RI April 2025

Another month of mostly LitRPG, leavened with a bit of space opera.
As usual, the links are are Amazon Affiliate ones which could in
theory earn me something should you buy from one.

==

Gateway (Expeditionary Force Book 18)
by Craig Alanson
https://amzn.to/44VqDOX

Book 17 of EF ended with a disaster on all fronts:  The rogue entity
General Joe Bishop, his Merry Band of Pirates and their
ace-in-the-hole/exploding-cigar the Elder AI Skippy had been pursuing
in the belief it was another, hostile Elder AI turned out to be an
Outsider, one of the enigmatic extra-galactics who drove the Elders
to "ascend" in the first place.  Having misunderstood its origin
and thus its motives the team is once again in the position of
having to execute some Mission Impossible misdirection to secure a
plot McGuffin, and absolutely everything goes wrong, leaving Bishop
in effect having betrayed several friends for nothing and Skippy
himself lost inside a star.

Will it be "super-easy-barely-an-inconvenience" to recover from
that mess?  Well, yes & no.  Alanson does a bit of a weave here
seemingly cheating at one point while unexpectedly making good on
the cheat later.  I enjoyed it, but honestly, but there was one bit
that I (correctly) never did believe in that could have perhaps
been handled better, and the shoe-horning of Bishop's family life
into the plot was a bit awkward (perhaps it was a bad decision to
literally sideline them behind an energy barrier).  The ending ups
the stakes again, and the action the beetle's Ethics & Compliance
team has undertaken has an end-game feel, but then I've thought
that before.

Welcome to Harrak: The Calamitous Bob Book Four
by Alex Gilbert
https://amzn.to/4kiYZzJ

Disaster Classes: The Calamitous Bob Book Five
by Alex Gilbert
https://amzn.to/4mfQqHu

Black Mana Gambit: The Calamitous Bob Book
by Alex Gilbert
https://amzn.to/4j7Cvk9

The League of Lesser Evil: The Calamitous Bob Book 7
by Alex Gilbert
https://amzn.to/43vNHSU

Stranger in a strange world French Special Forces combat medic
Viviane Saint-Lys has come a long way since being transported
unexpectedly & very painfully to the world of Nyil where the gods
are real and magic works.

Since landing in the lifeless capital of the dead empire (see how
that works?) of Harrak and being tutored by a Harrakian war golem
on its last legs of charge, Viv has come a long way.

In particular, she has actually made some progress in her tenuous
position as the Heir to the Empire (having been "born" in the palace
being good enough for the golem who desperately needs to believe
that), having shaken the free city of Kazar out of Enorian control
when they tried to bring their civil-war to her doorstep and having
started clearing the black mana from the deadlands and dealing with
the ongoing zombie apocalypse that caused.

She has also solved one of her two worst problems: Having had her
soul damaged by the thoughtless god who tossed her out of her original
body, so she can now actually commune with the gods, some of whom
aren't too bad, and fully use her magic.

Her other worst problem is that having materialized in the black
mana desolation of the old Empire has over-driven her "attunement"
to the color, and it will kill her in fairly short order if she
doesn't do something about it, something nobody in Kazar has any
idea how to do.  Her only chance is to go to the continent's magical
center, Helock and enroll in the academy there hoping to catch
some expert's attention.

As it turns out Helock's academy is not much like Hogwarts (other
than being dangerous) and the city itself is ripe for revolution.
Despite that, Viv does in fact find one person who could help her
make the transition to half-elemental and avoid dying.  Unfortunately
he's more than a bit of a prick and wants years of her services,
in all ways, guaranteed in a contract that doesn't look good *at
all*.  Also unfortunately the boyfriend Viv picked up on her hazardous
journey to Helock and has been gradually bringing back from near
death is an exiled prince now locked in a deadly succession crisis
not to mention that almost every place on the continent would pretty
much rather not have Harrak back and assassins are everywhere...

As I mentioned during my first review of these books, they are
chapters from an online serial, with multiple arcs in each book but
not always landing in convenient book-length resolutions.  I continue
to think that Viv is on the path to godhood (she now has the actual
title "Ascender" though in theory that could be to full-elemental,
I suppose), but so far she has seen enough of the pitfalls of
transcending humanity to keep herself grounded.  I have now finished
the book versions of the story (which will feature in my next batch
of reviews) and look forward to future volumes (yes, I could subscribe
online to the serial, but that's not my thing).
--
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..