Chuckles Mini Reviews Catchup

I review everything I read, on my blog and on Goodreads. Most reviews are of a decent length but sometimes you don't have much to say about the book because of its length or you DNFed it or various other reasons. In cases like that it makes sense to write a few mini reviews in one post and clear them out your way! So lets catch up with some reviews from July and August!

1) Robert Boren-The Plan
The "Bug Out!" books are about an invasion of the US Mainland by foreign and domestic terrorists. This volume contains the brand new novella called "The Plan", previews of the "Bug Out!" and "Bug Out! Texas" series, and four chapters from the "Bug Out! California" series. 

Although this is a prequel, I would advise reading this after completing the Bug Out series, when you know who everyone is and the actions all make more sense. This is a very short story of just a few chapters, the bulk of the book being previews of three of the four Bug Out series. It doesn't add a lot of meat to the bones of what we see in the Bug Out series and it would actually spoil the 'who are the military people we can trust' plot that I found so gripping as it tells you in this who the good guys are! It was fun to catch up with the Generals and I'd have liked to see more of these early days with them in a longer story. So I'd read it as an added extra after the main Bug Out series. On its own as a prequel, well it wouldn't have made me want to read the main series, but reading it after Bug Out made it a fun look at how easy it was for a bad political decision to lead to total disaster across America.

Read August 2019
3 stars. 

2) Catherine Glenn Holsclaw-Bigfoot
In the beautiful wilds of Oregon, a danger is lurking and stalking the unsuspecting inhabitants of a sleepy and once safe town. Jake Stone, a city transplant and now farmer, is about to experience the worst fear a parent can imagine. His young daughter Dianne, is taken, but not by anything resembling a human. Together, with an ensemble of townsfolk and local law enforcement, Jake faces the unthinkable. He must suspend his belief in reality and understand that monsters are indeed real and that one has taken his daughter. In the fight of his life, Jake must risk everything or accept his daughter's grim fate.  

Jake, Martha and their kids are visited by a Sasquatch and for safety, they flee to her parents. But after a few weeks, believing the danger has passed, they return home. When Jake is at work, the Sasquatch attacks Martha and snatches one of her daughters, leading to a beast hunt that involves most of the men in the town, led by the police and a skilled native tracker. 

There were issues with this one. The grammar was poor. There was no new line for the dialogue of each speaker so you were getting the words of both men rolled up in one paragraph which was annoying. After the attack scene at the house, Terri comes off the bus and then is continually called Dianne for the next few pages which is frustrating when Dianne is actually the missing kid. These glaring errors should have been corrected by a simple read through by the author or a friend. The dialogue isn't great either. Martha is a very annoying woman, demanding answers from her husband even when he says he has no information ie He sees the monster but has no clue what it is and tells her that but she spends the rest of the scene demanding he tells her what it is and throws in a few tears to try and make him answer. I wanted to thump her. The men all seem to make really stupid decisions through the book too. Also the dog is attacked by the Sasquatch and taken to a vet but is never heard of after that so I have no idea if it lives or not which is a pretty important detail. There are much better Bigfoot offerings out there to read instead.

Read  August 2019
2 stars.

3) Conn Iggulden-Darien
TWELVE FAMILIES. ONE THRONE.
The city of Darien stands at the weary end of a golden age. Twelve families keep order with soldiers and artefacts, spies and memories, clinging to a peace that shifts and crumbles. The people of the city endure what they cannot change. Here, amongst old feuds, a plot is hatched to kill a king. It will summon strangers to the city - Elias Post, a hunter, Tellius, an old swordsman banished from his home, Arthur, a boy who cannot speak, Daw Threefold, a chancer and gambler, Vic Deeds, who feels no guilt - and Nancy, a girl whose talent might be the undoing of them all. As the sun sets, their arrival inside the walls will spark a series of explosive events. Before the sun returns, six destinies will have been made - and lost - in Darien.  

I can't really say that much about what I read of this book. Firstly there was nothing wrong with the writing style which was uncomplicated and easy to follow. I just felt it was lacking in the worldbuilding. We are in the city of Darien, ruled by twelve families and they are the first thing mentioned on the back cover of my book, yet by the time I DNFed the book, I knew pretty much nothing about any of them. I had expected a sort of Game of Thrones type struggle with Lannisters, Stars, Tyrells, Baratheons, freys, Boltons, Ironborn etc all fighting, mixed in with the six people coming to the city. But it was all about the six with no detail about the families, and it was very light on details about Darien and the magic itself. It was all a bit vague.

The six characters I had mixed thoughts on. Elias is the man desperate to find a plague cure to save the rest of his family. I liked him but was somewhat annoyed by Vic, the arrogant man who recognises the talents of Elias and brings him to the General who promptly imprisons him to use him as an assassin. I liked Elias but Vic and the General annoyed me. The most interesting pair were the Fagin like Tellius, who looks after abandoned kids who steal for him, and his new talented prodigy Arthur. Their story was more interesting. But then there was self obsessed conman Daw who relies on magical charms. He is somewhat sulky and offended when the magic fails and he is outwitted by Nancy. I found him childish and annoying and had no interest in reading about him.

