DK

The end of a fantastic tale

Revisado: 04-01-25

Narration: The narrator is top notch and fits this tale quite well. Zero complaints.

Story: "Counterstrike" is a fitting finale for a trilogy that was a fun romp through a dire future war in which the main character (Captain Jackson Wolfe) is initially looked down upon due to his place of origin but gradually wins over his detractors. I would've given this 5 stars--and the trilogy itself is 5 stars overall--but the ending to this novel had two very uncharacteristically dissatisfying denouements. This is because most of the things that happened in the story seemed like a natural progression of events; there wasn't much in the way of deus ex machina or contrived circumstances--until the end. Without spoilers, I'll just say that a character's love life and career both took strange turns at the end that seemed more forced than natural; those elements just didn't make much sense to me at all.

That said, I still do recommend this trilogy quite a bit.

Addendum: This series vaguely reminded me of the "Lost Fleet" series, so if you like this, you might want to check that out too. While they're very different, and the lead characters are very different, the general situation the characters are in is similar and it scratches the same itch. (Although the author of this series is quite a bit better at the craft of writing than the "Lost Fleet" author. And unlike the "Lost Fleet" there isn't too much in the way of political correctness and the female characters act like real females.)

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High Quality Sword & Sorcery

Revisado: 09-27-24

Three very excellent stories well told by the narrator (whose voice i didn't care for at first, but rapidly grew on me). Not much more to say without spoilers, but the characters herein are all new, we haven't seen them in prior SRMs)

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Not bad

Revisado: 09-24-24

Not bad and better than most. The backstory is totally unbelievable, but at this point Gamelit readers such as myself derive a certain charm from ridiculous plot lines. The book definitely has flaws but I'd go so far as to say it's "good".

Huge penalties for the narrator for this book. Normally I love his narration, but here he talks in this sort of warbling voice that only works if the protagonist is terrified, but the protagonist is not always terrified. Fortunately, the narrator stops this by book 3.

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Astonishingly Bad

Revisado: 08-10-24

Pros:
The prose. It's well-written.

Cons:
--Way too descriptive way too frequently. Step aside Tolkien, there's a new master in town.
--Unbelievable premises. Harry acts in utterly ridiculous, illogical ways (involving women, naturally, as Harry has autism or something) that you start to realize he's doing just to advance the plot. It's the author being lazy.
--It follows the standard Dresden Files trope: all women are paragons and even if they're evil, manipulative and so on, they're still cool or somehow still good. Where are the cowardly women? The dumb women? The passive women? No, they're all smart, they're all skilled, they're all dominant and in many cases hyper-aggressive (even stranger, there are only aggressive women, there aren't aggressive men) they're all emotionally and socially superior to any of the men, and yet...they act in bizarre and foolish ways, jeopardizing their own lives for no reason such as they did in this novel. I don't mean to go on about this but after so many novels it's moved well past "repetitive" and is well into "obnoxious".
--Harry simply accepts being manipulated, used, and abused by women. Ok, can Harry please have some self-respect? It's been 5 or 6 novels, surely he's not still a doormat for women. Surely.

Overall:
This is a low point in the series that thankfully has our favorite demoness sprinkled throughout--this helps to mitigate the pain. I sorely wish we'd had a Harry+Lash interlude series. Alas.

4/10

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Shame

Revisado: 08-03-24

The story was going OK, not the worst but not the best, until we get to Charity's segment. I get what Butcher was trying to do, but normalizing assault/domestic violence just because Charity is a chick is very disappointing and ruins the tale for me (as I imagine it does for all who've been victimized by women). Making crime OK just because of what someone has between their legs is the path of evil.

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Decent narrator, boring tale

Revisado: 08-28-23

I'm now at chapter 9 and nothing has happened except character creation. In fact, it's so boring that I'm legit just sitting around doing nothing at work rather than listen to any more of it.

