Sex! Sex and smut! Sex and smut and violence!

My Kindle Unlimited reads this month included a large share of sex and smut. Some because of recommendations pushed at me, some because I was curious about this "spice" of which the kids speak.

Spoiler: it's mostly awful and not worth reading. Some falls in the category of PWP (Porn Without Plot), others seemed to have a little bit of plot accidentally mixed into the porn.

Worth noting that the books I sampled were definitely written for a male audience. I haven't read much female-targeted smut, but from what little I have, I am very aware that these are separate genres. Female smut might have explicit sex and graphic descriptions of organs, but there seems to be a lot more, well, foreplay and buildup and emotional bonding, and I guess cuddling is a thing too.

For the male audience? They pretty much get busy without preliminaries, the women are instantly eager and enthusiastic about the most ridiculous feats of bedroom acrobatics, and the men perform like they have a Viagra gland infusing their bloodstream and cyborg wieners.

Look, I'm a straight dude and no prude, but a 10-page blowjob scene written in the purplest of prose does not arouse me. I can't take it seriously. I can take wizards and cyberspace and elfin girls beating up 300-pound ogres more seriously.

This is not all I read, of course (I can only take so much before my irony gland overloads).

Also I should note, for pedantic accuracy, that not all these Kindle books were available on Kindle Unlimited - sometimes I will just download the sample chapters for a regular ebook. Once again, the fact that I DNF most of these books does not mean they are necessarily bad (or worse than the books I actually finish). But I speed-run through a huge grab bag of books that I sample because they look vaguely interesting, or someone on the Internet said something interesting about it, or I just liked the cover. Only a few make the cut.

All His Angels Are Starving, by Tess C. Foxes

Not much smut, but lots of violence. I finished this one: full review here.

On Astral Tides - Book One - From Humble Beginnings: A Modern-day return of magic LitRPG

Chosen by the Gods, Akio must rise… or fall!

A Heavenly messenger warns of an upcoming apocalypse, thrusting Akio into a new reality filled with endless dangers and miraculous opportunities.

But those who dwell within jealously guard their wealth and power.

Accompanied by an enigmatic and beautiful Faerie princess, the only chance for Akio - and Earth - is to gather companions, level up, and become the unlikely saviours of both their worlds.

When you start from nothing, the only way to go is up!

On Astral Tides is a Light Novel inspired LitRPG containing territory control and alliance building, social aspects, relationships and romance.

DNFed at 1%

Yeah, I barely made it through the first chapter of this. The writing was just so bad. Half-Japanese half-British dude describes his looks in a mirror, articulates every passing thought he has about his boring freelance coding job, and has some text banter with his little sister. I found it cringey and would not even consider it good if found on a fanfiction site. Had no patience to keep reading until something supernatural happened. I don't even know if this one gets smutty.

I Was An OP Demon Lord Before I Got Isekai'd To This Boring Corporate Job...

A wolf in sheeps' cubicles!

Trapped in a corporate hellscape, Vic Legion is shocked when the hot new secretary at Helcom makes some bold claims. Namely, that he is an overpowered demon lord whose identity and powers have all been stripped away by the angels secretly in control of the planet. Only breaking the seven planetary seals upon him can restore him to his original powers and free him from his jailers...and now that he's aware of his true nature, they're going to be in a rush to kill him before he causes a problem.

Sounds a little crazy, right? But when this nutty, busty blonde reveals herself to be a demon slave vowed to his service--in fact, one of four--and the chaos ramps up all around them, Legion has to learn to lean in. As he quickly discovers he's been surrounded by enemies all this time, the trick is going to be balancing his new secret identity alongside work and play...oh, yeah, and staying alive while he hunts for the keepers of the remaining seals.

DNFed at 17%

When you browse manga bookshops like BOOK☆WALKER, you see a lot of titles like this: "How to Treat A Lady Knight Right," "Why Does No One In This World Remember Me?", "The Dorky NPC Mercenary Knows His Place," etc. Very ... on the nose titles, that seem to be spelling out exactly what they are about, a scratch for every itch. I don't think all of these are smut or harem, but I found this title kind of funny. A demon lord who winds up in a cubicle job? Okay!

Well, 17% of the way through, and we've had a busty secretary follow him home, infodump about how he's a demon lord who's been dumped on Earth with no memories and now he's being hunted by angels, and also she's one of four demonesses devoted to his service.

I guess later in the book he meets the rest of his harem, but the first part of the book is like three sex scenes in a row with the first girl. Doesn't seem like there's much room for anything but sex in the rest of the book.

This was basically pure male fantasy (which is all harem novels, I guess): a super-hot girl shows up in an ordinary guy's apartment and says "Hi! You are super-special and have an amazing destiny and you are not the ordinary schmuck you think you are, also let's fuck! Would you like to fuck some more? Hey, anytime you want to fuck just call me, I'll be right over here, ready to fuck!"

Yeah, I mean, I get it. I'm male. It's probably a good thing this stuff wasn't around when I was fourteen, it would have bent me.

The John Blake Chronicles - Volume 1: Three Square Meals

You've just found the ultimate erotic science-fiction series!

It's 2779 and a retired Terran Federation Marine has taken up life as a trader. Follow John Blake's adventures as he travels the galaxy on his freighter, the "Fool's Gold". This is the first book in a massive epic full of beautiful women, rampaging aliens, gunfights, space combat, and a mysterious heritage that will shake the foundations of the galaxy...

A multi-award winning adult space opera by M Tefler.

DNFed at 5%

So way, way back in the day DAW and Ace paperbacks published the John Grimes series, by A. Bertram Chandler. It's about a gritty space captain who is sometimes a freelancer and sometimes a naval officer, working his way up to Commodore, and having lots of space adventures. It's classic golden age space opera, and as was typical in SF written in the 60s and 70s, there are quite a few random beautiful women falling onto his dick. Basically an R-rated Star Trek.

I remember those books fondly. My father introduced me to them (this is his collection, which I inherited), and I read a lot of them before I was even old enough to really be interested in the sexy space ladies.



So, I heard about this "John Blake" series, which apparently sells well enough to make it the author's full time job now. I downloaded a sample of the first book.

