me or hang me or throw me into the ocean in chunks, please, please, no, not...that...oww!" There was a cold pinch in her arm and the cold spread quickly and then she was warm and serene silence and darkness swept her up in warm, peaceful wings. "Mama, Papa, is that you?" she muttered. Then the drug Hoff injected into her arm claimed the last scrap of consciousness.
Look, I am a guy who likes stories for guys so I don't mind the romance, the hot Asian chick who we are constantly reminded is sexy and busty, and the hot elf chick we are constantly reminded is a sexy elf, and I didn't even mind the constant reminders that the women expect to be gang raped (I mean, being alone on sailing ships full of pirates and marines, why wouldn't they?) but can we go one chapter without being reminded that Sachi has huge tits and really wants to fuck the captain but oh no she is a dishonored nobody unworthy of love, and the captain really wants to fuck Sachi but oh no, he is married and honorable (even though his fellow officers tell him to his face his wife is an unfaithful bitch and he's obviously miserable)? Also Sachi is like super smoking hot as every man who sees her notices (even the gay guy), and did I mention she is tall and has really big tits and she's hot? Because the author sure does. A lot.
I'm making fun, but come on, author, we get it. Sachi is hot and stacked and I suppose we're going to have to wait until the next book for some tragedy to befall the captain's wife so he can bang Sachi.
It was okay, it's fun, it's just kind of silly and wasn't quite good enough for me to persist to the end, but I might come back to it someday and even check out the next book.
My complete list of book reviews.
DNF!
I very rarely Did Not Finish-tag books. If I paid for it (and sometimes if I didn't), I want to finish what I started. So I'll finish books I'm not really enjoying, if only to write a scorching review. The only time I normally DNF a book is if it's so spectacularly bad that it's making me crazy (and not even in an entertaining way), or if it's so boring that I can't wait for it to be over.
But for my KU reads, I've decided I will sample widely and DNF as soon as I'm not really feeling it. I will give books I wouldn't normally read (or pay for) a chance, including from self-published authors. I'll try out a book that has an interesting title or cover. I even tried a few books pushed at me by Facebook or reddit. (Facebook might now have a slightly skewed view of my reading habits after I made the mistake of checking out a harem novel. And boy does FB know I was car-shopping recently...) And I won't make myself keep reading if I'm not really looking forward to the next chapter.
So below, I present my KU books for November. I will emphasize that the fact that I didn't finish most of them does not mean they are bad (and some of them I might come back to someday); they just weren't good enough to make the cut. They have to be good enough to replace one of my already limited reading slots, so sometimes I'm just giving it a few chapters and then bailing. The occasional book I do finish, I will note with a link to my complete review.
Dungeon Crawler Carl, by Matt Dinniman
I actually finished this one. Review here.
Freelance on the Galactic Tunnel Network, by E.M. Foner
I gave this one more grace than I normally would, and finished it. Review here.
Arrival of The Moon Hare: An Apocalyptic Progression Fantasy, by Duyu Wander
Fear hinders one's potential.
A sinister presence delights in Rinyv's torment, relentlessly pursuing and killing her the moment she turns fifteen. Now, having encountered death four times already, the girl is living her fifth life hoping to alter her fate and put an end to this endless cycle of suffering.
As the terrifying age of fifteen approaches and chaotic events lead people down the path of despair, Rinyv can't help but do everything in her power to overcome her trauma and grow stronger.
The looming strides of death draw near, and Rinyv appears to hold the key to saving not only herself but all of mankind. Fortunately, armed with the knowledge of her past lives, continuous training, and a giant pair of scissors found on holy ground, she is no longer a powerless, naive young girl.
DNFed at 6%.
Once I finished my bath and changed into my daily attire, I rushed to the mirror to drool over my new body for the hundredth time this year. My wavy dark hair with white streaks, along with my strange red eyes and the few freckles underneath my eyes evoked a feeling of uniqueness that I totally cherished.
My slim body fit nicely even in the smaller-sized clothes, making almost any style accessible to me.
