Yoyogod's 2021 Reads

Hello everybody. It's a new year, and that means it's time for a new reading thread, and I actually managed to read a book yesterday, so I already have one down.

1) Limitless Seas Book 1: Privateer by Dean Henegar

This is a followup series to Limitless Lands, one of my favorite LitRPG series. This one features a retired navy man who has suffered a traumatic head injury and as part of his recovery process is in a medpod playing the Limitless Lands VR game as a snake man sea captain. I will admit that didn't like this one quite as much as the previous series, but it was still fun and I suspect I'll keep reading when the next volume comes out.

Welcome back!

Hope you have a great year of reading!

Happy reading in 2021, Nathan!

And keep up with my friends here, Nathan. Have a great 2021.

Thanks everybody. I'm really hoping this will be a good year for reading. I've already got book 2 read.

2) Restaurant to Another World, Vol. 4 by Junpei Inuzuka

After having the print version of this pushed back by about six months due to covid, I finally got to read it. This is one series that I love without really being able to articulate why as each volume is essentially a collection of shorts about people from a fantasy kingdom walking through a magic door that leads to a Japanese restaurant so they can eat Earth foods. This book is pretty much like the others with new customers showing up, o;d customers trying new things, and some world building to fill in the series backstory.

And I somehow got two more books read already:

3) Reincarnated as the Last of My Kind, vol. 1 by Kiri Komori

This book wasn't super great, but it was okay. It's one of those isekai style light novels about somebody from Japan dying and then getting reincarnated in a fantasy world. This is about a woman who gets reincarnated as the last of a species (unrevealed exactly what in this volume) that looks human enough but seems to have greater magical potential. This is about her life as a baby and young girl. The translation is subpar (using alchemy to create "manure" instead of fertilizer for instance) and the chapters alternate between the POV of the girl and her adopted father often telling the exact same story twice, just from a different perspective. The story itself is at least interesting though, so I still might pick up the rest of the series when it releases.

4) Hunger on the Chisholm Trail by M. Ennenbach

This is the second book of the Splatter Western series. This one is about a small western town fighting against a wendigo. It's gory, brutal, and very entertaining.

5) Overworld by Rohan M. Vider

This is the first volume of a new series by the author of The Gods' Game LitRPG series. This is also a LitRPG, but of the apocalyptic variety. The premise is that a bunch of gates appear on Earth, and humanity is informed that there world is being subsumed into the Overworld and that if they don't want to die, they need to go through the gates. The story revolves around a young man who travels to the Overworld after some orcs kill his mother in an attempt to kidnap him because he has latent magical powers. It's a decent enough book, with the only real complaint being that the mc, who has a foot that was badly injured by a drunk driver, is continually referred to as a cripple by himself and others, which is one of those words that some people find offensive and others don't.

6) Reincarnated as a Sword, Vol. 7 by Yuu Tanaka

In this volume, the sentient sword Teacher and his cat girl wielder, Fran, have an adventure on the high seas .

7) The Shattered Sword by T. J. Reynolds

This is the first volume of a VR-style litRPG series. It's set in a dystopian future controlled by evil corporations. It follows a teen girl who starts playing Eternal Online to try and earn money to pay off her late father's debt and avoid becoming a slave. It's not particularly great, but not bad either.

8) This Quest Is Broken! by J. P. Valentine

This is a comedic litRPG that's the first in a series about a young woman who is given the epic quest to go to the neighboring town and buy a loaf of bread. It has a rather silly premise and some witty banter, but also has lots of action and a fair amount of more serious plot points. I really liked it and will definitely read the rest of the series when it comes out and will probably read the author's previous series too.

9) The Lost City of Ithos by John Bierce

This is volume four of the Mage Errant fantasy series. This book sees our heroes on the hunt for the imperial capitol of Ithos, which was banished to a pocket dimension centuries ago and is now phasing back into reality. It's very good.

10) Black Dawn by Nathan Ameye

This is the first volume in an apocalyptic LitRPG series. The book follows a pair of brothers and their friend who are having a reunion at an old family cabin when an intense solar storm causes the Earth to reconnect to something called the Fae Nexus, which wipes out most of humanity, turns the world into an RPG, and allows a bunch of demons to invade their small southern town. It's a bit different from other stories of its type in that it's a bit more redneck and uses a tabletop style RPG format as opposed to a digital one. It's not bad.

11) All Our Hidden Gifts by Caroline O'Donoghue

This is a YA fantasy set in Ireland that I got through Early Reviewers. It's about a teen girl who, in a desperate bid to be more popular, ostracizes her only real friend. Later, she finds an odd tarot deck in a cupboard and accidentally makes her former friend vanish using a strange card called The Housekeeper. I do think it was a good book overall, but it really didn't particularly grip me. I suspect this is because I'm a forty five year old man and this is a book that's more geared towards teenagers.

12) Village of Hawkshead by John Cressman

This is the, rather mediocre, first volume of a new LitRPG series. About the only really good thing I can say is that despite the characters consisting of a human man as a protagonist and three assorted fantasy race women as his companions, it didn't turn into any harem BS.

13) Operation: Yukon by William Miekle

This is the 11th book in the S-Squad series about a Scottish army squad that are monster magnets. It's fun pulpy action horror with my only disappointment being that the monsters in this one are just a rehash of the ones from Operation: Siberia.

14) Tamamo-chan's a Fox! Vol. 1 by Yuuki Ray

This is a very cute manga series about a fox spirit who decides she wants to experience life as a high school student, but isn't very good at transformations, so all of her classmates can tell she's a fox.

15) Holmes of Kyoto: Volume 2 by Mai Mochizuki

The second volume of the mystery light novel series about a young antiques appraiser who is nicknamed Holmes because of his remarkable ability for observation and deduction.

16) Shadowcroft Academy for Dungeons: Year One by James A. Hunter & Aaron Michael Ritchey

As the title suggests, this is a dungeon core novel with an academic setting. It draws inspiration from Harry Potter and those sorts of comedy movies where a group of plucky misfits band together to show up the snotty rich kids and the crusty, old dean. I really liked this one.

17) The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa

This is the first volume of a classic light novel series that just recently came back into print. It's about a teen boy named Kyon who is just starting high school and on his first day meets a girl named Haruhi Suzumiya who tells everyone that she wants to meet aliens, time travelers, and espers. Kyon soon gets dragged into her circle and soon discovers that aliens, time travelers, and espers are real and Haruhi may be an unknowing goddess who created the universe three years ago. This was really fun.

18) The Deathworms of Kratos by Richard Avery

This is the sort of book that if I hadn't already known it was from 1974, I would have definitely known it was from the mid-1970s when I read it. It's a bit of disposable, sci-fi action that I only read because I was working on finishing off my 2020 r/fantasy bingo card and was having trouble finding a book about exploration that I hadn't read and that interested me.

This book is about a group called the Expendables who are sent to explore alien planets to see if they can be made safe for human colonization. In this, the first volume of the series, they go to a planet called Kratos, which, as you can probably guess from the title, is inhabited by giant carnivorous worms.

The whole book is loaded with cringe. Including an African character who occasionally talks in a "humorous" plantation slave style dialogue ("yassuh, massuh" kind of thing) to his white commander. Even worse is the female second in command, whose back story is that she was gang raped and and had her legs amputated by South American guerillas who still managed to get over the "sexual hang up" this caused and sleep with the super macho commander by the end of the story despite the fact that he says really cringey stuff like, "In view of your recent history, I suppose we shall have to train you to avoid being raped."

As you may guess, I really didn't like this and really wish I had gone with the Connie Willis story that was my second choice instead of picking this garbage because it was seven bucks cheaper on Kindle.

19) Tales of a Northblood: Winter's Quest by Carrie Summers

This is the second volume of the LitRPG series Tales of a Northblood which is a followup to the author's previous series Stonehaven League. I mostly enjoyed it, except for the explanation as to why people from the real world were suddenly appearing in the video game, which was frankly an incredibly stupid and boring cop out: They aren't actually being transported into the world of the game. The company that made the game secretly and illegally used nanites to perform brain scans on unsuspecting people and then used those scans as model for the game's NPCs. Now, for reasons that haven't been revealed yet, those brain scans are appearing in the game as new players.