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Good story, Lackluster Narrator

Revisado: 05-29-19

Due to a lackluster narrator who places emotion and emphasis on the wrong parts of sentences and frequently mispronounces words, this is a tale that is better read than listened to. Ignoring the audiobook, the actual story is slow to get started and drags in spots, but is otherwise a solid yarn from a first time author (I'm assuming he is a first time author). Worth a read!

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Slow start, sluggish finish

Revisado: 04-18-19

This book feels very different from book 1. In book 1, you had a constant sense that something was happening--the plot was constantly moving forward. With book 2, you plod along until the 38% mark before things start happening. It's when the story truly begins. The first 38% is backstory. This is also not an action adventure, it's almost all character development, with maybe one scene of pseudo-action. Your heart never pounds, and there's never any nail-biting moments. This isn't bad, just different. That said, I have to rate the overall story at 3 stars, and it really only gets that because the writing is so excellent. The story was fairly boring to me, unfortunately. Your milage may vary.

The narrator was excellent.

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Two Sides to this Tale

Revisado: 04-16-19

Summary: Are you mid-20s or older? Then you're not the target audience. Find something else. If you're early 20s or younger? Give it a read!

Details:
On the one hand, we have a fine story depicting the adventures of a teen trying to win a gaming competition. This is relatively entertaining for all ages.

On the other hand, we have the "out of game" story which involves the teen protagonist avoiding social services while trying to raise money for his sickly mom. For a mature adult, this side plot is cringe-inducing and made me groan at it's corniness. The facepalming is strong with this one. You can just skip 90% of those sections and not miss anything. That said, for a younger audience such material would likely still be entertaining.

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Not worth your time

Revisado: 05-01-18

This is book one in the Dragon Age series and it shows—the author was painfully new to novel writing. All the “new author” flaws are in evidence: telling not showing, too much time spent dwelling on things that shouldn’t even be mentioned, characters are cardboard cutouts, and so on.

The story would be generally entertaining (and is, at times) but just when it starts to gather momentum, the reader is pulled out of the story by some cringe-worthy scene or a scene that is confusing, unexplained, or completely unrealistic (yes, even in the context of a fantasy world). Non-spoiler example: there’s a scene where a King is randomly punched in the face by one of his knights, while said knight was wearing a metal gauntlet (ouch). The reason? There was none. The knight (who was a woman) was entirely in the wrong and made a false assumption. What makes this even more bizarre is the knight suffered no penalty or reprimand, never apologized, and IN THE SAME SCENE, moments later, apologizes to a stranger over something trivial. In the same scene, after knocking the King onto his back via punch, she acts tender towards him and we the reader are somehow being asked to accept the character, and believe that it’s his fault he got punched.

Now that I think of it, this weird angry femdom situation occurs throughout this novel. Men, particularly the royal main character, are beaten, belittled, and insulted by various women with zero response by the males (aside from blaming themselves, that is). It’s like the king is an abused wife or something. Man, the author is definitely projecting.

In terms of DA lore, this book is skippable. You learn all that’s relevant in book 2, which is a continuation of this storyline.

Book two is similar in quality, but not quite so bad. Still a lot of weirdly hostile women (who are forgiven no matter how they act), but not so frequent or nonsensical as in book one. That said, book two is skippable as well.

Book three is where the author finally comes into his own and is definitely worth reading.

Book four (The Masked Empire) was written by a different author. The prose is fine, but the story suffers from similar but different nonsensical scenes yet again (an abusive woman with a Stockholm Syndrome lover are the main chars). It’s skippable. The only real lore addition is a paragraph towards the end. That’s it.

Book five is excellent and is by far the best novel in the series. Besides excellent writing, well-crafted scenes, “normal” interactions between men and women, great additions to lore, and an awesome plot, we are given a real treat: characters who behave like real people. Barring one out-of-place character (who I’m certain the game corp. ordered the author to include) the book is terrific. It’s also the only book in the series written by a woman.

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