"War on the Frontier: The Trans-Mississippi West" by Alvin M. Josephy Jr.

This is a book about the American Civil War, specifically (as the title says) the parts in the Trans-Mississippi West. I don't actually really have anything to say about it, this review is just to point out the unintentional hilarity of a historical picture featured in the book.

This picture was created in 1862 by John Stevens, a sign painter, which may help explain the strangeness. It's reactionary and anti-Native-American and racist, and it was created for fearmongering purposes, so it wasn't intended to be funny...

I had to scan this, so the image quality might be kinda bad.

What I'm pretty sure is supposed to be going on in this picture: Shirtless Guy, after murdering two of Green Woman's children, is trying to murder a third while Green Woman tries to pull her child away. Meanwhile, Blue Kid throws out his arms in an attempt to protect his family.

What it looks like is going on in this picture: Shirtless Guy and Green Woman are having a tug-of-war over a badly-proportioned small child. Green Woman is attempting to Force-push Shirtless Guy, and Blue Kid is T-posing over two of his siblings (or possibly one sibling with a doll) in the background.

 

It was the T-posing that elevated this from "ok weird" to "this is funny and I should make a blog post on it so other people can see how funny it is". John Stevens's history as a sign painter, coupled with the (lack of) artistic quality of the picture, leads me to believe he never actually had any formal training. And probably didn't understand how to pose people so they look realistic (the T-posing kid strikes again) or to draw children so they don't just look like tiny adults.

 

Yes, I know this picture plays into a lot of the prejudices of its time. I'm not laughing at the racism, I'm laughing at the T-posing kid and the woman in green's attempts to use the Force.

Were this a videogame, its subject matter would get rated: M to AO for graphic violence, like all the war books.

However, the book handles it in a way that's more: T15+ for graphic violence (massacres by Native Americans, and massacres of Native Americans--it went both ways--are not pleasant).

4 stars. Informative.

(Endnote: I reviewed The Dreadnoughts because I like dreadnoughts, and I reviewed this because I thought something in it was funny. There's a vast ocean of other books in these series that I haven't reviewed.)

"Lines of Courage" by Jennifer A. Nielsen

This is a bunch of stories that could have been their own individual smaller books, except the author decided to tangle them all together into one semi-cohesive narrative instead. A narrative which takes place during World War I, hence the trenches.

Felix (Austro-Hungarian) is a civilian with a dad in the military, who (Felix, not the dad) has to survive with his mom when things get really bad in their area of Austria-Hungary.

Kara (British) just wants to be a Red Cross nurse. 

Juliette (French) lives in an area of France that got fighting in it, gets separated from her family, and is alone in WWI now, trying to survive.

Elsa (German) doesn't really have her own arc; she just catalyzes those of several of the others.

And finally, Dimitri (Russian) has fallen victim to the problem that chronically plagued Russia's armies in both World Wars: their lack of such essential things as "weapons for your soldiers". Also, there are Communists.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: A soft T for being set in WWI but not having graphic violence. It would most likely be rather difficult to make into a game, but it probably could be done. Would be an interesting one.

 

4 stars.

(Endnote: I don't always read historical fiction, but when I do, it's usually because I make somewhat of an exception for WWI and WWII. And Westerns.)

"The Dreadnoughts" by David Howarth

(Image is a bit small because this is like the only picture of this book I could find, and it looks weird if I scale it up. Sorry about that.)

This is part of a series about seafarers and ships throughout history. I will most likely not review the other books, but I'm doing this one, because I like dreadnoughts. (I know they're not the largest warships--WWII destroyers were actually bigger--but they have the coolest name, and they were the first warships to be super overpowered compared to everything else. They basically rendered all the other warships at the time obsolete.)

 

[EDIT: They actually weren't the first to way outclass all the others. That honor goes to the ironclads.]

The book is fairly dense, but it's not a bad density, if that makes sense. It's not dense because of overly flowery language or not getting to the point, it just has a lot of information per cubic meter. (What units would that even use? Fact/m^3?)

My favorite anecdote from this is when the British were building a new dreadnought and a bunch of British nerds (including Virginia Woolf) (I think the book called them "literati," so basically nerds) pretended to be the king of Abyssinia and his entourage and tried to get a tour. They got one, too, and convinced everyone until a few days later when someone figured out it was a hoax. At which point the British realized they should probably keep secrecy a bit tighter.

Were this a videogame, its subject matter would get rated: T15+ for violence (people getting explodified by artillery--it does talk about the Battle of Jutland).

However, the book handles it in a way that's more: T. 

4 stars.