It's very close to PWP. John Blake finds a stowaway on his ship, who at first he thinks is a young boy before she reveals that she's actually a petite girl running away from the last planet he was on. But she quickly clarifies that she's 18. So it's all okay when he tells her straightforwardly that he'll let her stay onboard as long as she's willing to service him on demand. She is very okay with this, and the next twenty pages is a lot of servicing. In which we learn that John Black is not entirely human, he has a huge tool with four testicles, and... let's just say it gets weirder from there. I think the author figured out exactly what fetishes there was a market for, and boy does he deliver.

Your Kink Is Not My Kink and Your Kink Is Fucking Weird.

Not judging those who like this kind of thing (okay, maybe a little), but one-handed reading pretending to be a space opera is a pass for me. I wanted a modern John Grimes series, not Penthouse Letters in space.

The Dog Walker, by Rian Stone

Rex has spent his entire adult life running from the shadow of his stepfather — a womanizing,
manipulative man who treated relationships like a game to be won. Now with a successful career
in the Navy and his own firm moral code, Rex tells himself he's nothing like the man who raised
him. He's better than that. He has to be.

But as Rex navigates the complex world of modern dating, analyzing every interaction and
female behavior pattern like tactical data, he begins to see uncomfortable parallels. From married
women to single mothers, fellow sailors, and bachelor party strippers, each relationship forces
him to question whether his calculated approach to romance is really so different from Jon's
manipulations.

In this groundbreaking exploration of contemporary romance from a male perspective, R A
Stone delivers a brutally honest examination of love, self-deception, and the patterns we
create — both to find connection and to avoid it.

With sharp wit and brutal honesty, The Dog Walker challenges our assumptions about
relationships while asking profound questions about authenticity, vulnerability, and the stories
we tell ourselves about love.

DNFed at 16%

This book had a fair amount of sex, but it's not smut. Instead it was an intriguing book recommended by a YouTuber, a "sex and romance" book written by and for a male POV.

I didn't immediately realize that Rian Stone is a Red Pill guy, but this novel was at least more introspective than your typical manosphere ranting about Betas and Shit-Tests. I enjoyed The Dog Walker for a while, but it started to get tiresome because it's just a series of vignettes about Rex, a frustrated young Coast Guard sailor, fucking different women. The pattern is the same for each one: he wants to be a decent guy, not like his asshole stepfather. He's a nice guy who doesn't mistreat or use women! So he overthinks every interaction, seems to have lots of unsatisfying guilt-and-neurosis-afflicted sex, and whines constantly about how things just keep going wrong for him.

Does he eventually get better? Does he learn Frame and Dread and turn into a Chad? I dunno, I got tired of reading about him banging one chick after another and then aftergaming each hookup. In a different mood, maybe I'd have finished this, it is well-written and yes, it's a believable and psychologically insightful novel from the POV of a hapless and kind of annoying dude.

Worth the Candle, by Alexander Wales

Juniper was always the Dungeon Master, never the player. He was always a creator of worlds rather than the one who walked within them…until now.

Somehow, the tables have turned in the most dramatic way possible. Juniper finds himself in a world filled with the wildest fantasies a mind could come up with, and his fingerprints are all over it.

Throughout this world, echoes of his own ideas and plots leave him feeling like he’s always one step behind. He finds bits and pieces of ancient influence strewn about every town he goes through. One thing is clear, though: Juniper walks this magical new world in someone else’s shadow.

It might all add up to something vital...if only he can survive long enough to figure it out.

DNFed at 9%

I was recommended this series repeatedly as a top-tier litrpg. The writing is okay, and there is a hint of psychological depth inasmuch as the main character is introspective and analytical. But after a few chapters I was not sold.

I get the appeal: it's a "rationalist fic" which, if you're not familiar, is a genre of fiction popular in the rationalist community (evolved from LessWrong and Eliezer Yudkowsky of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality fame) in which characters spend lots of time really, really thinking about their actions and their consequences. Philosophy, utilitarianism, and game theory are common themes. I would even say Brandon Sanderson and his "magic has rules, which you can discern with enough trial and error" style of writing, is ratfic-adjacent. In Worth the Candle, the protagonist is isekai'd to a fantasy world that appears to be literally based on his own D&D campaigns. He quickly realizes this and besides trying to optimize himself for this environment, flatters the reader by running through numerous explanations for how he wound up here that the genre-savvy reader will no doubt think of. So it's sort of meta with a clever main character, but it's still basically just another story about a dude who's dropped into a fantasy world to become a D&D character.

I remain baffled by people who read very mediocre novels and think they've found a gem because... they're marginally better than most of what you find on Royal Road? I won't say this book is strictly worse than, say, Dungeon Crawler Carl, which I have enjoyed enough to continue, even though the writing often leans on puerile humor and obvious tropes. But DCC is more fun and creative, whereas Worth the Candle seems too much in love with its own conceits.

The Sky That Broke the Hills, by T.C. Rubright and R.E. Rubright

"The Sky That Broke the Hills" is the first book of the "Dire Skies Trilogy," a fast-paced gaslamp fantasy epic that follows young Feldregor "Slaga" Boyden from his time as a mim (military indentured man) toiling away in a backwoods fort in Stheara, all the way to the distant, glittering capitol: Royalist Point.

When he and his friend Floort try to pawn a mysterious watch, he learns painfully that he was born with a condition called sharna macha, in which contact with magic makes him violently ill, but also gives him power: he can disrupt and dispel magical forces. Later, as Floort is about to be unjustly hanged in front of the whole fort, they are attacked by a fierce band of uplanders and a powerful, unseen mage. In the chaos, they escape with the help of a former enemy, the mysterious Major Dietrick. They go off in search of Bill Skye, the Master Witch Warden, who can train Slaga to turn the sharna macha to his advantage, if he can avoid the many agents of the crown, who have banned magic and all who use it. On the road they are attacked by bloodthirsty bandits, dodge cavalry, fight off bounty hunters, corral a wayward airship and more, while Slaga learns what he can do to magic and what magic can do to him.