20) Book Girl and the Captive Fool by Mizuki Nomura

This is the third volume of the Book Girl light novel series in which a severely broken high school boy is forced to solve literary based mysteries by the leader of the school's book club, a strange but kind girl who literally devours books. Each volume is based off of a classic literary work, in this case a Japanese book called Friendship by Saneatsu Mushanokōji. It's all about some very sad and disturbing love triangles. It was especially nice to see the protagonist finally start healing from his own past trauma in this one.

21) Marvel Masterworks: Marvel Team-Up, Vol. 3

This is a collection of bronze age comics featuring Spider-Man (or occasionally the Human Torch) teaming up with various other Marvel characters.

22) Ravaged Land by C. M. Carney

This is book 7 of the LitRPG series The Realms, and it's been so long since book 6 (released Nov. 2019) that I thought the author had abandoned the series. The book isn't bad, but it's not that great either. The next volume is supposed to be the last, so I'll probably read it.

23) Station 64: The Doll Dungeon: Frenzied Rebirth by Matthew Peed

This is a dungeon core fantasy. It's pretty dark, and while not really bad, it wasn't good enough that I'm likely to read the next volume when it comes out.

24) That time I Got Reincarnated As a Slime, Vol. 5 by Fuse

An interesting continuation of the series.

25) Dark on Monday by Michael Avallone

And here's another series that I thought had been abandoned, the Ed Noon mystery series, which is slowly being re-released in ebook format by the author's son. This volume was a nice change from the previous volume, which I found dreadfully dull. This story takes place in the past, before Noon met Melinda Mercer and before he became the president's personal private eye. My only complaint is that it's a fairly normal mystery with none of the weirdness you find in some of the Noon stories. The only odd thing is an attack by a 15 foot anaconda. It's not the best Ed Noon story, but it's definitely good.

26) Broken Council by Tao Wong

With this I am officially done with The System Apocalypse series. There may only be one more book coming in the series, but I'm not going to bother reading it because thanks to his actions in this book, I no longer give a crap about the main character.

27) Dust by Chris Miller

This is the third Splatter Western novel. This is a gruesome bit of cosmic horror in thw old west about a man looking for a hidden town called Dust so he can kill the ancient god that dwells there.

28) The Long Winter by John Christopher

This is the final book I need to finish my r/Fantasy 2020 bingo card, because for some reason Climate Fiction was something I had a hard time finding anything interesting in. This is a 1960s era sci-fi novel set in a world where the sun suddenly starts putting out less solar radiation, which causes a new ice age. Instead of being about the struggle for survival, the book uses the setting to explore the issues of race and colonialism in a very 60s-era, English way. It follows a middle class Englishman who first refuses to believe the disaster is happening, then flees to Nigeria where Europeans are being treated more or less the way Africans would have been treated in Europe. The book finishes with the MC returning to London as part of a Nigerian expeditionary force that's planning to colonize Europe. Overall, it's not bad, but is a bit dated.

Dust sounds interesting - actually, the whole series does. Can't tell from the LT data whether it's a graphic novel.

>18 drneutron: The Splatter Westerns all novellas.

29) Marvel Comics: The Untold Story by Sean Howe

Until I read this I never realized just how much the history pf Marvel Comics was made up of conflicts between huge egos. At least until the 90s when it started to be driven by money men instead of the creators.

30) Anima by Dennis Vanderkerken & Dakota Krout

This is the 6th volume of Artorian's Archives. I found thisone a bit dull.

31) By the Grace of the Gods: Volume 6 by Roy

In this volume of my favorite ultra-laid back isekai series, Ryoma finishes a camping trip, buys a suit, and gets a couple of new varieties of slime.

32) Spice & Wolf, Vol. 5 by Isuna Hasekura

While searching for information on her past, Holo the Wisewolf and Lawrence get caught up in a plot involving the fur trade. It's not the best volume in the series.

33) Cat Core by Dean Henegar

This was a bit of an unexpected book. Dean Henegar writes a lot of LitRPG and Dungeon Core novels, but they're usually very militaristic. This one is about an elderly cat lady (the real world type not the fantasy type) who gets turned into a dungeon core by accident, decides that instead of making monsters she wants to make house cats, and sets her dungeon up to look like a home. My only real complaint is that Henegar decided to make the bad guys an evil dog worshiping cult when everybody knows that dogs are good and cats are evil.

34) Restaurant to Another World, Vol 5 by Junpei Inuzuka

This is one of my favorite Light Novel series, and sadly this seems to be the last volume of it. At least I would assume so, since Wikipedia lists it as having been published in Japan in 2019, and there is no volume 6.

35) Life Reset: Salvation by Shemer Kuznits

This is the 6th and final volume of the New Era Online LitRPG series. The ending brings the series to a satisfying conclusion, but I thought that the stuff that led up to the ending dragged a lot.

36) The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob: The Penn State Years
37) The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob: There But For the Grace by Jim Cleveland

These would be print collections of a sci-fi humor comic that began in a Penn State student publication in the 90s and was revived as a webcomic more than a decade later. It's about an extraordinarily ordinary guy named Bob Smithson who suddenly starts having weird adventures involving aliens, mad scientists, and furry pink peanut butter monsters. I rather enjoyed the series, and had thought that it was more or less abandoned back in 2019, but just discovered it switched sites.

38) My Song by Harry Belafonte

I've been a fan of Belafonte's music since I saw him on The Muppet show when I was a kid. I never knew much about his life though, so I decided to get his memoir. He certainly led a far more interesting life than I would have expected.

39) Settlers by Robyn Wideman

This is volume 3 of the Darkthorn Academy series. While this wasn't as disappointing as the other LitRPG series I've continued recently, this one wasn't as good as volumes 1 & 2 of the series.

40) Heavy by J. J. Thorn
41) Dungeoneer by J. J. Thorn

These are the first two volumes of a LitRPG-adjacent series called The Weight of It All. The basic premise is that in this world, about 40% (I think) of the population are given an affinity and power by the Goddess shortly after their sixteenth birthday. The story follows a young man who gets an affinity for weight. It's an interesting story of the magical school variety, though the writing itself is subpar, but not the worst of seen in LitRPG. It gets better as he goes along, but there is one major recurring problem, like so many amateur writers, he somehow never learned how to properly use quotation marks in dialogue that spans multiple paragraphs, and he has a lot of dialogue that spans multiple paragraphs.

42) Holmes of Kyoto: Volume 3 by Mai Mochizuki
43) Monster Tamer: Volume 3 by Minto Higure

I don't really have very much to say about either of these.

44) Marvel Masterworks: Luke Cage, Hero for Hire, Vol. 1

This was really fun.

45) The Pirate by Galen Surlak-Ramsey

This is a fairly humorous LitRPG set in a pirate-themed world. It's not bad, but I think it would have been better with the first few introductory chapters removed.

46) The Night Silver River Run Red by Christine Morgan

This is the 4th Splatter Western. I think it might be my favorite in the series so far. It's about a small western town that gets destroyed shortly after a strange traveling show arrives, but surprisingly for a story of this type, the show people aren't the ones responsible.

47) Inflame by Dakota Krout

I really enjoyed this one.

48) Rule of Cool by Matthew Siege

This is a comedic LitRPG. This one I picked up in audiobook format largely because Felicia Day was doing the narration. The premise is that 1000 years ago, the heroes conquered a town ruled by the evil races and were generally oppressive jerks ever since. Now the bad guys are rising up to take back their town. It was pretty good.

49) Psychic Self-Defense by Dion Fortune

Well, I guess if I ever come under psychic attack, I can now defend myself.

50) The Hero's Lot by Patrick W. Carr

This is the second volume of the Christian fantasy series The Staff and the Sword. Despite the fact that it is Christian fantasy, I didn't find it terribly preachy and enjoyed it.

51) Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh

I picked this up hoping to use it for r/Fantasy's 2021 book bingo, but it didn't quite work for that. I can't complain though as it was a really good story.