This is a progression fantasy that got its start on Royal Road, and I thought that was a pretty whack cover, and an interesting premise. The protagonist (named "Rinyv") has to keep being reincarnated over and over again, with full memores of her previous lives, and is murdered each time she reaches the age of 15. It's like a cross between Beetlejuice and Groundhog Day. Could have been intriguing, but it's not just well-written (I think the author's native language might not be English), and the 14-year-old girl literally drooling over herself in the mirror and constantly talking about how much she loves being hot and slim (the opening chapter features her living the life of an ugly fat girl who gets beaten to death by her PE teacher) was, uh, kind of creepy.
In the first couple of chapters there are hints that she's being stalked by some kind of supernatural hare who's responsible for all her suffering. The setting is weird, a sort of anime-version of Japan but with completely different names to make it a not-Earth.
Interesting premise and the author is obviously dedicated, but this was fanfiction level (not good fanfiction) trash.
My Outcast State (The Maauro Chronicles Book 1), by Edward McKeown
Three alien machines descend to the asteroid base of their enemies. The ensuing battle is short and savage. The lone survivor hopes either for rescue, or for another chance to engage its enemies. It will be a long wait… Wrik Trigardt ekes out a living in the Kandalor system with his small ship, Sinner. He is caught between his failed past and a grim present in service to the local crimelord, Dusko. An expedition to the Rift Asteroids promises better days, but when the well of time is disturbed no one can say what will surface. Set in the same universe as the Robert Fenaday/Shasti Rainhell stories, but decades later, My Outcast State begins a new cycle of exploration of Confederation Space.
Do Androids Dream of Alien Smugglers, Galactic Heroes, Space Pirates, and Alien War? Freebooters on a Secret Interstellar Mission to an Extinct Civilization find a Robot Weapon on a Derelict Base. That’s right, nothing less than Alien Artifacts on a Mysterious Alien Planet. Rocket into this Science Fiction Spectacle of Sentient Races and High Adventure. Military Science Fiction Space Opera Romance has never been more fun!
DNFed at 8%.
The alien machine shuddered and its colors seemed to run and invert, almost as if it were turning inside out.
"What's going on?" I shouted backing away as the machine convulsed in a nauseating mess.
It did not answer but regained stability. Before me stood a girl: small-breasted and ivory-skinned. The nimbus of starchy monofilament hair had transformed into an impossibly long and voluminous cascade of blue-black hair that hung down her back and in bangs almost to her eyes. I looked into aquamarine eyes far too large to be human, over a petite nose and a tiny mouth. Then the perfect skin was covered in a skintight, dark-grey jumpsuit with orange panels on the torso and arms.
An AI war machine is trapped on a remote ball of rock after destroying its enemies. With no way off, it goes into hibernation. 50,000 years later, humans and other races colonize this part of the galaxy. A freelance pilot who makes his living running fortune hunters around the system looking for alien artifacts is hired by a hot chick whose large breasts are described repeatedly (I am not sure if anything else about her was described). They are double-crossed and ambushed by the local mob boss, and just as they are about to die, Maauro (the alien war machine) wakes up and slaughters the bad guys. Then she taps into the data on the pilot's ship and transforms herself into a waifu from his video games. They form an impromptu partnership and go to rescue Miss Big Titties.
Although leaning a bit heavily on the fan-service, this wasn't a terrible read and if I had bought it, I would probably finish it. It's tolerably well-written space opera, I just didn't think it was great.
Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use It, by Oliver Burkeman
The average human lifespan is absurdly, outrageously, insultingly brief: if you live to 80, you have about four thousand weeks on earth. That’s a pretty good argument for spending less time on Twitter.
Of course, nobody needs telling that there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed by our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, the ceaseless struggle against distraction, and the sense that our attention spans are shrivelling. Yet we rarely make the conscious connection that these problems of time management only trouble us in the first place thanks to the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks.
Four Thousand Weeks is a travelogue about this idea, combining first-person reportage and historical storytelling with excursions into philosophy, literature and psychology, and covering the past, present and future of our battles with time. It’s a book that goes beyond practical tips to transform the reader’s worldview.
Burkeman sets out on an unashamedly philosophical exploration of time and our relationship with it. Drawing on the insights of ancient philosophers, Benedictine monks, artists and authors, Scandinavian social reformers, renegade Buddhist technologists and many others, he sets out to realign our relationship with time - and in doing so, liberate us from its grasp.