(Endnote: The dreadnoughts' purpose in WWI was basically to stop the enemy's dreadnoughts from stopping your dreadnoughts from stopping the enemy's dreadnoughts from marauding all your puny other boats. Even at Jutland, none of them ever sank each other.)

Mini-Reviews 4: Never and Forever

The title is because the first three books in Cressida Crowell's Wizards of Once series all have ordinal-number-themed names (Wizards of Once, Twice Magic, and Knock Three Times) but the fourth one is called Never and Forever, which broke the chain. So when it came time to do the fourth mini-review collection, I named it this. There. Now you know.

 

Dead in the Water by Chris Lynch

This do be historical fiction, about a crewman on the U.S.S. Yorktown during World War II. We all know how well that ended. This dude |does survive, though|. 

The historical stuff is interspersed with baseball (because this was the 1940s and if you were in the States then everything was tangentially related to baseball) (please note that the previous statement is not entirely factually accurate) and a minor dealing-with-racism side plot (courtesy of the main character's friend, who gets hit with it a lot). (Also this paragraph is full of parentheses.)

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for violence and discussion of racism. Dead in the Water would make a reasonably good videogame in the right hands, although unless you let players change the story, it wouldn't have much replayability.

4 stars.

Tags for this one: 4-star, airplanes, historical fiction, military, rated T, WWII

 

 

 

All Summer Long by Hope Larson

I didn't like this one. The art wasn't really good (for me, art quality is an important factor in how much I like a graphic novel; it's like use of language in a print book), and I didn't love the storyline either. Plus it did a |casual homosexuality mention|, which I strongly dislike. If you're going to have that in your book, be overt about it so I can avoid you.

Anyway, T15+ for sexual references. 1 star. Lame.

Tags for this one: 1-star, lame, manga/graphic novel, modern setting, rated T15+, school drama

 

 

 

Truesight by David Stahler Jr.

 

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king illegal. |But also king.|

Basically, this is science fiction about a community where everyone is genetically engineered to be blind. Because... well, honestly it feels quasi-religious, like one of those weird philosophical religion-but-not-really-but-still-kinda things.

Aaaaaaaand then one guy discovers he can see, that the genetic engineering failed on him, and everything goes to pieces.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for delayed-action creepiness. It would be pretty hard to make into a videogame, but it could be done.

4 stars.

Tags for this one: 4-star, dystopian, rated E10+, science fiction

(Endnote: These have three very different covers. Dead in the Water is mostly realistic, All Summer Long is only vaguely evocative of the book, and Truesight... honestly looks almost like the cover of a horror movie.)

"189" series, story by Elliott Ryan, art by Hiroshi Tajiri

I really liked this series. That said, it's fairly odd, is an original English-language work, and involves zeppelins named after Metallica songs.

Yes.

 

It's also a three-book series at the time of writing, so I'll divide the review into three parts. Also, I'm not bothering with spoiler tags. You've been warmed.

 

Book 1 (officially titled "Frenemies")

 

This one introduces our three henceforth main characters: Taku Nakarai/Pale King (the mask on the first volume's cover, and the guy on the left on cover 2), Takeshi Uehara/Lightmorph Revenant (the guy in the cat mask), and Wilhelm Schönfelder/Bone Lord/Administrator of Zerodelve (the guy on the left in the first volume cover).

The three teenagers start out playing an unmemorable Minecraft avoiding-copyright-infringement-rebrand over the Internet, and then all of their chairs spontaneously fall through the floor. They appear in a stone chamber, where it is revealed that they have been transported to another world, and here I quote Wilhelm, "for no reason whatsoever," and they're supposed to build a continent-spanning empire. Taku picks the "artificer" archetype, which revolves around creating robots and things utilizing cheat magic. Takeshi gets the "sensei" archetype, which has him building a martial arts school. And Wilhelm takes "necromancer", which leads to a whole lot of trouble.

And then they are immediately dropped into areas seemingly primed for them to take over, so they take over in one of the more awesome montages I've ever seen.

 

Taku makes a bunch of robots after commandeering a blacksmith shop, takes over a city, renames it Making, and starts industrializing. Takeshi uses his power of sand telekinesis (it makes sense in context) to create a giant sandstone city named Chrysalis. Wilhelm makes a giant fortress which walks around on conglomerated bone legs, wanders around to battle sites obtaining more skeletons, and makes a giant throne out of skulls.

And then the drama begins, as three other people (John Veritas, Kei Hirata, and Lara Janus) are also summoned to provide opposition. Specifically, John Veritas is up against Taku (who's going by Pale King at this point, but I continue to refer to them by first names), Kei Hirata is against Takeshi, and Lara Janus is after Wilhelm. 

