Gilbert M. Stack's Blog, page 84

Top 10,000 Reviewer!!!

I am very happy to announce that after years of pouring my heart and soul into my book reviews, I have finally broken into the top 10,000 reviewers at Amazon with rank 9,598. I don't think I get a cool banner for this. (They save that for top 1000.) But thank you very much to anyone who has read my reviews and a double measure of thanks to anyone who has clicked the "helpful" button after reading one of my reviews. 

If you're interested in reading them all in one place, you can find them on my website at https://www.gilbertstack.com/reviews

Review: Welcome to Our Village, Please Invade Carefully by Eddie Robson

Welcome to Our Village, Please Invade Carefully by Eddie Robson

The small village of Cresdon Green has disappeared and nobody has noticed. That’s because the alien Geonin have invaded, erected a forcefield around the village, and caused the rest of the United Kingdom to forget them. With such amazing technology, you would expect the aliens to quickly get on to conquering the rest of the planet, but the quiet life of an English village so perplexes them they never quite get about to the task of expanding their area of control.

 

This fully dramatized audiobook feels like what would happen if you crossed Fawlty Towers with an alien invasion. Each episode is frankly ridiculous but there in lies the humor of the series as the aliens confront such peculiarly English institutions as A-level exams and cricket, and some more general problems like making a Facebook page. If you enjoy laughing, you’ll probably like this book.

 

Legionnaire Books 10 and 11 Available for Pre-Order at 25% Off

The long feared war with Diamonte has begun! 

Despite the heroic efforts of Marcus and his legionnaries in the north, Diamonte has begun its invasion before the legion could return to defend Amatista. Now you can order the first two volumes of the war against Amatista for 25% off if you purchase them before publication date, June 4 for Calidus' Stand and August 6 for Fog of War.

Review: Somewhere to Run to by Mike Adams

Book 22: Somewhere to Run to by Mike Adams

The noose is tightening around New Hope as the aliens prepare for a massive all-out assault to finish what they think is the last human settlement on the planet, but the rangers defending this outpost know that all they have to do is hold out until earth can send reinforcements with heavy weapons to rescue them. So the stakes are high in the twenty-second installment in this action-packed incredibly well thought out series as both sides are reaching that all or nothing moment when victory and survival will mean exactly the same thing.

 

One of the great thrills of this series is watching the desperate humans find new and clever ways to employ the very limited material they have to fight the war, and this time Adams comes up with a tactic I had wondered about several books earlier in the series. It’s definitely clever and promises to buy the colonists a couple of more days—if it doesn’t blow up in their faces and hasten their doom.

 

Finally, Adams returns to the Jacks, fifty teenaged girls from New Hope Academy who were stranded out in the wilderness at the beginning of the war. We’ve watched them train to fight and survive, grow into a competent military unit, battle wildlife and aliens with growing confidence, and rescue something like eight times their number of adult rangers and civilians captured (or in danger of being captured) by the aliens. In the latter half of this book they take on yet another amazing challenge, finally positioning themselves (I think) to be the decisive element in the coming battle for New Hope. Maybe next book we’ll see if I’m as smart as I think I am. I can’t wait to read it.

 

Review: Wolf Hunt 3 by Jeff Strand

Wolf Hunt 3 by Jeff Strand

Anyone who has read my reviews of Wolf Hunt 1 and 2 knows that one of the things I like best about this series is the author’s ability to surprise me again and again and again. Well nothing you’ve read before can prepare you for what’s coming this time. George and Lou are back in action (yes, I know Lou’s dead, but there are werewolves in this story so you should know that absolutely anything is possible) and everything that made you love them in books one and two is back again, bigger and better.

 

George and Lou are two of the strangest heroes in all of fiction. They are not nice men. They are petty criminals who hurt people for a living. But the willingness to stop at breaking a few bones and leaning on deadbeats makes them come off looking like honest-to-God saints compared to the true villains of the piece. Add to that the sarcastic, drive-your-car-off-the-road-its-so-funny humor, and you are in for a wild adventure.

 

George and Lou and a surprise cast member are off to kill the werewolf king to prevent him from starting a war to subjugate all humans to lycanthrope rule and as you might guess from the previous books, they have no chance of pulling their mission off. It’s not even clear they can reach the werewolf king’s home because of the long list of men seeking vengeance upon them for their actions in the previous books. It’s one hilarious mishap after another as George and Lou discover that you don’t have to be a lycanthrope to be one sick customer.

 

Scott Thomas reprises his role as narrator of the audiobook and I’m very glad he did. His characterizations first brought George and Lou to life for me and they continue to make this series excel. He’s the sort of talent who could get a base hit out of any wild pitch, but when you give him a real treasure like Wolf Hunt 3, he hits it out of the stadium and into orbit.

