Wasprider's Random Reviews

[Wasprider]

Jura 7 Wood

Ah, the good stuff.

Jura is a Scottish island, like Islay, but this particular brand backs off the iodine and smoky peat notes that are the backbone of Islay single malts.

This is a fragrant, well balanced (and expensive) scotch. It comes off with a sweet aftertaste on my tongue. Lots of gentle spice notes and bits of flavor from other wines and sprits.

The 7 part of 7 wood means it goes through 7 different used barrels to pick up flavors.

For me it comes with lots of fruit notes and vanilla (from the bourbon barrels it starts in), followed with a touch of bitter.

 

[Wasprider]

Doc Swanson's Reserve Straight Bourbon Whiskey Finished in Sherry Casks

This is a decent finished rye. Spoke to the saleswoman and got it at her recommendation.

I generally don't like straight bourbons, I find the rye to be really harsh on my tongue. She mentioned that it had the rye, and unlike many other sweet wine finished bourbons it has just touch of the flavor without being cloying or overly sweet.

I largely agree with her assessment.

For reference, my preferred sherry cask finished scotch is Glenmorangie Lasanta. I like it better, but this was a worthwhile experiment. (I heartily recommend any of the finished Glenmorangies.)

 

[Wasprider]

Warrior King: Odyssey One 5 by Evan Currie

TL;DR: The main part of this book was nice bit of chemistry between Stephanos and Milla as they attempt to dodge the bigger ships. It's one of the best parts of the series.

This book introduces a more competent bit of the Empire military. The Empire sends a fleet to back track the Drasin horde. This a conflict between the next generation of Priminae ships with Earth transition cannons and actual serving military in the Empire using ships similar to the biggest ships the Priminae fielded.

The human contributions were tunable lasers, tunable armor, teleport guns, and ship teleportation. These are pretty big improvements. The teleporting guns bypass point defenses and in most combat situations, are next to impossible to detect. The teleportation of ships is a massive improvement in strategic mobility. The entire equation of

Eventually they clash, and they find out the way the cruisers are powered (twin singularities) means that the gravitic geometry means the teleporting bombs land in the singularity and don't do anything but add mass. And it becomes obvious that the Priminae and the Empire are pulling from the same design database.

There some random interesting world building where it's revealed that the Priminae split off from the Empire and took really good laser resistant ceramic armor. The Empire also mounts parasite craft on their cruisers. These parasites don't have the singularity drives.

That said, the extended flying dark scene with Stephanos and Milla is the majority of the book and the best written. They are the most sympathetic characters to me. The frame is tight on them because they're stuck on a two man ship for the majority of their scenes. I like their chemistry and the possible slow motion romance.

The flying has lots of tightly paced sections as well as medium paced segments and the obligatory slowly paced sections, but there the author can cut away to other people and perspectives.

The larger scale combat is one on one cruiser on cruiser combat and ends in a tie.

 

[Wasprider]

Odysseus Awakening: Odyssey One 6 by Evan Currie

TL;DR: The combat is good. The strategic situation is excellently laid out. The opponents are competent, the win isn't overwhelming or clean. This is well done speculative and naval fiction from a technical perspective, and the characterization is well done. Unfortunately, there are too many characters, and I don't actually like the MC very much.

In this book the lone cruiser doing recon for the Empire makes it back to the Empire. The captain immediately gets blamed for incompetence, he fires back that the intel was inadequate. They decide to put him under suspicion and send him back out with the reconnaissance in force fleet.

The recon fleet is effectively a cruiser squadron of the closest Empire fleet led by a woman from the lesser nobility. She's pretty much topped out in the hierarchy without more honors or connections, and has largely made her peace with it. She's distrustful of the disgraced captain, but not completely dismissive.

What follows is the reconnaissance in force. They manage to destroy an older cruiser, and then almost pin one of the new ships against an inhabited planet. The Priminae captain of the new ship makes the hard call to run away, but flubs his running away by cutting too close. This engages a running battle, which gives the MC and his ship a chance to come in with reinforcements and make a fight of it.

He makes a few mistakes, but winds up disabled as the cavalry came in.

The Earth and Priminae ships are the single cruiser class. The Empire ships come in destroyer and cruiser classes. And here Earth pulls out their equivalent of submarines, these are based on the Odyssey, do not have a singularity drive. And these small ships use anti-matter projectiles and missiles like Odyssey did. In this case, they have the Alcubierre drives as well as the teleportation drives that the bigger ships have.

