Yoyogod's 2020 Readings

In 2019, my goal was to read over 200 books, and I succeeded, but there was a downside to this goal. A lot of larger books in my library got pushed the side and were left unread so I could keep my numbers up. Therefore, my 2020 reading goal is to read as many of my bigger books as I can, especially omnibus editions. I won't just be reading big books,but I do want to clear as many of the bigger volumes as possible off of my to read shelf.

Welcome back!

Best wishes for 2020!

Another resolution is to keep up in 2020 with all my friends on LT. Happy New Year!

Happy reading in 2020, Nathan!

Thanks everybody.

1) Restaurant to Another World, Vol. 3 by Junpei Inuzuka

I decided to start they year off with a quick read that's also from one of my favorite series.

2) The Land: Monsters by Aleron Kong

This is a series that I've had mixed feelings on. The main character is an obnoxious frat boy. The books are full of pointless pop culture references. The author clearly thinks he's funny, even though he's not, and he has a bad habit of randomly dropping plot threads. Usually, the books at least have an interesting story, but not this time.

This book would have been much better named The Land: Padding, because that's all it is. The plot doesn't advance at all. About half the book is dedicated to dealing with game prompts from the previous book. The MC spends a lot of time deciding on choices, but very little time doing anything. There's a whole chapter about an attack of diarrhea. The author randomly creates an entirely new major game system that surprisingly nobody ever mentioned before, but which arrives just in time to give the MC a major power boost just when he needs it.

This books sucks and I hope it's the worst book I read this year.

Enjoy your 2020 reading!

8> thanks

3) On the Shoulders of Titans by Andrew Rowe

This is the sequel to Sufficiently Advanced Magic, which I read last month. I'm really enjoying the series. it involves magical school, dungeon crawling, political conspiracy, and some good fights.

4) Alumni by Dennis Vanderkerken and Dakota Krout

This is the sequel to Axiom, which I read last month. I read, I don't think this one was as good as the previous volume, but was still good.

5) Light Online Book One: Farmer by Tom Larcombe

This is another LitRPG series. Instead of being focused on combat or saving the world, this one has a protagonist who just wants to make a living. He gets a job working as a farmer in a VR MMO It's a surprisingly decent story.

6) Gargantis by Thomas Taylor

This is a nice follow up to the book Malamander, which i got through ER last year. It's a fun, weird middle-grade adventure novel set in a small town where weird supernatural stuff seems to happen fairly frequently. It's well worth reading.

7) World's Strongest Farmer by Tyr Havolt

This book is a LitRPG take on the Farm Boy Hero trope. It's one of those self published books that really could have benefited from the author hiring someone to proofread (and to design the cover, cause that thing is butt ugly). The story itself is okay, but not particularly great.

8) Light Online Book Two: Keeper by Tom Larcombe

If I had known this was available, I would have probably read this one immediately after reading book one. I'm really liking this series. It's far less combat focused than most LitRPG books, and is mostly about running an inn and building up the surrounding town. There is still some fighting with the hero and his team doing a dungeon run and helping to fight off goblin attacks caused by a military conspiracy. I'm looking forward to book 3 whenever it comes out.

9) Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson

I picked this up because the ebook version was on sale the other day, and I usually like Sanderson's books. This one was okay. It's not his best stuff, but i didn't actively dislike it as I did with Oathbringer.

10) Cells at Work!, Vol. 1 by Akane Shimizu

I watched the anime adaptation of this manga on Netflix last week and loved it so much that i decided to start reading the original. It's an educational series about anthropomorphic human body cells, focusing on an airheaded red blood cell and the heroic white blood cell who continually rescues her.

11) Irrelevant Jack by Prax Venter

This is yet another LitRPG. I don't have much to say about it except that I enjoyed it.

12) Irrelevant Jack 2 by Prax Venter
13) Irrelevant Jack 3 by Prax Venter

I like the series, but don't have much to say about it.

14) Hero of Thera by Eric Nylund

I was surprised to discover that a professional fantasy author who has been in the business for more than two decades, who has written other books that I've read and enjoyed, and who has even been nominated for the World Fantasy Award had actually written a LitRPG novel. Not surprisingly, it's one of the best written books in the genre and a lot of fun. I've already started on reading the sequel.

15) A Thousand Drunken Monkeys by Eric Nylund

This is the sequel to Hero of Thera. I like the series, and will get book three if it ever comes out.

16) Path of Darkness by A. P. Gore & Patricia Jones

This books sucks. It's another LitRPG, and like many self published books, it's full of spelling and grammatical errors. What's even worse is that it's also full of inconsistencies in plot, worldbuilding, and characterization. Definitely not recommended.

17) Barrow King by C. M. Carney

This is another LitRPG. This one's pretty good.

18) The Lost City
19) Killing Time
20 Scourge of Souls all by C. M. Carney

These are volumes 2, 3, and 4 of the series that started with Barrow King. I'm already reading volume 5, and will probably read the rest of the series.

Oh yeah, I've also completed my first audiobook of 2020:

21) Eldren: The book of the dark by William Meikle

This is essentially a Scottish version of Salem's Lot, which isn't a bad thing. There are some differences other than the setting. This one has a vampire hunter who is an escaped mental patient. It also has a religious/mythological history behind the vampires and some good vampires. Overall, it's a good book, and my only complaint is that I thought the narrator's Scottish accent was a bit too thick at times, which occasionally gave me some trouble understanding him.

22) The Forsaken God
23) Chaos Rising by C. M. Carney

And I have now read all of this series that has been published so far.

24) The Crafter's Dilemma by Jonathan Brooks

This is the third volume in a dungeon core series about a dungeon that prefers crafting to killing people. It's an okay book. I think I liked the first two better, but it's not bad.

25) Dungeons of Strata by G. D. Penman

This is another LitRPG book that's the first of the series. I got it because it features a character who plays as something other than a human and has an unusual, both of which are always pluses in my book. Sadly, I didn't care for it that much. I disliked all of the characters and the setting was just too gloomy for my taste. Also, it was pretty clear from early on that the writer was going for a "this video game isn't really a game and is in fact real and a plot by a supernatural evil force" story.

26) Tales of a Northblood: Winter's Breath by Carrie Summers

I thought that Summers's previous series, Stonehaven League, was one of the better written LitRPGs I read last year, so I figured I'd give this new one a shot. This is more of an Isekai-type LitRPG with characters from Earth being mysteriously transported to a world that works like an RPG. I really dug this one and I look forward to reading more books in the series when they're published.

27) The Fucking Zombie Apocalypse by Bryan Smith

Zombie fiction is pretty much played out at this point, and the only reasons I picked this up were because the plot sounded crazy and because Smith is a very talented writer. The book is described as being about a man braving the zombie apocalypse to rescue his pet hamster from his crazy girlfriend. We quickly discover that the girlfriend maybe isn't crazy, the protagonist is an unreliable alcoholic and kind of a jerk, and the devil is involved in all this for some reason. The story isn't bad, but it's only about 100 pages long and really would have been better if it was a bit longer so things could have been fleshed out more.

28) Scamps & Scoundrels
29) Second Story Man
30) Skull and Thrones all by Eric Ugland

I've been having a hard time finding any decent LitRPG lately, so I decided to try this series. It's called The Bad guys and is by an author whose other series, The Good guys, I like. Both series are set in the same world and are about criminals who travel from our world to an RPG world when they're in big trouble. This series is about a guy who decides to continue his career as a thief in the fantasy world, only he ends up spending more time helping people than stealing stuff and ultimately gets caught up in the politics of the local empire. I think I actually like this series better than the other one.

31) Spice & Wolf, Vol. 2 by Isuna Hasekura

Now I read the second volume of a light novel series I started last year. The series is a bout a traveling merchant and his companion Holo the wisewolf, a sort of fertility goddess ho mostly takes the form of a pretty girl with a wolf's ears and tail. This volume focuses on the merchant, Lawrence, facing financial ruin after making a very bad deal. I thought it was a bit slow to get started, but in the end, I enjoyed it.

32) WorldEnd: What do You Do Wat the End of the World? Are You Busy? Will you Save Me?, Vol. 1 by Akira Kareno

This is the first volume of a nice light novel series about the last human who is revived centuries after the rest of humanity is wiped out and who helps a group of teenage female leprechauns battle monsters. It's not as weird as it sounds, but I liked it.

33) Silver Fox & The Western Hero: Warrior Reborn by M. H. Johnson

This was a hybrid of LitRPG and Wuxia (a sort of Chinese martial arts thing about getting ridiculously powerful). It was alright, but the LitRPG elements felt tacked on.

34) the Sign of Nine by G. S. Denning

This is the 4th Warlock Holmes novel. It's a parody of The Sign of the Four

Wishing you a great weekend, Nathan.

34 books already is impressive going!

I’ve got the first Warlock Holmes book wishlisted. They look like fun!

>24 PaulCranswick: Thanks
>25 drneutron: It's a fun series.

35) Annex by Dennis Vanderkerken

This is the third book of the Artorian's Archives series, which seems to mostly exist to do some extra world building in the world of Dakota Krout's Divine Dungeon series. I thought this was a very weak entry in the series as it spent the first 40% or so of the book dealing with the cliffhanger from the end of book 2, which felt way too drawn out.

36) Cataclysm by James A. Hunter

This is a nice LitRPG, even if its basic premise--downloading your mind to a video game whose servers are hidden in underground bunkers so you can escape an imminent extinction event in the form of a giant asteroid impact--is a bit silly.

37) Clear Sky by Patrick Laplante

This is the first volume of a Wuxia/cultivation style fantasy series. It's a fun enough series with my only complain being that the author chose to make the main character a man from Earth who got reincarnated in a Chinese fantasy world with all of his memories, but didn't actually make this affect the story in any appreciable way.

38) Strange Mitcham by James Clark

i have no idea why I bought this book. I have never heard of Mitcham and if it wasn't for the cover telling me it's in Surrey/south London, I would have no idea where it is. I tink I picked it up because it's a true ghost story/local folklore type book. it's a bit short and kind of dull, though.

39) Crimson Alliance by james A. Hunter

This is the second Viridian Gate book, the sequel to Cataclysm, and I really like the series. I've been listening to them in audiobook so far, so I'll likely get volume three when I get my next audible credit.

40) Blood Moon by Patrick Laplante

This is the sequel to Clear Sky. I'm enjoying the series so far.

