Tag: Fantasy

The Ninth Justice (One Piece #36) ★★★★★

~ Bookstooge ~ 20 Comments

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Ninth Justice
Series: One Piece #36
Arc: Water Seven #5
Author: Eiichiro Oda
Rating: 5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Manga
Pages: 209
Words: 10K

From Wikipedia:

“Protectors of the City of Water”

“Coup de Vent”

“Rumors”

“The Woman Who Brings Darkness”

“Demon”

“The Messengers of Darkness”

“Cipher Pol No. 9”

“Opposing Force”

“Sleepers”

“The Ninth Justice”

The Straw Hats are on the run and Robin is nowhere to be found. In order to determine where her allegiances lie, the Straw Hats decide to break into Galley-La’s headquarters to find her. To their surprise, they are not the only ones laying siege to Galley-La; a masked group has already infiltrated the headquarters looking for the blueprints to the ancient weapon Pluton. After finding the blueprints and discovering that they are fake, the masked individuals approach the recovering Iceburg. They remove their disguises, revealing themselves as Robin and some of the workers of Galley-La. Members of the secret government organization, Cipher Pol #9, they joined Galley-La to gain Pluton for the government’s use. After speaking with Iceberg, they learn that the real blueprints are with Franky, a shipwright and friend of Iceberg.

HOLY TOLEDO AND HOLD THE BBQ SAUCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Oh my goodness. I am astounded and amazed. After what I experienced in the previous volume, I didn’t know what to expect. Misaki was talking to me in the comments and assured me that most of the points I brought up were answered at some point and it made me laugh because this volume answered a lot of them.

This had all the twists. This had all the turns. And I didn’t see a single one coming. Now, to be fair, most of the time I’m so straight forward that even a simple misdirection is enough, like fake throwing a tennis ball for a dog to go chasing. But this was Pure Awesomesauce. One a scale of 1-25 on Awesomesauce’ness, I’m giving this a 23.

I was REALLY annoyed that all the shipwrights started hammering on the Straw Hat pirates without giving them a chance to state their case, but once the big reveal happened, it totally made sense. Of course, finding out that some of who I thought were fine, upstanding and powerful citizens turned out to be stooges of the world government was like a kick in the nuts. Governments are inherently corrupt and attempt to draw power to themselves and those who buy wholeheartedly into them become corrupt as well. Doesn’t mean there aren’t good people, but if they stay there they will be corrupted, much like the One Ring corrupted Gollum, Bilbo, Frodo and even Samwise.

Luffy gets beat all over the place here. He gets beaten by the Shipwrights. He gets beaten by Frankie. He gets beaten by the CP9 (the super secret world government black beyond black covert ops team). And he’s still kicking and hollering to beat the band at the end. I love this guy!

Remember, read it Right to Left

★★★★★

Book of Joe (Forgotten Ruin #5) ★✬☆☆☆

~ Bookstooge ~ 29 Comments

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Book of Joe
Series: Forgotten Ruin #5
Author: Jason Anspach & Nick Cole
Rating: 1.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Military Fantasy
Pages: 211
Words: 75K

This is a book ALL about Talker and how he survived and helped Joe.

What. The. Feth.

I am now done with this series. Don’t care how cool the story is, because it is always in the background and I hate Talker. I hate him for hogging the book. I hate him for whining about how he’s not good enough to be a “real” Rangeroo. I hate him for writing about coffee instead of what’s going on. I hate him for describing a ruin for 2 pages while a massive battle gets 3 paragraphs.

So I am done.

Nick Cole has a duology that I’m going to try out next. I need a cool down from Team Anspach/Cole.

★✬☆☆☆

Fullmetal Alchemist #4 ★★★★☆

~ Bookstooge ~ 27 Comments

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Fullmetal Alchemist #4
Series: Fullmetal Alchemist
Author: Hiromu Arakawa
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Manga
Pages: 193
Words: 9K

From FMA.fandom.com

“Trapped and injured in a secret alchemical laboratory, Edward Elric is at the mercy of his enemies, Lust and Envy. But they don’t want him dead…they have other plans for him. As the laboratory goes up in flames, the brothers find themselves back at square one, with only an inkling of the massive scale of the Philosopher’s Stone conspiracy. But then, Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes uncovers a shocking secret…”

Chapter 13: Fullmetal Body

Chapter 14: An Only Child’s Feelings

Chapter 15: Fullmetal Heart

Chapter 16: Separate Paths

Bonus Chapter: Dog of the Military?