 

I got this book free from Audiobook Boom in exchange for an honest review.

 

Review: Dawn of the Deadly Fang by T. James Logan

Dawn of the Deadly Fang by T. James Logan

You expect an author to kick the stakes up a notch in the first sequel to a novel, but in Dawn of the Deadly Fang, T. James Logan jumped over the first notch and took the plot all the way up to “eleven”. While in the first book, the focus on the werewolf threat made it look like a mostly local problem, the sequel makes it clear that the monsters pose a national—if not global—threat. The danger is greatly enhanced by the fact that these supernatural creatures are not just monsters mindlessly howling and killing people on the night of the full moon, they are experienced military and law enforcement personnel who have lost their moral compass as a result of contracting lycanthropy. They have come to believe that humans need to be knocked off the top of the food chain and into the cattle pens to serve as sheep for the new alpha predators.

 

In the middle of this (still secretly) evolving menace is Mia—the teenager whose DNA appears to hold the key to the lycanthropy pandemic. Her mother is completely immune to the disease, but Mia is infected but not expressing the disease like other lycanthropes. So, she’s being poked, prodded, and tested in a relationship that has become so antagonistic with her doctors that she starts hiding key developments from them—her ability to finally shape change and her unique ability to halt the transformation halfway.

 

The novel focuses on a global movement by werewolves to paralyze national governments through strikes on critical personnel and infrastructure. Since the knowledge of the existence of werewolves is not yet widespread in those governments, the creatures have been able to infiltrate everywhere simply by infecting people. The final move is to try and capture/kill Mia to prevent the government from using her to develop a vaccine or cure. How do you get your hands on a highly protected teenaged girl? Kidnap a busload of her friends and get her to come to you. But Mia isn’t as stupid as the bad guys think she is, and she’s got a lot of help. Too bad she doesn’t know that her friends are a sideshow toward the real plan—destruction of all human authority in the United States.

 

If you enjoyed the first book in this series, you’re certain to enjoy Dawn of the Deadly Fang.

 

I received this book free from Audiobook Boom in exchange for an honest review.

 

Review: Time Travelin' Gunslingers by Philip James

Time Travelin’ Gunslingers by Philip James

There is a lot more in this short novel than I was expecting. I picked up the book because I liked the idea of a western lawman suddenly finding himself facing down dinosaurs—and I got that—but I also found a fairly sophisticated plot involving an obsessed wizard, reincarnation, and the intense power of love.

 

At its heart, this is a novel about a rivalry between two men—US Marshal Dare Shine and outlaw Race Brody. They both wanted the same woman once upon a time and while Dare ended up winning her heart, Brody never lost his torch for her. By unfortunate coincidence, this woman is also the object of obsession of a millennium old wizard who is suffering under a curse which prevents him from directly interacting with people. He’s watched the woman live her life dozens of times and is determined to find a way to have her. So, he’s developed a fairly complex plan involving portals that move people through space and time and tries to manipulate Dare and Race into unwittingly giving him what he wants.

 

It’s a very good plot made even more interesting by Dare and Race’s reactions to showing up in such disparate places as modern day Las Vegas, a battlefield in World War I, and the Jurassic Era. There’s plenty of action to keep things hopping, but the center of the tale keeps coming back to Dare and Race’s interest in the same woman—who suddenly exists in multiple incarnations.

 

I received this book free from Voracious Readers Only in exchange for an honest review.

 

Review: Lying Beneath by Kevin Moran

Lying Beneath by Kevin Moran

Lying Beneath is based on the premise that a secret society had been living beneath a presumably American city for around a century. The hidden city beneath the city controls its population by telling them that there is major war going on in the world above them and that they are enjoying a relatively prosperous life in their hidden home because they are conducting vital research for their war effort developing new weapons and equipment. When Ayla, a struggling waitress, stumbled upon the hidden civilization, the basic lie that has sustained this society for a hundred years is in danger of being exposed for the fraud it is.

 

So there are three stories wrapping around each other in this novel. First, there is Ayla who is trying to figure out how to get free and escape back to her own world. Second, there is a totalitarian government with apparently very limited means of enforcing its will, struggling to control Ayla and access to her. And finally you have two groups—some scientists and some revolutionaries—trying to find out what’s really going on in the world above them.

