A Review of another audio novel.

 

A New age of Man(A Realms Novel) by D.A Putman. The story is a classic trope of the son of the blacksmith getting special powers to become one of the heroes of the realm. An interesting point to the story is the background of how people receive their power. They are granted power by patron which determines their power set. Each power set specializes in a particular group. For example, there are mages, warriors, healers and rogues/intelligence. It is basically like a blessing from a god.

I guess the best feature of the novel is the hero’s personal powerset. Normally, I would have expected to the main character to be a spell weaving or a sword swinging hero. Instead of the usually fantasy tropes, the author decides to give him a rogue skill set. So, we see the hero sneaking around, setting traps, hiding in shadows and basically learning to be spy. I have to say that it quite interesting to me. However, it seems that our hero never had any setbacks. Every time he was challenge to a new issue, he would just spend a little more time slowly learning the process. No matter what, he always overcomes the challenge. I kind of wished he would have failed dramatically at one point.

Now, most of book takes place in the school/academy for the people with the talents. I honestly felt the training situations should have been drawn out more but our lovely main character was prodigy like no other. He redefine the course training criteria because he cross trained some skills with his friends which apparently never happened before. It caused the academy to follow his training idea which I find to be completely ridiculous. You would think  that the academy has been around for hundreds of years would know how to expose students to other training methods. It isn’t hard concept but it completely ignored by the staff.

Not long after being at the academy, he is advance early to the third year of course work and he is able to take missions. On his first mission, he quickly discovers the issue that has been plaguing the country for over a year. The character that only has a year or so experience finds the cause of the problem and particularly solves it single handedly. You would think his instructors with decades of experience would be the ones to do it. But of course, it all falls on the main character.

So, if you like a novel where the main character is able to solve everything and never truly suffers a defeat, then the novel is definitely for you. I have to say the action sequences were enjoyable but I just wish the novel wasn’t so predictable. Overall, I think I will probably read the second of the series just to see where the story goes from here. Till next time.

A review of Power By Tom Larcombe

This week has been interesting. I finished another audio book Power by Tom Larcombe.

If I had to describe this book, it is a system apocalypse novel. Instead of the entire world being transformed at once, it starts off in a small area of Colorado. From there, the main character Max survive the first transformation by the skin of his teeth. As the transformation expands, more people are transformed. It starts with his neighbors and the small town that he lives nearby. Eventually, it grew to include most of the state of Colorado.

One of the most interesting things about this novel is the character’s skill development. Unlike most system apocalypse novels, Max isn’t granted a super powerful skill ability right off the bat. He wasn’t given a choice of his class. Instead, the intelligence behind the system forces a particular basic class on him. Later on, the intelligence does give later converts the ability to choose. However, all choices are based upon the skills they have developed over their lifetime.

                One thing that makes the main character stand out the most is his ability to fix modern equipment. Due to the energy changing the world, all existing technologies are breaking down. Cell phones, computers, and cars all stop working shortly after being exposed. Thankfully, the main character was granted a skill that allows him to resolve the issue in these devices.

I have to say that I’m I would recommend this novel to anyone who likes LitRPGs or system apocalypse novels.

In addition to finishing a novel, I did two other projects. The first thing that I worked on was my home lab environment. For the longest time, I had my lab powered off. I wanted to get it back up in running because I had to renew one of my sans certificates. Usually, when I’m starting my renewal process, I like to brush up on my skills. This time, I wanted to get the lab in a more secure environment. So, I purchased an Ubiquiti Cloud Gateway Ultra instead of setting up a virtual firewall. The gateway has 4 GbE Rj45 ports and thankfully the Wan port supports 2.5 GbE Rj45. I love the ease it was to setup. All it took was a few minutes and the Ubiquiti app. After the installation, all of my lab equipment was on and running.

Now, that I’ve gotten it back online, I will have to setup my virtual machines and find ways to use the IDS in the gateway. One thing that I’m looking forward to is seeing if I can get the logs into a SIEM solution. I haven’t decided between using an ELK stack or possibly using Logscale community addition. I guess I’ll have to make a decision.

The only project that I’ve been working on is another new hobby. Over the last couple of days, I had to cut down a few branches on one of our trees. While I was cutting it down, one of my kids asked me to carve a play cut out of the branches. I was able to use one of the knives to strip the bark off easily enough. Though I had problems carving out the center. The problem is the knife wasn’t a good tool for scraping out the center. So, I decided to purchase a basic carving set. I am debating on getting a really nice setup but I figure it would probably be better if I just get a basic decent set instead. So, I ended up getting the BeaverCraft Wood Spoon Carving tool kit S14 deluxe.

 This set comes with several pieces including a wood carving knife, hook knife, gouge and a leather strop. I’m hoping that the hook knife will clear out the center.

I’ll probably try it this weekend and let you know next time.

A reviewed of Demon Card Enforce: A Deck-Building LitRPG (The Cerberus Cards Book 1) by John Stovall

So, I just finished the audio version of Demon Card Enforce: A Deck-Building LitRPG (The Cerberus Cards Book 1) by John Stovall.

The novel is about Ethan Wolfe who is a 20-year veteran mob enforcer. In this novel, every year or so the gods gift the world mortals with magic cards, dungeons and monsters. Everyone that receives ten magic cards is called a deckbearer. Now, the novel starts off in a night club. The interesting part about the audio book is that it includes other sounds. For example, in the night club scene, you could faintly hear club music in the background. While it does bring some ambience to the scene, I found it to be quite annoying and at first, I really wanted to give up on the novel. The other sound effect happens when he looks at his cards. This sound was a bit more annoying to me but thankfully, unlike most LitRPGs, Ethan Wolfe doesn’t check out his cards/status every chapter. 

Another thing that bugged me is one of the rules to the magic system. According to the book, cards won’t disappeared from the world unless the deckbearer kills themselves, dies in a dungeon or dies to a monster. This rule seems like real bad setup for a deckbearer. If it gets out that you have cards, what is stopping anyone from hitting you with their card, poisoning your food or some other form assassination? Isn’t it enough that you have to face off against monsters and other deckbearers? Now, it is possible that anyone you meet would be out to get you. How could annoying not end up a paranoid lunatic? I’m guessing the author was relying on that most people in general are decent human beings and wouldn’t try to kill a stranger for magic powers. 

 Now, the actual plot is interesting. I enjoyed all the drama between the rival mob families. There was shootouts, ambushes and tons of deck fighting. The action kept my quite entertained. According to description on Amazon, there will be people hunting Wolfe that he never suspected. In the novel, it is completely true. Apparently, Ethan with his vast experience never saw/figure out the actual villain until the climax of the book. However, it was completely clear to me at beginning of the novel. I wonder if that was the author intension to have the reader realize before the main character. Or was it really not clear to Ethan? 

 Overall, the story was enjoyable and a little on the shorter sides for my audio books (only 11 hours and 36 minutes). I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good LitRPG novel.

My next read/listen is going to be Power: Wormhole Mana, Book 1 by Tom Larcombe.