41) Menacing Misfits by Robyn Wideman

This is the first volume in a new series that's pretty much LitRPG-lite. It's about a young man at a wizard school who has to go on dungeon crawls with his friends to pay for his schooling. It's a fun story.

42) Light in the Darkness
43) Pure Jade
44) Corrupted Crimson by Patrick Laplante

Continuing this series. I generally like it, but I thoughght Crimson dragged a bit.

45) Coyote Rage by Owl Goingback

I decided to take a bit of a break from the cultivation/wuxia series to read this novel that's up for the Stoker this year. It's a horror novel (or maybe even a dark fantasy) based on the premise that many of the animal people are getting fed up with the way humans treat the world and so Coyote (the trickster) decides to make wiping us out possible by killing the only remaining human member of the great council and his estranged daughter. It's a great book and my only complaint is the ending, which doesn't bring a real resolution and seems a bit too much like the set up for a sequel.

45) SCP Foundation: Iris through the Looking Glass, Vol 1 by Akira

This is a light novel based off of the SCP, which is an online collaborative fiction project about a mysterious organization that collects supernatural and superscientifict things. This novel is about a Japanese boy named ███████ (the book uses the standard SCP practice of redacting certain names and dates). ███████ gets pulled through a photograph and ends up in an SCP research facility where he interacts various weird stuff. It's a good book for anyone with a basic knowledge of SCP.

46) Moon People by Dale M. Courtney

I read this for the 372 Pages podcast, which focuses on bad books, and this is a strong contender for the worst book I've ever read. It's loaded with spelling and grammatical errors, which is pretty standard for self-pubbed book whose authors are too cheap to spring for an editor. The author seems to randomly divide the text into paragraphs and shows dialogue by having the speakers name appear in parentheses before their speech instead of using quotation marks and the word said. The plot makes no sense. The characters barely qualify as too dimensional. It's bad in pretty much every conceivable way.

47) The Devil Is a Part-Timer, Vol. 6 by Satoshi Wagahara

I also finished another volume in one of my favorite light novel series. I didn't care for this one as much as the previous volumes as I found the plot a bit too slow moving.

48) Kindling by Patrick Laplante
49) 24354724::Shifting Tides by Patrick Laplante

I have now read all of the published books in this series, and i generally like them, except for the recurring villain, who is annoying.

50) Ascendance of a Bookworm, Part 1, Vol. 1 by Miya Kazuki

This is a very different Japanese isekai novel. Usually these are about people from our world who get reborn into the world of an RPG and quickly end up becoming ridiculously powerful. This book is about a young woman who loves books and is about to start her dream job of being a librarian when she is killed during an earth quake when her bookshelves collapse and she is buried alive in books. She is reborn as a young girl in a poor family in a fantasy world where the literacy rate is practically nil, the printing press hasn't been invented, and the only type of paper is expensive parchment. Despite being this, and despite being small, weak, and sickly, she makes it her mission to find a way to live a life surrounded by books. It's a very slow-paced, non-actiony book that I actually really enjoyed.

51) Suppose a kid from the Last Dungeon Boonies Moved to a Starter town, vol. 1 by Toshio Satou

This is another japanese light novel. This one isn't isekai, but is set in an RPG-like universe (though not a particularly LitRPG universe). This one is about a boy from a town out in the boonies where all the old hero-who-defeated-the-demon-lord-and-saved-the-world types retired to long ago and is populated by their crazy strong descendants. The protagonist is a young man who is the weakest member of the village (but still at near Superman levels of strength) who decides to go to the nation's capitol to become a guardsman. The story goes for a more humorous tone than I thought it would, and frankly the humor just doesn't work for me.

52) Reincarnated as a Sword, vol. 1 by Yuu Tanaka

This is a light novel that is very much both isekai and set in an RPG world. It's about a guy from our world who gets reincarnated as a magic sword. He spends about 1/3 of the book flying around killing monsters on his own before partnering with a twelve year old cat girl. There's no real character devolopment or depth, but I found it to be fun.

53) WorldEnd What do you Do at the End of the world? Are You busy? Will You Save Us?, Vol. 2 by Akira Kareno

Another light novel finished. While this one had some fighting, it's far more romancy. It's about the developing love between a young man who should have died centuries ago and a teen girl who nearly dies in battle. It's not as creepy as I make it sound.

54) Spice & Wolf, Vol. 3 by Isuna Hasekura

Speaking of light novels and romance, this is the most romance thing I've read. This time a rival merchant falls in love with Holo the Wisewolf, and gets into an economic duel with the merchant Lawrence for Holo's heart. It's good stuff.

55) Gemini's Crossing by Arlo Adams

This is a really generic, boring LitRPG with vapid characters, an uninteresting plot, and harem elements, which is something I've been trying to avoid in these books.

56) The Perfectly Fine House by Stephen Kozeniewski and Wile E. Young

This is part reverse haunted house book part apocalyptic fiction. The book is set in a world where everyone and everything that dies turns into a ghost. Ghosts are everywhere, except for one house, which has somehow become unhauntable, and the effect is spreading. The story focuses on a pair of twins (one alive and one ghost) who are among the first to discover the phenomenon and who are forced to weather an oncoming apocalypse (for the dead) in which everyone has to cope with suddenly being mortal. It's a really good book with a different take on ghosts. I highly recommend.

57) The Land of the Undying Lord by J. T. Wright

This was a surprisingly good LitRPG novel.

58) Reincarnated As a Sword, vol. 2 by Yuu Tanaka

This is the second volume of the series about a man who was reincarnated as a sword and the young cat girl who wields him. This volume is mostly about the pair doing dungeon dives to level up. I enjoy it.

59) The Triangle of Belief by Brian Keene

This is one of the three volumes in the most recent batch of books in Keene's annual Maelstrom limited edition book imprint. This particular book is nonfiction about the nature of belief particularly relating to various paranormal events of his youth and some more recent ones, such as his UFO sighting from 2018 and the possible haunting that inspired his book The Girl on the Glider. I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in the paranormal if it ever gets a wider release.

60) Life Reset: Human Resource by Shemer Kuznits

I was surprised to hear that this book was released. It's the fourth volume in the series, and volume three felt very much as if the author was burned out on the series and was planning to abandon it. It feels very much like a return to form and is much better than volume three.

61) Operation Congo by William Meikle

This is another book I didn't know was coming out. it's volume 9 in the S-Squad series, about a British special forces squad that keeps running into monsters. This time around, they're sent to rescue a team of WHO doctors that were in the Congo investigating a possible plague outbreak in an isolated village. It turns out that the doctors were kidnapped by descendants of the Minoans who ride around on the back of velociraptors. It's fun, pulpy goodness.

Wow, Nathan, you really are reading up a storm.

Stay safe

>34 PaulCranswick: Thanks. I'm doing my best. Unfortunately, my job is "essential," so I still have to go to work even though there's a stay at home order here. Fortunately, my job is just sitting in a little booth at gas station where I'm isolated from the few customers we get. I've been getting a fair bit of reading done there.

62) The Last Odyssey by James Rollins

This is the latest book in the Sigma Force thriller series. This time around, Sigma must retrace the journey of Ulysses in The Odyssey to rescue a senator's daughter and to stop a group of apocalyptic religious fanatics from trying to destroy the world by opening the gates of Tartarus.

63) By the Grace of the Gods: Volume One by Roy

This is an isekai style light novel that's pretty chill. It's about a man who, after his death, is reborn as a young boy in a fantasy world. At first he just wants to live in the forest and raise slimes, but eventually he's more-or-less adopted by a kindly baron. It's a very relaxing story with little in the way of fighting, but I still found it immensely entertaining.

64) Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill: Volume One by Ren Eguchi

This is also an isekai style light novel, but not one I enjoyed as much. This is about a guy who is accidentally summoned to another world by a hero summoning spell. However, his only special ability allows him to summon groceries from our world, which isn't terribly useful in fighting a demon lord, so he goes off to do his own thing. His own thing mostly involves wandering around and cooking meals using a combination of Earthly food and monster meat, which enables him to tame a wolf monster and a slime. Despite how much I love the Restaurant to Another world series, which also focuses on food, I just found this book kind of dull.

65) So, I'm a Spider, So What? Vol. 8 by Okina Baba

This is the latest volume of my favorite light novel series. This volume is pretty much a tragedy. It focuses on a boy who was reincarnated in the world as a goblin, got tortured and driven mad by humans, evolved into an ogre, went on a rampage, and went insane. The series MC, the titular spider, is still in it, but since she lost her powers at the end of the last book, and doesn't start getting them back until the end of this book, she doesn't really do a whole lot. I still really liked it.

Hope you have had a lovely, peaceful, safe and healthy weekend, Nathan.

>37 PaulCranswick: I did thanks.

66) Super Villains Unite

This is a complete collection of the comic book series Super Villain Team-Up. It starts with the Submariner trying to get Dr. Doom to team up with him, but Doom refuses. Then Doom tries to get Submariner to team up, but Submariner refuses. Doom doesn't want to take no for an answer and uses force to make Submariner join him. Then they fight a bunch of super heroes and some other villains. It's not bad, but not super great.

67) Eastbound and Town by Eric Ugland

This is the 8th volume in The good guys series. I liked it a bit better than the previous volume, but it's not the best in the series.

68) The Spirit Box by J. H. Glaze

This was a horror novel about a gut who inherits a box with a spirit inside. Naturally, it's an evil spirit that wants the guy to feed people to it so it can be reborn. It was alright.

69) One For the Road by Wesley Southard

This is a horror novella about a band full of dysfunctional a-holes. One night, for reasons that are never explained, the band all falls asleep in their van and wakes up to find themselves in an abandoned desert town. It turns out to be a surreal nightmarish town full which switches from being in one inhospitable terrain to another and is full of monsters. It's a fun bit of extreme horror.

My reading has slowed down a bit this week, for some reason. So far it's:

70) Phone Losers of America by Brad Carter

This is a rather odd book. It's a mix of fiction and nonfiction about various pranks and criminal activities in the author's past as well as general weirdness. It's pretty funny stuff.

71) The Book of Taltos by Steven Brust

i read the first volume of the Vlad Taltos omnibus editions last year, I think, and now I picked up the second. I like the series, but will not be reading volume 3 any time soon as the ebook is ridiculously overpriced ($11.99 for a 13 year old book).

