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Various thoughts on a variety of topics.

Various Thoughts

Various thoughts on a variety of topics.

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  • Tag Archives Paranormal Romance
  • ARE YOU EVEN HUMAN & FEEDBACK

    Posted on March 10, 2025 7:28 am by Offkorn Comment

    Natalie Maher‘s Are You Even Human is a difficult book to categorize. While it certainly starts out as post-apocalyptic survival, it’s also on a character-driven journey to answer the question of the title and shifts into a completely different genre once the military takes center stage. Closer to an agency thriller maybe? There are lots of different directions it could go at this point, so it’ll be interesting to see how things progress.

    Feedback, the fourth novel in Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire‘s Newsflesh series is mostly an outside look at the events of Feed that goes rather off the rails in its second half. That first half is quite good even if some of the events feel like retcons, but the second half just… isn’t. The CDC doesn’t get a focus until Deadline, and so having them hit as hard as they do here just doesn’t gel with previous events. And then that whole raider abduction thing? What even is that?

    So I’m left with pretty mixed feelings on the novel as a whole and can’t really recommend it.

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    3. Middlegame, Siren’s Song, & Honors Seanan McGuire‘s Middlegame is a standalone story with no relation...
    4. Recent Books Normally I do these three at a time… but, well…...
    5. Sparrow Hill Road & Laughter at the Academy The first of Seanan McGuire’s Ghost Roads novels is a...

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    This entry was posted in Book Related and tagged Are You Even Human Mira Grant Natalie Maher Newsflesh Paranormal Romance Romance Science Fiction Seanan McGuire Urban Fantasy
  • MAGICAL GIRL MECHANICAL HEART & A LITTLE VICE

    Posted on March 7, 2025 3:12 pm by Offkorn Comment

    A dark magical girl story in the vein of Madoka, Natalie Maher‘s first Magical Girl Mechanical Heart novel explores expressions of slavery (both mental and physical), PTSD, clinical depression, mania, disassociation, and self-delusion. It is, to re-iterate, quite dark. Ultimately though most of its characters strive to rise above their issues, which results in there being a distinctive string of hope threaded throughout.

    Lighter, but by no means light (more akin to PreCure I guess), is Erin Elkin‘s A Little Vice. This magical girl story focuses almost entirely on one particularly messy journey of self-discovery with some abusive parenting thrown in on the side. It’s extremely bittersweet with some mixed messaging alongside a questionable ending, and the structure is odd enough that I’m unsure whether or not it’s supposed to be a stand-alone work.

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    1. BUSINESS DRAGON #1-2 & CALAMITY I was expecting a CEO type of thing going into...
    2. ARE YOU EVEN HUMAN & FEEDBACK Natalie Maher‘s Are You Even Human is a difficult book...
    3. The WITCH who TRADES with DEATH & BIOSHIFTER The Witch who Trades with Death is an engaging stand-alone...
    4. WHEN SORROWS COME & That Time I Got Reincarnated as a SLIME #12 Seanan McGuire‘s fifteenth October Daye novel is completely centered on...
    5. The Eminence in Shadow #4 & Sword Saint Adel’s Second Chance #2 Against my better judgement, I went and picked up the...

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    This entry was posted in Book Related and tagged Erin E. Elkin Magical Girl Mechanical Heart Natalie Maher Paranormal Romance Urban Fantasy
  • Ithria: Taroniah & EMPIRE of EXILES

    Posted on March 5, 2025 10:28 am by Offkorn Comment

    Peter Rhodan‘s Ithria series is a bit unusual in that it’s split into two almost entirely separate storylines. And after looking through the descriptions, I decided to follow Taroniah’s and skip Kyron’s.

    The first couple Taroniah novels suffer a bit from some extremely clunky dialog and occasionally repetitious segments. Normally if a character wanted to inform someone of a previous event an author would just write something like “they proceeded to recount what happened”; here though the whole scene will periodically end up recapped. Thankfully the former issue mostly resolves itself by the third novel, but the latter persists at least through the fourth. Which is the point I dropped it. For whatever reason, the author decided in that book that he wanted the protagonist to be both a battering ram and a confrontation-adverse infiltrator… and it just does not work.

    Picked up Bastian Knight‘s Empire of Exiles on a whim and ended up almost immediately disappointed. The protagonist is a weird amalgam of gamer and jock, he has a bizarre habit of constantly referencing Earth-related things in conversation despite being in a fantasy world, and the romance elements are incredibly forced.