52) Bloodline by Will Wright

This is the 9th volume of the cultivation fantasy series Cradle. I really love the series.

53) Sovereign's Choice by Rohan M. Vider

This is the 5th volume of the LitRPG series The Gods' Game. It's another series that I really enjoy.

54) Scalp by Carver Pike

I found this while looking for a book to use for hardcore mode in r/Fantasy's 2021 book bingo. It doesn't work for that, but it does work for hardcore mode for both the New to me author (as I've never heard of Carver Pike) and the Self Pubbed (as it currently only has 43 ratings on goodreads).

It's a horror novel about killer head lice that drill their way into their victims' brains and pilot their bodies, effectively turning them into zombies. I couldn't pass up a concept like that, and I'm glad I didn't. It's not a masterpiece of fiction, but it's a really fun zombie novel.

55) The Sword-Edged Blonde by Alex Bledsoe

This was a cool noir-ish fantasy/mystery. It's about a "sword jockey" called Eddie LaCrosse whose childhood fried King Phillip of Arentia calls him in to help when the queen is accused of murdering and devouring their infant son. It ends up being a strange case involving a goddess, a curse, a dwarf (of the human variety),, and an ancient grudge. I enjoyed it and will probably read the rest of the series at some point (especially since the audiobook versions all seem to be free in the Audible plus catalog).

56) The Women of Weird Tales

This is a collection of short stories from Weird Tales magazine featuring some of their most prolific female contributors: Everil Worrell, Eli Colter, Mary Elizabeth Counselman, and Greye La Spina. I'm fairly certain that I'd already read the two vampire stories of the collection, "The Canal" by Worrel and "The Antimacassar" by La Spina, but the rest were new to me. The stories were mostly good, though I did feel that some of them were a bit dated, which isn't unexpected as they're mostly 80-100 year old stories. Still it was definitely worth reading.

57) Wandering Witch: The Journey of Elaina, Vol. 1 by Jougi Shirasi

I got this one partly because I like the anime adaptation and partly because I needed a book about a witch for r/fantasy book bingo. The book is about a young woman called Elaina, the Ashen Witch. As a child, she fell in love with a book series called The Adventures of Niche, about a witch who traveled the world, so Elaina decided that she would one day become a witch and travel the world. This book is an account of some of her various adventures. It's a fun book and worth reading even if you've seen the anime as about half of the adventures in it weren't adapted.

58) The Cats of Tanglewood Forest by Charles de Lint

A cute story about a girl who gets turned into a kitten.

59) Tales of a Northblood: Winter's War by Carrie Summers

This is the third Tales of a Northblood LitRPG novel. It was mostly good, but the ending was a bit anticlimactic.

60) The Quilters Push Back by Mary Devlin Lynch, Debbie Devlin Zook, & Beth Devlin-Keune

I read this for the 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back podcast. It's about a group of quilters trying to solve their small town's drug problem. They spend more time planning a wedding than actually solving this "mystery," though, and the whole drug culture it shows seems to be about as out of touch as an old episode of Dragnet.

61) Tree Dungeon by Andrew Karevik

Ragnarok has come and gone and both the gods and frost giants have decided not to bother fighting, dooming the world to a slow death, so Yggdrasil sent out seeds to other worlds in attempt to preserve something of its world. One of those seeds landed in a forest in an RPG-esque world and became the Tree Dungeon. It makes for an interesting variation in dungeon core fantasy by lacking many of the more tedious tropes of the genre, but it's also lacking an overarching story. It's not bad, and I might read the rest of the series, but it's also not all that good.

62) D (A Tale of Two worlds) by Michel Faber

This was interesting. I hadn't realized before reading it that it was a children's story and is written in a fairly old fashioned style to boot. Even so, it's a pretty good story with an interesting concept. It's about a young girl named Dhikilo who awakens one day to discover that the letter D has vanished and nobody else seems to have noticed. She ends up going on a quest to a strange world with the help of a sphinx that can turn into a dog. It makes for a fun, if simplistic, story.

63) He Who fights With Monsters by Shirtaloon

This is something that I've seen a lot of people on LitRPG forums say is a really good LitRPG, and they're right. It's about a snarky Australian who gets sucked into a magical world where he can get stronger my collecting essences, which enhance his body and give the ability to learn magic powers. It's very entertaining.

64) Holmes of Kyoto: Volume 4 by Mai Mochizuki

The latest volume of the light novel mystery series about a grad student antiques appraiser who solves mysteries with the help of his school girl assistant continues.

65) Monster She Wrote by Lisa Kroger & Melanie R. Anderson

This book is essentially a history on women horror writers starting in the days of the gothic novel and continuing up until the present day. It mostly consists of short biographies of prominent women horror writers with emphasis on their horror writings. It's a good and informative book. My only regret is that I got the audio book edition due to it being free with my Audible subscription. The narration was excellent, but a print edition would have been better so I could more easily look up the recommended books.

66) Goblin Summoner by Tracy Gregory

This is a LitRPG set in a world where the magic follows the rules of a trading card game. It's interesting.

67) Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense., Vol. 1 by Yuumikan

This is a light novel that's very much in the LitRPG vein. I picked it up because I really loved the super cute anime adaptation. I really like this version too.

68) Lacrimore by SJ Costello

I mostly picked this one up because one of r/Fantasy's bingo squares this year is gothic fantasy, and this certainly is that. It's set in a world where something akin to spiritualism is the dominant religion and follows a medium who has a vision that calls her to a place called Lacrimore, a crumbling mansion on an isolated island, to perform last rites for an elderly scholar, who it turns out isn't actually dead yet. It's a bit odd, but despite being a big horror fan, I've never really been fond of gothic novels, and gothic fantasy is no exception. This isn't a bad book, but it's also really not my thing.

69) Shattered Lands by Patrick Laplante

This is the 8th book in the Painting the Mists cultivation fantasy series. I had abandoned the series last year after the author pulled it from Kindle Unlimited, but it's back now, so I decided to pick it up again. I still really enjoy the series.

70) Edge of Oblivion by Patrick Laplante

The 9th volume of Painting the Mists. This volume ends with the hero getting a high enough cultivation level to ascend to a higher plane, which isn't the end of the series.

71) Derelict: Book 3, Sarton Station by Dean Henegar

Not much to say about this.

72) Killing Them Awfully by Eric Ugland

The most recent volume of The Good Guys LitRPG series. This one features a war against some goblins. It was okay.

73) The Guild Core 3: War Torn by t. J. Reynolds

The final volume of The Guild Core. It's not bad, but trying to wrap up all the remaining plot threads in a single book made it feel a bit rushed.

74) Coyote Songs by Gabino Iglesias

This is the sort of book where I'm not sure quite what to say about it. It's a horror novel that's centered around the problems caused by America's racism towards Latinx peoples, particularly during the Trump era. I features six loosely connected, and very disturbing, stories set on both sides of the border. The only complaint I have, and it's a minor one, is that, much like Iglesias' previous novel Zero Saints, a lot of the dialogue is in Spanish, and since I can't read Spanish I found myself just skipping over it.

75) 26496020::Manufacturing Magic by Jaime Castle & Troy Osgood

This is the first volume of a new LitRPG series. It follows a GM (essentially tech support) for a VRMMO who gets caught up in weirdness when one of his game's AIs starts to try to create original content. It's okay.

76) New Arcadia: Stage One by Eric Jason Martin

This is a a GameLit novel that's not LitRPG. Instead, it's about an old fashioned beat 'em up only in virtual reality and with a few RPG elements tacked on. The book is set in 2023 in a world where the pandemic got even worse and everyone is apparently either living a Mad Max existence in the wilderness or is living in isolation while working for a company called Chum, which is a pretty thinly veiled Amazon. The story follows one of the chum workers who gets picked to help beta test a new game. Like a lot of the early LitRPG novels, it shows signs of having been influenced by Ready Player One with its rather annoyingly stupid main character (who is supposed to be funny but usually isn't) and it's constant, grating pop culture references. Despite this, I actually enjoyed it overall.

77) Starred Tower by Ryan DeBruyn

This would be the first volume of a new YA Cultivation fantasy series. It dragged in a few spots, but was mostly entertaining.