I wanted my message this year to be fairly universal in a time we all should be pulling together, whatever our beliefs. Happy Celebration, Happy Sunday, Nathan.

>40 PaulCranswick: Thanks

72) Magus of the Library Vol. 1
73) Magus of the Library Vol. 2
74) Magus of the Library Vol. 3 all by Mitsu Izumi

I picked up the first volume of this because it showed up in my Amazon recommendations and the ebook was only 99¢ and it sounded interesting. Then as soon as I finished that I bought volume 2 and got volume 3 when I finished 2. This is a manga series about a half-elf boy who grows up in a human town where he is, at first, treated badly. He loves books and dreams of becoming a librarian at the world's great central library. Volume one is about him as a very young boy where he first meets librarians from the central library and learns to stand up for himself. The second book is set at age 13, and is about his journey to the library to take the exam to become a librarian. Volume 3 is about the librarian exam. I really enjoyed this series and will get volume 4 when it comes out.

75) Wolf Hunt 3 by Jeff Strand

This book is pretty much what I expect from Strand's Wolf Hunt books. It's about former mobsters George and Lou who are tasked with hauling a psychotic werewolf across the country to assassinate another werewolf at the behest of a guy who leads a black ops sort of group that creates werewolf soldiers and reanimates the dead. Naturally things just get weird after that.

Congrats on hitting the goal!

Congratulations on reaching 75, Nathan!

>43 drneutron: & >44 FAMeulstee: Thanks

76) Light Online Book Three: Leader by Tom Larcombe

This is another LitRPG. I don't have a lot to say about it as not a lot really happened in the book, but I still liked it for some reason.

77) Path of the Necromancer by Deck Davis

This is the first volume of a LitRPG-light series, where there is still loot, dungeons (though they play no part in this story), skill trees, and experience, but no stats, no characters agonizing over which skill to pick on leveling up, and no quests. It's also one of the rare books in the genre that isn't set in a VR game and doesn't have an isekai plot. The book is about a novice necromancer who has just graduated from the academy and is set out on his first mission with his master when things go wrong. Surprisingly for the first volume in a LitRPG series, it's pretty much a self contained story.

78) Under My Skin by Charles de Lint

De Lint is one of my favorite writers, and the only novels of his I haven't read are the books in his Wildlings YA series. The book is set in a town in southern California where, for reasons that are not explained, certain teenagers gain the ability to turn into animals. Not surprisingly, this causes some people to panic and attracts the attention of the government and corporations. It's not a bad book, but it's far from my favorite of de Lint's books. I think my main dislike is that it's a bit more actiony than I expect in a de Lint book.

79) Alanna: The First Adventure by Tamora Pierce

I picked this (and its first two sequels) up from a thrift shop for 25¢ years ago and decided it was finally time to read it. It's about a young girl named Alanna who wants to be a knight, and so pretends to be a boy and takes her twin brother's place as a page while he follows his dream of becoming a sorcerer. It's a fun story that (I assume) would be empowering for young girls, though if it were written today (as opposed to nearly 40 years ago) some of the scenes where Alanna says she wishes she were a boy would be written differently as they (unintentionally) come across as a bit transphobic.

Congratulations on passing 75, Nathan.

>47 PaulCranswick: thanks

80) Code of the Necromancer by Deck Davis

This is the sequel to the book number 77. I feel pretty much the same way about this one as I did that one. There's a third book in the series, but I'm not sure about reading that one as the reviews indicate that the necromancer hardly plays any role in the book.

81) Blood Kin by Ronald Kelly

A week or so ago, horror author Brian Keene posted a list of his top 10 favorite horror novels on Twitter. I had read all but two of them, so I figured I might as well try the other two. This was one of them. This is a vampire novel set in a small town in the southern US in the early 1990s. It was pretty good. There are some cliches, with the MC being a recovering alcoholic man who is separated from his family but still loves his wife and kids and the main thing keeping them apart is his evil mother in law, who is as unlikable as the actual vampire.

82) The Oathbound by Mercedes Lackey

I picked this up because r/fantasy's book bingo this year has a square for a novel featuring an asexual or aromantic character, this book came up on a list of books with asexual/aromantic characters, and I generally like Mercedes Lackey's books. This book is about a pair of female mercenaries, a warrior (who has taken a vow that makes her a sexual) and a mage. It's a nice, adventurous fantasy with my only complaint being that the novel is very much episodic, to the point that it feels like it was originally written as a bunch of short stories that were edited together to make a novel.

83) Manhattan Grimoire by Sandy DeLuca

This is a book that I bought for my Kindle back when I first got it and never got around to reading. I finally read it because r/fantasy's book bingo has a book about books square this year, and I thought I could use this, but I can't because despite the title (and the description indicating that it's about a woman being menaced by a warlock who wants his grimoire back), books play almost no part in the story. It is about a woman who is menaced by a warlock, or possibly she's suffering from mental illness, or maybe she's hallucinating due to ingesting some sort of hallucinogen. The book leaves all three as possibilities, which left me feeling blah.

84) The Jade Lord by James A. Hunter

This in the third book in the Viridian Gate Archives series, and I didn't hate it, but I didn't like it as much as the previous two. I'm not entirely sure if I'll continue the series.

85) The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle

This is another book that's been sitting on my shelf for a long time that got dusted off for r/fantasy's book bingo, in this case for their "Big Dumb Thing" square. The big dumb thing in this 50s era hard science fiction novel is the titular black cloud, a massive cloud of space dust that is discovered to be hurtling towards the Earth and blocks out the sun causing massive devastation. Fortunately there's a group of astronomers to study the cloud's odd behavior and to advise the world's foolish politicians. The book has some good spots, but the main character is too arrogant and unlikable, and way too much time is spent discussing the science with paragraphs full of mathematical formulas, graphs, and arcane theorizing.

86) Ruthless by Dakota Krout

This is the latest volume in my Favorite LitRPG series. In this volume, thousands of people who have escaped from a dying Earth only to starve in an RPG world and everybody the MC has ticked off in the previous volumes team up to attack the MC's guild. Meanwhile the MC is busy trying to level up his class so he can proceed to the next area of the game world. It was a good story, if a bit dark.

87) Good Boy by Thomas A. Clark

I really liked this one. It's a post-apocalyptic zombie novel told from the perspective of a small dog who leads a pack of animals that's trying to survive. It's a very moving story. My only complaint is that the zombie plague is somehow simultaneously caused by a mutated form of rabies and mutant roundworms (which makes no sense, but zombie plagues are kind of nonsensical to begin with) , and the animals are immune because of their rabies vaccinations, but despite knowing that the disease is (partly) caused by rabies, humanity is mostly wiped out instead of inoculating itself against rabies.

88) Submitted for the Approval of the Midnight Pals by Bitter Karella

This is a bit of a weird book that I helped crowdfund. It's sort of like the old TV series Are You Afraid of the Dark?, in which a group of kids gather around a campfire to tell scary stories, only in this version the kids are some of the greatest horror authors of all time--like Stephen King, Dean Koontz, H. P. Lovecraft, Clive Barker, and Edgar Allan Poe--and they almost never manage to tell a story as their attempts tend to devolve into arguments or general silliness.

89) The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells

I apparently bought this for my Kindle in 2011 and never got around to reading it. I finally read it for r/fantasy's book bingo, which has a square for optimistic SFF, which I found so vague a category that I looked through lists of optimistic fantasy and found this. I'm really not sure what makes this story more optimistic than other fantasy (other than grimdark and dark fantasy) but whatever. I really liked the story, which is about a shapeshifter named Moon finding his place in the world.

90) The Stone of Sorrow by Brooke Carter

I've got mixed feelings for this book. I got it from Early Reviewers back in March, started reading it right away, and thought the first chapter was so pointless that I put it down and started reading another book. Then I forgot about it for a month and a half. When I finally got back to it, I found that the rest of the book was good, but not great. The plot was decent, but I thought the main character just breezed through every challenge placed in her way, which was a bit boring, and her relationships with her companions were a bit weird with (for example) going from hating a character to being a friend to being in love (I think) in the space of a few weeks. Over all, it's not a bad book, but not really all that great either.

91) The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

This is a fantasy novella set in a world based on ancient China. It's about an empress who is cast aside by the emperor after bearing him an heir. The story is told in a rather unconventional way, with the empress's former servant narrating the story to a historian cleric after the empress's death as the cleric catalogues item's in the empress's former house of exile. It's an interesting story told in an interesting way.

92) 668: The Neighbor of the Beast by Charles l. Grant (writing as Lionel Fenn)

I've always loved comedic fantasy, and back when I was in high school, I loved the Kent Montana series of books about a Scottish lord/actor who has a bad habit of stumbling across monsters, aliens, and mad scientists. Somehow, I missed this book, which was the last one in the series. I finally got around to it when I spotted it on a website that publishers use to give away free audible codes of their books. I don't know if it was because I was hearing it in audio format, or if it was that the last volume isn't as good as earlier ones, or if it's just that my tastes in humor have changed in the last 28 years, but I didn't like this one s much as I remember liking the others in the series. It wasn't bad. It had a crazy plot that combined soap opera melodrama with a cosmic horror story about a cult trying to bring the older gods back to Earth. I can't really recommend the book, but I think that at some point I'll have to try and reread the other volumes of the series.

93) Mage Errant by John Bierce

This is an audiobook omnibus edition of Into the Labyrinth and Jewel of the Endless Erg. It's one of those books about a teenage boy attending a magic school. The first novel is about him being bullied and feeling worthless while he becomes apprenticed to a librarian, makes some friends, and proves himself in the labyrinth. The second novel has him and his friends taking a class trip to a desert city ruled by a dragon where they get caught up in a conspiracy. This is one of those rare books that I couldn't put down (or stop listening to since it's audio). I really loved it and will get the third book when I get my next audible credit.

94) One Piece: Ace's Story, Vol. 1 by Sho Hinata

This is a light novel set in the world of Eiichiro Oda's One Piece manga. Though calling it a novel is a bit of a stretch as it's really three snapsots of Portgas D. Ace's life as told by Deuce, a member of his pirate crew. The first story is how Ace and Deuce met when they where stranded on a desert island. The second is how Ace first met Ensign Isuka, a nave officer who chased him around the Grand Line. The third is the story of Ace's adventure on the Sabody Archipeligo just before entering the New World. It's a simple, but fun book that's really only of interest to One Piece fans.