DNFed at 8%

Well-written, but "gaslamp" was a strike against it, as I just tend not to like gaslamp/steampunk. That said, I might have finished this book if it wasn't telling a story I've read many times before. A pair of lowly "mims" (basically serfs) are conscripted to do shit-work for the army, hoping to one day be elevated to actual soldiers, who will still be treated like shit but theoretically be free man. I already know that of course they will escape their servitude and go on Adventures, but I just don't care about yet another story about expandables going from zero to hero. If you like this kind of story, though, I think it was written at a professional level.

The Last Nazi, by Jeff Putnam

An ancient map. A missing relic. A race against the past.

Smuggler and ex-Army pilot Cole Harper is no stranger to dangerous jobs, but when a sharp MI6 agent pulls him into the hunt for a legendary artifact—the Spear of Destiny—he finds himself facing an enemy he thought was long gone.

From the back alleys of Tangier to the forgotten ruins of a lost Templar stronghold, Harper and his reluctant partner must stay one step ahead of a ruthless ex-Nazi commander determined to seize the relic’s rumored power for himself. But the danger runs deeper than they imagined. Someone inside British intelligence betrayed them, setting them up to fail. And as the pieces fall into place, Harper realizes the war never really ended—it just went underground.

Navigating shadowed ruins, unraveling cryptic clues, and pushing his luck to the breaking point, Harper must use every ounce of wit and grit he has to stop the enemy before history’s darkest legacy rises again.

With gunfights, betrayals, and a final showdown deep beneath the Turkish sands, The Last Nazi is a heart-pounding adventure perfect for fans of Indiana Jones, Uncharted, and Casablanca.

The war is over. The fight has just begun.

DNFed at 10%

Oh, nice AI art on the cover.

(I don't hate AI art. I know it makes a lot of people rage-stroke when they see it, but I just dislike lazy and obvious AI artifacts in a professional product. Use AI, but at least do some photoshopping to fix those googly eyes and insectile airplanes...)

As for the story, it's a pulp adventure that is clearly trying to capture the Indiana Jones fanbase. Cole Harper is a former WWII Army pilot now working as a smuggler in post-war Cuba. There is a dame, of course. A hot femme fatale with ex-Nazis on her trail drags Cole into a running gun fight across Havana; he helps her because of course he does.

The first few chapters were all action and somewhat wooden dialog, and read rather like a YA novel. As a preteen boy I might have liked this, but my tastes now are more discerning and it wasn't original or creative enough to make me read through a lesser Indiana Jones fanfic.

(Also, honestly, the AI art just seemed really low effort.)

My complete list of book reviews.

Once again, all the books I read with my KU subscription in the month of January, 2025.

I keep digging for gold amongst LitRPGs, and finding lead. I tried a Western and some SF, and found one hit with evolved octopuses.

Brings the Lightning, by Peter Grant

When the Civil War ends, where can a former Confederate soldier go to escape the long memories of neighbors who supported the winning side? Where can Johnny Reb go when he can't go home? He can go out West, where the land is hard, where there is danger on every side, and where no one cares for whom you fought - only how well you can do it.

Walt Ames, a former cavalryman with the First Virginia, is headed West with little more than a rifle, a revolver, and a pocket full of looted Yankee gold. But in his way stand bushwhackers, bluecoats, con men, and the ever-restless Indians. And perhaps most dangerous of all, even more dangerous than the cruel and unforgiving land, is the temptation of the woman whose face he can't forget.

When you can't go home again - go West!

DNFed at 15%

I occasionally like a good Western, even if the genre has mostly been dead since the 70s. There aren't a lot of new Western authors, and rarely do they get any buzz. Peter Grant is an indie author who seems to mostly write SF but also Westerns, so I sampled this start of a series.

Walt Ames is a former Confederate soldier trying to get home. The war has just ended which means word hasn't even reached the entire country that the South has surrendered. In the first chapter, Ames is ambushed by "bushwackers"; pro-Union guerilla fighters who are sniping Rebs in a Kentucky valley. It would be more accurate to say Ames ambushes them, since he listens in on them, figures out what they are up to, and guns them down first. In fact, they are a family, and Ames first kills the father, then as the teenage son pleads for his life, Ames kills him, and then when his (now-widowed) mother shoots at him, he kills her. (Supposedly he didn't know it was a woman when he shot her and he feels a little bad about it, though he clearly heard her calling to the two men earlier, so who else would it be?) And after he overheard them talking about how the older son will be returning soon, he waits for the older son and immediately murders him.

The bushwackers aren't depicted in a good light (they are clearly lowlives and little more than brigands themselves), but the setup reads like a Confederate revenge fantasy, and I really didn't see much to like about Walt Ames. He then returns to his family farm, to find his mother and older brother are dead and his sister is engaged to a Yankee officer. Ames meets the pretty schoolmarm, agrees to accompany her to St. Louis, and heads west for a new life.

It was okay, but the story so far is simple, the dialog stilted, and anything involving the war is glossed over, so I just wasn't that interested in Ames's continued adventures.

A Curse in Kyoto, by S.J. Cullen

When a supposedly cursed traditional Japanese instrument arrives at the British School of Kyoto, strange things start to happen. A phantom geisha haunts the halls, a star student vanishes, and cryptic symbols appear across the campus.

For Jessica Hunter, a seasoned globetrotter trying to adapt to life at BSK, the eerie events are more than just schoolyard rumours. Teaming up with Kenta Higashi, a local boy with his own connection to the missing student, Jessica suspects a sinister force is at play.

As they investigate, they uncover a web of secrets, lies, and a vengeance plot tied to the instrument’s shadowy past. Can Jessica and Kenta unravel the truth behind the curse before it claims another victim? Or will they become the next targets of its wrath?

DNFed at 5%.

This kept getting pushed at me on Facebook and Twitter, and it had a nice cover and blurb.

It's a very YA book, about a girl in a British boarding school in Kyoto. There's an opening scene with a mysterious shadowy figure shadowing about. Then there's an assembly at the British school where the students are all shown the MacGuffin (an ancient Japanese koto) on loan from a museum. An apprentice Geisha plays it for the students, they get a lecture about how it's very ancient and valuable, and someone asks if it's true about the "rumors" that the koto is cursed. Dundundun! The main character (a so-far generic teen girl) is sitting in the auditorium thinking too-cool-for-school teen girl thoughts.

