In Memorium: The best man I've ever known

So last Saturday I went to a gaming event with my best friend.  I've known this man for 34 years.  He was the best man at my wedding, and I was a groomsman at his.  Our sons were born 2 months apart.  I have had to talk him down a few times when things were going sideways for him.  I'm not exaggerating when I say he saved my life when my life went sideways.

He dropped me off at my house on his way home.  He lives 3 blocks from me.  Thirty minutes later my wife hears sirens.  Pulse Point says it's at his house.  Their neighbor texts my wife that one of his sons (5 kids) is in the front yard hugging the neighbor. That was enough to send me down there.

He had called 911 before handing off the phone to his  15 year old daughter, then collapsed.  She started CPR on him, and switched off with his 20 year old son.

The EMT's worked on him for an hour before taking him to the ambulance.  His wife was out of town at a work conference, and she asked me to go to the hospital with him. I took his 20 year old son with me and he was pronounced dead almost as soon as we got there.  I will never forget the anguish in his son's voice when he screamed "You mean he's fucking dead?!!!   Why!?  I'm only 20, what the fuck am I going to do now?!"

My wife said I may have gotten 5 more kids, and honestly I'm ok with that.  We mutually pledged to take care of each other's families if anything happened, and I guess it happened.

I'm not sure when CBR will pick back up, but now you know why it just stopped.

Fair winds and following seas my friend.  I will see you on the other side. You will be missed.

Remembering D-Day 80th anniversary

Eighty years ago today, the Allies breached the wall of Fortress Europe and began the liberation of France and the final defeat of Nazi Germany.

My ability to sit here, read dozens of books, and gripe about their quality, or extoll their quality is directly related to the sacrifices made on a beach in France in 1944.

I am humbled by their sacrifice.

Review: Second Chance Swordsman

Title: Second Chance Swordsman (A LitRPG Adventure, Book 1)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BC9Z446Z/

Author: Jakob Tanner

Rating: 2/5

Comments: I should start a tag for "Time travel isekai" but I don't think I will be able to convince myself to try another one.

This is not a great story.  It is so full of plot holes that I used the phrase "plot colander" when discussing it.  I am amazed I made it half-way through it.  I can't even describe all the issues with the story.

Disappointing, hopefully Mr. Tanner cleans up the story in future books.

Bedroom Activities: None

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Review: Mark of the Fool 7

Title: Mark of the Fool 7: A Progression Fantasy Epic

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CT9THG99/

Author: J.M. Clarke

Rating: 5/5

Comments: As a stunning contrast to yesterday's review, this one is awesome.

Mark of the Fool has always been good, some books are better than others, but no real stinkers, with consistent improvement in the story from book to book.  For that to be true over 6 (now 7) books is really remarkable.

The side character development is something where this series really shines.  Almost all of the recurring side characters have been developed to the point where you really have an emotional reaction when something significant happens to them.

Honestly the end of this book was some of the most stunning twists and turns I've found in a book in recent memory.

Highly highly recommended.

Bedroom Activities: FTB

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Review: Hell Difficulty Tutorial

Title: Hell Difficulty Tutorial: A LitRPG Adventure

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CRSQ1YKP

Author: Cerim

Rating: 1.5/5

Comments: I'll be honest, I didn't have a lot of expectations of this title when I picked it up.  It failed to live up to them. This has to be his first book.  I can't believe this had any editor revisions.

The narration is moderately coherent,  but only moderately.  Things jump around with little indication of what happened.  The protagonist is a clinical sociopath (confirmed by someone who has read more of it, which utterly horrified me.)

There seems to be a complete lack of effective rapport building between the reader and the characters.

It was honestly one of the worst things I've picked up this year.  The only positive I can take away is there is a corgi in the group of survivors.

Bedroom Activities: Unknown

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Review: Ard's Oath series 1-3

Title: Ard's Oath (3 book series)

Author: Bruce Sentar

Rating: 4/5

Comments:  I picked this series up because I was sick and needed something that required very little brain power to read.  Imagine my surprise when it was actually really good?!  There are a lot of really funny characters in the books, and there is a sub-plot with his family that really hooked me hard.  

All in all, very good, and I'll be reading the next one, assuming there is a next one.

Bedroom Activities: Some Explicit

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Review: The Derelict Duty

Title: The Derelict Duty: A Space Adventure

https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Derelict-Duty-A-Space-Adventure-Audiobook/B096T4866P

Author: James Haddock

Voice Actors: Daniel Wisniewski, Rebecca Woods

Rating: Story 3.5/5, Performance 5/5

Comments: I picked this up because it looked interesting and I love the performances Daniel and Rebecca do.

The performance is absolutely top notch.  So many distinct voices and speech patterns it's amazing.

The story is pretty good, but it really suffers a bit from the protagonist being too good at everything.  It's not quite to the level of Mary Sue, but it's VERY close. I will probably pick up the second book just to listen to Dan and Rebecca more.

Bedroom Activities: FTB

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Review: HMCS Borealis book 1

Title: Burnt Worlds (HMCS Borealis Book 1)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TNYC2NM/

Author: S.J. Madill 

Rating: 3.9/5

Comments: The premise of this book is fairly common, ship is separated from the rest of civilization, and has to improvise, adapt, and overcome.  I mean Star Trek: Voyager anyone?

So not particularly innovative a premise, that's not that big of a deal, some of the greatest literature in the world have similar premises. 

The characters are pretty decent, and the action is too.  If there's a problem I have with it, it's that the action is too BIG, and the stakes are too high.  I mean after achieving victory in this story, where do you go in the future?  It's kind of like in Star Wars, Luke blows up the Death Star.  How do you top it?  Blow up ANOTHER EVEN BIGGER Death Star.