96) A Bond Broken by J. T. Wright

This is the sequel to The Land of the Undying Lord, a LitRPG fantasy I read last year. I really like the series, though the MC was an idiot for the last half of the book. He got an ability that makes people forget he's there, forgot about it, and spent all his time sulking because everybody forgot he was there.

97) By the Grace of the Gods, Volume 2 by Roy

This is the second volume in a light novel isekai style series that i love. This one had more action than volume one, but still felt very relaxed. I already pre-ordered volume 3.

98) Queen in the Mud by Maari

This was a refreshingly different LitRPG. This is about a young woman called Naomi who finds herself waking up as a salamander (the amphibian not the fire elemental) in a world with RPG-like rules. It is somewhat reminiscent of So I'm a Spider, So What? in that both focus on young women who are reborn as weak monsters in RPG worlds, but unlike Spider, this protagonist doesn't immediately become super strong. Instead, she focuses on becoming smarter, which allows her to evolve into a humanoid being called a Royal Salamanderkin, which reproduces asexually, forcing her to immediately lay three eggs. Once that happens, she starts searching for more power so she can protect her family. It makes for a nice change from other LitRPGs.

99) Dark Agents book one: Violet and the Trial of Trauma by Janina Scarlet

This was a book I got a review copy of. It's a graphic novel that seems mainly designed to teach young people how to deal with emotional trauma. I suspect that if you want it for that purpose, it's fine.

However, I am not a young person who needs help coping with emotional trauma, so I can only review it as a regular reader. As a regular reader, it's not very good at all. The plot is paper thin, about a witch whose parents are killed in front of her by a necromancer. She vows revenge, and years later joins a supernatural police force run by Hades. The bulk of the book is about her classes, which surprisingly seem to mostly deal with controlling your emotions instead of the best ways to punch a demon in the face, which would seem to be more useful. The boring plot isn't helped at all by the ridiculously stilted dialogue.

Since this is a graphic novel, I should also talk about the art. There are a lot of talented artists working in comics today, but the person who did this isn't one of them. The character designs are terrible. Even the characters who are supposed to look human, are oddly shaped and mostly so similar that at times I can barely tell which is which. Then there's the fact that most of the story seems to take place in a weird, formless void consisting only of colors and shades of color because the artist couldn't be bothered to draw backgrounds for about 90% of the book.

This would definitely be a book to pass on if you want to read it for pleasure.

100) The Mask Omnibus, Volume 1 by John Arcudi

This is one of those comics that I've meant to read forever. it contains the story that the 1995 Jim Carrey movie is (very loosely) based on as well as two others. The basic premise is that there's a mask that turns anyone who wears it into what is essentially a walking cartoon character with the downside that it also makes you a bit psychotic. Since no one else around the mask's wearer has a cartoon's resilience, instead of being a light-hearted comedy like the movie, the comic is a gruesome (yet still funny) murder fest. It's actually a great comic.

101) Laurence and Celine and the Myth of the Purple Varadon by Martin Laenger

Since one of the challenges for this years r/fantasy book bingo is to read a book with a color in its title, I decided to go for a book with my favorite color in the title that was available with Kindle Unlimited. I chose this one because the premise seemed interesting and the book had no reviews. The premise is that a pair of mismatched adventurers go to a remote town that is being menaced by a mythical creature that;s called a purple varadon, which is at least mildly interesting if not original. Unfortunately the book itself is very badly in need of an editor (and not just a copy editor though it needs that too) as well as a lot of polishing from the author. The book is full of spelling and grammatical errors, odd word choices, bad dialogue, and plot points that don't quite make sense. It essentially reads like a rough draft instead of a completed novel.

102) Derelict: Book 1, Repel Boarders by Dean Henegar

This is a dungeoncore novel with a sci fi setting by one of favorite LitRPG authors. The premise is that one of the first human deep space exploration vessels is destroyed when attacked by kobolds, and somehow its captain is fused to its reactor core, turning him into a derelict, the sci fi equivalent of a fantasy dungeon. He has to fight off invasions and eventually turns on the shadowy cabal that controls derelict because he's an American doesn't like foreigners telling him what to do, but that's okay, because they're actually bad guys who want to wipe out humanity.There's nothing particularly new in it, but it's entertaining.

103) The Ghost and Mrs. McClure by Cleo Coyle

This is a cozy mystery novel in which a famous mystery author is murdered in a bookstore, and the store's owner and its resident ghost, a PI murdered there in the 1940s, have to solve the case. I don't read a lot of mystery novels, but I always mean to read more. Since this has a nice bit of a fantasy twist, I might try reading more of the series as it was fairly enjoyable.

104) Son of Gun in Cheek by Bill Pronzini

While not as good as its predecessor, Gun in Cheek, this is a fun book. It's a look at more of the worst mystery novels ever written including a chapter dedicated to one of my favorites, Michael Avallone.

105) Lightning Disciple by Elliot Hendry

This is an apocalyptic-style LitRPG. It's set in the distant future after humanity has finished destroying the planet and anyone who could has left for the stars. Then a terraforming ship returns, but after a fight breaks out onboard between the wealthy and the poor (for reasons that aren't explained except to hint that the rich are the bad guys) a combination of human error and sabotage causes the terraforming to instead turn Earth into an RPG world, and that's just the prologue. Actually a pretty decent story.

106) Dead White by Alan Ryan

This is a Paperbacks from Hell-era horror novel set in the small town of Deacon's Kill, New York. The town is buried under a massive blizzard that lasts for two days, and an antique circus train has just pulled up on the town's abandoned railroad tracks. It's a really fun horror novel that's fairly light on gore despite the fact that a pack of ghostly clowns are running around killing people.

107) Watcher's Test by Sean Oswald

This is a LitRPG in which two beings who seem to be an angel and the devil want to test humanity by sending a small number of humans from Earth to an RPG world. This book is about a family consisting of a mother, father, two daughters, and a son. Seeing family dynamics play out in a LitRPG is a nice change, though the fact that the family all fit pretty neatly into fairly stereotypical roles is a bit annoying. Also annoying is that the author frequently switches viewpoints between family members from one paragraph to the next with no warning despite the fact that he clearly knows chapter breaks are a thing as he uses them whenever he switches viewpoints to or from someone who isn't part of the family. Despite these flaws, it's still an entertaining read that's far from the worst LitRPG I've read.

108) Earthdom by Ryan DeBruyn

This is the third volume of the Ether Collapse apocalyptic LitRPG series. I loved the first volume and liked the second, but this one I didn't care for. The MC has always had problems with anger management, and who can blame him with an apocalypse going on, but while in the first two books, he mostly channeled that into battle rage, in this book he acts like a spoiled child for most of the volume, which really isn't a good look for this type of character. Even so, I'll probably give book four a shot when it comes out in the hope that the events in this book will make him get his crap together.

109) F. Paul Wilson's Repairman Jack: Scar-Lip Redux by F. Paul Wilson

This is a graphic novel set in Wilson's horror/thriller series Repairman Jack. It's a followup to the novella The Last Rakosh, which is itself a followup to the first novel of the series, the Tomb. The book is about Jack discovering that Scar-Lip, the last Rakosh--the Indian demon the Rakshasa--has returned to New York and is killing people.

110) By the Grace of the Gods: Volume 3 by Roy

This is the latest volume of my favorite ultra laid back light novel series about a boy who raises slimes. This time around, it's all about him opening up a laundromat.

11) City of the Dead by Vasily Mahanenko

This is a Russian LitRPG novel set in one of the Apocalyptic LitRPG worlds only centuries after the apocalypse. It's about a ten year old boy with strange abilities.

112) Crest of the Stars by Hiroyuki Morioka

This is an omnibus edition of a 90s-era Japanese light novel space opera. The plot revolves around a pair of young people called (in this translation) Jint and Lafier. It involves a a race of genetically modified humans called the abh, who are essentially space elves who want to rule space, but have no real interest in planets. Jint is an ordinary human who became the heir to a noble family after his world was conquered by the abh. Lafier is the granddaughter of the current empress of the abh. Lafier is a trainee starpilot on the ship that is tasked with transporting Jint to a military academy, as military service is required of nobles in the abh's empire. On the way, war breaks out with a rival human empire, the ship is destroyed, and only Jint and Lafier escape. It makes for a fun space adventure.

113) Four Beheadings and a Funeral by Eric Ugland

This is the 9th book in The Good Guys LitRPG series. This book is about our hero traveling to a nearby city to battle an enemy called the Master, who he believes is running some sort of cult there. It ends up with him fighting a nest of vampires while the city erupts into rebellion. It was a step up from the previous book, which was a bit lacking in plot development.

114) The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy by Mercedes Lackey

This was good and I should read more of Lackey's Valdemar books.

115) Shakespeare for Squirrels by Christopher Moore

This is the third of Moore's Shakespearean parodies featuring the fool, Pocket of Dog Snogging. This one is a retelling of A Midsummer Night's Dream. It's a nice humorous fantasy with lots of sex and violence and a murder mystery thrown in for good measure.

116) Book Girl and the Suicidal Mime by Mizuki Nomura

Well this was a bit different. It's a light novel, but it has less in the way of fantastic elements than most other light novels I've read. The only supernatural element is that the book girl in the title is some sort of "goblin" (I assume it was yokai in the original Japanese) who eats books. The plot is largely a mystery that is set up around the Japanese novel No Longer Human, which i have never read and suspect I wouldn't enjoy as it sounds very depressing. This book, I actually enjoyed and found moving and disturbing as it deals with suicide. I'll definitely have to try and get the rest of the series.

117) Reincarnated as a Sword, Vol. 3 by Yuu Tanaka

This is the third volume in a series about a former guy from our world who is now a magical sword in a fantasy world and is wielded by a twelve year old cat girl. This volume has our heroes accidentally rescuing a prince and princess, which leads to their involvement in a civil war. It's a nice bit of action with a little character development thrown in.

118) A Traitor in Skyhold by John Bierce

This is the third volume in the Mage Errant series. This volume is about the student at a magical school looking for a traitor among the administrators of the school. The traitor is working for a demon who dwells in the labyrinth beneath the scool. Over all, I liked this one, though I didn't think it was quite as good as the first two.