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    3. I’m not the final Boss’s Lover #1-4 & Heroine on Strike The most notable thing about Choejong Boss’eui Aein’irani Ohaeibnida is...
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    5. Min-Maxing My TRPG Build #8 & Modern Villainess #4 TRPG Player‘s ninth installment is a bit strange in the...

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    This entry was posted in Book Related and tagged Bastian Knight Empire of Exiles Fantasy Ithria Paranormal Romance Peter Rhodan
  • Through the Fire #1-3 & Necropolis

    Posted on March 1, 2025 7:25 am by Offkorn Comment

    The first three books in Benjamin Medrano‘s Through the Fire series alternate between good and middling. Although there’s nothing to complain about in The Avatar’s Flames, the pacing in Queen of Ice leaves much to be desired while The Obsidian Palace marks a return to quality despite some uneven pacing in the second half. That said, I do not like how it concluded (neither in the palace itself nor the last-minute harem expansion) and have no desire to continue the series past this point.

    The sixth of Stuart Grosse‘s Reborn as the First Boss novellas is an effectively self-contained dungeon run. I’m not really sure at this point what the author’s going for since there’s little overarching storyline and the episodic conflicts don’t seem to have any notable relation.

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    3. The Mythical Hero’s Otherworld Chronicles #2-3 & Mushoku Tensei #7-22 Despite my earlier misgivings I decided to roll the dice...
    4. Recent Books Normally I do these three at a time… but, well…...
    5. The IDEAL SPONGER LIFE #9-12 My earlier misgivings turned out to be unfounded as very...

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    This entry was posted in Book Related and tagged Benjamin Medrano Fantasy Novella Paranormal Romance Reborn as the First Boss Stuart Grosse Through the Fire
  • The Otome Heroine’s Fight for Survival #4 & I’m not the final Boss’s Lover #5

    Posted on February 28, 2025 12:16 am by Offkorn Comment

    The Otome Game no Heroine de Saikyou Survival series continues to hold up well in its fourth entry. It marks the end of the titular game’s prologue and the action will apparently be shifting to an academy setting in the next novel, which is something I’m not looking forward to… but I guess we’ll see how it goes.

    Checking on a whim, I was quite surprised to find that Choejong Boss’eui Aein’irani Ohaeibnida was back up on Amazon. Even more surprising was that the fifth entry turned out to be the series’ conclusion. Unfortunately, it’s not very good at all and makes me wonder if it just rapidly deteriorated here at the end or I happened to be in a particularly forgiving mood at the time I read the first four books.

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    5. I’m not the final Boss’s Lover #1-4 & Heroine on Strike The most notable thing about Choejong Boss’eui Aein’irani Ohaeibnida is...

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    This entry was posted in Book Related and tagged Choejong Boss'eui Aein'irani Ohaeibnida Fantasy Harunohi Biyori KEN Otome Game no Heroine de Saikyou Survival Paranormal Romance Young Adult Novel
  • The Realm Dungeon & IMMORTAL WAR

    Posted on February 25, 2025 11:44 am by Offkorn Comment

    The third Primer for the Apocalypse novel takes place entirely inside a dungeon that does not come across much like a dungeon at all. It’s not really any different from the action switching to a sequence of different planets, which is something that I’m thankful for. Quite a bit of time is covered as the protagonist advances from third all the way to eighth rank, with the main question being why she’s so set on advancing to the next realm without having spent much time in this one.

    Like, there’s no guarantee the next realm is any better. It could easily be worse (like it is in the Shop of Souls series).

    Beneath the Dragoneye Moons‘ fourteenth novel is a bit of a head-scratcher. The titular war only takes a day or two and the rest is the protagonist rebuilding her home… which she just did a couple books back. The apocalypse itself even gets handwaved away a few years later by a pair of ‘lifebringers’. What was the point of the pseudo-reset? To push Night off the stage? Why bring him back in the first place then? The whole production just comes across as completely arbitrary.

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    5. [PSYCHOKINETIC] EYEBALL PULLING #3 & HERETICAL FISHING The most notable thing about the third Psychokinetic novel is...

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    This entry was posted in Book Related and tagged Beneath the Dragoneye Moons Braided Sky Fantasy Paranormal Romance Primer for the Apocalypse Selkie Myth
  • Returner’s Defiance #1-3 & The Grand Imperial Prince #1-2

    Posted on February 23, 2025 1:22 pm by Offkorn Comment

    I picked up Bruce Sentar‘s Returner’s Defiance series expecting a situation like Heretic Spellblade‘s only to end up with something more like Na Honjaman Level-Up crossed with Mob Sorcery (although it does happen to feature a specific group of women completely obsessed with the protagonist). The harem development so far has been kind of forced, but the characters and events have been entertaining enough.

