Lord of the Toothpastes

September 14, 2019September 7, 2019 ~ Bookstooge ~ 31 Comments

fennel2 — *The Real Lord of the Toothpaste, Revealed at Last!*

Three Spearmint for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven Cinnamints for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine Silly Strawberry for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One Fennel for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Tom’s of Maine where the Toothbrushes lie.
One Toothpaste to rule them all, One Toothpaste to find them,
One Toothpaste to bring them all, and in the Bathroom bind them,
In the Land of Tom’s of Maine where the Toothbrushes lie

A Parody by Bookstooge (or is it?)
*insert X-Files music*

bookstooge (Custom)

John Hobo (2020 Movie)

May 24, 2019May 22, 2019 ~ Bookstooge ~ 24 Comments

John Hobo: : They Stole His Lunch, Now He’s Stealing Their Lives

Synopsis:

John Hobo was a man of the streets. Brought up rough and tough, he was hungry for success. And breakfast. And lunch. And dinner. And elevensies. And afternoon tea. One day he hit the jackpot.

roasted-rat

3 roasted “rat on a stick”, good as new, only been in the trash bin 30 minutes. But then tragedy struck. They stole his rats, called it “unsanitary”. John Hobo knew The Man had gone after him. So he’s returning the favor, one dead useless civil servant at a time. Detroit will never be the same!

My Thoughts:

You know, I’m beginning to think that Hollywood REALLY HAS run out of ideas.

hollywood-undead-five-2017-18883

Almost like there are no brains left and all the zombie who pretend to be alive are just regurgitating the brains they ate last year. Yeah, pretty gross. That’s how I’d class this movie. The whole revenge thing is really getting old.

The language? My goodness, I never knew there was a whole hobo sub-culture of profanity. Who knew that “ultra fresh” meant THAT! I was rather shocked. And when the Swiss hobos, who I would have thought would be the most refined and peaceful of the hobos just turned into toilet mouths, well, nothing could shock me after that. Or so I thought.

Everyone in this movie gets shanked. With a shiv. You thought a pencil was bad ass. I almost threw up when John Hobo killed that dude with a banana!

bananashiv

I found John Hobo to be a very dirty character. And the people he was offing were even worse. I mean, who doesn’t want to off the officious DMV lady who tells you that you “X”‘d the wrong box and makes you go fill out a new form and stand in line all over again? Or that shyster lawyer hired by the city to tell everyone that the city is taking over the whole block and is tearing it down and they have to move, in 2 weeks?

Honestly though, I think my biggest issue was how disconnected John Hobo was. He had no place to call home and it really showed.

Final verdict: Don’t waste your time with this piece of trash.

bookstooge (Custom)

The Midden

January 22, 2017November 24, 2022 ~ Bookstooge ~ 16 Comments

^{This review is written with a GPL 3.0 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, Booklikes & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission.}

Title: The Midden

Series: —–

Author: Tom Sharpe

Rating: 1 of 5 Stars

Genre: Satire

Pages: 352

Format: Kindle Digital edition

Synopsis:

A rich, spoiled boy gets involved with drug runners who want him to frame his uncle, who is a judge. Spoiled boy runs off, gets drugged, and somehow gets involved in small town politics.

A corrupt police chief, a woman who doesn’t want the burden of taking care of her ancestral home and a various cast of inept and bumbling idiots all come together for a finale of death, fire and explosions. Not to mention a Black Mass where hordes of children are to be sacrificed.

My Thoughts:

On the surface, this should have been as funny as Riotous Assembly. However, while it was just as biting and satirical, it came across as bitter and angry without the humor. In fact, this left me in a completely foul mood for about 24hrs.

When a book affects me like that, I drop the author like a hot potato.

star10full-custom

Riotous Assembly (Piemburg #1)

November 27, 2016November 24, 2022 ~ Bookstooge ~ Leave a comment

Title: Riotous Assembly

Series: Piemburg #1

Author: Tom Sharpe

Rating: 4 of 5 Stars

Genre: Historical, Humor

Pages: 258

Format: Kindle digital edition

Synopsis:

The misadventures of the Afrikaaner Van Heerden, head of the police force in Piemburg, South Africa, as he investigates the killing of a Zulu cook by the local (socially) ruling British matron.

Along the way there are police ambushes, latex fetishists, hand to paw combat with a doberman, hangings and a play by the local madhouse which ends with the shooting of some artillery that blows up.

Madcap

My Thoughts:

A bit of context was necessary before I got very far into this. Sharpe was in South Africa during apartheid and was a very vocal opponent of it. Eventually he was deported for his writings against it. Once you have that in mind you realize that what you are reading is not a raging rascist going for the humor angle, but a satirist at his most biting.