There are quite a few POVs among the MCs so it is a bit slow, dealing with the background to the characters and what was happening to them now, and I found it hard to stay interested. Had it focused on Elias and Tellius, I might have read on but the others didn't interest me. This book needed more details in Darien and the Twelve and less on characters that I didn't like. 

Read August 2019
DNF 2 stars.

4) Andy Bennett-The Line
A strange October heat wave rages across the streets of Chicago, and inside Seitz's Deil, 30 customers sweat it out while waiting to order lunch. But things heat up even more when a man enters the deli, locks them all inside, and sets himself on fire. His final words are a warning; "You have 3 hours." Soon, all hell breaks loose and 6 high school students must work together to stay alive and find a way to escape the deli. If they do, they'll discover a city destroyed and a clock that is still ticking, leading them down streets choked with unspeakable horrors toward a final showdown high above the ruined city of Chicago.  

We get a lot of introduction to the teenagers as they check out a college fair and then go to a deli to use up a voucher given to them. They do nothing but bicker with each other, bully each other and fight with each other as they wait their turn. Then an apocalypse event begins, trapping them in the freezer of the deli as a deadly virus kills the other customers. It becomes about solving several problems-stopping the toxin getting through the air vents, finding a way not to freeze to death and surviving the homocidal impulses of a couple of them. The fighting between them continues to the point where two are intent on murdering the rest and the rest are divided about killing the two. I was driven mad by these idiot characters! Reed in particular was a self obsessed, violent, deluded idiot who needed to be put down. I got annoyed by the constant sexist and racist behaviours of the kids and the bullying based on these attitudes.

Turns out these kids were all chosen to be in that deli because of their individual talents in problem solving. Kids were immune to the virus attacking Chicago and a group of resistance style scientists decide to get these kids into the safe deli where they can work together to survive. But they don't tell the kids anything about the virus, the attack on the city, the fact that Chicago is about to be blown up, so they don't know what they are meant to be doing and instead of working together, they are all fighting. All they get is the 'You have three hours' message. Yeah, helpful.  I'm not sure what kind of half assed plan this is but it doesn't work out very well. What exactly are these kids meant to do? What is the point of saving them from the virus and the shooting on the streets to say 'hey the bomb drops in three hours!' The only thing more stupid than the plot was the ending which left me wondering WTF I'd read and why I continued to the end. I didn't enjoy this at all.

Read July 2019
1 star. 

5) Alan David-Starfall Muta
The shuttlecraft detached from Probe 2 when Muta orbit was reached, carrying Commander Theron Clark and three crew members down to the mysterious surface of the planet. But trouble struck them before they reached the ground, enveloping them in a seemingly endless, horror-filled nightmare. From that moment on, they were alone with the inhospitable planet and its terrible inhabitants. The crew must make a quick decision. Armed with their survival kits, they venture out into the unknown. But they are not the only humans who have been stranded here…

Will Commander Clark find Vern, his missing brother? As their parents await news at home, the search is on. The odds are stacked against them, but anyone disobeying orders learns the hard way that there is no easy way out… Survival on the cruel and unfamiliar planet is a challenge that none of the humans are prepared for. A host of vicious mutants awaits this hapless crew, hiding in the dark before they strike. But Commander Clark will not surrender. He will fight. They are stranded. There is no hope. Will they ever make it home?  

A landing craft goes down to the surface of Muta, seeking what happened to a previous mission who never returned. The answer comes when they watch their mother ship blown up and are pursued on Muta by hostile locals. Rescue comes from the friendly Avics, a birdman race who rescued the survivors of a previous mission, keeping them safe from three hostile races on the planet. In order to steal a starship and escape Muta, the survivors will need to evade these deadly enemies. The main enemy are the technologically advanced Brutans but there are also the giant Ogrins to worry about and a cannibal tribe that live in the marshes. Clark helps the Avics defeat the Ogrins in battle with their advanced weapons but will it be enough to defend them against the Brutans?

I found the story itself interesting with the range of different enemies to deal with and their Avic allies. It did get a little repetitive in places though with a lot of going back and forth sneaking through the jungle and evading the enemies to check something out and then sneaking back the same way, making a new plan and then repeating the process. It did slow down a bit in the middle as well for me. Clark himself was a bit annoying. He seems to think a lot about Magenta in the early part of the story but as soon as they meet Ralip, he doesn't give her another thought. I was also frustrated a lot by the idiotic behaviour of Mallory. It was a decent enough space adventure with interesting alien life forms but it just lacked a little something to really grab me. I'm not really sure what was lacking but I did find it an interesting story to read. Would I read more by the author? I guess that would depend on the plot.

Read July 2019
3 stars.