Four Stars: Wothlondia Rising by Gary Vanucci

September 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Wothlondia Rising by Gary Vanucci is a collection of six short stories set in the fantasy world of Wothlondia; between ogres, Faceless Knights, zombie hordes and demon containing amulets, there is plenty of adventure for each of the characters. The short stories are all prequel events to the next full novel Covenant of the Faceless Knights.

I was very excited to meet Gary Vanucci at GenCon this year and he was kind enough to provide me copies of his Beginnings Books, of which Wothlondia Rising is the first. While there were a few things that bothered me while I was reading Wothlondia Rising, I did genuinely enjoy the characters that we are introduced to in this anthology of short stories and am quite excited to see what happens in the full length novel, Covenant of the Faceless Knights!

Wothlondia Rising by Gary Vanucci

Goodreads | Amazon
Title: Wothlondia Rising (Beginnings #1)
Author: Gary Vanucci
Pages: 3700 Kindle locations
Genre-ish: DnD-style high Fantasy
Rating: ★★★★☆- great characters, needs some editting
Setting: Wothlondia is a world that you could easily encounter in a table-top roleplaying game such as Dungeons and Dragons. There are elves, half-elves, ogres, half-ogres, humans, dragons, griffins, giant eagles, walking dead, etc. Magic and steel are both good ways for adventurers to defend themselves with plenty of potion brewing and praying to various gods thrown in for good measure.
Premise: Each of the short stories stands on its own and each is about one main character and a defining event(s) that happened to them. These range from a horde of zombies invading to someone being injured at a wedding to an amulet being stolen.

Strengths:

  • I really liked all of the characters that we encountered and their stories make me excited to see how they all come together in the full length novels.
  • While there are a lot of books set in these high fantasy worlds, I felt that Wothlondia Rising had some originality and expansion of typical ideas to keep it feeling fresh.
  • Yey for kick-butt female barbarians that don’t let their father keep them from kicking zombie butt!!
  • I really like the whole idea of a short story anthology to explain various stories that made characters who they are. It adds a nice depth.
  • A few days after finishing this anthology, the characters that were introduced keep springing to my mind and making me smile. Wothlondia Rising evidently succeeded in having some really likable characters :).

Weaknesses:

  • As with many indie books, Wothlondia Rising definitely would have shown brighter with another round of editing. Many sentences had redundant or awkward phrasing in addition to the typical (but a bit too frequent) grammatical typos.
  • Slightly along those lines as well, the main plot arches of several of the short stories was not traditional at all and so was rather jarring to realize, “wait, that’s the end, but there was no resolution!!” Especially in short stories I feel that at least most of the traditional plot arc needs to be respected so that the reader has some grounding.
  • There was a fairly frequent use of exclamation points in the narrator’s text, which just struck me as odd. Now I’m definitely a fan of exclamation points (see above), but it takes away from the narrator’s voice if they are used too frequently. You shouldn’t use exclamation points to make the reader understand something is exciting, you should use your text.
  • Similarly when it came to the narrator’s voice, there was a bit too much info-dumping for the sake of the reader’s understanding, to the point that I felt like the narrator was explaining parenthetically to me because the narrator didn’t think I’d get what was going on otherwise. It’s important to trust your readers to pick up on things without as much hand-holding; it keeps them on their toes ;-).

Summary:
While there were some really great characters and ideas in Wothlondia Rising, it just didn’t perform as well as it could have. I say it over and over, but it’s really important to get some good editing even for indie books, since otherwise those great ideas will get muddled. If you are a reader who doesn’t mind this frequent problem with indie books, and perhaps does some table-top gaming, then you should definitely pick up Wothlondia Rising. If, on the other hand, those types of mistakes would bother you greatly, perhaps just wait for another book by Vanucci to come out, since I’ve definitely found those things to improve in later books. Also I love table-top roleplaying. :D

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-A
Anya from About The StorySimilar Stories Reviewed:
Time of the Twins by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman - More table-top gaming inspired fantasy!
Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman - Even more! OMG so good!