Man, this volume had it all. Shocking secrets. Great laughs. Tragic deaths. Romance. Family. You name it and it was probably in here. And I liked it.

With the Homunculi saving Edward but hinting that they are only doing it so they can sacrifice him later, it is made evident beyond a doubt that they are evil. While they seem to want to stir up strife and war everywhere, what their actual plan is is still a mystery. And now that we know that Envy can look like anyone and shapechange at will, well, everybody is a suspect. That really amps the tension up.

While Hughes’ death was sad, it didn’t overshadow the whole volume. The manga-ka kept things pretty light and in the bonus chapter really made me laugh my head off. I think the following picture encapsulates the humor. In a previous panel, the puppy is peeing against a wall because it’s not housebroken and this is how it’s owner responds. Hahahahahahahaa.

At the same time, I never felt that the lighthearted humor made light of the trauma that various characters experience. Alphonse goes through an existential crisis as suddenly he begins to doubt whether he was ever actually a real person. Until Winry beats him over his metallic head with a big ass wrench and tells him not to be stupid. I laughed but I also understood the doubt and pathos he was feeling. He’s a suit of armor after all.

Overall, I enjoyed this a lot more than the previous volume, for which I am very thankful.

★★★★☆

Captain (One Piece #35) ★★★☆☆

~ Bookstooge ~ 25 Comments

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Captain
Series: One Piece #35
Arc: Water Seven #4
Author: Eiichiro Oda
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Manga
Pages: 187
Words: 9K

From Wikipedia:

“The Pirate Abduction Incident”

“My Name Is Franky”

“It’s Decided”

“The Big Argument”

“Luffy vs. Usopp”

“Captain”

“Big Trouble in the Secret Room”

“Warning”

“Luffy vs. Franky”

Luffy reluctantly decides to abandon the ship. Usopp, having grown attached to the Merry, is unwilling to take this course of action and challenges Luffy’s captaincy. Once defeated, Usopp decides to leave the Straw Hats, and the others go searching for a new ship. Meanwhile, the Aqua Laguna, an annual storm that strikes Water Seven, is about to return. To coincide with this Iceburg, the owner of Galley-La, is attacked, and Nico Robin is labeled as the prime suspect. Knowing Robin is a member of the Straw Hats, all of Water Seven turns against them.

I was reading along and things were ok. Unfortunately, it quickly went out of control.

Everyone getting all emotional about the ship needing to be trashed and getting a new one made me roll my eyes a bit and then the “fight” between Luffy and Usopp really made me roll my eyes. Usopp, while never the sharpest tool in the shed, acts downright stupid here. It felt very forced to me.

Then you have the Mayor getting attacked. He claims it was somebody and Robin Nico (one of Luffy’s crew) and so before you can say “boo”, the entire town is convinced that the Straw Hat Gang tried to assassinate their beloved mayor. And the mayor doesn’t do anything about it. Throw in the Frankie Gang for fun too. They stole 2/3rds of the crews money and when the Straw Hats took retribution and destroyed their hideout, Franky gets all butthurt and goes after Luffy. And he’s a cyborg. And there’s some sort of superstorm coming in.

This was only 187 pages but man, does Oda pack in everything that he possibly can. It felt overfull and not well thought out. If Franky is so powerful and so out of control, why haven’t the Shipwrights controlled him before? This is what happens when you think logically and rationally instead of “what sells” like a manga-ka does. I cannot imagine reading this a chapter at a time, it would have driven me nuts. As it is, even reading one tankubon at a time (the book form) is pushing things. Part of me wants to just read about 5 volumes at a go and review them all in one post. If the pacing and storytelling goes on like this volume, that will be something I seriously consider in the upcoming months.

There are certain things I can suspend my disbelief for, but don’t shove 5 improbable things at me all at once and expect me to deal with it. Especially if the improbables center around the established characters. I am not the Red Queen and I do not believe 10 impossible things before breakfast every day.

