Sky's End

More than just whacking material involving non-human women

Revisado: 06-08-24

I found the story to be surprisingly deep. Its portrayal of people being judged by a few simple metrics and cast aside. It reminds me of the X-Men's attempt at depicting a world where mankind is attempting to integrate, showing non-humans as almost untermensch despite the validity of their lives, wants, and dreams like anyone else. I won't deny that there are some raunchy scenes, though the notion of an Oni (known as a Drunken Giant in a few Japanese legends) is sufficiently exotic to catch the attention of people who've read countless stories of cat girls, snake women, and spider queens (Insert the utter shivers. Sorry, but I $hitcan any story that features insect or arachnid love interests. Nope. Not gonna happen. There isn't enough rum on this planet. And it sucks since I would've liked to listen to earlier books in the series, but since they crossed that line: No dice.)

The notion of men being subject to sexual assault and many of the stereotypical gender roles being reversed really made me think. One of those thoughts is the story's "splicers" could use a hatchet between the radial and ulnar nerves all the way from fingers to elbow until someone decides to get creative with them and they spill their gotdamn m0+**fu**ing d1**pump*** finger***" piece of **** dumb ** **** in the hopes that someone chooses to take away the welder while the nervous system is still technically intact. I hate secrets that aren't secrets, and organizations that are depicted as being stronger than the average wage slave working for them. But that's a personal gripe. My other thought is that an Oni, technically far larger and stronger than the main character, works for those into the whole "mommy dom" thing. With chesticles as big as described, I might be sufficiently flexible to make do. Still, I mainly listen to "spicy" stories because I find them hilarious. This one addressed reality too directly to make me laugh. So, it was objectively great, but I couldn't enjoy it for the simple smut and violence that I enjoy this author for.

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Wow

Revisado: 04-19-24

An MC who most people can associate with, except perhaps for skill with a piano. What he has in his corner is (well, choosing to be hung like a side of beef) and to be lucky. Stan Lee's own preferred superpower at work, with an incredible voice actress to bring it to life

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Sergeant Thor: Time-traveling Edgelord

Revisado: 12-03-23

Spinoff of the Forgotten Ruin Series, which was fairly imaginative, even if primarily as whacking material for people who get hot and bothered over the word Ranger, which was most popular single word in each book of the series. Sergeant Thor, thanks primarily to the mystery of the character, was one of the more interesting members of the 75th Ranger company dumped 10,000 years into the future. Turns out, that was thanks primarily to the listener's imagination. From referencing the series to a former Ranger who served in Vietnam all the way to the Gulf War, became an MD, then an oncologist, and has enjoyed his retirement working a paltry 14 hours a day as a psychiatrist well into his 80s, I was told that, aside from throat-punching Talker on forward patrol so no one under his command would have to when that would be his responsibility, the former Ranger felt Thor was a poser who would've had the Barret tied to his operator's beard and been forced to carry it that way while on forced march until he either had it ripped out or shaved and admitted how he couldn't get over himself long enough to do the job.

Personally, I found some internal inconsistencies. Snipers normally score pretty high on the ASVAB. They wouldn't have "read about Valhalla in a book about Vikings," so much as read it, throw it aside, and grab books on calculus & physics to best understand the external ballistics of his weapon. Adrenaline junkies these guys are not. Borderline autistic personality spectrum with a side order of ADHD and tendency to obsess is more the picture. These traits are actively sought after, though there are, of course, outliers. I get overlooking realism for the sake of a good story, but would expect more from authors with some familiarity with how things worked. Lacking a sense of dedication to his people is extremely out of character. Marine Scout-Snipers tend to be taught more in terms of survival and endurance than their Army counterparts, who are generally a part of a larger, much more lethal fighting force. The guy being in need of constantly newer and bigger highs is not conducive to the patience required of the job.

But let's ignore all that for the time being and address the presentation. Well, the only major difference in narrative style is this version of Talker doesn't crave coffee.