It reads like the setup for a Scooby Doo mystery, and the writing was about that level. Did not grab me.

The Mountain in the Sea, by Ray Nayler

Humankind discovers intelligent life in an octopus species with its own language and culture, and sets off a high-stakes global competition to dominate the future.

Rumors begin to spread of a species of hyperintelligent, dangerous octopus that may have developed its own language and culture. Marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen, who has spent her life researching cephalopod intelligence, will do anything for the chance to study them.

The transnational tech corporation DIANIMA has sealed the remote Con Dao Archipelago, where the octopuses were discovered, off from the world. Dr. Nguyen joins DIANIMA’s team on the islands: a battle-scarred security agent and the world’s first android.

The octopuses hold the key to unprecedented breakthroughs in extrahuman intelligence. The stakes are high: there are vast fortunes to be made by whoever can take advantage of the octopuses’ advancements, and as Dr. Nguyen struggles to communicate with the newly discovered species, forces larger than DIANIMA close in to seize the octopuses for themselves.

But no one has yet asked the octopuses what they think. And what they might do about it.

A near-future thriller about the nature of consciousness, Ray Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea is a dazzling literary debut and a mind-blowing dive into the treasure and wreckage of humankind’s legacy.

Made the cut! Full review here.

Azarinth Healer: Book One, by Rhaegar

Ilea likes punching things. And eating.

Unfortunately, there aren’t too many career options for hungry brawlers. Instead, the plan is to quit her crappy fast-food job, go to college, and become a fully functioning member of society. Essentially - a fate worse than death.

So maybe it's lucky that she wakes up one day in a strange world where a bunch of fantasy monsters are trying to kill her...?

On the bright side, ‘killing those monsters right back’ is now a viable career path! For she soon discovers her new home runs on a set of game-like rules that will allow her to punch things harder than in her wildest dreams. Well, maybe not her wildest dreams, but it’s close.

With no quest to follow, no guide to show her the way, and no real desire to be a Hero – Ilea embarks on a journey to discover a world full of magic. Magic she can use to fight even bigger monsters.

She’s struggling to survive, has no idea what will happen next, and is loving every minute of it. Except, and sometimes also, when she’s poisoned and/or has set herself on fire. It’s complicated.

DNFed at 5%.

I'm about ready to give up on Litrpgs (except Dungeon Crawler Carl).

The writing of this supposedly well-regarded series was competent enough, but bland and juvenile. The protagonist is a fighty girl who likes punching things but is studying medicine. Then bang, she is isekaid to a fantasy world, and has the usual "Check stats screens" as she fights some mooks. So far the plot is just that — girl get zapped to a fantasy world and becomes an RPG character. That's it.

I guess these kinds of books are crack for a certain kind of reader, but despite being an RPG fan and a fantasy literature fan, it's time for me to admit that the circles do not intersect for me.

The Way of Unity, by Sarah K. Balstrup

The Seven Lands of Velspar put their faith in the Intercessors, a psychic priesthood responsible for the purification of the spirit. Where passion flares, they soothe its intent. Those who cannot be soothed, are cast out, their spirits destroyed by fire.

The Intercessors are mystics of the highest order, but Velspar’s ruling Skalens believe their power has grown too great.

Surviving the Intercessor’s murder plot against her family, Sybilla Ladain rises to power. The Skalens come together under the banner of her grief, bringing the practice of Intercession to its brutal, bloody end.

Yet victory brings Sybilla no peace. In time, she will have to face the people of Velspar, forced to live in a psychically alienated world, and a band of rebels led by an escaped Intercessor set on her annihilation.

DNFed at 3%.

This book seems to have a small but dedicated following and received some buzz with its lyrical, dreamlike setting. It's a very creative work of dark fantasy, but suffers like a lot of books written by an author who has painstakingly constructed a fantasy world completely unlike ours: the characters, the society, the world, the magic, are all so bizarre it takes a while to settle in and figure out what's going on. And after a couple of chapters of dense prose just beginning to skim the surface of the world, I... was not interested.

Sybilla is a young woman whose family was targeted by the priestly Intercessor class, whose objective seems to be to suppress anyone who is too emotional or passionate. There is a lot of psychic religious mumbo jumbo. Sybilla embarks on a revenge quest. I found it confusing and slow-paced. Maybe I didn't give it a fair chance; the story seems to have potential and probably deserves a more serious reading than a quick Kindle Unlimited skim, but my KU skims are like that: grab my attention quickly or I will move on.

Saving Mars, by Cidney Swanson

Some pilots follow orders. Others just wing it.

Grounded for her Top Gun attitude, Jessamyn jumps at the chance to fly a covert mission to off-limits Earth and save her world from starvation. On Earth, the Chancellor keeps a dystopian peace through a competitive consciousness-transfer program, offering perfect bodies to those who toe the line. Pilot Jessamyn's orders are simple: get the food and get out, minimizing contact. But when the pilot's brilliant autistic brother is captured and charged with treason, all bets are off. Jess finds an ally in Pavel, the Chancellor's rebel nephew, but now she's got a choice to make: rescue her brother or save Mars?

DNFed at 5%.

So this was like the most generic, paint-by-numbers YA SF ever. Spunky cute girl who's the bestest pilot ever even as a teen lives on Mars, always getting in trouble because she's just too feisty and independent to follow orders. The first chapter is her borrowing one of the Mars colony's fliers to go pilfer some polar ice for her mother. Her flier encounters engine troubles on the way home, she disobeys orders to eject because she knows better than base control and thinks she can land it, which of course she does, but now she's grounded. Man, adults are such buzzkills!

The whole thing should appeal to me, as a lover of Heinlein's juveniles, but Jessamyn's ("Jessamyn"? Seriously?) personality so far is "hotshot pilot with a 'tude" and the description looks like it's going to be Generic YA Plot #4b. We've got the autistic brother for disability rep, we've got the feisty defiant girlboss as a STRAWNG FEMALE CHARACTAH! and she's going to have a romance with the bad guy's nephew. So, like, Hunger Games on Mars or something. The opening just wasn't that interesting and nothing about the writing grabbed me. Another "I wanted to like it but I didn't like it enough to continue."