 

John Veritas goes dungeon-crawling, acquires a pretty decent set of magic items, steals one of the trains Taku invented, and gatecrashes a board meeting to duel Taku. Then we get an epic battle sequence, with Veritas' giant sword versus Taku's bladestaff (basically a metal-coated stick with knives stuck on one end), which ends in a draw despite Taku's access to a lot more resources (and thus magic) than Veritas has. They part ways semi-amiably after realizing neither of them can beat the other, with Veritas leaving to go fight crime instead of Taku. All the summoned people are informed that "Veritas vs. Pale King" is resolved.

Kei Hirata is rather an all-around irritating jerkface, repeatedly beats up everyone like he's in a videogame with zero consequences, and is eventually curb-stomped by Takeshi riding a giant sand mech. His segment took the least time, which I was glad of, because he annoyed me.

Aaaand then Wilhelm goes rather off the rails. From his mobile city-base-thing of Deadwall, he starts wrecking innocent bystanders/forests/what-have-you, all to get at and eliminate Lara. He eventually burns down a forest, which brings the wrath of Takeshi and his sand mech down on him. At the climax of the final fight, Taku shows up out of nowhere, steals Wilhelm's unconscious body, dumps him on an island codenamed "Zero", and thus ends book 1.

 

Favorite lines:

For his entire segment, Kei Hirata is shown screaming "REVENAAAAAAANT!!!" (number of a's and exclamation points varies) during his battles with all and sundry. At the end of the book, there's a "rejected scenes" section; one of them is Kei at the beginning of his journey, screaming "REVENAAAANT!!!!" while chasing a duck through a park with a kitchen knife.

Also from the rejected scenes, we have a final battle comprising Wilhelm, Takeshi, and Lara having a slap fight while Taku looks on like "what the heck, you guys?"

Book 2 (officially titled "Mafia")

 

Apparently, whatever summoned our guys here considers Wilhelm "defeated", so it summons three new people to take his place. [Note: Just before publishing this post, I realized I should put their names here, but I'd already taken the books back by then. Silly me.] They call their organiztion "le mafia" (not making this up). They're the three guys on the cover of Book 2.

In the interim between the end of Book 1 and the beginning of this one, Taku (who, by the way, has the "obtain blueprint" spell, usable on a long cooldown, which gives him a blueprint for whatever device he wants) has developed Monitor-class ironclads and the Gatling gun in addition to his trains. Takeshi has discovered a sort of transferrable blue fire power, which he gives to the other two. Wilhelm decided to mine "Zero" out of boredom. 

 

Anyway, le mafia get into all sorts of trouble and attempt to make drugs, which results in them paying Taku a whole lot of money because he has access to chemical reagents. Takeshi obtains sentient hamsters, which show up whenever needed to provide a break from le mafia and their awfulness.

Taku obtains zeppelins, which he painstakingly fills with hydrogen and enchants to be fire-retardant. He then uses them to spy on le mafia, but as he's deploying the first one, the counterparts show up.

This time, there's Monika Sakurai (vs. le mafia), Natsuki Himekawa (vs. Takeshi), and Jonathan Wright (vs. Taku). In the interest of not having another Wilhelm "no cost too great", Taku and Takeshi bully le mafia into signing a treaty (which the original three also sign) basically ensuring they can't be evil or attack each other.

Jonathan Wright tuns out to be a brilliant lawyer, attempts to take Taku to task for breaking the law, and realizes he hasn't broken the law. Taku and Wright also part ways fairly amiably, with Wright serving as Taku's legal counsel. "Wright vs. Pale King" resolved, etc etc.

Natsuki Himekawa obtains about the same caliber of magics as John Veritas got in book 1, charges through Chrysalis intending to take Takeshi down in a blaze of glory, and does so. I was going "please don't die either of you" throughout their entire battle... which ended with a bunch of sentient trees restraining them both and sending an unconscious Natsuki by train to Deadford (it's Wilhelm's skeleton mech city after he stopped supporting it and it fell over).

 

Monika Sakurai gathers up a bunch of team members, enacts an epic Mission: Impossible-style heist to get evidence to convict le mafia of war crimes, and escapes on the wrong train so she ends up on the ferry to Zero.

 

Aaaaand then Wilhelm (now calling himself Administrator of Zerodelve) sees her evidence, invokes a clause of the treaty, and summons everyone else to put le mafia on trial for war crimes. After a long trial utilizing an entire arsenal of Chekov's guns, we have a war.

 

Which really means that le mafia, currently trying to kick Natsuki and her band of followers out of Deadford, get epically wrecked. We have giant sand people on Takeshi's end, and ironclads/trains/Gatling guns/zeppelins on Taku's. Oh, and enchanted artillery.