119) The Crafter's Darkness by Jonathan Brooks

This is the fourth book in the Dungeon Crafting series. Much like the previous volume in the series, I didn't care for this one as much s the first two. Frankly, I found book four to be dull. There just didn't seem to be anything of interest going on for the first 3/4 of the book.

120) The Weird Accordion to Al by Nathan Rabin

This is a book that I've been reading on and off since March. It's a book about the discography of "Weird Al" Yankovic that I backed a Kickstarter to fund. It's a good book, though I do disagree with the author's views on some of the classic television shows that Al has written songs about.

121) Forest of Desire by Vasily Mahanenko

This is the second volume in The Alchemist LitRPG series. It's about a young boy who is an alchemist trying to rescue his betrothed from slavers and then exploring a tomb in an ancient forest. It's not great, but not a bad story either, though I did find it to be a bit darker than I like in my LitRPG, which I attribute to it being Russian.

In this difficult year with an unprecedented pandemic and where the ills of the past intrude sadly upon the present there must still be room for positivity. Be rightly proud of your country. To all my American friends, enjoy your 4th of July weekend.

>72 PaulCranswick: Thanks.

122) Neverday by Carlton Mellick III

This is essentially a bizarro take on Groundhog Day. It's set in a world where everyone is repeating the same day over and over, but only some people are aware. Somehow the people who are aware have managed to set up a working government and law enforcement for the people stuck on repeat. The worst crime anyone can commit is to stay awake overnight, as that will allow you to reach tomorrow, called the Neverday, where horrible secrets await.

123) End of the Road by Brian Keene

This is another nonfiction work that I've been dipping into on and off since March. It's a collection of essays that were originally published as blog entries. It's partly a memoir that recount's Keene's 2016 cross-country book tour, partly a look at the history of the horror genre, and partly about about the political landscape of 2016. It's an interesting book.

124) Sovereign Rising by Rohan M. Vider

This is the third volume of The Gods' Game LitRPG series. It's been a year since book two came out, and this book really didn't do a very good job of reminding me of what happened in the last two volumes. Once I remembered how the world of the books worked, it was enjoyable. Surprisingly volume four is scheduled for September, so I should have an easier time getting into it when that volume comes out.

125)Limitless Lands Book 5: Invasion by Dean Henegar

This is the final volume of the Limitless Lands LitRPG series. It was possibly my favorite series in the genre as it avoided all of the annoying pitfalls that clutter up much of the rest of the LitRPG field and was fairly well written. Sadly the final volume was just kind of weak. Much of the story was from the POV of side characters, which was annoying enough, but the worst part was the way to abrupt ending, which was essentially, "The battle is over. The End." Even with its faults, this was still a good enough book.

126) American Demon by Kim Harrison

This one had me both excited and a bit leery. It's a new book in Harrison's The Hollows series, which is god, but she finished the series six years ago, which worried me a bit. I didn't need to worry though. This proved to be a great continuation of the series.

127) Stars Asunder by Tao Wong

This is book 9 of The System Apocalypse LitRPG series, which is about what happens when Earth is transformed into an RPG-like world by aliens. This volume has the protagonist and his friends training paladins and helping to pick the next empress on an alien planet. It's a very satisfying book.

128) Awakened by C. M. Carney

This is the first volume of a new progression fantasy series by the author of a LitRPG series I liked (The Realms, which he seems to have put aside to start this new series). This is the story of a young boy who is the chosen one with secret, unknown powers that he has to use to save the world from the forces of evil. It's set in a world that exists under a theocracy ruled by super powered beings who serve god-like beings called the First Ones who command humanity to become strong so they can aid in the fight against a demonic race called the Phage. Not surprisingly in a book with a plot this chliched, it turns out that the First Ones are also evil, and are in fact raising humanity for much the same reason humanity raises cows: to be dinner. Despite using what is probably the oldest, most over-used plot in fantasy, I still enjoyed the book.

129) Tomb for Rent by Alex Oakchest
130) Tomb with a View by Alex Oakchest

These are the first two volumes in a series called Dungeon Core Academy. They're about a dungeon core named Beno building hist first and, in book two, second dungeon. The books are short and reasonably entertaining, but the books' descriptions on Amazon have almost nothing to do with the actual plots, and the cover art is clearly stock art that has absolutely nothing to do with the plot at all.

131) No Place Like Gnome by Alex Oakchest

I decided to read one more Dungeon core Academy novel before taking a break from the series. It's still a fun series. This time, Beno tries to gain his freedom and fights off a villain named the Collector--who collects dungeon cores-- while working on building up his dungeon.

132) Arsenal by Dennis Vanderkerken and Dakota Krout

This is the fourth volume of the Artorian's Archives series, which largely serves as worldbuilding for the series it was spun off of, The Divine Dungeon. This volume finally has the series intersect with the Divine Dungeon series and has the main character take part in the events of the final two volumes of the DD. I hope the series continues, as the ending of the book hints that if there is a next volume, in will begin doing worldbuilding to tie in Krout's other series, The Completionist Chronicles.

133) Peace Talks by Jim Butcher

Despite how long I've been waiting for Butcher to finally write the next Dresden Files novel, it took me way longer than expected to actually read it, and I'm not really sure why. Despite the fact that I enjoyed it, it just took me a while to get into it. It's more or less exactly what I would expect from the series though, except that it's really half a novel and I have to wait a couple of month for Battle Ground to come out before I can read the second half.

134) A Snake's Life by Kenneth Arant

This is a LitRPG-adjacent novel about a man who chooses to be reincarnated as a snake monster so he can have a chance of encountering his wife, who has been reincarnated as a hero. It's a bit of an uncomfortable read as the main character is a bit of a psychopath who has no qualms about killing and eating any sentient creature he comes across, unless he makes friends with them for plot reasons. While I didn't hate the book, I don't think I enjoyed it enough to read the sequel whenever it comes out.

134) Ethria: The Pioneer by Aaron Holloway

This is another LitRPG novel. This one is about a man who is summoned to a fantasy world to help a group of refugees find a new home, only he spends very little time doing this and instead chooses to spend most of his time hanging out with elves and battle a necromancer and some goblins. It actually has an interesting story despite having the absolute worst spelling and grammar of any book I've ever read.

135) The Super-Fun-Pak Comix Reader by Ruben Bolling

This a collection of the complete (through 2019 anyway) Super-Fun-Pak comix from the Tom the Dancing Bug comic strip.

135) Ethria 2: The Golem Crafter by Aaron Holloway

Despite the poor writing of the first book, I decided to read the sequel. He has improved a bit. There are still plenty of spelling/grammar errors, but not anywhere near as many as in the first book. In this volume, the hero puts a hold on his divine mission to find homes for refugees, which he spent almost no time on in book one, and instead tries to help a friend rescue a woman from a sorcerer. On the way he has a bit of a Mary sue moment where he randomly learns how to craft golems, which turns out to be exactly the skill he needed to beat the sorcerer in a duel.

136) Don't F(beep)k with the Coloureds by Andre Duza

This is a collection of three bizarro/horror stories. The first id about a world where cartoon characters (known as Coloureds) are real and very dangerous. The second story is about a world where a strange drug seems to be altering the fabric of reality. The third story is about a world where celebrities become persecuted and then go on a rampage.

137) Tears of Alron by Vasily Mahanenko

This is the third volume of the The Alchemist LitRPG series. Despite my original misgivings about the series, due to it being Russian, I've actually really been enjoying it. This volume has the main character finally join his world's wizard's school only for everything to pretty much immediately start to go wrong and then keep going wronger for the rest of the book.

138) War of the Posers by Eric Ugland

This is the fourth volume in the LitRPG seies The Bad Guys, which is a spin-off of the author's other series, The Good Guys. It's a bit jumbled, but still a good book.

139) The Elements by Mark Stallings

This is the first volume of a progression fantasy series. It's about a young man who is "the chosen one" or something. His village is wiped out by a hoard of monsters and he and his best friend who are apparently the only survivors head to a martial arts school where they learn to fight using elemental attacks.

140) Derelict: Book 2: Counterattack by Dean Henegar

This is the second volume in a sci-fi dungeoncore series. It's about a human captain who dies, came back as a space dungeon (called a derelict), and is now helping humanity to fight against aliens bent on genocide.

141) Tech Duinn by Ryan DeBruyn

This is the first volume in a prequel series yo DeBuyn's LitRPG series Ether Collapse. It's set several billion years in the past, and stars the ancestor of the MC from the main series. I think I like this a bit better than the main series as the MC in this one isn't such a whiner.

142) How a Realist Hero Rebuilt The Kingdom, Vol. 1 by Dojyomaru

This is one of those Japanese stories where a king performs a magical ritual to summon a person from Earth to be their hero. Only this time instead of getting a mighty warrior, he gets an ultra-competent bureaucrat who becomes king and saves the land through political reforms. It's not the most exciting light novel I've read, but it was still pretty good.

143) Light Online Book Four: Defender by Tom Larcombe

This is a LitRPG series that's mostly focused on town building. In this volume, the evil AI Loki turns on a bit of legacy code that causes the hero to be attacked by waves of orcs, at least for the first half of the book. After that, he spends his time building up his small town into a small city.

144) Life Reset: Conquest by Shemer Kuznits

So this is the fifth volume of the LitRPG series New Era Online. It's about Oren, who plays as a goblin, managing his growing empire and conquering more places as part of his plan to free the players of New Era Online who are being held hostage by the game's AI.

145) Silver Fox & The Western Hero: Warrior Reforged
146) Silver Fox & The Western Hero: Warrior Forsworn by M. H. Johnson

These are the second and third volumes of Silver Fox & The Western Hero, a LitRPG/Wuxia series.These books are really not very good, but I couldn't help but read them. They tend to be very repetitive, largely because like many books in those genres they originated as a web serial, only the author in this case couldn't be bothered to edit the thing to take out the endless repetitions.

For some reason, I keep forgetting to update this.

147) Monster Tamer: Volume 1 by Minto Higure

This is a light novel of the isekai variety. A group of high school students end up transported to another world and things don't go so well. One of them ends up by himself after things descend into chaos, and discovers that he has the ability to tame monsters. This leads to him creating a little monster girl harem, but not in a pervy way. It's not the greatest light novel I've read, but it's not bad either.

