SF/F Review - Triple Shot
Kings Of The Wyld, Legends & Lattes, and We Are Legion (We Are Bob)
I missed a couple book club meetings in a row, so I’m doing three at once. You’ll see why in a moment. The first two aren’t book club reviews, since I wasn’t there for the meeting.
Kings Of The Wyld, by Nicholas Eames
Synopsis: Middle-aged adventurers that hung up their weapons get the party back together to rescue one of the member’s adult daughter.
Review: Refreshingly delightful. The adventuring parties are direct analogs for rock bock bands in our world. The first act is literally “getting the band back together.” There’s a shifty manager, groupies, touring, etc. Except instead of playing music, they kill orcs and goblins and (once) a dragon. The swap is surprisingly appropriate, and well done.
The humor in this piece is great, the world feels lived in, the lore is great, and the writing is very solid. This feels like what happens with the old swords-n-sorcery style grows up, retires, then comes back for one last hurrah. It’s a little bit on the light side, this isn’t saying anything deep or mind-blowing. Also there’s too many action scenes, I guess the tour contract required one every couple of chapters, and after a while they just get repetitive. They actually get boring, there’s a few that I literally skipped over and lost nothing for it.
That being said, the more I think back on this book, the more I like it. It feels cozy. It was great fun. The characters are all just guys with problems, that are basically admirable, perhaps because of their flaws as much as despite them. I wouldn’t go pushing this on everyone, but honestly, I enjoyed it more than most books. A good time, I definitely recommend it to myself. Recommended!
Kings Of The Wyld, affiliate link
Legends and Lattes, by Travis Baldree
Synopsis: A retired adventurer sets up a coffee shop.
Review: You know how fanfic writers are always writhing Coffee Shop Alternate Universe stories of their favorite series? Where all the characters aren’t heroes doing great and dangerous feats, they’re just a bunch of average people working in a coffee shop and having lots of conversations, and flirting, and maybe getting into relationships? They have depth and personality due to all the books we’ve read, we already know them. Who doesn’t want to see their favorite characters for some casual hangouts? They’re already kinda like friends.
Well, what if you completely skipped over the “heroes doing great and dangerous feats” part, and went directly to the Coffee Shop part? Just an orc setting up a shop, with occasional references to a past filled with adventure and excitement. That’s what this book seeks to answer.
Turns out, it’s what you’d expect. Kinda OK, but no real point. I read it because I recognized the AGP fantasy of it. If you’re an AGP guy it’s super obvious, it’s like a very toned-down version of Bound or Xena. Except without any action or tension. I wouldn’t have read to the end if I didn’t have that motivation, it’s very insubstantial. Not Recommended.
Hugo News: Oh except for one thing - this is one of the six best SF/F books published in 2022 according to the Hugo voters. I cannot even make this stuff up. The Hugos have steadily driven away a lot of the broader SF community, and the core that's left is lacking in diversity (and taste), and it shows in lists like these. They aren’t even pretending to be serious anymore, they’re just nominating the friends of their ingroup minicelebs. I mean, I appreciate the AGP representation, but… not like this? I don’t want my people associated with this sort of disgrace. I hope future readers will remember that pre-2020ish the Hugos really did mean something. Seeing the skin of the institution being worn around like Edgar’s human suit in Men in Black is sad.
Legends and Lattes affliate link
We Are Legion (We Are Bob), by Dennis E. Taylor
Synopsis: A cryopreserved guy from our time wakes up as a sim in the future and is used as the AI for a Von-Neuman-Probe exploration wave.
Review: Great concept, boring book. The book is boring because the author is lazy. He cuts every corner. I think he had a lot of cool ideas of what could happen in an SF story, and he wrote those down.
That’s it, that’s the end. He published the outline, with a little bit of internal monologue for color. The events aren’t exciting. The characters aren’t alive. The plot isn’t there. A bunch of events happen, but they don’t impact anyone. There is no emotion explored (and in fact, there’s an emotion-inhibitor created so Taylor won’t have to bother.) Taylor wants slightly different characters, so there is a flaw in the cloning process that makes each copy a bit different. This is not elaborated upon. There’s no tension built, because that would take writing work. The closest we get to attempted humor is weak pop-culture references.
It’s one of the more boring things I’ve read in a long time. I couldn’t even hate it like I hated Strange&Norrell, because there was nothing worth hating. It just kept droning until the pages ran out and I could move on.
If this had been published in 2022, it could have been a Hugo nominee!
Not Recommended.
Book Club Review: Don’t bother. Seriously tho, Kings of the Wyld is fun, book club will have some stuff to laugh about at least. :)