The Imperial cruiser squadron has something like 4 to 5 times as many ships, and teleportation is strategic mobility that they don't want to use where the Empire can spot them, since they realize that this isn't as big as the Empire gets.

The Empire lands a parasite on the disabled cruiser and they start making for the library to suck out information.

This works until a rescue mission finds the parasite and then there is a massive moving fight between earth marines and Imperial marines. They manage to disrupt the data siphoning but have to chase the withdrawing Imperials as they try to get out with the data they lost.

In this case, the singularity of Odysseus having been infected by Gaia, is awakening, and similar to Gaia, can interact with people and does. Odysseus then proceeds to overcharge all sorts of stuff and haunt the ship. The overcharging results in them blasting through the enemy formation by themselves, which is a move no one expected.

Odysseus acts haunted.

The Imperials are expecting the data dump, so they keep a fighting withdrawal. The data transmission is cut short, but they still get away with data.

The Imperials withdraw with a smaller percentage lost, but a much greater tonnage of ships lost.

The combined Priminae and Earth force limps back to their primary ship yard. Then they wind up isolating Odysseus because Odysseus is acting like a child and having that much power uncontrolled.

It becomes obvious that the Imperials didn't get the teleportation or teleport crystals, but they have realized that Earth is a single planet polity and have an idea of the layout of the Priminae space.

 

[Wasprider]

Odysseus Ascendant: Odyssey One 7 by Evan Currie

Series TL;DR: This series does an excellent job world building and the space combat is excellent through the sixth book, and even through most of the seventh. This last one performs a mildly foreshadowed ass pull that allows Earth to threaten a Samson maneuver which causes the Empire to back off. Then the series stops. The world building has been relatively convincing, which makes it a shame that the series has not been directly continued. There is a related two book sequel series focusing on a more charismatic character, but it peters out and does not seem to draw to a good conclusion. I don't sympathize with the MC, or most of the characters with primary agency. For me that happened around book 4.

TL;DR: They make peace with Odysseus in time to detect the entire Imperial sector fleet heading to Priminae home world. They ambush it and pick away at the massive numerical advantage (over 400 ships versus 20-40), making them go more slowly. They pull out the stops on various weapons, especially their willingness to use anti-matter and missile/projectile weapons gives them a large, but not insurmountable edge against the Imperial sector fleet. In reaction, the Imperials realize that Earth has been putting backbone and trickiness into the Priminae. So if they eliminate Earth they can reduce the threat. So they do, and the fleet is forced to teleport directly into combat, and then they use their deus ex machina to blow up the sector fleet home port, and force a retreat. And then the story runs out, leaving the setting in a volatile place.

In this case, there's not much set up before getting into the plot. The sector military governor decides to smash the threat because there are internal affairs to worry about. He refits the ships with extra armor, looks over the data and goes for it.

Their first thrust is to go after the colonies in a straight line for the primary Priminae world. And they do. The size of the fleet makes their gravitic and tachyon signature easily detectable, since it is actually larger than the Drasin horde. The sector governor wonders why the directives came down to go after the Priminae so hard, and why they opened with the Drasin, which destroy garden worlds. None the less, he has a threat in his sector and he will worry about cleaning up behind up after he's done with the task in front of him.

The Earth faction pulls out all the stops, effectively making a competition of ways to deliver outsized amounts of anti-matter to the Imperial ships. They figure out grav mines to slam into the leading Alcubierre sink and increase the mass of the sink, hopefully creating a singularity and sucking the ship in. They figure out how to run drones behind a modified Archangel fighter to hit the ships. Fighters are much smaller and shorter ranged than the parasite craft, and are hard to detect and quick to move making them hard targets to hit.

They maul the incoming fleet for very few losses, continuing to withdraw towards the Priminae core world. However, the imperial fleet decides to change tack and goes after Earth on the theory that Earth is the backbone behind the new innovations and improved tactical and strategic sense. This catches the defending fleet off guard. And in a place where they don't have teleportation, the empire would have an insurmountable lead.

As it stands, Earth is stuck with a laser constructed and directed by the united command and constructed using tech scavenged from the Drasin horde. It takes out a huge chunk of the fleet, but it's not enough to stop them. The Imperial fleet is sitting over 30% casualties, and hasn't broken (mostly due to an approach to discipline similar to propagandized CCCP commissars).

The array is destroyed, but they've figured out how to enable a teleporting "laser" powered by a significant portion of the output of a sun.

The MC teleports directly into a Lagrange point with the entire fleet, losing a few ships in the process, and then fights for a while.