>40 yoyogod: Congratulations on reaching 75, Nathan!

Congrats on blowing past the goal!

>41 FAMeulstee: >42 drneutron: Thanks

78) Algorithm by Dennis Vanderkerken & Dakota Krout

This is the 7th book in the Artorian's Archives series which bridges the gap between the Divine Dungeon and Completionist Chronicles series. This book features the MC, Artorian, playing an early beta version of the game that would eventually become the setting of CC. That part of the book was good, but the stuff that came before it dragged on interminably.

79) The Nine by Tracy Townsend

This is, I think, a variety of gaslamp fantasy. It's set in a time period that seems vaguely analogous to Victorian England, but in a world where there are three sentient species: humanity, tree people, and a monstrous race that has their eyes on their heels for no apparent reason. In this world humanity has replaced religion with science, but recently a scientist has found God's notebook, which writes itself and contains notes on observations of nine humans. It made for an interesting book, though some of the earlier chapters were a bit annoying.

80) The Graveyard Apartment by Mariko Koike
This is a really creepy Japanese horror novel about a young family who move into an apartment newly built building that's surrounded by a graveyard, a crematorium, and a Buddhist temple that performs funerals. Less than half of the apartments are occupied, and as time goes on that number only goes down. This is because there is something evil in the building, centered in the creepy basement. I really liked this one.

81) Dungeon Bunny by Richard J. Hansen

This was a cute LitRPG adjacent book about a bunny in a dungeon. The bunny is more intelligent than ordinary bunnies, and she manages to learn to understand language and picks up some magic spells.

>44 yoyogod: That was a good one!

82) The Shapes of Night by Mary SanGiovanni

This is a cosmic horror novel in which a group of teens performs a ritual and opens a portal to another world. One of their high school teachers has visions of the future that show him one of his students is in trouble, and the pair have to work together to stop the creatures. Good stuff.

83) Words of Creation by Patrick Laplante

This is book 10 of the Painting the Mists cultivation series. The main characters have just ascended from their old realm to a new one, which means they've gone from being some of the strongest people in the world to some of the weakest. It's got lots of good action.

84) He Who Fights with Monsters 2 by Shirtaloon

I generally like this series though it it does have some annoying repetition resulting from originally being serialized.

85) EverRealm by Jake Bible

This was a bit disappointing. It was advertised as a LitRPG/horror novel, but the LitRPG elements are very scant, and the characters were very annoying. The book is set in a a post-apocalyptic zombie-infested world. A small group of survivors have gotten together (remotely) to create a virtual hub connecting nine different genres of virtual world. Unfortunately on the day they decide to permanently abandon the physical world for the digital, two of them get infected and zombies infest the digital reams. The parts in the real world were pretty good, but the fantasy RPG world was painfully generic. It's just as well that the author seems to have abandoned the series after the first volume, as I would probably skip it.

86) So I'm a Spider, So What?, Vol. 11 by Okina Baba

This is by far the weakest novel in the So I'm a Spider, So What? series. The series main character is barely in it at all, and it instead focuses on a secondary character.

87) Moonrot by Elliot Hendry

This is the second book in the Heirloom Earth LitRPG series. It's an interesting variation of the apocalyptic LitRPG, but this volume feels to much like a sidequest.

88) Thief's Bounty by DB King

This is a dungeoncore novel with an interesting premise that's too poorly executed for me to bother with the inevitable sequels.

89) Reincarnated as a Sword, Vol. 8 by Yuu Tanaka

This is the latest volume in one of my favorite light novel series. This time the sentient sword Teacher and his cat girl wielder, Fran, visit the beastman kingdom and have a bunch of adventures.

90) By the Grace of the Gods: Volume 7 by Roy

This is the latest volume of my favorite remarkably chill light novel series. It's also my least favorite novel in the series by far. This is largely because a lot of the book is about one of my least favorite plots that turns up way to often in isekai--the protagonist buying a slave, but it's okay because he treats the slave well. About the only good things I can say about it in this book is that at least it's not chattel slavery, and since the slave is male, Roy isn't going for the super gross "female slave falls in love with her master because he's nice to her" trope.

91) Durarara!! SH, Vol. 1 by Ryohgo Narita

This is the first volume of the followup series to the urban fantasy light novel series Durarara!!. It's set about a year and a half after the end of the previous series and is about three teenagers in Ikebukuro who want to find the legendary Headless Rider for three very different reasons. I really like it and am looking forward to the rest of the series.

92) Deadlands: Ghostwalkers by Jonathan Maberry

This one has been sitting on my kindle for years. It's a media tie in novel based off of the RPG Deadlands, which I've never played. I picked it up because I'm a fan of Maberry's writing, and I finally read it because I need a genre mashup of at least three genres for this year's r/fantasy book bingo, and this is a horror/western/steampunk mashup. It's a fun action-oriented book about a Civil war veteran defending a California town from an evil alchemist and his army of the undead.

93) Born Again Hans Holzer

I remember reading and enjoying some of Holzer's ghost books back in the day, so when I saw a free audiobook code for this book of his on reincarnation, I picked it up. I still like Holzer's writing style, and the narration is good, but I discovered that I don't care for reincarnation investigation stories as much as ghost investigation stories.

94) Strange Academy: First Class by Skottie Young

This is a comic book collection that was recommended by the host of a comics podcast I listen to. It's a fairly standard magical academy type story, but it's set in the Marvel universe, so the teachers are various magic using superheroes, though they don't play much part in the story as it focuses on the kids. I liked it, and if they publish a second collected volume, I'll probably pick it up.

95) Beastborne: Mist Wardens by James T. Callum

This is the third book in the Beastborne LitRPG series. It was a fun enough read, but it felt like it was mostly seemed to be tying up loose ends from the previous volume, which is kind of weird for a book that's apparently 1000+ pages.

96) A Thousand Li: The Second Sect by Tao Wong

This is book five of the cultivation/wuxia/xianxia (I've been reading these for about a year and I'm still not really sure of the difference) series A Thousand Li. This one sees the main character seriously injured after an accident in the previous novel awakens a mysterious bloodline trait. It's okay.

97) Everwood by J.J. Thorn

This is the third book in the progression fantasy/magical academy series The Weight of it All about a young man who gets magical abilities related to weight. This book has him and his friends doing their first dungeon dive and taking part in the early stages of a tournament. It could have used some better copy editing and some of the philosophical bits were a bit dull, but it was good overall.

98) Crown of the Starry Sky by Patrick Laplante

This is the eleventh volume of Painting the Mists, which is another cultivation fantasy series. I enjoyed it and will get the next volume when it comes out.

99) Operation: Sahara by William Meikle

This is the 12th volume of the S-Squad series about a Scottish army squadron that keeps running into monsters. This time it's giant beetles.

100) Oh Great! I Was Reincarnated as a Farmer by Benjamin Kerei

This is the first volume of a new LitRPG series that has a fairly interesting concept, but could have been better written. The premise is that a gamer from our world is killed by a priestess in another world as part of a botched revival spell and ends up taking over the body of his formerly deceased counterpart in a fantasy world. The problem is that he is forced into the role of a farmer despite having no interest in farming and can only change his class by reaching level 100.

101) Monster Tamer: Volume 4 by Minto Higure

This took things in an interesting direction.

102) Pet by Akwaeke Emezi

I'm a bit torn on this book. I mostly read it because I needed something for the r/fantasy hardcore book club square and this was short and written for a young audience, so I thought it would be a quick read. Instead I found it a bit of a slog to get through.

I really didn't much like it , but I also didn't really dislike it either. I can certainly see why other people like it, but it just didn't grip me. That's not really too surprising though as I'm about really not the target audience for a book like this. I will say that I did like the characters, particularly Jam, and the monster/angel dynamic was interesting, but I really didn't care for the setting as failed Utopias always leave me feeling a bit depressed.

103) The Ends of the World by Peter Brannen

This has been sitting in my Audible library for a while, and I'm not exactly sure when, or even why, I got it it. It's an interesting, though depressing, look at the five great extinctions of Earth's past, the hypothetical sixth great extinction that we may (or may not) be in right now, and the ultimate final extinction that will wipe out all life on Earth billions of years from now.

