Re: Looking Back: RI 2024

On 1/1/2025 10:33 PM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:

In article <vl4voc$2urqr$1@dont-email.me>,
Ahasuerus  <ahasuerus@email.com> wrote:

On 12/31/2024 10:05 PM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
[snip-snip]

Aside from specific reviews, I continued down the harem adventure rabbit-hole
during 2024.  Some of it, predictably, pretty bad, but I continue to enjoy
Sara Hawke's harem & hot-adventure tales.  She writes both fantasy & space
opera books that would be above average without the sex.

>
Back in 2018, right around the time "harem" and LitRPG novels began to
take off, I tried William D. Arand's _Super Sales on Super Heroes_
series and his _Otherlife/ Selfless Hero_ trilogy, which explored
elements taken from both sub-genres. There were a few interesting
moments, but the execution was sub-professional at best and barely
coherent at worst, so I set each series aside after the first two volumes.
>
Occasionally I come across online reviews that praise certain "harem"
authors, including Michael-Scott Earle, Robert Harper, K. D. Robertson,
Tamryn Tamer and Mike Truk. Unfortunately, almost all of my attempts to
read their works have failed spectacularly, typically because their
protagonists tend to be poor excuses for human beings.
>

 I would say that in particular Truk's hero in Tsun-Tsun TzimTzum
is a good person and each of his companions is well drawn and has
her own compelling arc.  Unfortunately we may never get the last book.

I am afraid my take on him was different. My notes read, in part:
 > he is lecherous, cowardly, dishonorable, immature and has no self-esteem to speak of.
I dropped the first volume after Chapter 2 or 6% in. I suppose it's possible that he changed later on.
One "harem" series that I forgot to mention yesterday was E. William Brown's _Daniel Black_. It's a fairly straightforward portal fantasy about a 36-year-old computer programmer whose life falls apart, which is why he agrees to go to a fantasy world as a glorified bodyguard. Once he gets there, things quickly escalate.
The beginning wasn't promising, e.g. my notes read:
 > The notion that the MC’s aptitude for combat had come from his 20 years of playing RPGs was cringe-worthy.
Luckily, once things got off the ground, there was enough fighting, magic-based engineering, politics, kingdom building, end-of-the-world unpleasantness, etc, to keep things at least somewhat entertaining.
Unfortunately, I found the "harem" elements to be at best unnecessary and at worst actively harmful. I would have enjoyed the series a lot more if they hadn't been there. Come to think of it, I had the exact same experience with Brown's Naruto time loop fanfic _Time Braid_: fun power munchkinry marred by unnecessary/unpleasant harem shenanigans (and mind rape subplots.)
I found Brown's space opera _Perilous Waif_ (2017), which featured internally consistent and well thought-out world-building, to be much better. No harem either. The _Worm_/_Perilous Waif_ crossover "The Visitor" that he posted online in 2021 (https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/shapers-plot-bunny-farm.11318/page-8#post-4067199 , requires a free account to access) was also fun (beware of spoilers for both universes.) His standalone _Worm_ fanfic _Moon Shot_ (https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/moon-shot.14085/) was decent as well.