Wothlondia Rising by Gary Vanucci

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Four Stars: Merciful Flush by Lance Manion

June 15, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Merciful Flush is a collection of posts from Lance Manion’s blog, which range from disturbing to hilarious and back again over and over. Read at your own risk, you might get grossed out, you might get offended or you might have a cool idea and a laugh.

I first off need to say thank you so much to Lance Manion for sending me a copy of Merciful Flush for review. Merciful Flush is my first unsolicited review copy and it was quite exciting for an ickle fledgling like me! It was also highly entertaining :).

Goodreads
Title: Merciful Flush
Authors: Lance Manion
Pages: 199 (e-copy)
Genre-ish: Adult Humor (think South Park)
Rating: ★★★★☆ - Fairly entertaining, offensive to some I’m sure
Setting: Mostly the real world, though there are a few stories that definitely didn’t happen in this world (I hope….) or stray pretty far into someone’s imagination ;-).
Premise: As I said, this is a collection of blog posts that are each a stand alone short story. And honestly, this guy has one of the craziest imaginations I’ve run across in the last week, maybe the last month. Some examples that I can recall off the top of my head: an airplane window turning into a touch pad on the descent, taking a shower so hot your skin melts off, what starfish think to themselves.

Strengths:

  • Entertaining and compulsive writing, very easy to get sucked into “just one more”
  • Very very very very imaginative, I can’t believe what is now in my mind that wasn’t there before….
  • Fairly entertaining in spots, depending on your humor style, as a fan of puns, I was delighted :) Even if you don’t like puns, the dry delivery is sure to draw a chuckle

Weaknesses:

  • Just as imagination can be a strength, there are times that I was wholly disturbed by what came out of this guy’s head, read some of these stories at your own risk….
  • As can be expected from a blog to book transition, there were a few glaring typos and tripping sentences that could have been brushed up by another set of eyes
  • Swearing here and there so definitely not safe for the young ‘uns
  • Not as many laughable moments as I’d hoped for, but still more than I expected (since I don’t tend to laugh easily at the humor genre)

Summary: An easy and compulsive read, Merciful Flush by Lance Manion is a blogging success story and definitely worth picking up for any travel reading. If you are sensitive to normal adult humor offenses, you might not enjoy the book, but fans of South Park and modern comedians will probably really enjoy Merciful Flush.

Remember to subscribe to get weekly reviews of awesome books!

-A
Anya from About The StorySimilar Stories Reviewed:
Dogs and Goddesses – Another adult humor style book with swearing and some inappropriateness thrown in with laughs

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This World Must Die! Short Story by Horace Brown Fyfe

April 27, 2012 by 1 Comment


Short story This World Must Die! by Horace Brown Fyfe, examines the emotional and rational reactions to murder in a twenty second century space faring civilization

This World Must Die!As I was browsing my subscribed blogs today I came across an article about expanding your reading experience by Jessica from Sci-Fi Fan Letter as a guest post on Fantasy Cafe. At the end of the post, Jessica recommended a number of short stories that are available free at ManyBooks.net. Since it’s a rainy and cold afternoon and I’ve always been a fan of short Sci-Fi stories, I decided to try out the first one listed, This World Must Die! by Horace Brown Fyfe.