It's not enough. So he's handed control of the teleporting laser and uses it to burn the home port of the Imperial fleet and broadcast it. He then threatens a Samson maneuver. "Yes, you'll kill me (or my planet), but I'll destroy you too." Effectively MAD. I'm going to use this to render as many planets and bases of yours useless as I can while I run.

The leader of the imperial fleet expresses skepticism, and the MC burns one of their ships to prove his ability.

The Imperial fleet withdraws with an effective Mexican stand off.

Basically, the Imperial fleet is going to try to hunt down and either obtain, or destroy the teleporting laser. In the mean time things are in a stalemate.

The entire sentient planets thing is put on hold, and since this is the end of the series, never addressed again.

Does the Earth survive? Not fully answered. There are sequels, but they don't seem to do the same thin.

My guess: I think it was a planet that got miffed at the other planets and decided to trigger of the planet destroying war. The point was to destroy the sentient planets. Everything else fell out from that. Not that this will ever be answered.

 

[Wasprider]

Street Cultivation by Sarah Lin

TL;DR: This is a decent time waster.

The setting conceits are fine. It hits a bunch of the tropes for Xianxia but is set in a generic American setting, making this urban Xianxia.

The mention of sects feels a bit out of place compared to corporations. Demons are fine, but they don't map nicely to the Spirit Beasts or equivalent. In fact, they map to credit cards. Which is okay, but a bit heavy handed.

The financial advice presented as lucrim (qi) management is baby's first financial advice and structured for poor people facing predatory lending. This is actually appropriate for the character at the beginning of the book, but by the end, it's not really relevant to his circumstances or his demonstrated character.

If you're looking for financial advice, you're better off listening to Dave Ramsey or if you're one or two steps above that, looking at Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

That said, it hits on several of the genre staples and has the virtue of being short. Apparently only two books. And I can read these at about 50 pages per hour, so the text isn't dense or hard to parse.

I read this on Prime Reading. It is available as a Kindle Unlimited book as well. It was originally hosted on Royal Road and some other sites, but due to KU's terms of service is probably not available in those places anymore. Some of it may be hosted on the author's Patreon.

I only read the first, and not the second. Take that as you will.

 

[Wasprider]

Totally Spies: Season 5

TL;DR: The spies graduate and go to college. There they do lots of the typical college stuff, trying to live in a dorm, sign up for classes, try to attend classes, get their "first" jobs, and deal with their standard shenanigans. At this point, I regard the show as a slice of life interrupted once per episode by being WOOPHed, getting restrained some how, and then winning the day. I am still enjoying this show, but it's probably running out of slack.

I still like this. I'm impressed that they graduated them from high school after four seasons. Then they went to Mali. U., which seems to be a pastiche of UC Santa Barbara.

They have to deal with signing up for classes, and then getting into a dorm and trying to live there. Somehow Mandy and her blonde cousin managed to get admitted to the same university.

The stuff proceeds as expected, though this time a lot of the shenanigans happen or or just off campus.

They do show how dorm living could be annoying only to quickly circumvent it by giving the girls a penthouse suite for the three of them on top of the dorm.

Them having to get a job at the college coffee bar and put up with the various pressures was actually interesting. It puts them in a very different dynamic, answering to a boss who's right there and asking for good customer service (which isn't a strength).

There's also a surprisingly touching attempted clumsy date between Alex and the owner?/manager? at the bar. That wouldn't be kosher, but the actual disaster of a date, and the attempts to impress are pathetic but written with sympathy.

It's obvious that some of the show writers have been to college, and know enough to poke tongue in cheek fun at the foibles of going to college.

 

[Wasprider]

The Towers of the Sunset by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

TL;DR: This taught me a lot about what I can and cannot write. So this review may not be useful for you. That said, it's a prequel to the first book in the Saga of Recluce, and seems to define big parts of the setting for several of the following books. This is a story of forced closeness and falling in love, and fighting against all odds with lots of power to clear the way to survive. It's well done, in a style that is no longer current. It is also a story about love found in strange circumstances. If you've read older fantasy, this might be worth looking at the synopsis and reviews.

Summary:

The White wizards (Whites from here on in) of Fairhaven are plotting to take over and sideline the Black wizards (Blacks from here on in). The Whites are chaos wizards and Blacks are order wizards. And chaos excels at destruction and immediate effects. This is from the first story as well.

They manipulate a magical singer to sleep with the (female) leader of the West Wind Guards. These women (and exclusively women) run mercenaries over the whole continent and have maintained a balance of power by being somewhat inaccessible and able to go to the border of almost all the other countries. Think Swiss pikemen.