104) Holmes of Kyoto: Volume 5 by Mai Mochizuki

This was another great addition to the series. Among other things it has the characters attend a meeting of a Japanese Sherlock Holmes fan club where they solve a very Sherlockian mystery. It also culminates in an adventure that finally has Holmes and Aoi finally admitting their love for each other.

105) Yokai Attack by Hiroko Yoda & Matt Alt

This was an interesting little book on the Japanese monsters known as Yokai.

106) Dark Words ed. by Jamie & Matt Wildasin

This is a horror anthology of stories about local folklore written by up and coming writers. They're all pretty good, though most of them could have used a bit more polish and a bit better editing.

107) Terramyr Online: The Undiscovered Country by Sam Ferguson

This is a bit of an odd entry into the world of VR based LitRPG. It's set in a future world in which a series of fantasy novels called Terramyr is really popular and has inspired an even more popular line of MMOs. Surprisingly, the author of the book has already written a series of books set in a world called Terramyr.

Anyway, this book starts off at an archaeological dig in Chile. Volcanic activity has uncovered some ancient ruins, but is also threatening to destroy them forever. So a brave team of archaeologists is digging up the ruins, which contain an oracle along the lines of the Delphic one. Instead of spending all their time studying the ruins, the archaeologists spend most of their time playing a VR MMO expansion for the Terramyr Online game, because the game company has offered to create a digital replica of the dig site if the archaeologist beta test for them. Exactly why either side would agree to do this is never explained.

It turns out that the oracle was actually an alien supercomputer that crashed there thousands of years ago. In a moment of utter stupidity, the head archaeologist decides to hook it up to the game server to try and analyze. Naturally, this causes bad things to happen and pretty soon people are getting trapped in the game and dying for real.

Despite the weirdness and unbelievability of the plot, it wasn't bad, though it did drag at spots.

108) The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

This was another book that I picked up because it was recommended for r/fantasy's book bingo (for the found family square) and because the ebook version was cheap. This is one that I thoroughly enjoyed. It's a very character driven space opera story about the adventure of the crew of a ship that makes wormholes.

109) Defiance of the Fall by TheFirstDefier

This is the first volume of an apocalyptic LitRPG/cultivation series. The Earth gets sucked into a multiverse and begins to work like an RPG. Most people get teleported to a tutorial, but not Zac our MC. He can't naturally cultivate, so he gets left behind. He's out camping in the middle of nowhere, and ends up having to fight off a demonic incursion. It's a pretty good story.

110) Submitted for the Approval of the Midnight Pals II by Bitter Karella

This is the second collection of the Twitter account @midnight_pals which is about various horror authors re-imagined as children who tell stories around a campfire in the style of the classic television series Are You Afraid of the Dark?.

111) Tamamo-chan's a Fox! Vol. 2 by Yuuki Ray

In the second volume of the manga about a kitsune who decided she wanted to be a high school student, we see two of her sisters playing a larger role and have two villains appear in the forms of a tanuki and a weasel.

112) The Amulet by Michael McDowell

This is a late seventies horror novel set in Alabama in 1965.It starts off with Dean Howell, a recent Vietnam War draftee from the small town of Pinecone, being horribly injured (and left a vegetable) when a rifle manufactured in his home town's munitions plant blows up in his face. He's shipped back home and left in the care of his young widow and his mother, who is a rather unpleasant person, blames the town for what happened to her son, and is also apparently a witch. She has a cursed amulet in her possession, which causes anyone who wears it to turn into a homicidal maniac and then die a gruesome, accidental death. She gives the amulet to the person she holds most responsible for her son's fate, and then the rest of the book is scenes of people dying horrible deaths interspersed with scenes of her daughter-in-law trying to get the amulet back to stop the madness. I thought that some of the non-murdery scenes dragged on a bit, but as a fan of some gruesome horror, I liked it.

113) Artifact by Dennis Vanderkerken & Dakota Krout

This is the 8th book in the Artorian's Archives series. Like the previous volume it focuses on the MC taking part in what is essentially a beta version of the game from Completionist Chronicles. Much like the previous volume, the parts where things are happening are good, but there are way too many parts where nothing much happens other than talking.

114) Lichbane by Tracy Gregory

This is the sequel to the book Goblin Summoner and is a LitRPG series based around deckbuilding. Despite the title, there is very little fighting of undead in the book, but it is still a nice adventure story.

115) Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, So I'll Max Out My Defense, Vol. 2 by Yuumikan

This volume features Maple the tankiest tank and her friend Sally taking part in a medal gathering competition.

116) The Cartoonist by Sean Costello

This is a bit of 80s era horror about a doctor who discovers that an elderly wan with some form of dementia has the ability to predict (or perhaps influence) the future by drawing cartoons, and it turns out the man has a connection to a young girl that the doctor and his friends killed in a hit and run in their youth. It's a pretty good story.

117) The Dwarf, The Mine, and the RPG Apocalypse by Constantine Step

This is an apocalyptic LitRPG that's okay. The author's first language isn't English, and while he has had it professionally copy edited, it still has quite a few mistakes (among other things it uses a lot of numbers and randomly switches back and forth between using a period and a comma for the decimal marker). Also, some of the dialogue is very cringey. Still, the basic story is interesting.

118) The Retired S-Rank Adventurer: Volume I
119) The Retired S-Rank Adventurer: Volume II by Wolf Locke & James Falcon

I loved this one. It's a LitRPG-adjacent series that's set in a world modeled after JRPG style video games, but without all the screens and stats and EXP. It's about a man who reached the highest ranks of adventuring, became one of the strongest people in the world, hand even helped fight the last demon lord, but now he's retired. Being retired doesn't mean he can just relax though, because there are mysteries in his past that even he doesn't realize, and there's a dark conspiracy threatening the kingdom.

120) Futures Grave by James T. Callum

This is the second volume of the LitRPG series Pyresoul Apocalypse. It's one of the darker, more horror-ish, series in the genre.

121) The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

This is one that I picked up for r/fantasy's book bingo, specifically for the comfort read square as it came highly recommended and I've hardly seen anyone with anything bad to say about it. It is definitely a very charming fantasy novel about found family and learning to love others for who they are (and yourself for who you are). It is probably one of my favorite books I've read so far this year.

122) 26828090::Claddings of Light by Patrick Laplante

This is the 12th Painting the Mists novel. It was enjoyable enough.

123) This Class Is Bonkers! by J. P. Valentine

This is the sequel to This Quest Is Broken!, which I read back in January. It's not quite as silly as the original, but I still enjoyed it.

124) Wrath: A LitRPG Dungeon Core Adventure by Alex Raizman

This is a fairly standard dungeon core novel where the dungeon using dinosaurs for it's monsters. Despite having a fairly standard plot, it's still pretty fun.

125) The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa

This is the second Haruhi Suzumiya novel, about a girl who unkowingly has the power to alter reality to suit her whims. This time around, she gets her club to work on making a movie for their school's culture festival, and pretty soon events from the movie begin to become real. It's not a s good as the first book in the series, but it was still decent.

126) Shadeslinger by Kyle Kirrin

This was an interesting LitRPG, largely for the characterization. You start of believing that the MC is a lazy, self-centered, wealthy failson, but as the story progresses, you come to realize that he isn't. I enjoyed it and look forward to the sequel.

127) Juniper Wiles by Charles de Lint

I bought this back in March, when it was first released, and for some reason, despite de Lint being one of my favorite writers, I put off reading it until now. It's an attempt to combine de Lint's older type of urban fantasy with the more modern, paranormal investigator style of urban fantasy. The book stars Juniper Wiles, a former actress who played a teenage detective on a popular TV show a decade ago. She currently lives in Newford, where so many of de Lint's stories take place, and gets caught up in supernatural events when the world of her former TV show starts bleeding into the real world. It's a nice story and I was really happy to see in the introduction that that there are already sequels in the works.