 

Over all I enjoyed the story, but there are some major weaknesses which troubled me right through to the end. First, I never understood why the government didn’t just take possession of Ayla as soon as she appeared. There were some efforts to explain this through established rules and procedures, but they just weren’t convincing. This is why I described the totalitarian government as having “very limited means of enforcing its will.” Controlling access to someone they describe as an enemy spy would seem to be the bare minimum necessary to maintain their fraud—and they do know it’s a fraud because they later go to the surface to capture Ayla’s boyfriend.

 

Of much greater concern to me was the questions that didn’t get asked by either side. Ayla is constantly interrogated about “the war.” Why did she never say, “Which war? Where was it being fought? Who was the enemy?” I could never tell for certain what war started the whole mess that is the premise of the story. It might even have been the U.S. Civil War. If I was Ayla, I’d have started listing every war we’d fought right back to the Revolutionary War and pointing out that none of these lasted very long and we kept winning them and we were now the major military power in the world and that no one could truly threaten us. And if I had been one of the scientists questioning her, I would have asked a lot of questions not only about the wars, but about the equipment they had produced over a hundred years to help wage it. There are dozens of questions that could have been asked, all of which would suggest that the scientists weren’t getting accurate information from their government.

 

So this is the sort of book that’s an enjoyable read, but you can’t think about it too much. And I found that to be a particular shame, because this novel could have supported some very big ideas.

 

I received this book free from Voracious Readers Only in exchange for an honest review.

 

Review: The Prison Stone

The Prison Stone by J. R. Mabry and Mickey Asteriou

Mabry and Asteriou’s new series has one of the most unique settings I have ever encountered in fantasy literature. It’s a galaxy worth of worlds—each with their dwarves and elves and humans—but despite the essentially medieval level technology they are reached by dwarven built spaceships. I suspect that it is magic powering those ships, but they are spaceships nonetheless and that makes for a very distinctive mix of high tech and low tech interactions that gives this series a wonderful flavor.

 

The plot revolves around a totally evil big bad guy who destroyed entire worlds a millennium earlier before the good guys managed to trap him in the prison stone. That’s just long enough ago that even the long-lived dwarves think of these events as stories rather than history (many elves actually remember the big bad) so when the stone is rediscovered (and one does wonder how you lose something that important) it isn’t given the proper respect it deserves. In a decision that must go down as one of the worst ever made, a dwarf king decides to transport the stone by humble courier instead of by armed battalion. This being an epic fantasy series, no one will be surprised when that decision goes bad and the fate of worlds is once again endangered.

 

There are a lot of great characters in this story but none so endearing as Ellis, the haffolk. I admit I initially rolled my eyes when I saw the race. Hobbits or halflings are a staple of fantasy literature—gentle, inoffensive, and often loved by all. But here again, Mabry and Asteriou have taken their own route. The haffolk are still basically gentle, but they are not a race. They are instead mules—the infertile product of a dwarf and human mating who are despised by just about everyone—and it quickly becomes apparent that that is going to have major implications for the development of this story.

 

So the setting of the Prison Stone is exceptional, the foundations are strong, and now my expectations for the rest of the series is sky high. Can’t wait for the next book to be published.

 

If you liked this review, you can find more at www.gilbertstack.com/reviews.

 

Night of the Hidden Fang by T. James Logan

Night of the Hidden Fang by T. James Logan

It’s really difficult to write a good werewolf story focused on high school kids—at least it looked that way before I read Night of the Hidden Fang. The problem isn’t that the high school kids often live a very separate life from their out of touch parents, they do. It also isn’t a problem that no one would believe the high school kids if they started talking about werewolves prowling the neighborhood, they wouldn’t. No, the break down usually comes when the high school kids insist on solving the whole problem by themselves and somehow get away with doing it without the adults ever finding out. That isn’t the way T. James Logan handles this problem in Night of the Hidden Fang and as a result he was able to surprise me again and again in the novel. At times it felt like he was “breaking the rules” and that was very good for his story.

 

Mia is a believable high school girl who never feels like she fits in. Because her dad was in the military before he joined the FBI, she hasn’t lived in any one place very long and she doesn’t have many good friends. She’s bullied by some of the more popular girls and suffers endless amounts of teen angst over the boy she likes but feels like she could never have. Then strange things start happening—disappearances, body parts appearing, unsettling men, some mysterious boys—and suddenly we’re not in high school anymore. (Except, Mia is, of course, and manages to never lose all her angst no matter what terrible things are happening around her.)

 

After a slightly slow beginning, the plot starts charging forward and never stops until the end of the novel. There were a couple of very big surprises for me—shocks that I just never believed would occur—and one very obvious plot line that never happened. Both the shock and the author’s restraint greatly enhanced the novel.

 

If you’re looking for a new take on the werewolf story, you should give Night of the Hidden Fang a try.