Title: This World Must Die!
Author: Horace Brown Fyfe
Pages: 34 (available as almost any e-format)
Genre-ish: Classic Space Sci-Fi
Rating: ★★★★☆ - Solid read, recommended
Setting: It’s the twenty-second century and humankind has pioneered settlements on Mars, the Moon and still on Earth in addition to a number of space stations. Murder has become fiercely outlawed and even accidental murder and suicide attempts are punished with lifetime sentences in the Moon jail. This has led to most of the “normal” population being so emotional disgusted by the thought of murder that even attempting mercy killing for the good of the species (ie to kill plague ridden insane people bent on infecting Mars) causes “normal” people to black out.
Premise: As it so happens, a plague that causes insanity and a one hundred percent mortality rate has broken out on an outer colony and a ship of quarantined people has been taken over by said insane people and is making a break for Mars. If they land they will inevitably spread the plague to everyone on Mars which will inevitably spread to Earth and Venus as well. There is no cure yet and they have know idea how it is even spread. Needless to say the ship needs to be stopped for the greater good. However all the normal military people that have been sent to do this admittedly horrible task have been physically unable to. This has led the government to turn to four prisoners who committed violent crimes because they are the only ones who have any hope of actually killing this ship of plagued people.

Strengths:

  • Very classic sci-fi in terms of spaceships and colonies and unforseen consequences to modern societies current direction
  • Strong writing and the two characters that become the main focus pull you in to them even in the few short pages that you have to get to know them
  • Interesting premise given the debates about the death penalty and when murder is acceptable in today’s society
  • Very fast read, only took me an hour
  • There is a picture in the format that I downloaded :D (I just did a pdf)
  • It’s free! What have you really got to lose?

Weaknesses:

  • It’s a sad premise and there is a lot of death and violence packed into the pages, as could be expected
  • Because of it’s length, obviously not a lot of development could occur
  • It basically ends up saying that violence is important to have in the population, and I’m not sure where I am going to end up on that internal debate (ie my head is still confused)

Summary:
If you have been wanting to try out some classic Sci-Fi but don’t want a long term commitment, this is a good one-hour stand. It isn’t as strong as some of the other classic short stories I’ve read (Asimov is pretty hard to beat…) but it does bring up an interesting idea and presents it with some characters I grew fond of.

Has anyone else read this? Go read it and tell me what you think! Anyone have any other recommendations for good short stories (especially if they are free!).

-A
Anya from About The Story

Similar Stories Reviewed:
Dune (Another Classic Sci-Fi story) 

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The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey

July 29, 2011 by Leave a Comment

I read a lot of Anne McCaffrey when I was younger, and some of her stuff is definitely for young adults, but I think she has some really interesting lesser known stories and this is one of them. This book is actually a collection of all the short stories about Helva (the ship who sang) named after the first short story. They flow fairly nicely if I remember correctly though, and I consider them basically a series.

Title: The Ship Who Sang
Author: Anne McCaffrey
Pages: 248 all told (paperback)
Setting: Far future in the same universe as other McCaffrey series since the grouping of settled planets that Pern is part of is in this universe. Basic space travel setting really except for the brain ships
Premise: Parents of severely physically handicapped babies can choose to have their children become part of the brain ships program where they are trained from childhood to control a space ship with their brains and then travel the galaxies on jobs for the company that loans them all the training to pay off their enormous debts. Helva is one such person who is also a fan of singing through her ship and goes on lots of adventures with her “brawns” who are plain old flesh and blood humans who help her out.

Strengths:

  • Fun main character who just happens to be a brain in a ship 
  • Interesting twist on classic space adventure
  • Short and easy to read
  • Even after quite a few years I still remember Helva very fondly :-)

Weaknesses:

  • Less memorable plot (since I certainly don’t really remember them) 
  • The premise is honestly a little bit creepy, I mean a human brain fused with a ship…
  • The “brawns” (Helva’s companions) are not as well developed or memorable
  • The stories have been criticized for locking away disabled children in ships and making them indentured servants to a company

Summary: While this collection might not be for everyone I found them enjoyable when I was younger and therefore they should be a quick and entertaining read. The stories also raise some interesting ethical questions about whether this sort of practice is a good or a bad thing, since it does enable people who would otherwise be unlikely to live on their own to travel the universe, but it also makes them indentured servants for the beginning of their lives unless they are quite lucky. Also because it is a collection of short stories that aren’t that strongly connected, it would be easy to set down and pick up again as you wished.

-A

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