Anyway good, but I'm not sure where things are going to go from here, so book 2 is waiting.

Bedroom Activities: FTB

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Review: Guardian of Aster Fall Book 7

Title: World Seal (Guardian of Aster Fall Book 7)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CG15JTYB/

Author: David North

Rating: 3.5/5

Comments: I have been having issues with this series since book 4, when the family aspect began to dwindle away, and at this point the family gets mentioned maybe a double handful of times per book.  Characters that we expected to have a significant role in the overall story in early books don't even get mentioned. Meanwhile Sam is routinely punching above his weight class, despite there being an extremely limited number of beings that are actually higher tier than him.

And then we have the navel gazing.  It's gotten worse.  I was regularly skipping paragraphs, and significant chunks of pages.

At this point I'm invested in this story and I will probably finish the story, but I don't find it nearly as satisfying as the early books.

Bedroom Activities: None

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Blog update

For the few people wondering, I didn't have a post yesterday because I have been sick, and just haven't been up for doing a post.  I have some books queued up, but translating that into posts takes brain power, and that's been in short supply

Review: Dreamer's Throne

Title: Dreamer's Throne: A Fantasy LitRPG Adventure 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0C9VW6BYM

Author: Seth Ring

Rating: 3/5

Comments:  I picked this up because Seth writes Battlemage Farmer, and that's great.  Objectively the writing in this book is just as good as Battlemage Farmer but the protagonist's actions in this story seriously bothered me.  Morally and ethically, I find what he does to be wrong on so many levels.  Sorry, hard pass on this series.

Bedroom Activities: None

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Review: Unintended Cultivator 1&2

Title: Unintended Cultivator 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CLKVMJDB

Author: Eric Dontigney

Rating: 4.8/5

Comments:  This one has been floating in front of me for a while, but I just put off picking it up for a lot of reasons.   I grabbed the audiobook because I needed a commute listen and then when I was done with that I picked up book 2 because I didn't want to wait for the audiobook.    It's a really good cultivation story, focused on a street kid who was bullied by the noble brats and then they get a cultivation mentor of phenomenal power.  Hilarity ensues.

Definitely going to be reading book 3.

Bedroom Activities: FTB

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Review: Path of Ascension 6

Title: The Path of Ascension 6: A LitRPG Adventure

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CQ35D2D4/

Author: C. Mantis

Rating:3.9/5

Comments: Path of Ascension as a series is starting to deal with the issue of dragging its tail along with the story.  All the stuff that has happened before is there weighing things down.  I mean the characters are still good, and the setting is decent but as readers we still want a new story with our familiar tropes.  For myself, in order for the story to be good, there has to be something new.  This one took a while, but it gave us some of what we want.  This book covers the first half of Minkalla.  It's an odd setting honestly, but the author puts some really interesting scenes in it.  I'll still be reading the next one, but I hope he picks up the pace.

Bedroom Activities: FTB

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Author Interview: Cebelius

Cebelius was interviewed by Tess Irondale, and I can't say I'm very familiar with Tess but she does a great job with the interview, and Cebelius provides insightful and thoughtful answers.  I don't usually go for hour long listens, but it went by really fast.

https://soundcloud.com/tess-irondale-narration/narrator-tess-irondale-interviews-author-cebelius

Review: Sunken Spaceship

Title: Sunken Spaceship

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CLD2XMZ9/

Author: Anthony J. Melchiorri

Rating: 3/5

Comments:  I wasn't really sure how to rate this one.  It's not badly written, and the premise is decent, but I just didn't enjoy it.  I enjoyed parts of it, and some of the characters are good, but I didn't connect to the protagonist.  I think the biggest problem is that it didn't feel like the character really developed over the course of the book.  

Bedroom Activities: None

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In Memoriam: Travis Heermann

 In memoriam: Travis Heermann

Amazon.com: Travis Heermann: books, biography, latest update

Well, I had hoped to avoid making these kind of posts a regular occurrence, but here we are.

Travis was a friend of mine going back to college (early 90's), and we were pretty tight for a long time.  We gamed together, we did home renovation projects, and went to Gen-Con.  Unfortunately, over the last 10-15 years we had grown apart, but I wished him no harm.

Back in December he was involved in a freak motorcycle accident and suffered massive brain trauma.  They initially gave him a 5% chance to wake up.  He did indeed wake up, but the trauma was catastrophic.  Despite months of intensive therapy, he did not improve, and he was placed in hospice.  Last week he passed on.

Fair winds and following seas Travis, may He grant you Grace in the next life.

Review: Unbound 9

Title: Crown: A LitRPG Adventure (Unbound Book 9)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CJQNP43Y/

Author: Nicoli Gonnella

Rating: 4.5/5

Comments:  Nine books in, and I'm still reading, that alone is remarkable.  This story is into at least it's third arc, and honestly it's tough to keep things together that long.  It suffers from the "Who is this?" issue with the minor characters when you pick up a new book, and also because of its length you have semi-regular digressions to a non-protagonist point of view.  

Now with those quibble clearly stated, the main arc remains very strong.  I am invested in seeing how the storyline with the Pathless' Chose plays out.  To say that storyline had some significant developments would be a gross understatement, and he left it hanging at the end.  Book 10 can't get here fast enough.

Bedroom Activities: FTB

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Review: Heretical Fishing

Title: Heretical Fishing

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CVD8D7H6

Author: Haylock Jobson

Rating: 4.8/5

Comments:  This has been (fairly) positively compared to Beware of Chicken, and it definitely shares elements, but it is its own story.  I enjoyed it quite a bit, and it helped me get past some of the dreck that has been covered here recently.  

It has some isekai tropes (Hello Truck-kun) but it pokes fun at them and then things go a bit sideways.  

Highly recommended if you need a feel good story.

Bedroom Activities: None

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