For story, we have our hero deserting his unit for the sake of...being attacked and overcome by pirates? seemed the only real intent of our trepid if not tepid hero. Character interactions in the form of manipulating characters to form them into a cohesive unit was probably the majority of the actual word-space. There was a strong disconnect between many action scenes, in which Thor preps to attack, the chapter breaks, and Thor is then surveying the bodies of what would probably be something to get the listener's blood up. The bad guys and monsters make their appearance and pose as if it's some anime entrance wherein the character spends 20 minutes presenting his life story, during which the main character and his allies just...wait? Then there are scene in which said allies act according to their extremely limited training, hitting or missing targets without any particular emotional content since the listener hasn't been made to really care about any of them. Then, upon defeating his does, Thor goes looking for something else to do.

The premise of bringing modern-day weapons, combatants, and tactics into your basic swords & sorcery fantasy world has merit. I think my favorite was a short story featuring a contingent of Marines facing off with a Legion of Rome's finest. But this falls well short of the mark. Sure, if you sit down and crank out so many words a day, you end up with a manuscript. Whether it's worth sharing is a very different thing. The difference? Making the reader feel for the story's characters, be it one or many. That way, their actions, their highs and lows, their losses and gains; it has value to the reader/listener.

Then there's the question of which way the story is trying to go. Is Thor carrying forth using the skills and discipline he was supposed to have been taught in the Rangers, achieving victory by dint of his mind and the way he was taught to look at the world? Because, this isn't exactly quite as much of a melding of the two worlds as the previous series. is the series about Thor going native and beating the enemy at their own game? What exactly does he seek beyond glory for flory's sake? Because the explots of Conan the Cimerian this is not. Early on, he's in a small boat out to sea. and that's kind of what the rest of the story is like. There's no rudder, and barely and wind in the sails.

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Someone put this out of our misery

Revisado: 05-04-23

If it were possible to list a book's score in a negative number or stars, I would. What we have here is an excellent example of the writings of someone suffering from disorganized schizophrenia. I counted no less than seven novel introductions, none of which actually had anything to do with the events of the story, such as it is. I'd say it ends with a cliffhanger, but that implies a story that's ramping up the pressure to a climactic third act. In saying it ends with a cliffhanger, I would be a liar.

Perhaps it's best then that the narrator, who is not the narrator who has presented the rest of the series, is so godawful that the pain of listening to her droning monotone without any form of variation to fit the story's cast of male and female characters somehow takes your mind off the contents of the book itself. Kinda of like taking your mind from the pain of a gunshot wound by snapping several of your own fingers.

I'm being harsh because Randi Darren/William Arand is one of my favorite authors for fun and relaxing listens. And the Wild Wastes series is a favorite among favorites. But this piece of trash should shame everyone involved its creation. That anger of mine gives way to further disappointment, in that if the author doesn't get his head out of his ass, as well as gives the narrator the boot, I'm going to have to look elsewhere for my regular fix of implausible violence and smut.

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I lost some very dear people to me today

Revisado: 04-29-22

Logically, you know that a series must come to an end eventually. But, emotionally, you find that there are some adventures that you can't imagine stopping in a just work. Sadly, this is not a just world, as the many sidelined characters and half-done story arcs will agree. And I've refused to read the last installment of some of my favorites, content in the knowledge that the story doesn't end if I don't wish it to. Had I known this was the finale to the series, I would not have bought it. But, since I did, I had to go through with it. It's almost twice as long as the others due to the fact that the necessary events of the story don't have a clean point of division. So, this is really books 8 and 9. I can't tell if this was deliberate or a rush job. Either way, it let me spend more time with my friends. It also skipped a good deal that two comprehensive books could have properly laid to rest. But screw the reader, right? I mean, once they've been hooked into buying the book, why should anyone care?

That's the wondrous and fell magic of an author; sure, a wonderful imagination to show the reader the fantastic and tie it all together into the sort of tidy conclusion we don't get to have in real life is a skill set that takes a lot of hard work to achieve. And perhaps one day this author will be able to confidently claim he can do that instead of flying by the seat of his pants and cutting short so many character and story arcs. But what makes me love and hate this all so much is that I have come to know and see the story's characters as real people. And I have been given the privilege of sharing in their escapades, as well as homelife (seriously, only in game logic would Alvin be such a master 'swordsman', able to kill all day with his rifle and perform all night with his gun. "This is my rifle, this is my gun; this one's for fighting, this one's for fun"~Full Metal Jacket. You'd think he'd have extra muscles and voluntary control to be able to satisfy so many. What's more, can you imagine a full harem? It's hard enough for a guy to disappoint ONE woman at a time.)