Now, with all that complaining and whining and hand wringing out of the way, I do think that Oda showed the weight of command here. Luffy had to make a decision about the ship and when one of his crew acted like a baby about it, he had to Captain Up and put the beatdown on Usopp. No good being a pirate captain if you’re going to just let your crew rule by committee. In the future Luffy is going to have to make some really hard decisions and this book showed he was capable of that. He is growing up and becoming the Captain (hence the volume’s title) he is going to need to be. I like that “growing up” aspect of a story and it appeals to me a lot.

★★★☆☆

Conan the Unconquered (Conan the Barbarian) ★★★✬☆

~ Bookstooge ~ 20 Comments

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Conan the Unconquered
Series: Conan the Barbarian
Author: Robert Jordan
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 207
Words: 72K

From Wikipedia:

An evil sorcerer Jhandar wishes to raise an army of undead slaves, and his meddling with chaos brings him into conflict with Conan, who must battle his deadly ninja henchmen who can kill with a touch, and retrieve a weapon from a dent in reality created by the sorcerer’s earlier botched experiments. A whirlwind of adventure ensures.

Conan sleeps with all the wimenz and killz all the sorcererz (but there is only one). So he can haz a cheezeburger now. I’ve gone ahead and injected it with penicillin though because you don’t sleep around that much without catching an std after all.

All silliness aside, this was a good jaunt as Conan fights another sorcerer and goes to a blasted land and fights some nefarious creature there too. Secret Kung-Fu masters are involved but Conan doesn’t care and stabs them to death. Take that Morpheus! I enjoyed this just a bit more than the two previous Conan stories by Jordan and I think that is because of the lack of women main characters in this story. In a sword and sorcery story, I want the hero, his sidekick/s, the babes and the badguy/s. And that is exactly what I got this time around.

While I don’t want a book diet exclusively composed of this pulp, having it on a regular basis means I don’t crave it. It also allows me to appreciate the finer works that I read when I do read them. Like Groo the Wanderer! Hahahahahahaha 😉

★★★✬☆

Fullmetal Alchemist #3 ★★★☆☆

~ Bookstooge ~ 19 Comments

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Fullmetal Alchemist #3
Series: Fullmetal Alchemist
Author: Hiromu Arakawa
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Manga
Pages: 185
Words: 9K

Table of Contents & Backcover Synopsis:

Chapter 9: A Home with a Family Waiting

Chapter 10: The Philosopher’s Stone

Chapter 11: The Two Guardians

Chapter 12: The Definition of Human

Bonus Chapter: The Military Festival

Synopsis:

Accompanied by their bodyguard, Alex Louis Armstrong, our heroes seek out their closest friend, mechanic Winry Rockbell, to fix their battered “auto-mail” bodyparts. Soon their quest for the Philosopher’s Stone takes them to the great central library, where the Stone’s formula may be hidden…if the mysterious figure named Lust doesn’t get there first! But the secret of the Philosopher’s Stone may be even more frightening than the beings who guard it.…

So Ed and Al continue their quest to track down the Philospher’s Stone only to realize that it takes human life to create one. With that, they now face a philosophical quandary. Can they in good conscience try to use one knowing the cost of it’s creation? They also have to deal with the fact that the military higher ups are involved in creating them. This leads them to an abandoned factory where they end up fighting some soul embedded beings like Al. And the volume ends with Lust confronting Edward

Truth be told, I wasn’t really feeling it while reading this. Not a bad volume per se but I wasn’t spellbound, nor was I glued to the pages. I actually watched Shrek in the background while perusing this and ended up enjoying that more. I don’t know what it is, but this just doesn’t keep my interest that much. I hope future volumes work better for me.

★★★☆☆

Lay the Hate (Forgotten Ruin #4) ★★★☆☆

~ Bookstooge ~ 23 Comments

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Lay the Hate
Series: Forgotten Ruin #4
Author: Jason Anspach & Nick Cole
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Military Fantasy
Pages: 209
Words: 76K

The Ranger-Roos are off on a big bad mission to kill somebody. Only, they get side tracked and kill somebody else and the stupid narrator, Talker, who is like the most important person to the group for his linguistics skills, jumps into a dimensional vortex/rift thingy to save another ranger so he pretty much is dead.