DNFed at 27%.
One of the few non-fiction books I sampled. I liked Atomic Habits by James Clear and Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, and sampled this one to see if it had anything new or useful to say. It's basically a book about time management for people who don't like to manage their time.
Instead of offering methods or "life hacks" to manage your time better, the author argues basically that you should get real about the time you have left on Earth and how you want to spend it. Stop trying to chart, plan, and manage your every waking hour, and decide what's important.
This is a fine message, but it felt like an essay padded out to book length. I skimmed the rest and there really wasn't much more to it.
The Sword of Kaigen, by M.L. Wang
On a mountainside at the edge of the Kaigenese Empire live the most powerful warriors in the world, superhumans capable of raising the sea and wielding blades of ice. For hundreds of years, the fighters of the Kusanagi Peninsula have held the Empire's enemies at bay, earning their frozen spit of land the name 'The Sword of Kaigen.' Born into Kusanagi's legendary Matsuda family, fourteen-year-old Mamoru has always known his purpose: to master his family's fighting techniques and defend his homeland. But when an outsider arrives and pulls back the curtain on Kaigen's alleged age of peace, Mamoru realizes that he might not have much time to become the fighter he was bred to be. Worse, the empire he was bred to defend may stand on a foundation of lies.
Misaki told herself that she left the passions of her youth behind when she married into the Matsuda house. Determined to be a good housewife and mother, she hid away her sword, along with everything from her days as a fighter in a faraway country. But with her growing son asking questions about the outside world, the threat of an impending invasion looming across the sea, and her frigid husband grating on her nerves, Misaki finds the fighter in her clawing its way back to the surface.
When the winds of war reach their peninsula, will the Matsuda family have the strength to defend their empire? Or will they tear each other apart before the true enemies even reach their shores?
DNFed at 16%.
This book seems popular on r/fantasy. Like many self-published books nowadays it got its start on Royal Road, and it won a self-published book content.
It wasn't bad; in fact, it was good enough to tempt me to continue reading. But I found the writing adequate at best, and the world-building killed it for me.
It's an Asian-inspired fantasy world with the main characters being not-Japanese samurai clans (but very much using Japanese culture, Japanese names, and Japanese language terms). They have magical/psionic ice powers, and the clan of the protagonists are stationed on a lonely peninsula with the job of "protecting the empire." The setting is strange, because it feels like a typical pre-modern fantasy world, but in fact they have modern technology like computers and jet fighters, which we just don't see much because the story takes place in a remote boondocks.
There are two main characters: Mamoru, a teenage warrior who really wants to prove himself as he goes through what is basically a Magical School training arc, and his mother, Misaki, who is hinted (as of the point I stopped reading) at being some bad-ass special forces warrior in a past life but is now living the docile life of a submissive housewife to Mamoru's cold fish of father.
Mamoru is forcibly paired with a foreign exchange student from fantasy not-Korea, who shows up to tell him that their entire history is a lie. (And one of the author's really odd and annoying decisions was to put dialog in italics whenever a character is not speaking their native language, which means all of Chul-Hee's dialog is in italics!)
I wanted to like this more, but I just found the writing and the characters not compelling enough to really make me want to find out what happens next.
Still Falling, by Martin Wilsey
DNFed at 11%.
Barcus is a working stiff looking for a good paycheck. When the Ventura and its crew enter orbit for a scheduled planet survey, the ship activates an automated defense system protecting the planet. Although the Ventura is destroyed in the attack, Barcus alone survives the harrowing fall to the remote planet surface. He struggles to remain alive and sane, and to discover why everyone he knew and loved on the Ventura was deliberately murdered.
Swinging between despair and fury, Barcus discovers that for every answer he obtains, there are more questions raised. Barcus is assisted by the Emergency Module, Em, his most useful tool. It is an Artificial Intelligence system contained in an all-terrain vehicle specifically designed to help him survive. Barcus soon finds himself in the middle of a planetary genocide of the local native population. He is unable to stand passively by as more people die, even if they are long lost colonists who fear "The Man From Earth" like children fear the monster under their bed.