The Primal Hunter, by Zogarth

On just another average day, Jake finds himself in a forest filled with monsters, dangers, and opportunity...

It was a day like any other when suddenly the world changed. The universe reached a threshold humanity didn’t even know existed, and it was time to finally be integrated into the vast multiverse. A place where power is the only thing anyone can truly rely on.
Jake, a seemingly average office worker, finds himself thrust into this new world. Into a tutorial filled with dangers and opportunities.

His new reality should breed fear and concern. His fellow coworkers falter at every turn. Jake, however, finds himself thriving.

Perhaps... This is the world Jake was meant to be born in.

DNFed at 3%.

This was another series that gets a lot of recommendations. It's up to 12 volumes.

The writing is dull and amateurish, aimed at about a 6th grade reading level (being generous). It's boring descriptions of Jake going through his day before suddenly waking up in a LitRPG world, and having some kind of an alien infodump to him about how he's now in an RPG world and he has to choose a class. Humanity has entered the multiverse. This is followed by several pages of descriptions of the various classes available to Jake, before he chooses one.

I yawned and DNFed.

He Who Fights With Monsters, by Shirtaloon

Jason wakes up in a mysterious world of magic and monsters.

It’s not easy making the career jump from office-supplies-store middle manager to heroic interdimensional adventurer. At least, Jason tries to be heroic, but it's hard to be good when all your powers are evil.

He’ll face off against cannibals, cultists, wizards, monsters...and that’s just on the first day. He’s going to need courage, he’s going to need wit, and he’s going to need some magic powers of his own. But first, he’s going to need pants.

After cementing itself as one of the best-rated serial novels on Royal Road with an astonishing 13 million views, He Who Fights with Monsters is now available on Kindle.

About the series: Experience an isekai culture clash as a laid-back Australian finds himself in a very serious world. See him gain suspiciously evil powers through a unique progression system combining cultivation and traditional LitRPG elements. Enjoy a weak-to-strong story with a main character who earns his power without overshadowing everyone around him, with plenty of loot, adventurers, gods and magic. Rich characters and world-building offer humor, political intrigue and slice-of-life elements alongside lots of monster fighting and adventure.

DNFed at 3%.

It's better-written than the above LitRPG entries, but just as formulaic and boring. So like, I know the formula is "ordinary schmuck is iseakaied into a fantasy world and has a character sheet and shit," but do they all have to be so on-the-nose? Dungeon Crawler Carl at least does some worldbuilding so the "character sheet" is more than just something for the readers to track Numbers Go Up.

He Who Hunts With Monsters tries to start us out with a bit of humor, as Jason has to fight a bunch of low-level monsters like a "Vigorous Hamster" and an "Outraged Pheasant." But it wasn't that funny. Jason fights monsters. Jason loots monsters. Jason applies one of the piles of healing potions he's acquired.

I know, you're supposed to keep reading to get to the... good stuff? Where there's actually a plot? And a world we're supposed to care about? But this didn't do it for me.

Forced Evolution: A LitRPG/Gamelit Adventure, by Lazybaker

In a world ravaged by pandemic, one man's desperate quest for survival unleashes powers that could save humanity – or destroy it.

Welcome,

To Lance Lawthorn's apartment, where he was reassessing his existence, when a cosmic event shattered the ancient barrier that had long shielded Earth from mysterious energies. In an instant, his world—and every living being within it—was bathed in a magical force that humans were never meant to endure.

He had only wanted to break free from his nine-to-five routine and start his own business. Instead, he got his superhero origin story. While the world wrestled to adapt to its new normal, Lance struggled to get used to his enhanced strength, enhanced speed, enhanced senses, and a whole lot of problems he wanted nothing to do with. Now, he must navigate a world where power is measured in stats, and the line between hero and villain blurs with each skill gained.

DNFed at 11%.

Okay, so for my last shot with LitRPGs I tried a superhero one. Maybe it would be a little different than the usual "Wake up in a fantasy world and fight goblins and hamsters."

The writing was... okay, but "Lance Lawthorn" seemed like a Brett Easton Ellis character. He's a dude in some kind of tech startup, he flirts with his firm's marketing specialist and a hot Latina import, there's lots of kind of cringey dialog... And then a plague hits. A "shut down the world" kind of plague. This book was published post-Covid, and yet there was surprisingly little political commentary or realistic handling of logistics. Lance gets really sick, then his boss hooks him up with a mysterious "trial" vaccine that he has to pay $20K to get access to, when he's told he can't drink for 48 hours before taking it (and admits that he was drinking the previous night) he just grabs a needle and injects himself. The research lab throws him out on the street.

Uh, that's not how things work. That's not how any of this works.

Anyway, I was waiting for, you know, the superpowers. The litrpg. 11% of the way in, I guess we're almost there, but the writing was, once again, not good enough or the story interesting enough to make me care.

LitRPGs, it's not me, it's you.

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My complete list of book reviews.

I decided to try out a Kindle Unlimited subscription. KU is like an all-you-can-eat buffet, and like all-you-can-eat buffets, I discovered I really can't eat that much. Some people read a book every day or two; I typically take a week or more, and so it's hard to read fast enough to make the KU subscription worth it. So I decided to take a different approach:

DNF!

I very rarely Did Not Finish-tag books. If I paid for it (and sometimes if I didn't), I want to finish what I started. So I'll finish books I'm not really enjoying, if only to write a scorching review. The only time I normally DNF a book is if it's so spectacularly bad that it's making me crazy (and not even in an entertaining way), or if it's so boring that I can't wait for it to be over.

But for my KU reads, I've decided I will sample widely and DNF as soon as I'm not really feeling it. I will give books I wouldn't normally read (or pay for) a chance, including from self-published authors. I'll try out a book that has an interesting title or cover. I even tried a few books pushed at me by Facebook or reddit. (Facebook might now have a slightly skewed view of my reading habits after I made the mistake of checking out a harem novel. And boy does FB know I was car-shopping recently...) And I won't make myself keep reading if I'm not really looking forward to the next chapter.