128) Wild Wild Quest by Eric Ugland

This is the 12th book in The Good Guys LitRPG series. This book is about half about tying up looses ends from previous books that fans were complaining about Ugland forgetting. The other half is about an adventure in a pseudo wild west town where the hero Montana has to find the person who helped goblins attack his duchy.

129) Hunt: A Divine Dungeon Series by Rohan Hublikar and Dakota Krout

This is the first volume of yet another series that Krout is spinning off of his The Divine Dungeon, and is the third ongoing one that is a collaboration with someone else (or him slapping his name on it anyway). This is a prequel story that's an expansion of a short story from Essence: A Divine Dungeon Anthology. It's a good story though, and I look forward to the rest of the series.

130) Monster Tamer: Volume 5

In this volume of the series, the main character and his monsters leave the evil monster-filled woods that the rest of the series has taken place in. I don't really have much to say about it.

131) Anti-Man by Dean Koontz

This is a very early (1970) work by horror grandmaster Dean Koontz. It's a bit different from his usual work in that it's more of a sci-fi thriller than a horror novel. The book is set in a near future where the planet has become so badly overpopulated that the world government has made it illegal for doctors to save lives. So the main character, who is a doctor, helps invent an android and it turns out that the android can perform miracle surgeries and even raise the dead (think Lazarus not zombies) and refuses to stop doing so when ordered by the government. When he learns that the android is to be destroyed, the doctor grabs Him and runs. Then the book begins and we get a tale of the doctor and the android on the run and it eventually turns out that the android is God and there's another evil android that is the Devil. It's not a great book, but it's really not bad either.

132) A Fist Full of Credits by Craig Hamilton & Tao Wong

This is the first volume in a new series set in the world of The System Apocalypse. It follows a bail bondsman's adventures in an |Earth that has been transformed into an RPG by aliens. I enjoyed it, though I did think it shared too many of the same plot points as the series it was spun off of.

133) Irrelevant Jack 5 by Prax Venter

I don't have much to say about this one.

134) Vincent Price: A Daughter's Biography by Victoria Price

As a horror fan, I've pretty much always been interested in Vincent Price, so I decided to get the audiobook version of his daughter's biography of him. He lead a far more interesting life than I realized.

135) So I'm a Spider, So What?, Vol. 12 by Okina Baba

As with volume 11, the main character of the series is hardly in this one at all. I really liked this one anyway as it was a really tragic story about the war between the humans and the demons with quite a few major character deaths.

136) Defiance of the Fall 2 by TheFirstDefier

In the second volume of Defiance of the Fall, Super Brother Man finally rescues his sister, pisses off the new World Government, gains a new race and class, and generally kicks butt. I really enjoy the series.

137) Pride by Alex Raizman

This is the second Dinosaur Dungeon novel. In this one, the dungeon gets a T-Rex, battles some dragons, and defeats an otherworldly being.

Somehow, I've forgotten to update this all week.

138) The Green Lama: The Complete Pulp Adventures Volume 1 by Kendell Foster Crossen

This is a collection of old timey pulp hero stories. Their really a bit silly.

139) The Wastes of Keldora by Alex Raizman
140) Dragonflame by Alex Raizman

At the end of the book I read in post 79, the author mentioned he would be doing a crossover between that series and two of his other series, of which these are the first two volumes. These two aren't bad, but there not as good as the Dinosaur Dungeon series.

141) The Trains of Keldora by Alex Raizman

Despite the title, the focus of this book is not on trains. It's a good series, but the author really should have spent more some time proofreading.

142) By the Grace of the Gods: Volume 8 by Roy

This one has a wedding, defense of a fishing village, and an unpleasant divine interaction.

143) Steel Orc: Player Reborn
144) Steel Orc: Player Reborn 2 by Deck Davis

This is a fairly mediocre LitRPG series. the first volume was a bit better than the first, but still wasn't very good.

145) Extra Credit by J. Arthur Klein

This was a reasonably fun VR based LitRPG that uses one of the two major VR plots, the one where the protagonist is playing the game to make money. I actually find this overused plot less believable than the other VR plot (the trapped in the game plot) because it doesn't seem economically viable. That said, this book is about a kobold necromancer, which is nice.

146) The Motors of Keldora by Alex Raizman

This book is pretty much like the two previous books in the Factory of the Gods. There's a lot of crafting and fighting against enemies.

147) The Siege of Skyhold by John Bierce

This is the 5th Mage Errant Novel, and all I have to say is damn. This one veers into Red Wedding territory with several characters dying and one turning traitor. It's really good.

148) The Guns of Keldora by Alex Raizman

This is the most recent book in the Factory of the Gods series and the next one will be the crossover with Dinosaur Dungeon.

149) The Retires S-Rank Adventurer: Volume III byWolfe Locke & James Falcon

I thought this one was a bit too slow to get moving, but wasn't that bad.

150) Solo Leveling, Vol. 1 by Chu-Gong

This Korean novel is one of those books that I see get praised in LitRPG and anime/manga/light novel circles, and I'm not really sure why. It's not bad, but it's really not very good either. The main character is kind of a Gary Stu (or whatever you want to call a male Mary Sue) and is incredibly stupid, though everyone around him is even stupider. Also, anyone who does want to read the book should absolutely not get the audiobook edition, as the narrator felt the bizarre need to add in sound effects, and it's really annoying.

>86 yoyogod: Congratulations on reaching 2 x 75, Nathan!

87) Thanks. Now to see if I can make it to 3x

151) Tamamo-chan's a Fox! Vol. 3 by Yuuki Ray

This is the latest volume of a manga about a kitsune attending a Japanese high school.

152) He Who Fights with Monsters 3 by Shirtaloon

This is volume 3 of a progression fantasy series about an annoying Australian who fights monsters in another world. It's a good story, though I think the author was going for the world record for epilogues with, I think, nine of them.

152) Back to One by Eric Ugland

This is the 7th book in The Bad Guys LitRPG series. This is mostly about the main character getting reset to level one and having to solve the mystery of weird goings on in a seemingly deserted town.

153) Rainhorn
154) Archcrafter by Sarah Lin

I somehow didn't hear that volume 2 of The Weirkey Chronicles was out until volume 3 was released this weekend. It's an interesting progression fantasy series where people get stronger by building a tower inside their soul.

155) Durarara!! SH, Vol. 2 by Ryohgo Narita

This was a nice ending to the first story arc of the series.

156) A Libertarian walks Into a Bear by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

This is a nonfiction book that I picked up more or less on a whim after reading an article about it. It's about the small town of Grafton, New Hampshire, which was, for a time, simultaneously overrun by Libertarians and bears.

157) If the RPG World Had Social Media by Yusuke Nitta

This was a really cute comedic fantasy romance sort of thing. It's set in a JRPG style fantasy world where the Internet and social media exist. It's about the Hero and the Demon Lord, who is a cute girl in this story. They're both socially awkward types who mostly only communicate through texts, and are pretty much shut ins until the Demon Lord accidentally kidnaps a princess and the Hero is tasked with her rescue. This quickly leads to the Hero and the Demon Lord falling into a very awkward kind of love over social media. It's a really cute, fun story made more interesting by the fact that most of it is told through text messages. The only downside it that the texts were done as art that appears to have originally been in color, but is rendered in grayscale in the book, which leads to some of the texts being shown as white text on a gray background, which my middle aged eyes had a hard time reading.

158) Shadowcroft Academy For Dungeons: Year Two by James Hunter & Aaron Michael Ritchey

This is the second volume of what is pretty much a standard magical school story, only with dungeon cores instead of wizards. I didn't like it as much as the first one, and I thought the "humor" was a bit grating, but it was still okay.

159) War Core, Book 1: Hold the Line by Dean Henegar

This was an attempt to translate Real Time Strategy games into a novel. Frankly, I thought it was a bit dull. It was mostly just a series of really long battle sequences with very little in the way of actual plot or character building.

160) The Dungeon Shop by Chris Ford

This was okay. It's a LitRPG about a girl who wants to run an item shop in a dungeon. I'd probably have liked it better if I didn't find the fact that the protagonist was a 17 year old girl who acted more like she was 7 a little bit creepy.