 

[WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH]

 

It ends with Evil Mafia Dude One (non-graphically) taking a direct hit from an artillery shell, Evil Mafia Dude Two being impaled by a giant sword made of sand (courtesy of Takeshi; all we get/have to see are silhouettes), and Evil Mafia Dude Ringleader activating a weapon of last resort that misfires and dumps him in a dimension full of darkness and creepy... things. I think he dies. That one was the most evil, though, so he kinda deserves it.

[END SPOILERS]

Favorite lines:

    Evil Mafia Dude Ringleader: "You realize you'll need something pretty powerful to compel us to sign this, right?"

    Taku: *pulls a gun on him*

    Takeshi: "Why did you decide to dig out the middle of an entire island?"

    Wilhelm: "I got bored."

Book 3 (officially titled "Proxies")

 

This one starts off with the new guy, Satoru Ohmori, playing the Civilization-copyright-infringement-avoidance-knockoff endgame. Then he saves, gets up, walks out of the room, and falls through the floor.

I won't bore you with a lengthy recap of the first bit; this post is long enough already. It did provide me with one of my overall favorite lines from the series, though. Basically, Satoru bases his world-conquering strategy on his Civilization strategy, which involves such useful-as-game-mechanics-but-super-awful-when-real-people-are-involved things such as a police state and state property. 

This leads to thing such as Takeshi repeatedly saying "Big Brother is watching you..." around Satoru, and Taku calling him "Little Bro" (tying in to that). Satoru and Takeshi get into some odd proxy wars, into which stumble the three who try to topple them: an American mechanic whose name I've forgotten, a Korean (I think) doctor named Yi Suchong, and another Japanese gamer dude named Takao Suzuhara. 

 

The mechanic guy ends up amassing a whole lot of money retooling trains and going dungeon-delving; then he buys a tank and drives straight into one of the Satoru-Takeshi proxy wars. He quickly racks up quite the killcount, which makes Satoru try to sic Taku or Wilhelm on him. This led to a fairly funny exchange, which I put in my favorite lines section.

Dr. Suchong promptly decides to settle down in Chrysalis (Takeshi's capital) and practice his chosen profession. He's a sort of general physician, and I'm pretty sure the author researched what he was talking about, but I don't know enough about medicine to be sure. He eventually ends up performing an autopsy on someone suspected to have been assassinated, figures out that (in his words) it "isn't natural, doesn't appear to be caused by anything at all, and I would have to conclude it was either chemical or radiological if I didn't know about magic now." This tips Takeshi off that he's the summoned enemy, so Takeshi promptly officially employs him.

Takao Suzuhara acts like he's in a videogame and grinds (grinding, in videogame parlance, is repeatedly performing the same action in order to advance) until he's very powerful. Then he magically nukes Making, defeating Taku.

WHAT???

Taku ends up on a flotilla of galleons, zeppelins, and ironclads which he'd intended to explore with, sailing away from his continent with most of his create material-equipped subordinates with him.

 

And then the book ends.

 

Again, WHAT??? I'm sure Taku will end up finding the magical Americas or something in Book 4, but BOOK 4 ISN'T OUT YET!!!

Angery. 

Favorite lines:

 

    (for context, the three are delivering Satoru some dire warnings)

    Taku: "Then the grave..."

    Wilhelm: "...will be..."

    Takeshi: "...your density."

    Taku: "It's 'destiny', Takeshi."

 

    Satoru: "Come on, this guy is costing me millions of gold in tanks!"

    Taku: "Y'know, this is the guy who's making me millions of gold selling you tanks. And while you are well within your rights to try to get Wilhelm to smack me for it, be aware it's not going to work."

    Wilhelm (walking into the room): "Smack you for what?"

This series gets an overall 4 stars. That's as a series average; I'd probably rate book 1 at 5 stars, book 2 at 4 (despite le mafia), and book 3 at 3 (though I am biased due to the cliffhanger).

 

Were this series made of videogames, I'd rate them: T for books 1 and 3, but the upper limit of T15+ for book 2; the villains in that one get up to some pretty creepy and awful stuff.

 

TL/DR This series does not actually exist, as this post is an April Fools' Day joke. However, the joke's also kind of on me, because now I really want the series to exist. 

I was inspired in the joke by my mom's review of a noir Hamlet retelling, which movie also doesn't exist. In that, she said something to the effect of "I know, no fair, it's not April Fools' Day or anything," which made me wonder if I could do sort of the same thing for April Fools' Day. Except nobody reads my blog posts on the day they come out, so the joke will be lost.