So below, I present my KU books for November. I will emphasize that the fact that I didn't finish most of them does not mean they are bad (and some of them I might come back to someday); they just weren't good enough to make the cut. They have to be good enough to replace one of my already limited reading slots, so sometimes I'm just giving it a few chapters and then bailing. The occasional book I do finish, I will note with a link to my complete review.

Dungeon Crawler Carl, by Matt Dinniman

I actually finished this one. Review here.

Freelance on the Galactic Tunnel Network, by E.M. Foner

I gave this one more grace than I normally would, and finished it. Review here.

Arrival of The Moon Hare: An Apocalyptic Progression Fantasy, by Duyu Wander

Fear hinders one's potential.

A sinister presence delights in Rinyv's torment, relentlessly pursuing and killing her the moment she turns fifteen. Now, having encountered death four times already, the girl is living her fifth life hoping to alter her fate and put an end to this endless cycle of suffering.

As the terrifying age of fifteen approaches and chaotic events lead people down the path of despair, Rinyv can't help but do everything in her power to overcome her trauma and grow stronger.

The looming strides of death draw near, and Rinyv appears to hold the key to saving not only herself but all of mankind. Fortunately, armed with the knowledge of her past lives, continuous training, and a giant pair of scissors found on holy ground, she is no longer a powerless, naive young girl.

DNFed at 6%.

Once I finished my bath and changed into my daily attire, I rushed to the mirror to drool over my new body for the hundredth time this year. My wavy dark hair with white streaks, along with my strange red eyes and the few freckles underneath my eyes evoked a feeling of uniqueness that I totally cherished.

My slim body fit nicely even in the smaller-sized clothes, making almost any style accessible to me.

This is a progression fantasy that got its start on Royal Road, and I thought that was a pretty whack cover, and an interesting premise. The protagonist (named "Rinyv") has to keep being reincarnated over and over again, with full memores of her previous lives, and is murdered each time she reaches the age of 15. It's like a cross between Beetlejuice and Groundhog Day. Could have been intriguing, but it's not just well-written (I think the author's native language might not be English), and the 14-year-old girl literally drooling over herself in the mirror and constantly talking about how much she loves being hot and slim (the opening chapter features her living the life of an ugly fat girl who gets beaten to death by her PE teacher) was, uh, kind of creepy.

In the first couple of chapters there are hints that she's being stalked by some kind of supernatural hare who's responsible for all her suffering. The setting is weird, a sort of anime-version of Japan but with completely different names to make it a not-Earth.

Interesting premise and the author is obviously dedicated, but this was fanfiction level (not good fanfiction) trash.

My Outcast State (The Maauro Chronicles Book 1), by Edward McKeown

Three alien machines descend to the asteroid base of their enemies. The ensuing battle is short and savage. The lone survivor hopes either for rescue, or for another chance to engage its enemies. It will be a long wait… Wrik Trigardt ekes out a living in the Kandalor system with his small ship, Sinner. He is caught between his failed past and a grim present in service to the local crimelord, Dusko. An expedition to the Rift Asteroids promises better days, but when the well of time is disturbed no one can say what will surface. Set in the same universe as the Robert Fenaday/Shasti Rainhell stories, but decades later, My Outcast State begins a new cycle of exploration of Confederation Space.

Do Androids Dream of Alien Smugglers, Galactic Heroes, Space Pirates, and Alien War? Freebooters on a Secret Interstellar Mission to an Extinct Civilization find a Robot Weapon on a Derelict Base. That’s right, nothing less than Alien Artifacts on a Mysterious Alien Planet. Rocket into this Science Fiction Spectacle of Sentient Races and High Adventure. Military Science Fiction Space Opera Romance has never been more fun!

DNFed at 8%.

The alien machine shuddered and its colors seemed to run and invert, almost as if it were turning inside out.

"What's going on?" I shouted backing away as the machine convulsed in a nauseating mess.

It did not answer but regained stability. Before me stood a girl: small-breasted and ivory-skinned. The nimbus of starchy monofilament hair had transformed into an impossibly long and voluminous cascade of blue-black hair that hung down her back and in bangs almost to her eyes. I looked into aquamarine eyes far too large to be human, over a petite nose and a tiny mouth. Then the perfect skin was covered in a skintight, dark-grey jumpsuit with orange panels on the torso and arms.

An AI war machine is trapped on a remote ball of rock after destroying its enemies. With no way off, it goes into hibernation. 50,000 years later, humans and other races colonize this part of the galaxy. A freelance pilot who makes his living running fortune hunters around the system looking for alien artifacts is hired by a hot chick whose large breasts are described repeatedly (I am not sure if anything else about her was described). They are double-crossed and ambushed by the local mob boss, and just as they are about to die, Maauro (the alien war machine) wakes up and slaughters the bad guys. Then she taps into the data on the pilot's ship and transforms herself into a waifu from his video games. They form an impromptu partnership and go to rescue Miss Big Titties.

Although leaning a bit heavily on the fan-service, this wasn't a terrible read and if I had bought it, I would probably finish it. It's tolerably well-written space opera, I just didn't think it was great.

Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use It, by Oliver Burkeman

The average human lifespan is absurdly, outrageously, insultingly brief: if you live to 80, you have about four thousand weeks on earth. That’s a pretty good argument for spending less time on Twitter.

Of course, nobody needs telling that there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed by our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, the ceaseless struggle against distraction, and the sense that our attention spans are shrivelling. Yet we rarely make the conscious connection that these problems of time management only trouble us in the first place thanks to the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks.

Four Thousand Weeks is a travelogue about this idea, combining first-person reportage and historical storytelling with excursions into philosophy, literature and psychology, and covering the past, present and future of our battles with time. It’s a book that goes beyond practical tips to transform the reader’s worldview.

Burkeman sets out on an unashamedly philosophical exploration of time and our relationship with it. Drawing on the insights of ancient philosophers, Benedictine monks, artists and authors, Scandinavian social reformers, renegade Buddhist technologists and many others, he sets out to realign our relationship with time – and in doing so, liberate us from its grasp.

DNFed at 27%.