161) John Sinclair: Demon Hunter Volume 1 by Gabriel Conroy

This is the first volume of an English translation of a German occult detective pulp novel series. Or to be more accurate this (and volumes 2 & 3 according to Wikipedia) are English adaptations of the first few volumes of the series that were originally written in 2015 for a different publisher and were further readpted for this publisher to (among other things) change the setting back to its original 1970s dates so it can mesh better with volumes 4 and up which are straight up translations of the original German series by Jason Dark.

the series about Jason Sinclair, a member of Scotland Yard's Special Division, which handles the weird sort of cases. This volume includes four rarther shortish novels featuring zombies, the Aztec god of Death, a mad scientist, and vampires. It's pretty good, and I think I'll try and read the rest of the series.

162) Conquer by Edward m. Erdelac

This is a collection of occult detective short stories set in the 1970s and written very much in the style of blaxploitation movies. They're pretty cool, though the narrator for the audiobook edition had a bad habit of seriously mispronouncing words.

163) The Corrupted core by John Stovall

This is a pretty much standard dungeon core novel. There's nothing particularly special about it, but it is entertaining enough that I'm already reading the sequel.

164) The Entropic Core by John Stovall

This is the sequel to The Corrupted Core. I enjoyed it.

165) Black Sand Baron by Kyle Kirrin

This is the sequel to Shadeslinger, which I read a few months ago. This is another LitRPG series that I really like.

Somehow, I keep forgetting to update this:

166) Enter System by Tom Larcombe

This is an apocalyptic LitRPG that spends most of its time dealing with base building. It was pretty good.

167) Cat Core, Book 2, Lich's Bargain by Dean Henegar

I had no idea there was going to be a sequel to the Cat Core dungeon core novel I read at the beginning of the year, but there was. I liked it, but it wasn't as good as the first one as it mostly seemed to exist just to serve as a link between volume 1 and the upcoming volume 3, which will have a fairly different plot.

168) The Quintessence: Crucible Book 2 - Blighted by C. M. Carney

It's been so long since I read book one of this series that I almost forgot about it, and it really wasn't worth the wait. This volume was pretty much a snooze fest.

169) This Guild is Batty! by J. P. Valentine

This is the third volume in the comedic LitRPG series This Trilogy is Broken, which uses the word trilogy in a very Douglas Adams sense. This is another series that I really enjoy and I look forward to volume 4 of the "trilogy."

Not so familiar with many of the books you are reading, Nathan, but your numbers are pretty impressive.

Hope you are doing well.

>98 PaulCranswick: I'm doing fine, thanks. I've definitely been reading a lot of niche stuff lately.

170) System Return by Tom Larcombe

I didn't realize that the sequel to Enter System was already out, but apparently it is. It's not bad.

171) Dreams of Ivory and Gold by Kirk Dougal

This is one of those odd books that I'm not exactly sure why I bought it. It's a fairly standard horror/thriller about a secret centuries old Vatican emissary who is in New York on the trail of a demon that's raping and murdering women. It takes the unusual step of making the emissary as unlikable as possible, even going so far as to show flashbacks where we learn that in the process of his hunt he became Jack the Ripper and a Nazi collaborator. All in all, it's an entertaining enough read, but is nothing particularly special.

172) Starving Zoe by C Derick Miller

I decided to read another Splatter Western. I didn't really care for this one that much. The main character managed to be both annoying and unlikable and spouted off too many anachronisms (like using the terms "serial killer" and "political correctness" in 1865), and the plot was kind of stupid.

173) Shelf Check: A Library Comic Collection by Gene Abaum

I backed this one on Kickstarter. It's a collection of comics from the webcomic Library Comic.

174) Collapse by J.J. Thorn

This is the 4th The Weight of It All fantasy novel, which ends the series first story arc. It's not bad but really needed some editing.

I've decided to work on getting through some of my unread light novels:

175) She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man, Vol. 1 by Ryusen Hirotsugu

This is an isekai story of the trapped in the video game variety. The protagonist is one of the top players of a VR RPG, and one night he decides to play with his character's appearance and transforms it from an old man to a pretty young girl. Then he passes out, and when he wakes up thirty years have passed and he's trapped in the game as his character, but with the pretty girl form he had created. So she decides to pretend to be the disciple of the old man she used to be and travels to see if any of her friends are in the game and know what's going on. It makes for a fairly fun adventure story.

176) Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense., Vol. 3 by YuuMikan

This is the 3rd volume of a very cute series about a girl and her friends playing a VR RPG, where they all end up getting crazy strong by playing in unconventional ways. This one sees them founding a guild and getting some even crazier new abilities.

177) Monster Tamer: Volume 6 by Minto Higure

This book is mostly about Lily the slime getting kidnapped, and everybody else trying to rescue her. It was fun.

178) Holmes of Kyoto: Volume 6 by Mai Mochizuki

This is a bit different from the other books in the series in that it's an actual novel instead of a collection of short stories. It's a strange mystery involving a teen runaway, a cult, stolen artwork, and cannabis. It was mostly good, though the cannabis part served as kind of a stark reminder of how differently Japan views marijuana than many other places as whenever Holmes talked about it, he sounded like Joe Friday in an episode of the 60s era Dragnet tv show.

179) Playing Possum by Stephanie Rabig

This is a rather silly horror novel about a small town being menaced by a horde of angry possums that turn anyone they bite or scratch into a werepossum. It's very fun.

180) Reincarnated as a Sword, Vol. 9 Yuu Tanaka

This volume sees Teacher and his cat girl weilder Fran fighting against fiends led by the centuries old cat girl who got the black cat tribe cursed.

181) The NPCs in this Village Sim Game Must Be Real, Vol. 1 by Hirukuma

This was an interesting concept. It follows a 30 year old shut in who's been mooching off his family for a decade. Then one day he wins a video game called Village of Fate. As he plays, he begins to suspect that the characters in the game are real people, and as he begins to care for them, he also starts to get his life back in order. I really like it, but I just hope this doesn't get cancelled after 3 volumes like Hirukuma's other series Reborn as a Vending Machine did.

182) Echoes of Divinity by Patrick Laplante

This is the most recent volume of the cultivation fantasy, Painting the Mists. This one is mostly about exploring ancient ruins.

182) The Devotion of "The Surgery Room" by Mizuki Nomura

This is the first volume of a new series by the author of Book Girl, which shares the same setting but takes place years later. This is a collection of stories about a boy who can hear the voices of books and helps solve their problems. In this volume, he reunites a copy of Pippi Longstocking with its lost owner, helps a light novel writer sell copies of his book, helps another boy who has been infected by the short story "Rashomon", has an island adventure with Two Years' Vacation (which is referred to by its Japanese title The Story of Fifteen Boys), and finally helps a a book containing the short story "The Surgery Room" with its romantic problems. It's an enjoyable book for bibliophiles.

183) October Nights by Kevin Lucia

This is the latest volume in the Clifton Heights horror series, which is one of my favorites. This one is a collection of Halloween themed stories.

184) John Sinclair: Demon Hunter Volume 2 by Gabriel Conroy

In the second collection of pulp novels put out by J-novel featuring John Sinclair, he fights a mummy, some more vampires, Elizabeth Bathory, and ghouls.

185) Libriohexer by James Hunter & Dakota Krout

I was glad to see they finally wrote a sequel to 2019's Bibliomancer. It's not a bad book and makes for an interesting side series to Completionist chronicles.

186) Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James

This was a really dark and depressing book. It's a fantasy story with an African setting that is told by a man named Tracker. It's mostly about his two trips to track down a missing boy, the first time to rescue him, but the second time not so much.

187) Jake's Magical Market by J. R. Mathews

This is a relatively good progression fantasy with a really deceptive title and description. It's another one of those books where an apocalypse switches Earth to operate on a game-like system, but in this case instead of the standard RPG system, it's a card game. Based off of the title and description, I expected this to be a slice of life sort of thing about a guy running a shop in that post-apocalyptic world, but that really only take up about a quarter of the book, if that. Most of the book is about Jake going on a series of adventures that take him farther and farther away from his shop. It's still a good book, but not what I was expecting.