Will Barcus ever find his way home? Will he find out who is responsible? Will his rage just burn this world down? Or will he find his soul in the eyes of a starving, frightened woman?
Still Falling is a sci-fi survival story. Barcus was a crewman aboard a spaceship doing a routine survey of a planetary system. It was shot out of the sky, and Barcus appears to be the only survivor. Fortunately, an advanced AI also made it down to the planet with him. Barcus and the AI learn that this planet was settled by humans from an earlier wave of colonization, but they have reverted to a medieval state. Barcus has an advanced suit of powered armor, plus his robot AI and a horde of drones, so they are basically godlike beings on this world.
Barcus encounters some marauders who are massacring entire villages. Flying into a rage, he slaughters the entire band of marauders and rescues the sole survivors of the village, a woman and a child.
There is a lot of internal monologue. Barcus is suffering PTSD and mourning his dead crewmates. It looks like the woman he saved is going to be a love interest. And the AI seems to have a hidden agenda. This could be interesting, but it actually reads as very dry and I just wasn't that engaged in the story. Part of it was that there isn't a lot of tension when Barcus and his AI are basically invincible and can mow down armies. I was tempted to skim ahead to see what the payoff is; this is apparently the first in a series.
This is a very techy book written by an engineer, so it goes hard on the SF elements, but it felt like a lot of self-published books written by smart people, well-written but flat.
Judicator Jane, by Brian Rouleau
Could you survive waking up alone in a vast and deadly desert?
Moments ago, Jane's biggest worries were unpaid bills and finding a job. Now, she must use all her cunning, along with her new, mysterious powers, to survive the desolate and scorching sands.
No food. No water. No answers.
Jane's battle for survival in this unfamiliar land has just begun...
Hunted by the savage beasts of the desert, it's only a matter of time before Jane either adapts to the world around her or ends up as another skeleton rotting in the blistering sun. But what chance does a modern woman have in the endless dunes, dressed only in her pajamas?
DNFed at 16%.
This was a LitRPG book, and like most LitRPGs it's the first in a series. I picked it because the cover looked kind of cool and the title sounded like maybe it's a female Judge Dredd chick going through a fantasy wild west...
It's not. Jane is a nice girl who just got laid off from her software testing job, and she wakes up in a desert world where a "system" pops up info dialogs telling her to assign her stats - in other words, she just wakes up in a LitRPG fantasy world, with no explanation. At the point where I stopped reading, there was still no explanation. While I get that this is typical of LitRPGs, I need to be given some kind of background, some reason why someone suddenly gets Isekai'd from our world to Random RPG World.
The gimmick in Judicator Jane is that since she's a software tester, she spends some time exploring the selection menus, and figures out how to zero out her hundreds of default skills and reassign the points. So she basically dumps everything (all 630 points!) into Luck. She is now a normal human with no skills and God-level Luck.
This is kind of entertaining as it results in giant scorpions accidentally stabbing themselves and demon lords literally tripping and impaling themselves on random spikes in the ground as they try to attack her. Each time she earns a gazillion XPs, most of which are discarded as she only gets enough to move up to the next level, but when she gets to pick a class, her Luck once again lets her choose from three Legendary classes, so she becomes a "Judicator."
This book is an example of everything good and bad about LitRPGs. It's light and entertaining reading and if you just want literary popcorn, watching the character move through a LitRPG world with stats going up and encountering a new critter in each chapter, it requires basically no thought.
Unfortunately, it's just an uninteresting story with an uninteresting protagonist. Jane has no personality, and just wanders through a desert until she encounters a fortress full of demons, and there is still no sign of a larger plot or setting or other characters of interest. The writing was fine but nothing special, so I just wasn't interesting in reading more about Lucky Jane.
To Find a Tall Ship, by A.G. Thompson
Sachi Takahashi, not yet nineteen seasons old, is in deep trouble. She’s just killed the only son of the lord of corrupt Clan Ishikawa, a man who will spend weeks torturing her to death. Now she must flee her homeland. But Clan Ishikawa reaches throughout the Empire and into other, nearby nations.