One of the few non-fiction books I sampled. I liked Atomic Habits by James Clear and Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, and sampled this one to see if it had anything new or useful to say. It's basically a book about time management for people who don't like to manage their time.

Instead of offering methods or "life hacks" to manage your time better, the author argues basically that you should get real about the time you have left on Earth and how you want to spend it. Stop trying to chart, plan, and manage your every waking hour, and decide what's important.

This is a fine message, but it felt like an essay padded out to book length. I skimmed the rest and there really wasn't much more to it.

The Sword of Kaigen, by M.L. Wang

On a mountainside at the edge of the Kaigenese Empire live the most powerful warriors in the world, superhumans capable of raising the sea and wielding blades of ice. For hundreds of years, the fighters of the Kusanagi Peninsula have held the Empire's enemies at bay, earning their frozen spit of land the name 'The Sword of Kaigen.' Born into Kusanagi's legendary Matsuda family, fourteen-year-old Mamoru has always known his purpose: to master his family's fighting techniques and defend his homeland. But when an outsider arrives and pulls back the curtain on Kaigen's alleged age of peace, Mamoru realizes that he might not have much time to become the fighter he was bred to be. Worse, the empire he was bred to defend may stand on a foundation of lies.

Misaki told herself that she left the passions of her youth behind when she married into the Matsuda house. Determined to be a good housewife and mother, she hid away her sword, along with everything from her days as a fighter in a faraway country. But with her growing son asking questions about the outside world, the threat of an impending invasion looming across the sea, and her frigid husband grating on her nerves, Misaki finds the fighter in her clawing its way back to the surface.

When the winds of war reach their peninsula, will the Matsuda family have the strength to defend their empire? Or will they tear each other apart before the true enemies even reach their shores?

DNFed at 16%.

This book seems popular on r/fantasy. Like many self-published books nowadays it got its start on Royal Road, and it won a self-published book content.

It wasn't bad; in fact, it was good enough to tempt me to continue reading. But I found the writing adequate at best, and the world-building killed it for me.

It's an Asian-inspired fantasy world with the main characters being not-Japanese samurai clans (but very much using Japanese culture, Japanese names, and Japanese language terms). They have magical/psionic ice powers, and the clan of the protagonists are stationed on a lonely peninsula with the job of "protecting the empire." The setting is strange, because it feels like a typical pre-modern fantasy world, but in fact they have modern technology like computers and jet fighters, which we just don't see much because the story takes place in a remote boondocks.

There are two main characters: Mamoru, a teenage warrior who really wants to prove himself as he goes through what is basically a Magical School training arc, and his mother, Misaki, who is hinted (as of the point I stopped reading) at being some bad-ass special forces warrior in a past life but is now living the docile life of a submissive housewife to Mamoru's cold fish of father.

Mamoru is forcibly paired with a foreign exchange student from fantasy not-Korea, who shows up to tell him that their entire history is a lie. (And one of the author's really odd and annoying decisions was to put dialog in italics whenever a character is not speaking their native language, which means all of Chul-Hee's dialog is in italics!)

I wanted to like this more, but I just found the writing and the characters not compelling enough to really make me want to find out what happens next.

Still Falling, by Martin Wilsey

DNFed at 11%.

Barcus is a working stiff looking for a good paycheck. When the Ventura and its crew enter orbit for a scheduled planet survey, the ship activates an automated defense system protecting the planet. Although the Ventura is destroyed in the attack, Barcus alone survives the harrowing fall to the remote planet surface. He struggles to remain alive and sane, and to discover why everyone he knew and loved on the Ventura was deliberately murdered.

Swinging between despair and fury, Barcus discovers that for every answer he obtains, there are more questions raised. Barcus is assisted by the Emergency Module, Em, his most useful tool. It is an Artificial Intelligence system contained in an all-terrain vehicle specifically designed to help him survive. Barcus soon finds himself in the middle of a planetary genocide of the local native population. He is unable to stand passively by as more people die, even if they are long lost colonists who fear "The Man From Earth" like children fear the monster under their bed.

Will Barcus ever find his way home? Will he find out who is responsible? Will his rage just burn this world down? Or will he find his soul in the eyes of a starving, frightened woman?

Still Falling is a sci-fi survival story. Barcus was a crewman aboard a spaceship doing a routine survey of a planetary system. It was shot out of the sky, and Barcus appears to be the only survivor. Fortunately, an advanced AI also made it down to the planet with him. Barcus and the AI learn that this planet was settled by humans from an earlier wave of colonization, but they have reverted to a medieval state. Barcus has an advanced suit of powered armor, plus his robot AI and a horde of drones, so they are basically godlike beings on this world.

Barcus encounters some marauders who are massacring entire villages. Flying into a rage, he slaughters the entire band of marauders and rescues the sole survivors of the village, a woman and a child.

There is a lot of internal monologue. Barcus is suffering PTSD and mourning his dead crewmates. It looks like the woman he saved is going to be a love interest. And the AI seems to have a hidden agenda. This could be interesting, but it actually reads as very dry and I just wasn't that engaged in the story. Part of it was that there isn't a lot of tension when Barcus and his AI are basically invincible and can mow down armies. I was tempted to skim ahead to see what the payoff is; this is apparently the first in a series.

This is a very techy book written by an engineer, so it goes hard on the SF elements, but it felt like a lot of self-published books written by smart people, well-written but flat.

Judicator Jane, by Brian Rouleau

Could you survive waking up alone in a vast and deadly desert?

Moments ago, Jane's biggest worries were unpaid bills and finding a job. Now, she must use all her cunning, along with her new, mysterious powers, to survive the desolate and scorching sands.

No food. No water. No answers.

Jane's battle for survival in this unfamiliar land has just begun...

Hunted by the savage beasts of the desert, it's only a matter of time before Jane either adapts to the world around her or ends up as another skeleton rotting in the blistering sun. But what chance does a modern woman have in the endless dunes, dressed only in her pajamas?

DNFed at 16%.

This was a LitRPG book, and like most LitRPGs it's the first in a series. I picked it because the cover looked kind of cool and the title sounded like maybe it's a female Judge Dredd chick going through a fantasy wild west...