188) Li'l Classix: Little Women by Grady Hendrix & Ryan Dunlavey

This is a sort of comics parody of Little Women. It's pretty funny even without ever having read the book.

189) The Joy of Photoshop by James Fridman

This is a collection of mostly silly images by a guy who has people send him photos with requests like "make me and my friend the same height" and then photoshops it so the taller person has their head where their chest should be.

190) Town Under by Tao Wong and K. T. Hanna

This is the first volume of another spinoff series of The System Apocalypse. This one features a mother trying to protect her two children in Australia. It makes a nice change from the main series and its first spinoff to have a main character who is more interested in protecting other people than themselves and who doesn't start out with a ridiculously overpowered class.

191) Reaper by Will Wight

This is the latest Cradle book. I really liked it, and I sure didn't see that twist at the end coming.

192) By the Grace of the Gods: Volume 9 by Roy

Things start to take a bit of a darker turn in this one, and I hope that's not indicative of how the series is going to end up.

193) The Legend of Randidly Ghosthound: Book One by Noret Flood

This is the first kindle volume of a LitRPG series that's really popular in it's original webnovel version on Royal Road. I found it to be generally enjoyable, though not as good as everyone said it was.

194) Operation London by William Meikle
This is the 13th S-Squad book. In this one, the squad is prowling the sewers of London to hunt down a giant, carnivorous slime monster.

195) The Drones of Keldora by Alex Raizman

This is the 5th and final volume of Factory of the Gods. It was okay, but I had two main problems with it. First, it used the term "drone" both for a race of evil insects that were attacking the hero and for semi-autonomous robots used by the hero, which was just plain confusing at points. Secondly, there's not real resolution to the conflict with the main enemy as it merely gets banished instead of defeated.

196) 27352505::The Warring Core by John Stovall

This is volume 3 of The Dungeon of Stories. It's an enjoyable enough series, but I don't have much to say about it.

197) The Hero of the Valley by Gary Spechko

This is the 1st volume of a series that tries to combine cultivation fantasy and LitRPG. It's about a young man who lives in an isolated valley where everyone gets stronger by cultivation. Due to an accident, he gets teleported into the wider world, where people get stronger by more RPG means. He ends up being really strong and has a bunch of adventures. It's decent stuff.

A Thanksgiving to Friends (Lighting the Way)

In difficult times
a friend is there to light the way
to lighten the load,
to show the path,
to smooth the road

At the darkest hour
a friend, with a word of truth
points to light
and the encroaching dawn
is in the plainest sight.

Nathan, to a friend in books and more this Thanksgiving

>113 PaulCranswick: Thanks.

198) Lich Hollow by Nathan Ameye

This is volume 2 of a series in which a group of rednecks battle against demons in a LitRPG apocalypse.

199) Battlefield Reclaimer by David North

A LitRPG about a boy who inherits a seemingly unusable family class and then manages to make it work after a bizarre accident.

200) Defiance of the Fall 3 by TheFirstDefier

This is one of my favorite LitRPGs.

201) The Houndsman by J. Pal

This is a LitRPG adjacent novel about a dog loving man building a fortress. It was enjoyable.

202) The Second Storm by Tao Wong

This is the 6th volume of the cultivation fantasy series A Thousand Li. It bring an end to the series' 2nd story arc.

203) The Academy of Steel by Gary Spechko

This is the sequel to The Hero of the Valley that I read last month. It's okay.

204) 27424070::The Grand Game: Book One by Tom Elliot

This is the first volume of another LitRPG. This is about a guy getting reincarnated in another world where he's forced to play in a game controlled by supernatural forces while a villain tries to trick him into being evil.

205) Godsword by Tracy Gregory

This is volume 3 of the Goblin Summoner series. I didn't like this one as much as the previous volumes. It really felt like a novella length story that was massively padded out by having the characters constantly engage in long (and very dull) philosophical conversations. I was also rather annoyed by the fact that even after finishing the book, I was never sure if the title was supposed to be pronounced "Gods Word" or "God Sword." Plus, while it's a petty complaint, the author is way to fond of the word "whilst."

206) Aster Fall by David North

This is the sequel to Battlefield Reclaimer, which I read recently. It was pretty good.

207) Asgard by Dennis Vanderkerken & Dakota Krout

This is the 9th volume of Artorian's Archives. It was okay. It would have been a lot better without all the lame pop culture references substituting for jokes. Seriously, there were two chapters devoted to a pretty pointless Addams Family reference.

208) So I'm a Spider So What?: The Daily Lives of the Kumoko Sisters 1

This is an alternate universe, comedy, manga spinoff of So I'm a Spider, So What? in which the main character, who at one point in the main series had divided her mind into four separate parts, instead split into four separate beings. It's pretty cute.

209) Where the Footprints End: High Strangeness and the Bigfoot Phenomenon. volume one: Folklore by Joshua Cutchin & Timothy Renner

This is the first volume of a two volume work on the relationship between bigfoot and other supernatural phenomena. This one focuses on folklore, showing the similarities between bigfoot and such fairies, witches, ghosts, aliens, etc. It's interesting.

210) Battle Spire by Michael R. Miller

Another litRPG. This one is a trapped in the game variety, where a player gets trapped in a tower that's overrun by terrorists. He's the only one that can fight them off, but he's just started playing, has a weak class, and has about 48 hour to live if he can't get out of the game. It's okay.

211) Level Up, Kaiju! by Tracy Gregory

Another litRPG series by the author of Goblin Summoner (which once again shows an odd fondness for the word whilst). In this one, the world has been devastated by kaiju attacks, and humanity's response is magic bracelets that can allow certain people to turn into kaiju and kill the evil kaiju. I didn't think it was all that good. The rate of leveling up was ridiculously fast, and the author decided to have an international cast despite not being able to write dialogue for his characters that sounds non-British.

212) Lupin III: Greatest Heists by Monkey Punch

This is a manga collection of some of the best episodes in the career of Lupin III, the grandson of Arsene Lupin. These stories are funny, raunchy, and a bit confusing, but still fun.

Have a lovely holiday, Nathan.

>120 PaulCranswick: A happy holiday to you as well.

213) Reborn: Apocalypse by L. M. Kerr

This is a weird LitRPG about a guy who witness humanity getting wiped out and manages to send his memories back in time so he can try to prevent it. It's okay.

214) The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories, Volume 4 edited by Christopher Philippo

This is a collection of (mostly American) Christmas ghost stories (and poems) from the Victorian era. It wasn't bad, but I would have liked it more without the Scooby Doo style "ghosts".

215) Banner of the Stars: Collectors Edition 1 by Hiroyuki Morioka

an omnibus edition of the first three volumes of the sci-fi light novel series Banner of the Stars, which is a followup to Crest of the Stars, which I read last year. This volune sees the main characters, Jint and Lafier, in the military during a galactic war. The first volume is about their first battle, the second is about them temporarily being in charge of a recently conquered prison planet, and the third is about Jint's rather melancholy return to his home world. Overall, it's a pretty good series.

216) Conan: The Songs of the Dead & Other Stories

This is a graphic novel containing a great five issue Conan story written by Joe Lansdale and a few stories by other people that I didn't like as much.

217) Reborn: Apocalypse (Volume 2) by L. M. Kerr

I don't know why I decided to read this pretty much right after finishing volume one. It's not that great a series.

218) The Headless Boy by Kelli Owen

This is a book that I started earlier in the year and put aside because I really wasn't in the mood for horror at he time. I decided I might as well try and finish it now, since Kelli Owen is an author whose work I generally enjoy and I figured I could squeeze one more book in if I finished this. It's a rather sad story about a couple who move into a new house after they lose their baby. The house turns out to be haunted by the ghost of a little boy who soon latches onto the grieving mother. It was good.

Now to see if I can finish two already started shorter books by the end of the day so I can get to 220.

219) Holmes of Kyoto: Volume 7 by Mai Mochizuki

This volume dealt more with the relationship between the main characters than with any mystery solving. It was still good.

220) A Savage Breed by Patrick C. Harrison III

This is another one of the Splatter Western books. This one is about a flock of bird monsters, though the real monsters are the characters, who are all murderous psychopaths.