    Speaking of books that feature groups of women being obsessed with the protagonist, Kingsley Khan‘s The Grand Imperial Prince series takes that scenario and dials it up to eleven. To be honest I’m not really sure what I was expecting when I picked it up, but the first two novels in the series absolutely live up to their titles. These books are porn first and story second… but there is a story there (one featuring some surprisingly fitting eldritch horror elements). What stands out most to me though is the way the author starts off with the depravity cranked up high enough that when the protagonist takes over his actions almost manage to come off as restrained in comparison.

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    This entry was posted in Book Related and tagged Bruce Sentar Fantasy Kingsley Khan Paranormal Romance Returner's Defiance The Grand Imperial Prince Urban Fantasy
  • Incubus Inc. #1-3 & Corsairs & Cataclysms #5

    Posted on February 20, 2025 5:33 am by Offkorn Comment

    While the atmosphere of Randi Darren‘s Incubus Inc. series is somewhat similar to Privateer’s Commission‘s, it starts out a very different series. At the beginning it stands apart for having the protagonist take a backseat in most roles while featuring sex scenes like a Japanese LN would food porn. This works surprisingly well and the first two books end up enjoyable.

    The third however shakes things up in highly questionable ways following a time-skip. Suddenly the protagonist here starts acting like the protagonist of Privateer and all sorts of highly questionable event developments occur one after another. I had to drop it a little over a third of the way through.

    Although the conclusion to Devan Drake‘s Corsairs & Cataclysms series does end up a little on the fast-paced side of things, it manages to avoid feeling rushed while wrapping up all the major outstanding plot threads. Honestly it’s incredibly impressive. The only annoying aspect being how it seems like the author has a bit of a fixation on Raven not being part of the harem.

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    This entry was posted in Book Related and tagged Corsairs & Cataclysms Devan Drake Incubus Inc Paranormal Romance Randi Darren Urban Fantasy
  • For Whom the belle Tolls & The Mirror

    Posted on February 11, 2025 1:40 pm by Offkorn Comment

    Jaysea Lynn‘s For Whom the Belle Tolls is a shockingly good paranormal romance with a fitting blend of comedy and drama (along with a small bit of action and a number of detailed sex scenes in the second half). My only complaints are how the counterpart to ‘people can change for the better’ is never addressed and how the reincarnation issue is ultimately handled.

    The initial resolution was perfect, not least because it didn’t come across as a trite ass-pull. So to suddenly change that at the last moment comes across as nothing but a… trite ass-pull. One made worse due to how the epilogue makes clear that there ended up being no functional difference between the two. That’s a very minor issue though and isn’t anywhere near enough to ruin the story.

    I wasn’t thrilled with how the first book in Nora Roberts‘ Lost Bride trilogy ended, and so had put off reading the second until now. Turns out the trip was just a brief arbitrary thing… presumably to force that cliffhanger ending. Nothing actually changes regarding the daily life routine or character dynamics, which for the most part is a positive. The only thing that really sticks out negatively is the somewhat high level of repetition in both conversations and certain events.

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    5. Iron and Magic, The Ripper Affair, & The Chemist Iron and Magic is the first of a new trilogy...

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    This entry was posted in Book Related and tagged Jaysea Lynn Lost Bride Trilogy Nora Roberts Paranormal Romance Romance Urban Fantasy
  • ULTIMATE LEVEL 1: NEW FREEDOMS & NEW POTENTIAL

    Posted on February 4, 2025 1:24 pm by Offkorn Comment

    The fifth of Shawn Wilson‘s Ultimate Level 1 novels continues along the path previous entries set out. Nothing particularly noteworthy one way or the other in it beyond that there are quite a few technical errors in the last quarter and the cliffhanger ending.

    New Potential, however, is something completely different. I almost dropped it barely a chapter in since I most definitely do not read this kind of book to follow restricted or de-powered protagonists. That this series has mostly been more of an ensemble thing meant having that taken away was another mark against it. Still, I decided to force my way through and… yeah, it’s not very good. I’ll give the follow-up a chance, but my expectations now that the protagonist has been boosted worlds ahead of the rest of the party are at rock bottom.

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    This entry was posted in Book Related and tagged Fantasy Paranormal Romance Science Fiction Shawn Wilson Ultimate Level 1

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