This was hilarious. I was wheezing in several places and my wife had to ask me if I was ok. I was more than ok in fact.

Every character was incompetent, looking out for themselves and bumbling. It made for some serious misadventures. One such was when one police underling is told to guard the gate and he takes an elephant gun with him. He hides in a bunker, it is dusk and some other plainclothes policemen are coming onsite. He starts shooting, they start shooting, armoured cars get involved and in the end 21 policeman are dead and the underling is desperately trying to figure out how he can spin it so it isn’t his fault. That sums up this book.

There was a lot of crassness involved [anything to do with latex fetishists seems to go that way] and some unnecessary sexual details. Other than that, this was an uproariously fun read.

star40full

The Hero’s Guide to Being an Outlaw (League of Princes #3)

October 28, 2016May 13, 2023 ~ Bookstooge ~ Leave a comment

Title: The Hero’s Guide to Being an Outlaw

Series: League of Princes

Author: Christopher Healy

Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars

Genre: SFF

Pages: 529

Format: Kindle digital edition

Synopsis:

The League of Princes get involved in yet another madcap escapade and the various princess’ are involved. An old enemy returns and uses the bards to make the Princes’ into villains, puts a price on their heads and begins a conquest of all the Kingdoms.

Surprise, surprise, everything turns out ok. I know that is totally shocking to anyone who has read the previous books, but believe it!

My Thoughts:

Ehhh, this was ok, just like Book 2 but not as fun as Book 1. Three books worth of these characters was just too much for me. They were fairytale caricatures shoehorned into a “regular” fantasy novel. The novelty was amusing but it wore thin and in this book wore out for me.

For a series called The League of Princes’, this sure had as much to do with their various love interests taking the stage as it did with them. If I wanted to read the PC, Lady Power schtick, I’d go read some Urban or Paranormal Fantasy, thank you very much.

It wasn’t a bad read, it just didn’t live up to the first book, which unfortunately seems to happen with a lot of series, no matter what genre they might be in. It left me feeling slightly lacking in the Enjoyment Factor. I do recommend this if you’re looking for a fairytale parody or something very light.

Odd Apocalypse (Odd Thomas #6)

December 12, 2015November 1, 2022 ~ Bookstooge ~ Leave a comment

Title: Odd Apocalypse

Series: Odd Thomas

Author: Dean Koontz

Rating: 3.5 of 5 Battle Axes

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Pages: 370

Format: Kindle

Synopsis:

Odd and Annamaria are just hanging out at a billionaire’s mysterious house where things are weird.

Odd meets a ghost who wants him to help her son, sees some sort of human/swine hybrid creatures wandering the grounds and sees the sky turn yellow instead of blue.

Annamaria simply sits in her room and tells Odd to believe in himself.

My Thoughts:

As much as I don’t care for Annamaria, she really helps anchor Odd. She gives him a purpose that he can hold onto and a center that he can return to when things are simply beyond his understanding. I still don’t like her though.

While this is touted as book 5, it really is book 6, as Koontz interjected that serial novel Odd Interlude, into the stream of things part way through.

Things get really weird in this book. It seems like reality itself is shifting at random, but only on the estate. Koontz wrote these sequences in such a way that I felt just as confused and disoriented as Odd when these shifts happen. And bad things happen during these shifts as well, so the tension was ratcheted up pretty good.

The whole Tesla and time and copper thing was a means to an end for the story but it didn’t do much for me. I’m not one of those who think that Tesla was some sort of super-genius who got bypassed in history because of politics and business maneuverings.

The ending was a bit more violent than I was expecting, but that isn’t really a bad thing.

Reenlistment (America’s Galactic Foreign Legion #2)

December 10, 2015February 21, 2023 ~ Bookstooge ~ Leave a comment

This review is written with a GPL 3.0 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 Bookstooge.booklikes.blogspot. wordpress.leafmarks.com & Bookstooge’s Reviews on the Road Facebook Group by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission.
Title: Reenlistment
Series: America’s Galactic Foreign Legion
Author: Walter Knight
NEW Rating: 1 of 5 Battle Axes
OLD Rating: 3 of 5 Battle Axes
Genre: SFF
Pages: 147
Format: Kindle

UPDATE 1.26.16

Penumbra Publishing stripped my review of its licensing info [the first paragraph above permitting only me to post this review] and then put the whole review on their own site. I was not asked nor did I give my permission for my review to appear on their site. This violates my rights as the copyright holder of this review.
So Walter Knight gets a 1 Star and no more sales, or reviews, from me. I won’t support a thief or a thieving publisher.

Synopsis:

Gold! Gosh darned GOLD! A goldrush occurs and the spiders start up the war again.

