Books I Found For Free On Kindle And What I Think Of Them

We start out with Caleb, a self-labeled “twink”, who is with his brother’s widow and some of her fanatic anti-mal “friends” trying to find his brother’s body, because it fucked off after he died, possessed by something or other. Everything starts out intentionally vague, not really wanting to show us what’s going on in this world just yet, which does get on my nerves.

They find Ben’s body, but as they start to fight, Caleb falls through the floor and, essentially, dies. The demon they were hunting possesses him, but his sister-in-law brings him back with CPR. This is when the federal agency that deals with the paranormal, SPECTR, is called in.

John was the one assigned to Ben’s case. Somehow no one ever told him about Ben’s body becoming possessed after his death. Caleb is still possessed, but also alive, himself and Gray inhabiting the body together. Gray is innocent enough, only interested in hunting demons and nothing else. He does make some effort to protect and comfort Caleb, though no one is able to exorcise him. He doesn’t choose the body he takes, it is merely the nearest corpse. Caleb was, however briefly, a corpse, just as Ben’s body was destroyed.

Caleb is sent home with John to be supervised, and to keep all this under wraps, as John’s boss suspects there is treachery afoot. Gray is not like anything they’ve ever dealt with before. At first Caleb is extraordinarily untrusting of John, since John works for SPECTR and Caleb is an unregistered paranormally abled (or ‘mal’), albeit a very weak one. His brother was the only one that knew.

Gray is not used to inhabiting a living body, and though he has no interest in leaving he also has no interest in wrenching control away from Caleb. Everything is more vivid with living senses, and it occasionally confuses or distracts him. Honestly I find his character fascinating, and endearing. The possession was where the book turned from mildly irritating to very intriguing.

John and Caleb flirt relentlessly, of course. Things stay relatively calm at first. Caleb is wary of John, and rumors have been spreading of John’s failure at work, despite his boss’s best attempts at keeping the whole incident under wraps. Caleb’s sister-in-law manages to find him, but discovers he is still possessed, and runs in terror. Meanwhile, John is finding that she and her husband had ties to a fundamentalist group called the Fist of God.

After Melanie’s rejection, Caleb attempts to get drunk, but Gray can’t allow it. John had drawn a spirit ward at the door before he left, but Caleb and Gray are able to cross it without resistance. John is alerted to this through the ward, and rushes home. Turns out Caleb and Gray had simply gotten stir-crazy and gone for a supernaturally powerful run. John tells him that if it happens again, he can no longer protect them. Caleb tells him they could smell the demon Gray had been searching for before.

This leads to Caleb and Gray being drafted into tracking NHEs (Non-Human Entities) for SPECTR, in a very hush-hush, under-the-table sort of way. A body is found, and the scent is the same as the one that killed Ben. The trail ends suddenly, however, as if the NHE got into a car or something, and they are unable to track it further. After this, John and Caleb argue, and Caleb shuts down.

John leaves the next morning, placing another spirit ward on the door. Melanie calls, saying she thinks the demon is hunting her next. Caleb only hesitates long enough to leave a voicemail telling John where he’s going and why before he and Gray sprint off for the address she gives them.

The demon has possessed the leader of Melanie’s group, and convinced Melanie to lure Caleb there to destroy him. This betrayal nearly shatters Caleb, and Gray takes over to fight the demon. John and his friend come in just in time to aid in the fight. When John’s life is threatened, Caleb and Gray become furious and destroy the demon. They nearly turn on Melanie next when she makes a last desperate attack, because of the incredible pain she caused and the intense pleasure Gray felt from feeding with a living body, but Caleb stops. Gray withdraws after that, leaving Caleb pretty much alone.

John and Caleb head back to the condo, and they bang. Caleb needs to feel like he’s still human and John is the only one he feels might still care. Gray enjoys it too, which freaks Caleb out a bit, but meh, whatever. Turns out the demon was summoned by the leader of Melanie and Ben’s chapter of the Fist of God when he felt they became a threat to his ideals, in the sort of leap of logic only ever seen in extreme fundamentalism, at least to my knowledge. The last line is John’s boss giving Caleb a job offer.