Now that we have come to see these people as friends and family, they are taken away from us. And, while circumstances may change, it's certainly no happily ever after. We are simply no longer allowed to be with the people we have come to care about. Alvin's conclusion would be that, for that hurt done, blood must be spilled at the least to balance the scales.

I too am not known to care for many. Those I do consider my people are those I'd die and kill for. And you can be certain I'd hunt down those responsible for taking what's mine from me. In this respect, I had loved the author like a brother. But, like my brother, I was betrayed and now hate him with an unholy passion. And, if circumstances differed slightly, I'd spend a week in a shack deep in the Glades peeling the guy like a grape. The living bundle of flesh and nerve endings would be tied to a cypress stump to let the skeeters and gators take piecemeal. It would be nice to visit the old stomping grounds, but I cannot risk death or incarceration while I have others who need me; it's a new sensation to be needed, and I can understand how one would give every moment of his life to ensure the happiness and well-being of others.

I realize this is probably disturbing to the reader, but Alvin is the first character in literature I've encountered that I identify with. Since that likely makes me a monster, why shouldn't I be honest as he did? Besides, what's one person's nightmare is another's dream, and I have come to take pride in having done enough in my life to be considered both. And, I should probably state for legal purposes that I am not going to carry out anything construed as a threat. They are hypotheticals only, and any indication of prior wrongdoing is well past the statute of limitations.

It was also touching to know that the damaged can be healed, and those of us born different still have hope (even if it does involve the world ending in order to shine thanks to your skills for unhesitating and decisive violence, feeling nothing toward others except in how you can profit from them, and feeding on the steadily heating furnace of rage inside you to have the unswerving will to pull down the sky and uproot the very fermament if it means managing to trouble or harm those who own you and had your cage ready before the day you were born. ) In a way, it teaches us that even a broken blade, if it cannot be repaired, still has the capacity to cut. So we, all of us, could find our purpose, if only we threw away religion, government, the sanctity of life, and lived by a code of right and wrong in which there was no room for pity or half-measures, aided by digitized logic which ignored the necessities of life and the concept of a scarcity-based economy; we could roll with that.

You know, I think us broken ones would enjoy this sort of digital hellscape; in that respect, I was disappointed by the big reveal as to why Alvin's brain was pulped. As Alvin grew as a person and healed throughout the series, I came to believe that this was all a huge experiment to see if we sociopaths could be rehabilitated. It would have made for a more satisfying ending.

Of course, you can only level up, get loot, lot for the best gear and powers, and become OP AF until the game has to end. A few more books properly dealing with Johnny's quest, their visit to Salem, and the fiasco in Massachusetts (which somehow failed to present so much as a single Masshole) could have been properly paced and made into maybe a 10 or 11 book series. But, no; we got the Sandman Slim treatment instead.

I also feel that the narrator, while adequate, could not even come close to the skill of the narrator of the first two books in the series. for that reason alone, they will always be my favorite. Still, now that the author has slammed the door in his readers' faces, I'll be deleting the series so that I won't see them and relive the pain of the loss and tragedy of what could have been such a climactic rise to a throbbing, cataclysmic crescendo that ended prematurely. The author just couldn't get it up to perform. It was limp, flaccid, and a waste of time. And I hope he's haunted by the shame and embarrassment of it because, despite what they say, it DOES NOT happen to all men at some point.

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listened for free. Still not worth it.