Joey and the Legion are playing a 3 sided game and the silliness continues.

My Thoughts:

I didn’t find this as funny as the first book. Part of that is what is funny the first time isn’t as funny the second time around. It was still amusing and entertaining, but I wasn’t laughing like I was in the first book.

I found the Human/Spider only interaction to be limiting as well. I was hoping for more mayhem between everyone, ie, the beetles, the ants, the spiders and the humans. But I guess the random spiders taking of humans was enough.

Feeling Lucky (America’s Galactic Foreign Legion #1)

December 8, 2015February 21, 2023 ~ Bookstooge ~ 1 Comment

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reviews, from me. I won’t support a thief or a thieving publisher.

Title: Feeling LuckySeries: America’s Galactic Foreign Legion

Author: Walter Knight

NEW Rating: 1 of 5 Stars

OLD Rating: 3 of 5 Stars

Genre: SFF

Pages: 222

Synopsis:

In the Future, America rules the world and is in the process of ruling the Galaxy.

However, the Evil Bugs have taken a planet from humanity. So the call goes out and the American Foreign Legion is taking ANYONE to fight this threat against our very way of life, our EXISTENCE!!

My Thoughts:

This book started out with something like this in the dedication:

In the Tradition of Catch-22.

That right there set me off pretty bad. I hated that book, didn’t like the humor so I was ready to DUMP on this book. The main character was a schlub, the plot a rip-off parody of Starship Troopers and the politics was the worst of a bureaucracy.

And I LOVED EVERY MINUTE. After the Schlub dies, it gets good. It was darkly funny, right wing hilarious [I mean, the United States declared war on pretty much everything, including Democrats, and won!] and completely disrespectful of any and all things military.

And the thing is, the mockery goes to the bugs, the ants, and all the OTHER aliens we encounter.

There are several more books in this series and I plan on reading them. This was probably closer to a 2.5 Star book with a 4 Star’s worth of enjoyment. I love it when a book can do that.

Dakota Run (Endworld #5)

February 26, 2015December 7, 2022 ~ Bookstooge ~ Leave a comment

Title: Dakota Run

Series: Endworld #5

Author: David Robbins

Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars

Genre: SFF

Pages: 212

Synopsis:

Geronimo is out and alone and runs across a feuding army of cavalry.

Blade and Hickock are dealing with a threat from the Doktor.

And everyone gets married at the end and is happy. Thank goodness.

My Thoughts:

This was not as eye rollingly bad as the previous books. Thank goodness for a nest of giant ants.

And things are shaping up for new allies and a much larger conflict.

The Kalispell Run (Endworld #4)

January 10, 2015December 7, 2022 ~ Bookstooge ~ Leave a comment

Title: The Kalispell Run

Series: Endworld #4

Author: David Robbins

Rating: 2 of 5 Stars

Genre: SFF

Pages: 212

Synopsis:

Alpha Triad is split up. Beefcake Boy [the man on the cover] and Token Indian Guy take Chieftess Hot Chick back to her clan because she claims they have the equipment the Family needs.

Hickock heads out after a hotblooded young idiot who gets himself captured while trying to prove how capable he is.

Meanwhile, back at the Camp…. the Power Monger is revealed and not dealt with.

My Thoughts:

Around the halfway mark I was ready to put this down. It was racist all around, culturally illiterate [a japanese guy who wants to kill the leadership of the family because he couldn’t win a sword? After 100 years, there shouldn’t BE any ethnic’ness left, sigh] and just as stupid [rippling brawny muscles is despairing because he’d left his darling Jenny back at the compound] as the previous books.

Then a switch turned in me and I sat back and enjoyed the 80’s badness of it. It was like a MST3K book, just without the funny commentary.

But lets be real, this is trash. I’m talking trailer living, twinky eating, beer chugging trash. How it continued for so many books [25+ I believe] is beyond me. I’m certainly not paying for these, even if I am continuing to borrow and read them.

And to continue my indie rants from before…

I believe this is some of the worst you can get from the 80’s. And it is still better than 90% of the indie offerings I see today in the Kindle SFF section. As absolute PANTS [man, I love foreign curse words, as they aren’t for me :-)] as this series is, as completely juvenile, mindless and cringeworthy as it continues to be, it is still BETTER.

Don’t talk to me about the Big Publishing Houses stifling creativity or such drivel. They were some chikusho good Gatekeepers and I for one miss that function. And don’t tell me that the Indie Cream will rise to the top through word of mouth, etc. A pound of Cream will still taste like crap if it is wrapped in 10 pounds of manure.

Hmm, lets see, what else can’t you tell me? I’ll get back to you on that.

Hopefully, this will be the last of my rants for a bit. Can’t allow such useless idiots to drive even one aspect of my life.