Category: Books

The Roach is another superhero story by Rhett C. Bruno and I really like this one.

The Roach is a likable character with all kinds of flaws and the characters around him are interesting and add a lot to the story.

Publisher’s Summary

A string of killings. An identity stolen. Only he can find the truth.
Reese Roberts was the guardian of Iron City. Its fearless protector. The only one willing to do whatever it takes…until he was shot on the streets and left paralyzed from the waist down. Now, the vigilante known as the Roach has disappeared. Faded into legend. 
It’s been years since Reese could take on crime and clean up the streets. He’s a shriveled old drunk, living like a hermit and waiting for his life to end. All that’s left to do is wallow in the mistakes that led him here. To wonder if he went too far. 
But when a copycat steals his suit and takes justice into his own hands, a new killer emerges, leaving brutal messages behind. He wants to eliminate the Roach for good this time. 
It’s time for Reese to re-emerge from his shell and fight back. Who else can stop the flurry of killings? Definitely not the corrupt police department. Iron City needs the Roach again. Only, this time, he’ll need to save it without his legs.

©2020 Aethon Books (P)2020 Podium Audio

I rate The Roach an 8 out 10 and recommend it to anyone looking for a good superhero story.

Baron Steele is a very short listen at 47 minutes and I believe it is an introduction to the Raptors series of books.

I didn’t especially like the book and probably wont be listening to the Raptors series anytime soon. The humor just didn’t work for me.

About This Audible Original

Paul Steele, known to the world as Baron Steele, isn’t your average masked crimefighter. As a matter of fact, he doesn’t even wear a mask. And he doesn’t even fight crime anymore. That’s for the guys with too much brawn and not enough brain.
No, Steele works in consulting. After having his license revoked by the Guild of Masked Crimefighters, he decided he would scout talent instead. Match up heroes with their villainous counterparts, help the young bucks and buckettes discover their talents and abilities. That sort of thing.
It’s all going fine and well until Steele gets a bad cup of coffee. No. Seriously. Day after day, the same little twerp gets his order wrong. From there, it’s a downhill spiral into chaos, and Steele finds himself fighting for his freedom in a court of law. Did he really kill a barista over a cup of joe?
Don’t miss this hilarious spin on the superhero genre from the number one Audible best-selling duo of Rhett C. Bruno and Jaime Castle.
©2020 Aethon Books (P)2020 Aethon Books

I rate Baron Steele a 4 out 10 and don’t recommend it.

Operation Brushfire is a solid mystery novel and Lou Diamond Phillips does a good job bringing it to life.

Publisher’s Summary

He’ll do anything for the truth. They’ll do anything to bury it.

Henry Stasik, an Internal Affairs agent for the globe-spanning Coalition, is no stranger to crooked agents or scandals. He’s a truth-junkie. An addict. But when international celebrity Anastasia Danicheva specifically demands his presence at a police station, everything changes. The Coalition, which has brought peace through uniting the world under a single banner, wants her dead. But none of their case against her adds up.

Stasik can’t help but need to know why.

Hours after taking her under his department’s protection, a cybernetically enhanced hitman nips at Stasik’s heels. Witnesses disappear or turn up in pools of blood. And lurking above it all, guarded by a genocidal AI construct, is a secret that threatens to dismantle a perfect world and–Stasik himself.

Man in the High Castle meets Blade Runner with a dash of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in this breakneck sci-fi spy thriller set in a drug-fueled alternate history from the number one Audible best-selling author of Titanborn, Rhett C. Bruno, and James Wolanyk. Performed by award-winning actor Lou Diamond Phillips, star of Prodigal Son, Young Guns, and La Bamba.

©2021 Rhett C. Bruno, James Wolanyk (P)2021 Podium Audio

I rate Operation Brushfire a 6 out of 10, meh.

Another Heartstrikers dragon book by Rachel Aaron, who’d a thunk?

I’m working my way through the series and have to say that I am enjoying them. They are not great and amazing works of art, but they are good solid modern fantasy and I look forward to more of them.