It's not. Jane is a nice girl who just got laid off from her software testing job, and she wakes up in a desert world where a "system" pops up info dialogs telling her to assign her stats - in other words, she just wakes up in a LitRPG fantasy world, with no explanation. At the point where I stopped reading, there was still no explanation. While I get that this is typical of LitRPGs, I need to be given some kind of background, some reason why someone suddenly gets Isekai'd from our world to Random RPG World.

The gimmick in Judicator Jane is that since she's a software tester, she spends some time exploring the selection menus, and figures out how to zero out her hundreds of default skills and reassign the points. So she basically dumps everything (all 630 points!) into Luck. She is now a normal human with no skills and God-level Luck.

This is kind of entertaining as it results in giant scorpions accidentally stabbing themselves and demon lords literally tripping and impaling themselves on random spikes in the ground as they try to attack her. Each time she earns a gazillion XPs, most of which are discarded as she only gets enough to move up to the next level, but when she gets to pick a class, her Luck once again lets her choose from three Legendary classes, so she becomes a "Judicator."

This book is an example of everything good and bad about LitRPGs. It's light and entertaining reading and if you just want literary popcorn, watching the character move through a LitRPG world with stats going up and encountering a new critter in each chapter, it requires basically no thought.

Unfortunately, it's just an uninteresting story with an uninteresting protagonist. Jane has no personality, and just wanders through a desert until she encounters a fortress full of demons, and there is still no sign of a larger plot or setting or other characters of interest. The writing was fine but nothing special, so I just wasn't interesting in reading more about Lucky Jane.

To Find a Tall Ship, by A.G. Thompson

Sachi Takahashi, not yet nineteen seasons old, is in deep trouble. She’s just killed the only son of the lord of corrupt Clan Ishikawa, a man who will spend weeks torturing her to death. Now she must flee her homeland. But Clan Ishikawa reaches throughout the Empire and into other, nearby nations.

So she must seek a ship on which she can hide until it reaches her goal, the nearly mythical Kingdom of Montagar, on the other side of the world. A place beyond even the reach of her clan lord’s thugs and murderers.

She had to find a tall ship.

DNFed at 43%.

You'll notice I got almost halfway through this one before bailing. To Find a Tall Ship wasn't bad, but it tries to be a little bit of everything. We start out with Sachi Takahachi, who is the adopted daughter of a Japanese ninja clan who's just killed her violent, sadistic cousin and thus must flee for her life. She's not actually in Japan, though — this is what appears to be some sort of alternate fantasy world, with a fantasy Japan, fantasy England, fantasy Russia, fantasy Spain (complete with Inquisitors), all basically historical analogues with the serial numbers very lightly filed off. At first it resembled Taylor Anderson's Destroyermen series.

Sachi sneaks onto a "Kolbian Republic" frigate. The Kolbians are the fantasy British in this world. After stowing away for a month, she is finally discovered, whereupon a will-they-won't-they romance develops between her and the dashing Captain Blaine.

Then we get POV chapters from several other characters. First, there is the "Confederal" officer in an orbiting space station waking up from hibernation.

Wait, what?

Yes, we learn that this is actually an alien planet that was once colonized by humans from earth, but there was a huge war with apostrophes-in-their-names aliens who were defeated by a moon-sized battleship, which disappeared and left the human survivors behind for the next 9000 years. So the humans who colonized the planet previously have (roughly) recreated Earth's history several times while forgetting their origins, while above, spacemen silently watch and monitor them, and there are also some bad guys who are keeping the humans on the planet below from ever achieving a proper technological civilization.

Sachi somehow is connected to an AI, which lets her do things like call down an orbital strike on a giant sea monster that's about to eat their ship.

Then there are the chapters with the pirates, where we learn that this world also has actual magic-using elves and dwarves and sorcerers.

So... that's kind of a lot to throw into one book, and I felt like the author just wanted to recreate some multi-genre RPG setting. The writing was okay, but the dialog was very unrealistic, the thought processes of the characters entirely too modern at times, and while my Japanese is far from fluent, I have some doubts about the Japanese phrases Sachi spouts at times.

"Please, no," she muttered to him, half-delirious. "Not the whole crew. There's just me. Let me stay with the Captain. I could be ready anytime he wants me. Or m-m-m-maybe, you could just share me a little bit, the Captain, you, Master Fleet, maybe Master Caplin, he's nice. Mister Bosun, too. I could be good, very good for just a few, but not the whole crew. Please, Ancestor Spirits, please don't send me to the galley to service the whole crew. I don't want to be locked into a crib." By the end of her outburst, she was holding onto Doctor Hoff's coat, trying to kiss him. "I'll be so good to all of you, just please not a crib, kill me or hang me or throw me into the ocean in chunks, please, please, no, not...that...oww!" There was a cold pinch in her arm and the cold spread quickly and then she was warm and serene silence and darkness swept her up in warm, peaceful wings. "Mama, Papa, is that you?" she muttered. Then the drug Hoff injected into her arm claimed the last scrap of consciousness.

Look, I am a guy who likes stories for guys so I don't mind the romance, the hot Asian chick who we are constantly reminded is sexy and busty, and the hot elf chick we are constantly reminded is a sexy elf, and I didn't even mind the constant reminders that the women expect to be gang raped (I mean, being alone on sailing ships full of pirates and marines, why wouldn't they?) but can we go one chapter without being reminded that Sachi has huge tits and really wants to fuck the captain but oh no she is a dishonored nobody unworthy of love, and the captain really wants to fuck Sachi but oh no, he is married and honorable (even though his fellow officers tell him to his face his wife is an unfaithful bitch and he's obviously miserable)? Also Sachi is like super smoking hot as every man who sees her notices (even the gay guy), and did I mention she is tall and has really big tits and she's hot? Because the author sure does. A lot.

I'm making fun, but come on, author, we get it. Sachi is hot and stacked and I suppose we're going to have to wait until the next book for some tragedy to befall the captain's wife so he can bang Sachi.

It was okay, it's fun, it's just kind of silly and wasn't quite good enough for me to persist to the end, but I might come back to it someday and even check out the next book.

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My complete list of book reviews.