148) A Thousand Li: The First Step
149) A Thousand Li: The First Stop
150) A Thousand Li: The First War by Tao Wong

This is a wuxia/progression fantasy type of series about a former peasant in a very Chinese world who learns mystical martial arts type stuff. It's pretty fun and is one of the better series of this sort that I've read.

151) By the Grace of the Gods: Volume 4 by Roy

This is the latest volume of my favorite remarkably chill light novel series. This volume is mostly about the MC opening his second laundry and working on evolving his slimes.

>88 yoyogod: Congratulations on reaching 2 x 75, Nathan!

>89 FAMeulstee: Thanks

152) Spice & Wolf, Vol. 4 by Isuna Hasekura

This volume has our protagonists Lawrence and Holo the Wisewolf arriving in a small village to read books of pagan folklore to find out what happened to Holo's home city. It's a charming story.

Somehow, I've managed to finish quite a few books in the last few days:

153) Irrelevant Jack 4 by Prax Venter

This is, of course, the 4th volume in the Irrelevant Jack LitRPG series. This book focuses on Jack expanding his kingdom. It was okay.

154) Street Cultivation
155) Street Cultivation 2 by Sarah Lin

This is a series that puts a different spin on the wuxia/progression fantasy genre. Instead of being set in a fantasy world that's based off of ancient China, it's set in an alternate version of the modern world. In this world, the mystical energy that martial arts masters use to perform superhuman feats is used as currency and can no longer be absorbed freely through nature, but only gained by hard work. The book focuses on a young man's struggle to become a strong fighter so he can provide for those he cares about.

156) So I'm a Spider, So What?, Vol. 9 by Okina Baba

This volume is about the main character, White, finally getting her powers back after ascending to godhood several volumes ago. It\s good, and I really didn't see the surprise twist at the end coming where it's revealed that she is not in fact a high school girl who was reincarnated as a spider monster, but is in fact a spider who had the fictional memories of a high school girl grafted onto her soul before being reincarnated as a spider monster all so the evil god D could avoid anyone noticing that she was skipping work by masquerading as a high school student.

157) Something by Dakota Krout

This is another LitRPG series by Krout, and unless my count is off it's his 4th ongoing series and his 5th book published this year. I have no idea how he does it. This one seems to be completely unrelated to his other books, all of which are in a shared universe. Something is set in a world where people with magical powers can become beings called Ascended by traveling through portals to other world. It's interesting, but I think I like his Completionist Chronicles series more.

158) One Piece: Ace's Story, Vol. 2: New World by Tatsuya Hamazaki

This is the second half of the One Piece spin-off light novel series about the life of Portgas D. Ace. This volume details some of his adventures in the New World, which is the second half of the Grand Line, up until he finally joins the White Beard Pirates.

159) Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare

This is a YA horror novel about a teen girl who moves to a small town with her father. She quickly becomes friends with the popular kids, and gets invited to a party. Unfortunately, just as the party gets started, a killer in a clown costume shows up and starts killing off the local teenagers. Then things take an even darker twist that I didn't see coming, and don't want to spoil here even using the spoiler tags. The only thing I will say is that it's very much the sort of thing that I could see happening with all the craziness that's been going on in 2020.

160) Of Flesh and Feathers by L M Pierce

This is an odd, and fairly unique, horror novel that I picked up after seeing someone review it on Reddit. It's a horror novel about a flock of chickens trying to survive a zombie apocalypse. The author does a really great job with the world building and characterization. My only complaint is that it's at times a little bit too derivative of Watership Down.

161) The Dungeon Fairy
162) The Dungeon Fairy: Two Choices by Jonathan Brooks

These are the first two novels in a dungeon core series, with the twist that a dungeon fairy, who is supposed to be the assistant to a dungeon core, gets turned into a core by accident. It was generally good, though the first volume took way too long to get going and the second dedicated way to many chapters to the POV of secondary characters.

163) Reincarnated as a Sword, Vol. 4 by Yuu Tanaka

This volume of the series has the titular sword and his cat girl ward entering a cooking contest and foiling an evil scheme to destroy a city. It's fun adventure.

164) Beastborne: Mark of the Founder by James T. Callum

This is a Lit RPG about a guy from Earth who gets transported to a fantasy world and discovers that he's a "Founder," which means he can somehow nurture a magical tree that will protect people from monsters and "mana storms." Despite this book being freaking huge, he doesn't get to that yet. This book has him fleeing from other Founders, who are all evil, and unlocking a really rare class called Beastborne, which allows him to steal abilities from monsters. It's a decent enough story.

165) Phone Losers of America: The Complete 'Zine Collection by Brad Carter

Back in the days of BBSes, the Phone Losers of America had an ezine on phone phreaking, hacking, prank calling, various kinds of crime, and general humor. Most of the more interesting bits were adapted into the book Phone Losers of America, but there are quite a few cool bits that didn't appear there. It's probably a good thing that I never read any of these zines back then, because I was a teenager myself, and probably would have tried some of the less-illegal stuff.

166) Silver Fox & the Western Hero: Warrior's Oath by M. H. Johnson

Why do I keep reading this series? The books are ridiculously formulaic and repetitive. The author has real trouble with homophones. There's a lack of internal consistency. This one gets even worse by adding in a fairly pointless (and kind of half-assed) socialism bad, capitalism good rant. I really want to say that I'll avoid book 5 when it comes out, but I have a bad feeling that I won't be able to stop myself from reading it.

167) Monster Girl Doctor, Vol. 2 by Yoshino Origuchi

This is a light novel, or really short story collection, series about a doctor who specializes in treating monsters, but somehow seems to end up only treating monster girls. This time he treats a centaur with a sprained leg, a harpy who's molting, and a giant with a cold. There's also a story about dealing with an arachne who seems a bit nuts.

168) Hell Hollow by Ronald Kelly

I've been listening to this in audiobook form on and off for over a month. It's not a bad story, but it had some problems. I thought it was a bit slow to get moving. The setting was a bit off temporally to the point where it seemed to somehow be simultaneously set in the 80's, the 90's, and post 9-11. Then there was the fact that the villain was defeated way to easily.

169) The Freakshow by Bryan Smith

This is a horror novel about a group of ultraterrestrial freaks who destroy small towns. I mostly picked it up because Smith is collaborating on a sequel to Brian Keene's Urban Gothic, which is also a sequel to Freakshow. This was a pretty good book.

170) Operation: North Sea by William Meikle

This is the latest book in the S-Squad series about a Scottish military unit that fights monsters. This time around, they get called to the North sea to sight a sea serpent that's menacing an oil rig. It's pulpy fun.

171) Smashed by Junji Ito

This is a collection of short horror manga by Junji Ito. It's a bit tamer than some of his other stuff, but still good.

172) Cold Boots by Simon Haynes

This is the most recent book in the Hal Spacejock sci-fi comedy series. This volume mostly revolves around Hal getting conned into becoming president of the Spacers Guild. There's quite a lot of other stuff about an angry pilot, a homicidal robot, and a crime boss. Overall, it's a lot of fun.

173) Condition Evolution by Kevin Sinclair

This is a LitRPG novel that's okay I guess. It's about a morbidly obese guy who goes into a fully immersive RPG longterm as part of a treatment for his condition. He's kind of stupid, but also lucky and somehow ends up becoming super strong and beating the game. The plot seemed like it was all wrapped up and I was thinking that this might be the ultra rare standalone LitRPG novel, but no. It turns out that the game was actually training the MC to help fight an alien invasion, which is so f-ing stupid that I won't read the rest of the series.

174) Dragon Bourne by T. J. Reynolds

This one I enjoyed a lot more. It's a combination of LitRPG, Dungeon Core, and Progression Fantasy. The premise is that once upon a time dragons built dungeons as places for them to hang out. Then a fairly barbarous human kingdom decided to wipe out the dragons and destroy or enslave all the dungeons. Now it's a couple decades later, and a young man who wants to be a hero accidentally revives one of the dungeons and discovers a secret about his own ancestry. Meanwhile the daughter of one of the "heroes" who slaughtered the dragons and dungeons decides that she doesn't want to follow in her father's footsteps and becomes a kung fu style monk who travels the land to try and prevent another war. I really liked this one, so much that in fact that I actually put off starting the new Dresden Files novel to finish this first.

175) Battle Ground by Jim Butcher

I rather enjoyed this one despite Butcher killing one of my favorite characters.

176) A Thousand Li: The Second Expedition by Tao Wong

This is the fourth book in a progression fantasy series. While it wasn't bad, I don't think it was as good as the previous volumes.

177) Scavengers by Robyn Wideman

This is volume two of the Darkthorn Academy series, which is LitRPG-lite. This volume added some progression fantasy elements as well. It also saw a shakeup in the story line, and I really liked it.

178) Wintersteel by Will Wright

The eighth volume of the progression fantasy series Cradle also came out this week. The previous volume had been a bit of a disappointment, but this one was better. We finally get an end to the Uncrowned Tournament, and all the major characters get power boosts. while setting up the next book nicely.

179) The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories, volume 1

This is a book that I've been looking forward to ever since it was first announced, and I wasn't disappointed. The general premise of the anthology was to collect modern horror short stories from around the world, excluding the English speaking parts of the US, UK, Canada, Australia,New Zealand, and Ireland. It came out surprisingly well, with all of the stories being good, and some of them very good—my particular favorite being "The Time Remaining" by the Hungarian writer Attila Veres.

My only complaint is that it's a bit too European-centric with 12 of the 21 stories being from Europe. The rest of the stories are divided up with 4 from various Latin American countries, 3 from African countries, 1 from Quebec, and 1 from the Philippines. This issue was addressed in the Foreword, though, and can be attributed to the fact that they could only use stories in languages the editors could read or which were submitted with translations, so I really can't hold it against them.

All in all, this is a great book for any horror fan who's interested in reading globally.

180) The Christmas Thingy by F. Paul Wilson

This is a really short and cute story about a girl who wishes for a friendly monster to play with and is warned that the monster, called Christmas Thingy, will steal all of her Christmas presents.

181) Acme by Dakota Krout & Dennis Vanderkerken

This is the 5th volume of Artorian's Archives, which seems to mostly serve as worldbuilding for Krout's other series. This volume it gets to the point where it starts to bridge the gap between The Divine Dungeon and Completionist Chronicles by showing the early days transitoning from a progression fantasy-style world into a LitRPG-style world. It's a bit slow, but I started enjoying it a bit more halfway through.