Hurray!!!!!!!!!!!!! No more blathering idiot going on about coffee or blabbing about wanting to be a real Ranger-Roo. I actually did a fist pump when it was revealed that he was dead. It was very carthartic for me.

Of course, we’ll have to see if the next narrator is any better. I have a bad feeling Anspach and Cole (the authors) are just going to use some other nitwit to journal instead of, you know, actually writing an exciting adventure novel. Aaaaaand I just went on Amazon to see how many books were in this series and wouldn’t you know, one of the later books has Talker as the narrator again. Tarnation!

★★★☆☆

The City of Water, Water Seven (One Piece #34) ★★★✬☆

~ Bookstooge ~ 21 Comments

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The City of Water, Water Seven
Series: One Piece #34
Arc: Water Seven #3
Author: Eiichiro Oda
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Manga
Pages: 230
Words: 10K

The Straw Hats win the Davy Back Fight and sail on to the island of Seven Waters where there is a whole city of shipwrights to work on the Merry Go. The shipwrights show their power and the Straw Hats convert all the gold into ready cash and immediately start having robbery attempts on them.

While the end of the Fight was stupid, the introduction to the shipwrights was as madcap as I could want in the One Piece world. And Luffy’s response was just what I would expect from him, as evinced by this panel:

I now have higher hopes for this Water Seven arc than I did when it started out. That makes me happy.

★★★✬☆

Conan the Defender (Conan the Barbarian) ★★★✬☆

~ Bookstooge ~ 24 Comments

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Conan the Defender
Series: Conan the Barbarian
Author: Robert Jordan
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 193
Words: 65K

This is a direct sequel to the previous Conan book, Conan the Invincible. More in terms of characters than in plot. Conan gets together with the prince of the bandits from the previous book and they go to some city and try to earn gold as guards. There’s a revolution brewing and a sorcerer is the prime mover and shaker and Conan works out said sorcerer is using the revolutionaries (who are the spares of rich royal families and thus have nothing to do) as patsies. When he reveals they get all butt hurt and toss him out. He goes to work for the king and runs across the Queen of the Bandits from the previous book. He also comes into conflict with the sorcerer and with wit and mighty thews bests him. Everyone realizes Conan was right about everything and peace reigns supreme. The end.

My goodness. Jordan knows how to write some pulp here. If I had been in a more scathing mood I’d probably have trashed this 6 ways from Sunday. But as I was rather raw inside at the time of reading, the simple hack, slash and bash of Conan outpowering everyone was like a balm upon my heart. Conan’s ability to literally cut his way through any and all problems is what I WISH I could do today. Sadly, it just doesn’t work that way. And it really doesn’t work that way for little chubby bald guys who don’t like people 😉

This stuff is pure wish fulfillment and I enjoy it as such.

★★★✬☆

Fullmetal Alchemist #2 ★★★★☆

~ Bookstooge ~ 13 Comments

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Fullmetal Alchemist #2
Series: Fullmetal Alchemist
Author: Hiromu Arakawa
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Manga
Pages: 187
Words: 9K

Even with the Shou Tucker (the Stitching Alchemist) arc, I still really enjoyed this volume. Unfortunately, Shou murdering his wife and then 2 years later his little daughter to create talking chimeras was just brutal. I still remember this from the anime and it had a lot more heart and punch than was presented here in the manga.

There is a lot of info revealed yet again. Another entity, Envy, is revealed and we’re also treated to the debut of Scar, an alchemist who is one of the last surviving Shambalans. Shambala was a country that defied the Government and said government used State Alchemists to wipe it off the map in retaliation. Lust, one of the entities, reveals that the Entities have some sort of master plan that the Elric brothers figure into but we’re not given much info beyond that.

Lots of existential angst and wondering if the rules are good and fights. Oh, the fights are grand. Scar has the power of destruction and explodes people and things and is also apparently superhumanly fast. Ed gets his arm destroyed and Al gets massive holes blown in him. The volume ends with them going back to their home village to be repaired by the mechanic who created Ed’s automail arm and leg in the first place.

My only quibble here was how everyone didn’t shoot first and ask questions later when it came to Scar. He has already killed over 15 state alchemists but nobody shoots him. They try to go mano a mano with predictable results. There’s a reason we have armies of soldiers now and not one of warriors.

★★★★☆