So she must seek a ship on which she can hide until it reaches her goal, the nearly mythical Kingdom of Montagar, on the other side of the world. A place beyond even the reach of her clan lord’s thugs and murderers.
She had to find a tall ship.
DNFed at 43%.
You'll notice I got almost halfway through this one before bailing. To Find a Tall Ship wasn't bad, but it tries to be a little bit of everything. We start out with Sachi Takahachi, who is the adopted daughter of a Japanese ninja clan who's just killed her violent, sadistic cousin and thus must flee for her life. She's not actually in Japan, though - this is what appears to be some sort of alternate fantasy world, with a fantasy Japan, fantasy England, fantasy Russia, fantasy Spain (complete with Inquisitors), all basically historical analogues with the serial numbers very lightly filed off. At first it resembled Taylor Anderson's Destroyermen series.
Sachi sneaks onto a "Kolbian Republic" frigate. The Kolbians are the fantasy British in this world. After stowing away for a month, she is finally discovered, whereupon a will-they-won't-they romance develops between her and the dashing Captain Blaine.
Then we get POV chapters from several other characters. First, there is the "Confederal" officer in an orbiting space station waking up from hibernation.
Wait, what?
Yes, we learn that this is actually an alien planet that was once colonized by humans from earth, but there was a huge war with apostrophes-in-their-names aliens who were defeated by a moon-sized battleship, which disappeared and left the human survivors behind for the next 9000 years. So the humans who colonized the planet previously have (roughly) recreated Earth's history several times while forgetting their origins, while above, spacemen silently watch and monitor them, and there are also some bad guys who are keeping the humans on the planet below from ever achieving a proper technological civilization.
Sachi somehow is connected to an AI, which lets her do things like call down an orbital strike on a giant sea monster that's about to eat their ship.
Then there are the chapters with the pirates, where we learn that this world also has actual magic-using elves and dwarves and sorcerers.
So... that's kind of a lot to throw into one book, and I felt like the author just wanted to recreate some multi-genre RPG setting. The writing was okay, but the dialog was very unrealistic, the thought processes of the characters entirely too modern at times, and while my Japanese is far from fluent, I have some doubts about the Japanese phrases Sachi spouts at times.
"Please, no," she muttered to him, half-delirious. "Not the whole crew. There's just me. Let me stay with the Captain. I could be ready anytime he wants me. Or m-m-m-maybe, you could just share me a little bit, the Captain, you, Master Fleet, maybe Master Caplin, he's nice. Mister Bosun, too. I could be good, very good for just a few, but not the whole crew. Please, Ancestor Spirits, please don't send me to the galley to service the whole crew. I don't want to be locked into a crib." By the end of her outburst, she was holding onto Doctor Hoff's coat, trying to kiss him. "I'll be so good to all of you, just please not a crib, kill me or hang me or throw me into the ocean in chunks, please, please, no, not...that...oww!" There was a cold pinch in her arm and the cold spread quickly and then she was warm and serene silence and darkness swept her up in warm, peaceful wings. "Mama, Papa, is that you?" she muttered. Then the drug Hoff injected into her arm claimed the last scrap of consciousness.
Look, I am a guy who likes stories for guys so I don't mind the romance, the hot Asian chick who we are constantly reminded is sexy and busty, and the hot elf chick we are constantly reminded is a sexy elf, and I didn't even mind the constant reminders that the women expect to be gang raped (I mean, being alone on sailing ships full of pirates and marines, why wouldn't they?) but can we go one chapter without being reminded that Sachi has huge tits and really wants to fuck the captain but oh no she is a dishonored nobody unworthy of love, and the captain really wants to fuck Sachi but oh no, he is married and honorable (even though his fellow officers tell him to his face his wife is an unfaithful bitch and he's obviously miserable)? Also Sachi is like super smoking hot as every man who sees her notices (even the gay guy), and did I mention she is tall and has really big tits and she's hot? Because the author sure does. A lot.
I'm making fun, but come on, author, we get it. Sachi is hot and stacked and I suppose we're going to have to wait until the next book for some tragedy to befall the captain's wife so he can bang Sachi.
It was okay, it's fun, it's just kind of silly and wasn't quite good enough for me to persist to the end, but I might come back to it someday and even check out the next book.
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