Revisado: 03-21-22

The 8 hours of this piece of drek that I was able to power through is time lost that I could've been listening to something more enjoyable, like the static of a radio with no reception.

seriously, 28 hours of interpersonal events, with the major changes being glossed over, the minutia of arguments done in excruciating detail, all thanks to the mysterious male love interest with wings (probably angels, though their supposedly celestial creation myth was an utter rip-off of the Sumerian deities of Mesopotamia as depicted in works like the Epic of Gilgamesh...as if people would not be at least passingly familiar with the first epic story of a heroic demigod ever to be written. And the names weren't even changed).

seriously, if someone has just tied this winged version of the stuttering idiot from Pulp Fiction to a chair, stuck his feet in a tub of saltwater, and hooked his jewels up to a deep cycle marine battery, he would've spat the friggin story our in all off 6 minutes. Instead, he plays coy, expecting the female protagonist to understand his cryptic statements, and then gets all huffy over her being "stubborn" or "hard-headed" when he's coming straight out of left field and a team of psychologists, psychiatrists, English and Poetry majors all working together would be incapable of catching on since he replies on the protagonist having some innate genetic memory that she Simply Doesn't Have. All the while, she's talking to this winged blockhead until she's blue in the face, telling him that she doesn't magically know what a complete stranger like him is referring to, and if he wanted to make both their lives go more smoothly, they needed to sit down at a table across from each other, break out spare slammer glasses, uncork a couple bottles of mezcal, and have it out. Everytime someone goes coy or prances around what should be clearly stated, they have to throw back a slammer glass. You'll see some results, since the Wish.com version of an angel would end up dealing with a hangover before he even stopped drinking and passed out. And waking with a skull that's pounding like two continents colliding has a way of breaking people from certain habits. Heck, I still have JD flashbacks as if I'd been to war, and I learned my lesson right quick. You could cut 28 hours of frustration into 8 hours of productivity this way, and end up with a shorter but actually enjoyable book.

Either this, or the professionals would straightjacket the winged whiner and have him forcibly hooked up to a slightly less-than-lethal dose of sodium pentathol, and interrogated him until he simply spat out what he'd previously kept dancing around. And, in the name of saving as many lives as possible while improving their quality, the schmuck would be left tied to a gurney in a locked wing of a facility and left to die per the treatment of those who contract rabies, are too late to receive effective treatment, and consequently are left to die of dehydration over the course of several days. "It's the most humane thing to do," said the CDC rep in the face of movement towards humane euthanasia. Or simply putting these poor buggers down like Old Yeller at the very least.

Sort of makes you wish the criteria for euthanasia involved things like petitions which a certain percentage of the population had to sign. "At what price!?" you say in horror, to which I respond by saying "At the price of most elected officials in all levels of government, board members of major companies that claim they have to increase prices because of inflation while also posting record profits, and the majority of reality TV show stars," before dropping the mic and deleting this book from my poor tainted computer.

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Sociopath X Sociopath = Adventure!

Revisado: 02-23-22

This starts out as any lit RPG, but it quickly gets some blood and grit in that lit. It is unapologetic and bleak natured, forcing the protagonist onward due to the fact that he no longer qualifies as a human being with the rights thereof.

the fact that the protagonist is considered generally unlikable and lived a hard life which likely resulted in his clear sociopathic tendencies is proof that we have something which deviates from the standard lit RPG, which is more like a fantasized life with controlled parameters that the protagonist (and only the protagonist) can change to his personal benefit. in this case, we are following a character in a murder game, in which the digitized version of a human mind that once belonged to a dead man is resurrected and put through its paces just as the apocalypse takes place at the beginning of the year 2000.

the interface is more hassle than help, the helper AI is an antagonist little bastard, and Alvin, our supposed hero, seems to be one of the very few individuals with the tendencies required to survive an apocalyptic event. that would be a mind that can accept how reality has changed, prioritize the necessities of survival over emotional reaction and courtesies, and will not hesitate when it comes to the hard job of doing things like putting down a friend who has just become a zombie. basically, the fictionalized version of a sociopath is ideal to survive under these circumstances. the thing which has made me wonder the entire series is the motives for the people who have developed this hellscape.

some say that it is for scientific experimentation, and others say that it is to monetize the experiment in order to cover the costs involved, and later on it becomes more clear that there is a game Dev team, and even recognition that there will be other people, live people, who will eventually be able to access this Apocalypse Gates game, to guess at the title.

this is not simply all doom and gloom, as this is a case of lit RPG not knowing if it got its violence in its smut or its smut in its violence. I personally love having both in a good story, and this is a good long format story because, while this particular book is entertaining, it is mostly just setting up for future novels.