Publisher’s Summary

After barely escaping the machinations of his terrifying mother, two all-knowing seers, and countless bloodthirsty siblings, the last thing Julius wants to see is another dragon. Unfortunately for him, the only thing more dangerous than being a useless Heartstriker is being a useful one. Now that he’s got an in with the Three Sisters, Julius has become a key pawn in Bethesda the Heartstriker’s gamble to put her clan on top. Refusal to play along with his mother’s plans means death, but there’s more going on than even Bethesda knows. Heartstriker futures are disappearing, and Algonquin’s dragon hunter is closing in. Now, with his most powerful family members dropping like flies, it’s up to Julius to save the family that never respected him and prove once and for all that the world’s worst dragon is the very best one to have on your side.

©2015 Rachel Aaron (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

I rate One Good Dragon Deserves Another 8 out of 10 and recommend it to anyone who is looking for modern fantasy with dragons.

I bought The Werewolf’s 15 Minutes from Audible and listened to it using the Audible app.

Good contemporary werewolf stories are hard to find, but I think this is one of them. It’s a modern day take on what could happen when a YouTube generation kid decides to go public about his lycanthropy.

At only 1 hour and 42 minutes in length it is short but tells an engaging story that I enjoyed.

From the publisher:

Gary Bruce is a slacker of epic loserness. Can’t keep a job. His friends are as bad as he is. No girlfriend. No direction.

Gary Bruce is also a werewolf.

Desperate for any kind of success, Gary decides to out himself on YouTube. The moment this ordinary guy goes full-on fur, fangs, and claws, the world can’t get enough of him. He’s the biggest thing on social media, he’s on every talk show, book and movie deals fall in his lap, and for the first time in his life he gets invited to all the best parties.

But celebrity is a special kind of voracious monster. And when Gary’s star begins to lose its luster, he has to decide how far he’ll go to stay relevant in a world that discards has-beens in favor of the next big thing.

Fortunately, Gary has a plan….

The Werewolf’s 15 Minutes is a brand-new short story by New York Times best-seller and five-time Bram Stoker Award winner Jonathan Maberry, author of Bewilderness and V-Wars (Netflix).

©2021 Jonathan Maberry Productions, LLC (P)2021 Audible Originals, LLC.

I enjoyed The Werewolf’s 15 Minutes and rate it an 8 out of 10.

I got Nice Dragons Finish Last from Audible and listened using the Audible App.

It is not as fantastical as the Detroit Free Zone books and not as much humor, but still a good story and great narration by Vikas Adam.

From the publisher:

As the smallest dragon in the Heartstriker clan, Julius survives by a simple code: keep quiet, don’t cause trouble, and stay out of the way of bigger dragons. But this meek behavior doesn’t fly in a family of ambitious magical predators, and his mother, Bethesda the Heartstriker, has finally reached the end of her patience. Now, sealed in human form and banished to the DFZ – a vertical metropolis built on the ruins of Old Detroit – Julius has one month to prove he can be a ruthless dragon or kiss his true shape goodbye forever. But in a city of modern mages and vengeful spirits where dragons are considered monsters to be exterminated, he’s going to need some serious help to survive this test. He only hopes humans are more trustworthy than dragons….

©2014 Rachel Aaron (P)2014 Audible Inc.

I rate Nice Dragons Finish Last a 7 out of 10 and look forward to listening to more stories of the Heartstrikers clan.

I bought Lost Planet Homicide from Audible and listened to it using the Audible app.

Larry Correia always gets my attention and Gun Runners has a good start with Lost Planet Homicide. His world building skills shine here with a gritty crime riddled world settled long ago by people hoping to live in paradise, instead they end up barely being able to survive on hostile world where the air will kill them.

I enjoyed the story and characters, but it is not in the same class as the Grimnoir Chronicles or Monster Hunter books, but it is a good book and I look forward to more.

From the publisher:

A lost colony planet, a perplexing murder, and a dogged homicide cop in this Audible Original story from best-selling author Larry Correia.