The resulting boy, Creslin, is sent down to an arranged marriage down in the plains. The first trip is weird, he winds up meeting the ruler of the place he's supposed to marry into and establishes that even though he's sheltered, he's got a sharp tongue and the ability to back it up with a blade. Someone steals his blood and does something with it.

Once he makes it back home he's told that the deal has been finalized. He disagrees and escapes his escort. He makes it down and wanders into Fairhaven with a caravan, where he finds out that singing is licensed because music is too much order for the Whites. He also establishes that he can control the wind.

The Whites actually find him, knock him out and put him on road construction duty, which is effectively a death sentence. While he's on road duty, a couple of healing Blacks get him recovered enough to break free.

He runs off and gets to the court of his betrothed, Megaera, killing a lot of White guards and a couple of White wizards on the way. He finds out Megaera is a gray mage who has been bound in iron and blood to him (remember the blood drawn before). She can read his thoughts and feel what he feels.

Somehow he manages to be appointed co-regent of a largely empty island controlled by the ruler of his betrothed. They make it there, and he establishes that he can control weather all the way up to storms. He uses the storms to sink White aligned ships chasing him.

They land and find a very poor area. They have some initial budget coming in from their sovereign, but the Whites keep attacking him and they make a move to remove his trade routes.

They then use the altered weather to blame him for causing droughts and fires (which it turns out the Whites are setting themselves) to attack him in propaganda. This winds up restricting his options further.

In the meantime he's getting on with his bound betrothed like a house on fire. She resents that she never had a choice to not know about him. That she's in a bad position because of him. He lusts for her and she throws that in his face as often as possible. He does his best to give her space and not think of her that way.

The Whites blow up the leader of the West Wind Guards and effectively start eliminating all opposition they can find. This causes an extra surge of refugees to Recluse.

Indeed that's the background plot. The Whites are attempting to push Recluse past what it can effectively support, pushing it into chaos and societal breakdown. And he's forced to work hard just to keep up, and with the trade embargo in place, he is forced to resort to things close to smuggling and extortion to gain enough supplies while building up infrastructure.

He modifies the weather permanently to leave Recluse with enough water. Which is really scary.

Eventually they have sex someplace between the middle of the second half and the end, but it's written obtusely enough that I suspected but wasn't sure till ten chapters later when Megaera mentions nausea and the Black healer confirms that she's pregnant. This is a story about love found despite the crushing pressures of an arranged marriage and really cut throat politics.

The Whites mount a massive attack coercing and convincing other people to join. Creslin uses his magic till he blinds himself (not clear if it was permanent or not). By this point he can sort of sense things through his wife.

Discussing Writing:

This feels almost like in media res on the scale of books instead of chapters.

This story is written with lots of tiny chapters in a shift in style from the previous book in the series. Most of the scenes are set further apart as vignettes in a long life. Deliberately written that way to allow him to cover what feels like 10 years.

Large sections are written in close style with longer chapters. Mostly early on to establish the character and setting.

The writing of the sex is a bit obtuse to be suitable for 11-12 year olds. It's actually done quite well, and not as graphic as Anne McCaffrey did. (From what I hear, Anne McCaffrey is tame compared to the current YA writers targeting females.)

The way the extended time skip sections are done make me jealous. There's just enough emotional description along with a description of the surroundings and actions to make it work. It's short with the description clothing or people, as most of this kind of fantasy and sci-fi does.

Given that this was my jam, and what I chose to read back when, I've got these problems but worse. I wish I could write this well.

It's also pretty obvious that he wrote a timeline and outline for this epic/shared world long before he started on the first novel. I'm just in awe.

 

[Wasprider]

Totally Spies: Season 6

TL;DR: The satire became more pointed and less general. That made it good, but limited its appeal. It's much more of its time, and makes fun of smart phones and social media. I'm glad they did it, and I'm glad they only did one season.

This is a sillier season (yes, they managed it somehow).

The colors are more saturated. The OP changed. There are more poses. The eyes are larger and more anime. SD characters were used much more frequently. WOOPHing is now even more physically improbable and they lean harder on the fourth wall.

There are a lot of punny names, and they are on point. Most of them aren't mean spirited, and don't make me laugh at the characters, but rather at the pun. Stand outs are Feline Dion (Celine Dion), Jason Wiebler (Justin Bieber), Rad Smitt (Brad Pitt), etc..

They almost approach having the girls graduate to being individual spies, but they back off from that by the end of the episode.