Besides the violence and screwing, I mean.

regrettably, the narrator of books 3 and onward is far the inferior to the current narrator, who is able to provide many different voices as well as to change the tone of the story itself. it mellows out over time, and makes me wonder if perhaps this is some convoluted way of experimenting with software intended to treat people suffering from some form of antisocial personality disorder, which we otherwise and erroneously refer to as sociopathy. but that's more of a fan theory for the length of the series rather than something limited to this particular book.

this is not a light listen. it's a hardcore situation, there's hardcore violence, and serious hardcore f***ing. If that doesn't describe what you're looking for, the huge number of somewhat limp-wristed alternatives you can turn to and be happy with is, frankly, painful. otherwise, this book starts a fun, meandering, smutty series about a harem of murderhobos in a simulation where all those behaviors are conducive to surviving and thriving.

I just wish the same narrator had remained for the entire series thus far.

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A bullet through my heart

Revisado: 01-09-22

The Sandman Slim series holds great sentimental value to me. To set the scene, my life was in shambles: a highly intelligent young man who put himself through college on scholarship and was raised in a military household with the expectation that I would join the Corps to pay for my post-graduate work, as military service is something of a family tradition.

They found cancer on my entrance physical, and I was kicked to the curb. No money, no health insurance, and my only actionable skillsets were those of a profession of violence. I'm not proud of the gigs that I took minding doors and collecting money, but I did it to survive. And since I was already a dead man walking, people didn't give me trouble in general.

Thing is, my oncologist was a quack, and I received chemo doses that would've killed a rhino. It left me with a lot of nerve damage, in constant pain, and disabled. So, I fell into a deep depression. For years.

I was walking by a huge second-hand store and went inside. No reason not to; nothing mattered. By that point I'd been fighting depression for 3 years and had finally set the date and means by which I was going to off myself. Two weeks from that day. So, I was kind of carefree. And I was bending down to reach for a book with an interesting cover (The Devil Said Bang) when I bumped into a woman.

She toppled, which was to be expected considering I was 6'6" and 250 lbs, a lot of it muscle. I was uncertain whether or not to help her up. I was wearing leather and chains, with Army surplus boots, black jeans with padding sewn into the knees, and I was openly carrying three friggin huge knives (with another 4 and a firearm concealed). I don't have the friendliest of faces, and my hair was a bit unkempt since I didn't care about cutting it.

But she just looked up at me with eyes shining, and actually smiled. I helped her up, and what began as a simple apology turned into a genuine conversation. She was a pragmatic Southern woman who understood that violence is a controlled thing, and was not threatened by me because I could not morally harm her, nor would I ever.

Picking up a Sandman Slim novel is how I met my wife, and how I got another chance at having a life. So, the book series is inextricably linked to the miraculous woman who saw the good in me and loves me for who I am; no one had ever done that before.

And so I got the audiobooks of the series and listened avidly to the passionate, wild skill of the narrator, who took a bonfire and threw in a gasoline tank with a maniacal laugh. And Macleod Andrews, with each book, sounded more mature. It was as if I got to watch a dear friend grow.

But this last book? It's not the end of the series; it's the midpoint at which the author should then see about tying up all the loose ends, starting with escaping from Heaven like he did Hell, and then continuing on his quest for an abomination who was never meant to exist to find his place in the universe. Instead, all the listener gets is a kick in the crotch after all the build-up to the finale, as if the author is telling the listener to screw off and figure out how the rest of the story is supposed to go for themselves.

If it were any other series, I'd shrug it off as the author being a jerk and move on. But this travesty of a book has forever tainted the wondrous memories of meeting the love of my life. It left me hurt, mad, and wanting to yank the author into a dark alley to use the violent skillsets I developed to stay alive one more time. Just one last time. As compensation for the destruction of something I held dear.

I've been shot before, but it was King Bullet that put a hole in my heart.