182) Sovereign by Rohan M. Vider

This is the 4th book in The Gods' Game, a LitRPG series. This volume sees the hero and his companions wander around in a forest for a bit, where they battle some necromancers and meet some elves. It's okay.

183) The Finality Problem by G. S. Denning

This is the most recent book in the Warlock Holmes comedy/fantasy/mystery series which parodies Sherlock Holmes, but in which Watson is the protagonist and a genius detective, and Holmes is a rather idiotic warlock. It had some genuinely funny bits, but is probably the weakest in the series as it is set during the period of Watson's marriage, and most of the stories involve Watson desperately seeking adventure while Holmes tries to stop him from having any fun because the whole marriage was caused by a curse placed by Holmes to keep Watson from having adventures because Holmes didn't want to risk Watson getting killed on an adventure. This makes things a bit tedious at times.

184) The Devil is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 7 by Satoshi Wagahara

This is the seventh volume of a light novel series in which the devil from a JRPG-style world (but not a LitRPG) ends up stuck in modern Japan and gets a job working part-time at a McDonald's analogue. This volume is a collection of four short stories, all of which are set well before volume six, so it's well out of chronological order. In these we see the devil fight some scammers, adopt a cat, and buy a futon. There's also a story about Chiho, a major character who's an ordinary high school girl, in which we learn about how she came to be the devil's coworker and fell in love with him.

185) Holmes of Kyoto: Volume 1 by Mai Mochizuki

This is a light novel series that's the first one I've read that has no fantasy or sci-fi elements. As you can probably guess from the title it's a mystery series. The series is narrated from the perspective of a high school girl who works part time in an antiques store. The owner's grad student grandson is nicknamed Holmes, because of his amazing deductive (and antique appraisal) abilities. The pair travel around Kyoto, solving (non-murder) mysteries that revolve around antiques. There's also a good bit of romantic tension between the two.

186) Reborn: Evolution by Gleb Alucard

This is pretty much just Russian fan fiction for the 2008 video game Spore.It's far from the worst thing I've read, but it's really not very good.

187) Book Girl and the Famished Spirit by Mizuki Nomura

This is the second volume of the Book Girl series of light novels. The series is basically pretty dark mystery novels inspired by classic works of literature, in this case Wuthering Heights. It's surprisingly engaging.

188) Reincarnated As a Sword, Vol. 5 by Yuu Tanaka

I have also read the fifth volume of the adventures of Black Cat girl Fran and her intelligent sword, Teacher. Despite it being pretty much just mindless entertainment, I love this series. This volume was slightly disappointing though, as despite being fairly long, it doesn't tell anything like a complete story on its own.

189) Pyresouls Apocalypse: Rewind by James T. Callum

This is the first volume of another LitRPG series. This one tends a bit more towards the horror end of things, though. The premise is that a bit over a decade ago, a video game company released a VR game promising that the first one to beat it would get billions of dollars. Only it was a trap, and when someone in game released the boss monster from its prison, it broke out into the real world and turned Earth into a wasteland filled with zombies and eldritch horrors. Now, the few surviving humans have found a way to send a single person back into the past in the hope that armed with foreknowledge, he will be able to beat the game and prevent the apocalypse. It was pretty good.

190) Seas the Day by Eric Ugland

This is the 5th volume of The Bad Guys LitRPG series, and is one of my favorites. In this volume, the protagonist has been forced to leave the city he spent the first four books in and head to a different city so he can get a rather deadly curse removed. This book is all about the journey between the two cities, and as you could probably guess from the title, it is mostly a sea voyage. It made for a fun adventure story.

191) Rowdy Roddy Piper: The Kilted Avenger by Dominic Riggo

This was a shortish graphic novel that I backed on Indiegogo. It stars pro wrestler Roddy Piper as a talk show host/crime fighting vigilante who takes on a group of heels who are committing crimes. It's a decent story and has good art, but it's a bit on the short side at only around 60 pages and doesn't tell a complete story. Still, if there ends up being a volume two, I'll probably pick it up.

192) Nothing but bones: The Wasteland by J. Carran

This is another LitRPG of the evolving monster category. The book is set on Earth in the future where all life in the galaxy is gone because of a lack of mana (don't worry humanity fled to another galaxy). Now the only only inhabitants of the planet are undead, and giant wyrms for some reason that is never explained. The story follows a skeleton after he gains self awareness and evolves into different forms of undead. It's not one of the best books I've read, but it was entertaining.

193) Death Cultivator by eden Hudson

This book falls pretty firmly in the progression fantasy/wuxia style of fiction. On the plus side, it avoids the standard vaguely ancient China-like setting that most of these novels seem to use. The downside being that it goes for a sci-fi setting, and a fantasy based cultivation style progression fantasy doesn't really seem to fit in that setting particularly well. It also doesn't help that the main character is an idiotic loudmouth with a huge chip on his shoulder. It's an okay book, but not really good enough that I'm likely to seek out the sequel.

194) Beastborne: Exiled Lands by James T. Callum

This is the 2nd Beastborne Chronicles book. It's about the characters traveling through dangerous lands and founding their own settlement. I mostly enjoyed it, except for the end. The last part of the book is about the settlement coming under attack from monsters, and that battle just seemed to go on forever.

195) The Magpie Coffin by Wile E. Young

I really enjoyed this book. It's the first volume of the Splatter Western series, which consists of standalone volumes of really gory, violent horror westerns. This one is about a very bad man nicknamed Black Magpie who is on a quest to avenge his murdered teacher. I think it may have been the most gruesome book I've rread this year, but I loved it.

196) How to Defeat a Demon King in Ten Easy Steps by Andrew Rowe

I also liked this one. It's a standalone comedy LitRPG that's very much an homage to the classic RPG The Legend of Zelda (with a fair amount of the RPG Dragon Quest thrown in as well). It was good, though a bit predictable at points, and the humor occasionally came off as more annoying than funny.

197) Bedeviled Stagecoach by Hideyuki Kikuchi

This is the 26th Vampire Hunter D novel. This one has a bit of a Western feel to it with a sheriff and her deputies escorting a prisoner on a stagecoach that also contains a few civilians. The prisoner if a captured servant of one of the local vampiric Nobles, and naturally the vamp wants him back, but eventually D shows up to help out. It's not the best thing ever, but in a series that's this long, that's not surprising.

198) The Aussie Mana Apocalypse by Christopher Timms

This wasn't very good. It's an apocalyptic LitRPG set in the Australian Outback. My main problems were that I hound all the Aussie slang confusing, and the book's attempts at humor were usually not very funny. It didn't help that the author kept using 's to form plurals either.

199) A Cast of Stones by Patrick w. Carr

This is a fantasy novel about an alcoholic young man being forced to take part in a quest to save a kingdom. It was pretty good.

200) Tales from the Upgrade by Dean Henegar

This is a new LitRPG from one of my favorite authors from the genre. This one is kind of like World War Z only with an RPG-style apocalypse instead of zombies. The plot is that a bunch of aliens release nanites into Earth's atmosphere to make it work like an RPG.

201) Welcome to the N.H.K. by Tatsuhiko Takimoto

Well this is a bit different for me. It's a Japanese novel that's not a light novel or sci-fi, fantasy, or horror. It's about a young man who has become a shut-in who really only interacts with a teen girl who wants to help him as a way to deal with her own problems and with his neighbor who is also kind of a shut in and has an obsession with pornographic video games. At turns I found it to be funny, sad, disturbing, and heart warming.

202) Monster Tamer: Volume 2 by Minto Higure

I don't think I liked this one quite as much as the first volume, mostly because there's not a lot going on in this volume. The only thing that really happens until the end of the book is the MC taming a baby fox monster and a parasitic plant that embeds itself in his arm. The end is promising though, as he meets some humans (and an elf) native to this new world in the final chapter.

203) The Comet Caper by Simon Haynes

This is volume four of the Hal Junior series, which is a mid grade spinoff of the Hal Spacejock series. I didn't like this one as much as the previous volumes, but it wasn't bad or anything. This volume is about Hal and the other children trying to survive and rescue their parents after their space station is struck by fragments of a comet.

204) Light Online Book Five: Ruler by Tom Larcombe

This is apparently the final volume of the Light Online LitRPG series. It wasn't bad, but I thought it lacked the sense of closure I'd expect for a final volume.

205) Moonlight Banishes Shadows by J.T. Wright

This is the third volume of The Infinite World LitRPG series. I really enjoy this series, and this volume is an improvement on the mopey second volume.

206) Sadako at the End of the World by Koma Natsumi

This is a horror manga set in a post apocalyptic world (there's no mention of what the apocalypse was just most of the world seems to be gone) where a couple of little girls find the cursed videotape from Ring and instead of being frightened befriend Sadako, the cursed ghost girl who kills anyone who views the tape after one week. Then the three spend their week together traveling through the deserted remains of civilization looking for more people to befriend.

207) Hellion Mage by James Green

This was a book that I added to my amazon wish list months ago because it was a sort of LitRPG-adjacent novel whose description made it sound like it was
sort of like Pokemon. I never got around to reading it, because shortly after I added it to my wishlist, it mysteriously vanished from Amazon. Then sometime this month it just as mysteriously returned, and I snapped it up. Sadly, it wasn't worth the wait as it's just painfully mediocre with a very Mary sue (or whatever you want to call the male equivalent) protagonist.

208) Reincarnated As a Sword, Vol. 6 by Yuu Tanaka

This one I enjoyed as I always do for this series. In this volume, Fran the catgirl and her sword, Teacher, take part in a massive fighting tournament.

209) The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

I picked this epic fantasy up because I'd heard a lot of good things about it. Unfortunately, this would have been one time when I'd have been better off paying attention to the negative reviews, because I really didn't like it all that much for mostly the same reasons other people didn't like it. The books does have great world building, but it also has a really boring and slow paced plot coupled with largely unlikable characters that I really couldn't bring myself to care about very much. It also didn't help that I was listening to the audiobook version, and the narrator was absolutely dreadful at doing character voices. Seriously, one of the viewpoint characters, Niclays Roos, sounded as if he was continuously clenching his teeth while suffering from severe constipation. It might be worth reading the print version if you really like world building or are looking for a decent fantasy with prominent LGBT characters, but definitely avoid the audiobook.