Really, this series suffered from a criminal lack of merchandising. Heart shaped backpacks and "com powders" would have been great for little girls (in my head, I'm not a mom making purchasing decisions for a daughter). Cat suits might have been a harder sell, but that's what teenage fans are for.

 

[Wasprider]

Totally Spies: Movie

TL;DR: Only necessary to establish Alex's pet in season 6. Only watch this if you want more Totally Spies.

I watched this in the wrong order. I should have watched this before season 6.

That said, nothing important really happens. It is the origin story of the spies, and is only useful for canon compliance when writing fanfic.


The spies run into problems trying to balance life and spying, but since this is a prequel, they don't do anything with it except to mention it. Mandy is meaner. And frankly that's all the substance there is to it.

It uses the more saturated colors of season 6, and the basis of the new character designs.

Cute, but unnecessary. Enjoy it for more spies.

 

[Wasprider]

Kindle Unlimited

TL;DR: This is a trap as you grow older and get more selective. It's fine for comfort reading, but can ruin your overall reading experience.

Kindle Unlimited is an interesting idea. It drops the marginal price of trying a book to nothing and just charges you the subscription. However, like all successful subscription services, it should make bank on most people consuming a lot less than they actually pay for.

This means that unless you are a voracious reader of the Kindle Unlimited catalog, you are overpaying.

That brings us to the second problem, quality versus quantity. The quality of KU books is execrable. There are some truly excellent authors who are KU only (often in niche genres). There are lots of good authors, again in niche genres. But there is an incredible amount of utter crap, even if they do have more erotica for males. (There's a bunch for females as well, but written erotica for males has been a niche market, mostly served by various web forums and news groups of dubious provenance.)

In my reading life, I'm trying to optimize a combination of enjoyment and thought provocation over time spent. Money is a concern, but not necessarily the primary concern. My time is more valuable to me now. Being buried under recommendations for comfort reading is actually annoying. It's a buffet where the all the dessert is up front, but the really satisfying food is scattered on a back table.

I used to love the amazon feature for people who bought this also bought this, and that was a good way to browse for recommendations, especially when people actually paid for it. Kindle Unlimited has ruined those recommendations by recommending cheap stuff in many circumstances, when I'd prefer something better.

Is there a solution? Not really. Find a few reviewers who have reviewed a book you like, see if they can explain what they liked and why. If those reasons match up with yours, look at their other reviews and see if you can find something that is similar to that book and read that as well. Otherwise, you're looking at a slush pile (AIUI, an industry term for unreviewed works submitted for publication).

 

[Wasprider]

Jura Journey

This is an easy drinking lightly peated single malt scotch.

Not as fragrant as 7 Wood. Pretty much as described, with a long subtle tail. Vanilla sticks out, and there's a bunch of other flavors. You can see the label and try to pick them out, but for me there are very slightly floral and fruity notes along with some spices. But the spice notes are mostly informed by the smokiness of the peat combined with the floral notes.

Not too challenging, but not as flavorful as some other scotches.

 

[Wasprider]

Charles Krug Pinot Noir 2013 Carneros Napa Valley

This is a California Pinot Noir as opposed to an Oregon Pinot Noir or a French Pinot Noir. Which means it's far less robust than an Oregon Pinot Noir but more robust than a French Pinot Noir.

2013 was supposed to be a decent year for California (most of the West Coast of the US). I haven't tracked the vertical, so I can't compare it. That said, it's a good solid California Pinot Noir.

It's got the tannins and acidity of a Pinot Noir. I would say a good fruity nose for a pinot, with hints of berry. And stone fruit at the head fading to tannins in the tail. The tannins come off the tongue easily without leaving your tongue itching or dry (as the case often is with Oregon Pinot Noirs).

I enjoyed it.

But my palate for wine has been fading over the last few years, just for a lack of practice.

If you are going to develop a taste for alcohol, keep in mind that wine is the most expensive habit to develop. Whiskey, bourbon, beer, and even cognac (single bottles of which can cost over $3000) are cheaper. However, there are lots of decent mid and low cost wines which you can enjoy perfectly well, this is one of them.

 

[Wasprider]

The Magic Engineer: The Saga of Recluce 3 by L. E. Modest, Jr.

TL;DR: This is continuing to fill in blanks from the first published novel in this series. And as with the second novel, it is a complete story in itself. The writing is excellent, and the writing about relationships is less obtuse, now that I'm familiar with his style. The style itself is a fantasy epic of the old school, and well written for the style. If you've read the first couple of books and enjoyed them, this will continue to satisfy.