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esto le resultó útil a 8 personas

I didn't want it to end.

Revisado: 02-25-20

Some books leave you panting when you finish. Others make you groan because you just know the author is gonna drag this out into a series, and you'll follow along with each installment to get your next fix, just needing it to feel normal, like any other addict with the hooks in deep. I am particularly a fan of books that work as standalones which nevertheless tack on an epilogue that leave a vicious little smile on your face, because the story might be over but that doesn't mean the characters get away Scot free. Larry Correia is notorious for this, and his name in it is why I picked this one up. And it's the best pick I've made in several years. The acknowledgement that it was the published book by an author who passed before he had the chance was sad and unexpected, and by the time the book was done I was convinced the author's death constituted a national tragedy. Because he crafted that rare kind of novel that you never want to end, but when it does end, it leaves you feeling empty, like when the newlyweds leave a wedding reception and now they are off to lives far away from you that you can only daydream about. But that feeling gives way to a sense of happiness, in the sense you feel when you see loved ones successful, happy, and finally having found their path in life. How many stories can you say you felt so close to the characters that you were truly joyful that they got the happy ending the good and just in this world deserve? How many books make you feel like the characters know you back? And how many books make you want a sequel only to realize that there can't be one, because a sequel would imbalance the perfect harmony of the story and destroy the sense of emptiness, peace, and well wishes for characters that you forget are ultimately fictional? For me, after reading and listening to tens of thousands of books in my life, this is the second. The first was Butcher Bird by Richard Kadrey. I suggest you check it out if you want the same emotional and action-filled rollercoaster with an ending that is, like this book, also perfect. If you know Butcher Bird already, expect a genre change, but not a change in the core concepts of life that everyone in this world can understand. It's truly a shame to think there will be no further works from this author; that is the one flat note in the otherwise Symphony of Destruction (which you'll understand later if you're not already a Megadeth fan).

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Shadowrun is back! And moving with the times

Revisado: 07-19-19

I fell in love with Shadowrun books as a kid before hitting the more hardcore cyberpunk genre. And as technology advanced, the awesome stuff in the books seemed like it was more alternate history than a sci-fi/shooter/fantasy magic mashup. I've still got all my old books on the shelf, yellowed with age and use as they've become (Frankly, I would definitely buy in if Audible decided to grab those books and narrate them to put up alongside their next-gen counterparts) and still read them for the nostalgia and to remember what it felt like to be a child and hope for what might come to be. Being disabled from the age of 9, the idea that cybernetics might one day replace the parts of me that are broken and dysfunctional was something to cling to in the worst of times. I can't say technological advances on such a scale failing to come into fruition hasn't been a terrible disappointment, essentially eating decades of my life's potential. Lord knows corporations becoming world powers and dictating the direction of billions of lives has certainly taken place. Audible is yet another facet of Amazon. They, Google, and Wal-Mart will soon own and control vast swathes of this planet outright, as they already functionally do.

That is an element I'm happy to see remains included in the new-gen Shadowrun novels, as it adds a dose of grounding realism to the story and aids with the suspension of disbelief. I liked the majority of the characters, though some aren't as well-fleshed out as they could be. That happens when you have a word limit and a wandering focus. We go from conspiracies to the nature of a team lead who will sacrifice others to achieve the goal, to some pretty decent action, to a whodunnit mystery at the South Pole while unearthing something impossibly old, almost as if we were getting into Lovecraft's Mountains of Madness. Then we return to the team lead being confronted for the sacrifices he made, and his culpability in the deaths of other runners.

Don't get me wrong, it's an entertaining book, but it lacks a certain cohesion. The terminology differs. Some say that it's thematically inconsistent, in that a theme is less a concept or genre and more a statement, a sentence or two which a story's events serve to reinforce again and again. others would say that it lost track of the point of a book: to teach. Every good book leaves a person feeling sated, fulfilled, because at a very deep level they have come to understand something they previously didn't. I listened, but it was as if there were several books accidentally intermingled, and so it muddled what lesson it had to teach.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed it and sincerely hope Audible will have more Shadowrun titles available soon.

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