When the biggest colony ship in human history was sent to settle a paradise world, an accident hurtled it deep into uncharted space. A thousand light years from Earth, with no way home and no way to call for help, the colonists’ only hope for survival was the one barely habitable planet in range, a nightmare world they named Croatoan. Landing on the only five mountain peaks tall enough to rise above the lethal acid clouds, the settlers carved a civilization from the rock.

A hundred years later, Five Points has grown into a city of corruption and violence. With powerful corporations ruling the surface domes and criminal syndicates running the caverns below, murder is just the cost of doing business.

So when a Special Magistrate is found dissolving in a protein vat, it barely registers – until DCI Lutero Cade, the last honest cop in Five Points, catches the case. What he finds could threaten the colony’s very existence.
Or, at the very least, Cade himself.

©2021 Larry Correia (P)2021 Audible Originals, LLC.Z

I enjoyed Lost Planet Homicide and rate it a 6 out of 10.

I am always looking for a new Sci-Fi series that has a lot of humor in it and after the Bobiverse series I wanted to keep the laughs going.

Columbus Day is the first in the Expeditionary Force series of books by Craig Alanson.

With narration by R.C. Bray, you can never go wrong, and his portrayal of Bishop, Skippy, and the entire Expeditionary Force crew is fantastic.

This the story of a man and his super-duper intelligent beer can of AWESOMENESS. If that doesn’t get you to read the book, then nothing will.

From the publisher:

We were fighting on the wrong side of a war we couldn’t win. And that was the good news.

The Ruhar hit us on Columbus Day. There we were, innocently drifting along the cosmos on our little blue marble, like the Native Americans in 1492. Over the horizon came ships of a technologically advanced, aggressive culture, and BAM! There went the good old days, when humans got killed only by each other. So, Columbus Day. It fits.

When the morning sky twinkled again, this time with Kristang starships jumping in to hammer the Ruhar, we thought we were saved. The UN Expeditionary Force hitched a ride on Kristang ships to fight the Ruhar wherever our new allies thought we could be useful. So, I went from fighting with the US Army in Nigeria to fighting in space. It was lies, all of it. We shouldn’t even be fighting the Ruhar; they aren’t our enemy. Our allies are.

I’d better start at the beginning.

©2016 Craig Alanson (P)2016 Podium Publishing

I rate Columbus Day an 8 out of 10 and recommend it to anyone looking for fun sci-fi.

P.S.

An 8 out of 10 may seem a bit low, but the books and the stories get better and better.

This had been sitting in my Audible Wish List for some time, after listening to The Wrong Unit, I wanted to continue the goodness with another Rob Dircks novel.

I thoroughly enjoyed the story of Where the Hell is Tesla? which was made even more charming by the author’s reading of the tale.

There is not a lot new in this story, I feel like I have experienced all of the tropes before, but they are used to great effect in this time and space traveling experience. And it has Tesla!

From the publisher:

Sci-fi odyssey. Comedy. Love story. And of course, Nikola Tesla.

I’ll let Chip, the main character, tell you more: “I found the journal at work. Well, I don’t know if you’d call it work, but that’s where I found it. It’s the lost journal of Nikola Tesla, one of the greatest inventors and visionaries ever. Before he died in 1943, he kept a notebook filled with spectacular claims and outrageous plans. One of these plans was for an “INTERDIMENSIONAL TRANSFER APPARATUS” – that allowed someone (in this case me and my friend Pete) to travel to other versions of the infinite possibilities around us. Crazy, right? But that’s just where the crazy starts.”

Chip’s Official Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. The events depicted in the collection of emails did not happen. I have never been in contact with a covert government group attempting to suppress knowledge of the lost journal of Nikola Tesla. I have not been threatened with death if I divulge the secrets contained inside. They did not buy me this handsome jacket (oh crap, you’re listening to this – trust me, it looks great on me). They did not come to my place, and liquor me up, and offer to publish this book as a sci-fi comedy novel to throw the public off the trail of the real truth.

Or did they?

I’m kidding. Of course they didn’t.

Or did they?

God, I can’t keep my big mouth shut.

©2015 Rob Dircks (P)2015 Rob Dircks

I rate Where the Hell is Tesla? a 7 out of 10 and recommend it to anyone looking for a fun sci-fi time-travel romp.