Technically speaking, I'm impressed by how the author approaches passing time. The chapters are generally short, as is his style, but each chapter transition is a time skip, a changed character perspective and/or a change in location. This way he can step through large amounts of time and events quickly.

This does lose indulgence and emotional resonance, but works well for very focused male characters who are a bit socially maladept. And coincidentally, that may be the reachable ideal image of much of the target audience. Basically, smartish sci-fi nerd boys in middle-school through college.

Plotwise, this is the man who created the invisible black ships of Recluse. He is exiled from the island as a late adolescent with his childhood crush (who doesn't return his feelings), and is stuck in a land where the white wizards are getting more powerful and vicious. They seem to be proceeding in their plans to terraform the continent/planet by raising another mountain range and bring all the other non-chaos aligned nations under their thumb no matter how many people they need to kill. (And they want to kill a lot of people aligned with the other side.)

The boy never does get together with his childhood crush, who prefers men of action. He winds up working on his passion, which is machines in an out of the way place. He does wind up with an older woman who worked to trade his goods and shows him around.

The white wizards wind up realizing that he's an order nexus and extend great effort to kill him. This doesn't mean they're dumb. They wind up conditioning the woman to attack him. Which she does, but she's not doing it fully willingly, and he manages to defend himself. It takes them lots of time and effort to make it work out.

In the meantime, he's been working on mechanical devices and healing skills. Slowly refining his concepts and selling his experiments as toys and curiosities.

At the point the white wizards finish taking over or coercing most of the other countries, and they point their alliance to destroying the country in which the eventual creator of the black ships resides. This puts him on defense and he turns his skill in crafting to creating tools of war and destruction. Working on a direct weapon of destruction is next to impossible with his alignment to the black. However, making tools that excel at cutting is not necessarily directly destructive.

He helps hold the white wizards off long enough to plan and pay for his escape, and to reduce the prestige the current leader of the white wizards. He does pay a price for enabling violence, and winds up mostly blind as his predecessors did.

The escape happens, and he winds up back at Recluse and is allowed to create a harbor and build his ships. He also introduces the concept that a concentration of black leads to a concentration of white (and vice versa, probably). Recluse being a huge concentration of black, effectively enables Fairhaven. He builds his ships and uses them to destroy the fleets that the whites send against Recluse.

Well written and emotionally compelling, even though I'm not actually in the original target audience. (My guess is 13-25 year old males.) Excellent for geeky, socially awkward guys.

 

[Wasprider]

Suntory Toki Whiskey

TL;DR: Straight down the middle whiskey with a mild sour note.

This is a basic and cheap whiskey by Suntory. Cheap in this case does not mean bad. Not many complicated notes, but easy drinking and not distracting.

Probably aimed at making a good whiskey sour, which seemed to be a popular drink in Japan. Not my favorite cocktail.

 

[Wasprider]

Basil Hayden's Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey

TL;DR: Damn fine bourbon. Nothing too complex, it's a bourbon not a single malt. But it's a very good bourbon.

Plenty of rasp and spice on the tongue at the first taste, but it's not overwhelming. Fades into caramel and vanilla, and tails off with a bit of oak.

 

[Bear Ribs]

The Magic Engineer: The Saga of Recluce 3 by L. E. Modest, Jr.

I really wanted to get into the Recluce Saga but after I'd gotten through five or so, it started feeling like all the books were the same story with slight variations over and over. A guy lives on Recluce, gets exiled for not being Recluce-ey enough, discovers the power of Order on his own by making things, and then defeats chaos mage(s) who are far more experienced and should stomp him but don't because even though the series pays lip service to "balance" between chaos and order, in reality, the series treats it more like the balance between BB guns and empty beer cans.

 

[Wasprider]

I really wanted to get into the Recluce Saga but after I'd gotten through five or so, it started feeling like all the books were the same story with slight variations over and over. A guy lives on Recluce, gets exiled for not being Recluce-ey enough, discovers the power of Order on his own by making things, and then defeats chaos mage(s) who are far more experienced and should stomp him but don't because even though the series pays lip service to "balance" between chaos and order, in reality, the series treats it more like the balance between BB guns and empty beer cans.

Fair enough. I can see that it would get boring. These are basic morality plays, and so far each one has been the adolescence to ultimate accomplishment of one person.

The setting also runs on conservation of ninjitsu (on both sides).

If I get there and I get bored, I'll mention it. As I did with Eric Vall and Evan Currie.