Review: Son of a Liche

Son of a Liche by J. Zachary Pike
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a 5-star review.

The book continues The Dark Profit Saga with our heroes now outcasts. Their actions in Book 1 have now made them villains as far as the government is concerned. The government is inept as there is a genuine threat coming on the horizon; the Liche in the book's title. The government does nothing, but our heroes do.

Layered onto the story is a recounting of the chicanery associated with the derivative financial investments that ultimately caused the recession of 2008/2009. There is a werebear named "Sterns" for Pete's sake! The criticism being levied towards the financial industry are on point.

If you don't want to read about the actual disaster, read this book instead!

Can our heroes save the world and salvage their own reputation at the same time? You have to finish the book to find out.

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Review: Outcast: Mountain Warriors Book 1

Outcast: Mountain Warriors Book 1 by R.J. Burle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a 3-star review. That is an accurate estimate of my experience with this book.

The premise of this book is that our protagonist lives in a world where zombies have taken over. There is a narrow area on the east coast where "civilization" survives. The area is fenced off and the zombies are monitored via drones.

The protagonist irritates the wrong people and gets shuffled outside of the fenceline with a mission to contact a non-infected group that is living out in the wild areas of the country. There is a bit of intrigue as there hints of groups/people back in the civilized area working with individuals out in the wild. Also...vampires.

The book suffers from one primary issue.

The fighters in the wild are martial arts students. All of them. Survival living doesn't lend itself to martial arts studios.

Also, all of the fighters are near martial arts masters.

The lack of differentiation routinely took me out of the story.

The bones of the book were pretty good. The concept was interesting. The execution was a bit lacking.

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Review: The Forever King

The Forever King by Ben Galley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a 3-star review. That is an accurate estimate of my experience with this book.

The writing and general story structure were pretty good. However, the book had two significant flaws that were hard to overlook.

- there really wasn't much effort put into creating an emotional connection with any of the characters. The protagonists get victimized early on in the book with only a middling amount of character development to form the basis for an emotional connection.

- there is an inconsistent representation of power. On a related note, the balance of power is also inconsistent.

The magic users have lots of power, but they still work with ordinary fighters. Towards the end of the book, the fighters seem to be largely irrelevant to the ongoing fight while the magic users do all the heavy lifting. Equally, the protagonists have dragons that are quite powerful. There really doesn't seem to be that much of a need for normal infantry.

The first half of the book was really good, but the back half was a bit of a chore to finish. I don't have any plans to continue this series.

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