Thanks for the heads up. I'm gonna pass on this one!

210) so I'm a Spider, so What?, Vol. 10 by Okina Baba

This volume is largely about the affairs of the demon kingdom and to a lesser extent the elves. There's also a bit more world building and some information about the motivations of White and the Demon Lord.

211) Street Cultivation 3 by Sarah Lin

With this volume, the Street Cultivation series comes to a close. It has the main character, Rick Hunter, taking part in a fighting competition that travels the globe. The story ends with bringing his character arc to a very satisfying close. My only complaint is that there are a few plotlines of a more global scale that were started in the series, but never wrapped up.

This Brit wishes to express his thanks for the warmth and friendship that has helped sustain him in this group, Nathan.

>120 PaulCranswick: Thank you

212) By The Grace of the Gods: Volume 5 by Roy

The latest volume of my favorite laid back isekai series has a little action again with a battle against treants. Though there's also a lot about attending a festival, taking some kids on a camping trip, and gaining two new varieties of slime.

213) Dungeon of Chance: Even Odds by Jonathan Brooks

This is yet another dungeon core novel from a guy who has like five series in this genre two of which I've also read and are still ongoing. This one revolves around a dungeon who is reliant on a Gacha system to acquire monsters and traps. It's okay, I guess.

214) A Wealth of Pigeons by Steve Martin & Harry Bliss

This is a collection of (mostly one panel) cartoons written by Martin and drawn by Bliss. I mostly picked it up because I'm a fan of Martin and Barnes & Noble was selling signed copies. They tend to be pretty funny with some really good artwork.

215) That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime, Vol. 4 by Fuse

It's been quite a while since I last read anything in the That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime series. I thought this one was a bit slow to get going, and I didn't like that it ended on a cliffhanger, but it wasn't bad.

216) The Snatch by Bill Pronzini

I've read a couple of later novellas in the Nameless Detective series, and decided to give the first volume a try in audiobook format. It's a shortish novel in which the unnamed detective MC gets hired to make the drop to pay for a kidnapped child's release only to get stabbed and have the kidnapper get murdered by an unknown person. It's a pretty good book and I'll probably read or listen.

217) Isr Kale's Journal by Vasily Mahanenko

This is the 4th book in the Russian LitRPG series The Alchemist. The plot seemed to get bogged down pretty badly in this one, but I'll still probably give volume 5 a shot when it comes out.

218) WorldEnd: What Do You Do at the End of the world? Are You Busy? Will You Save Us?, Vol. 3 by Akira Kareno

It's very rare for me to really enjoy a book and still want to curse out the author. This book managed it.RIP Ctholly.

219) The Fat Man: A Tale of North Pole Noir by Ken Harmon

This is an odd book. It's a comedic noir mystery set in a land where Santa, his elves, and all of the characters from your favorite Christmas specials live. The story revolves around Gumdrop Coal, the elf in charge of putting lumps of coal in bad kids' Christmas stockings, who gets framed for murder and has to prove his innocence and save Christmas. It's alright. The pop culture rerences grate after a while, and the author makes the mistake of doing a chapter set in Whoville which is written in poetry despite being absolutely awful at mimicking Seussian-style verse. I will say that in the end, I did like it, mostly because I tend to be a bit sentimental and really liked the schmaltzy, Christmas special-esque ending.

220) Disgaea by Arashi Shindo

My favorite video game series is the Japanese SRPG series Disgaea, and until recently, I never knew there was a manga adaptation of it. It's not super great, but it's not really terrible either. My main complaints are that it made the plot a bit too simplistic and completely cut out Captain Gordon (Defender of Earth), Jennifer (his beautiful, super genius sidekick), and Thursday (their very retro looking robot companion) along with all the entire human part of the storyline.

221) Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear, vol. 1 by Kumanano

This is another light novel series. It's one that lacks any overarching plot, and as such is more a series of vignettes about the same character. The premise is that a 15 year old girl, who likes living as a hermit, gets sucked into the world of her favorite video game by God and is given a bear onesie allows her to gain powers as she levels up. While I didn't dislike the book, I felt that it lacked the charm of some of the other slice of life light novels I've read. Still, I'll probably give volume two a chance at some point.

222) The Raven by Jonathan Janz

Since the year is almost over, I thought it was time to start trying to finish books I'd started and put aside, but meant to get back to at some point. This one got set aside because the hellscape that is 2020 was making it hard for me to read certain types of horror.

This is a post-apocalyptic horror novel set in a world were a genetically engineered virus has awakened mankind's junk DNA causing large portions of humanity to transform into vampires, werewolves, and other mythical monsters. It follows a man named Dez, who is one of the few remaining ordinary humans. He's on a quest to rescue the woman he loves, even though in his heart he knows she's probably already dead. It's a really good book.

223) Infernal Bones by Jonathan Smidt

This is the 2nd volume of the Elemental Dungeon dungeoncore series. I read volume one last year and somehow missed hearing about this volume until Amazon sent me a notice that volume 3 had been released. The series is about a dungeon that specialized in using reanimated skeletons as its mobs. In this volume it helps fight off the forces of chaos. I found it entertaining and will read volume 3 soon.

224) Soulhome by Sarah Lin

This is the first volume in a new cultivation series by the author of Street Cultivation. This series takes the fantasy sub-genre in a new direction in which people gain power not through meditation, weird potions, and practicing the martial arts but instead by absorbing specialized building materials that they can use to construct a home within their soul to store power and enable techniques.

225) Hallowed Bones by Jonathan Smidt

This is the third and final volume of the Elemental Dungeon series. I don't have much to say about it other than that I liked it.

226) The Torch that Ignites the Stars by Andrew Rowe

This is the third volume of the Arcane Ascension series. I don't think it was quite as good as the previous two, but I didn't not like it.

227) Ascendance of a Bookworm, Part 1, Vol. 1 by Miya Kazuki

This is another book that I started reading and set aside at one point. In this case it was back in March (I think) and was set aside because I wasn't in the mood for a slow paced, slice of life fantasy at the time. The premise of the series is that a young, book loving woman from our world dies and is reincarnated into a a poor family in a fantasy world where literacy is almost nil and books are almost entirely the province of the nobility. This book continues her quest to make books more common by creating paper despite the facts that she's poor, a small child, and suffering from a dangerous sickness called the Devouring. I like it, and will probably read volume 3 at some point, but I don't think it's as good as the other slice of life fantasy light novel series I read like Restaurant to Another World or By the Grace of the Gods.

>131 yoyogod: Congratulations on reaching 3 x 75, Nathan!

>132 FAMeulstee: thanks.

228) Forging Divinity by Andrew Rowe

since I like Arcane Ascension, I decided to try one of Rowe's other series set in the same universe, The War of Broken Mirrors, of which this is the first volume. It has some pacing issues--which really are also present in the Arcane books as well--but over all it was pretty good, though not as good as his other books that I've read.

229) Core Sworn by TJ Reynolds

This is the second book in The Guild Core series, which combines elements of LitRPG, Dungeon Core, and Cultivation fantasies. This volume sees the heroes fighting an army bent on their destruction while founding a new dungeon in an abandoned tower. It's fun.

230) 25 Gates of Hell

This is an anthology of 25 horror stories. I didn't much care for it. There were some good stories in it, but there were more stories that were just really stupid, like the adaptation of the song "Hotel California," or the story of a captive alien with a "twist" that no one will not see coming, or the story of the exceptionally stupid reporter going on a ride along with a serial killer. Frankly, I'm surprised at how many good reviews I've seen elsewhere for this book.

231) Tales from the Gas Station: Volume Three by Jack Townsend

This came out in audiobook format last month, and I finally finished listening to it. I love the series. it's really weirs, almost surreal, horror.

232) High Gloom by Eric Ugland

This is the 6th book in the Bad Guys LitRPG series, and it's okay. It definitely could have used some better editing, the plot wasn't quite as interesting as previous volumes, and I really didn't like the cliffhanger ending. Still, I will pick up the next one.

233) Man-Wolf: The Complete Collection

This is a collection of bronze age comics featuring Spider-Man character Man-Wolf. Back when I was a kid, I had a book/record set that contained part of this story, and I've been meaning to read the rest of it. The best part was the stuff that was on the record. It's all about the son of J. Jonah Jameson, who is an astronaut and picked up a crystal while on the moon, which turned him into the Man-Wolf, who is essentially a werewolf. The beginning of the story, which was what the record I had as a kid was based on, was a horror story, then as new writers took over, it became more standard super-hero fare, then turned into a sci-fi story, then a fantasy, and then went through a couple more changes before wrapping. It's not bad, but the best part was the first story.

I hope you get some of those at least, Nathan, as we all look forward to a better 2021.

>137 PaulCranswick: Thanks.

234) Dungeon Heart by David Sanchez-Poton

This is a dungeon core story with elements of LitRPG and cultivation fantasy as well. I'm a bit conflicted on this one. I generally enjoyed the book, but there were some problems. First off, I found the continual shifts between first and third person narration to be distracting. Then there's the fact that author felt the need to have the dungeon's stat sheet at the end of every chapter, about whichI'll be generous and assume that's the result of being too lazy to edit it out from the serialized version and not an attempt to milk Kindle Unlimited for extra money by padding the book. Finally, there's the ending, which essentially seems to just have been arbitrarily chosen as the ending because the author decided the book was long enough and not because it reaches any sort of plot culmination or the end of a story arc. Despite all that, I'd say it's a worthwhile book for people who like dungeon core stories.

Looks like I managed to get two more in.

235) Some Unknown gulf of Night by W. H. Pugmire

I've generally enjoyed Pugmire's fiction, but this really wasn't my sort of thing. It's a cycle of prose poems and short vignettes inspired by H. P. Lovecraft's Fungi from Yuggoth.

236) Marvel Masterworks: Killraven by Don McGregor

The ebook versions of the Marvel Masterworks comic collections were on sale really cheap last week, so I picked up a bunch (of mostly non-super hero titles) and decided to try and get this one read by the end of the year. The Killraven story is a sequel to The War of the Worlds written in the 1970s in which the Martians return to Earth a hundred years after their first invasion and this time, their conquest is successful. This story is set several years later in the then distant years of 2017-2020 and is about an escaped gladiator named Killraven who leads a band of rebels in a fight against the Martian overlords. It's good stuff.

Nathan

As the year turns, friendship continues