I really enjoyed this one. I wasn’t sure about it at first, but urban fantasy has always appealed to me, and I find the dynamic between our three boys to be a really interesting thing to play with. It reminds me just a tad of The Host, by Stephanie Meyer (yes, her), though I enjoy the writing and atmosphere and general all of it better in this. Aside from the intentional moments of dangling information just out of reach in the very beginning, none of it really frustrated me or seemed unreasonable or weak. I enjoyed it a lot.

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Page count: 127

Objective quality: 5/5

Personal enjoyment: 5/5

The author takes their sweet bloody time getting to the actual ghosty part of things, with a short introduction followed by an incredibly long description of first the village, then the house, then the family that lives in that house. Dan, his wife, her two sisters and one brother, Dan’s two sons, and a fellow shoemaker. We spend a great deal of time attempting to get to know these occupants, whom the author frequently refers to as inmates.

Esther, one of the sisters, is the primary person of interest. She has been dating a man that the rest of the family feels is trouble, but she persists in her relationship with him. He doesn’t turn up one night when he was expected, and Esther drinks some buttermilk before bed and has a terrible dream, which she fears to be an omen. The next morning, one of the children is nearly hit by a wagon, though he is saved by a neighbor, and that evening, her suitor returns and takes her for a ride before threatening her at gunpoint, though he is interrupted by a passing carriage and takes her home without further incident.

She tells her family none of this, and suffers in silence for several days, until she and the unmarried sister hear something moving under their bed and pull out a box, thinking there is a mouse inside. The box, after being set in the center of the room, seems to move of its own accord, more than once. When they call for Dan, he simply laughs, then tells them to go back to bed. The next evening Esther feels feverish and retires early.

A couple hours later, when the unmarried sister (Jane) goes up to join her, Esther is woken in some sort of fit, fleeing to the center of the room, trembling, flushed, and cold to the touch. Once she is negotiated back into the bed, she begins to swell, radiating heat, but pale as a ghost. There is the sound of thunder, and Dan’s wife worries about the children, but it is not a lightning storm.

There are several days of peace before a similar attack. This brings the doctor into the mix, and he begins to make various attempts to calm and cure her. There are writings on the wall, mysterious knockings that come from various parts of the house, blankets and pillows being thrown around, and it seems to escalate from there. After this episode, whatever it is seems content to simply throw objects around the house and knock on the walls and floors for some time afterwards.

Several weeks later, Esther has some sort of seizure, wherein she told the family of what had happened to her that night with Bob. Esther becomes a sort of regional curiosity, bringing in all sorts of scientists and pastors to witness and make their guesses as to what was going on. Cold water seems to boil while simply sitting on a table, objects disappear before being dropped from the ceiling, and so on.

Esther falls ill for some time, during which the manifestations cease. They also do not make an appearance when Esther is out of town visiting friends, either around her or in the house. However, after this brief respite, a ghost tells Esther that the house will be set aflame, and, indeed, lit matches drop from the ceiling onto the bed repeatedly throughout the night. The occupants have developed a way to communicate with the ghost, one knock for no, three knocks for yes, and two knocks for uncertainty. During this night, a dress hanging on the wall is removed, rolled up, pushed under the bed, and set ablaze, without any visible cause, and the next morning a barrel in the cellar catches fire as well, only being put out by a mysterious stranger whom no one had seen before or since.

When the ghost appears to Esther and tells her to leave or it will burn the house, she moves to a kind neighbor’s house for some time. She is left alone for nearly three weeks before the ghost returns, though it is relatively mild-mannered for several weeks more before beginning to start fires and throw heavy doors off their hinges and the like. At one point it steals a pocket knife from one of the neighbor’s boys and stabs it straight into Esther’s back, leaving the knife in the wound. Furniture is moved about, and other ghosts appear as well. Two mischievous ones, Bob and Maggie, and one tempering influence, Peter.

When Esther leaves the village to visit friends once more, she is left alone for the duration of her visit. After this, the author narrates his own visit to the cottage, describing knives and chairs and all sorts of objects being hurled at him regularly, objects vanishing in plain sight before being dropped from the ceiling some time later, chairs stacked teeteringly atop one another, and even holding conversations with the now-6 ghosts. (Three more have joined the cohort, though they are largely inactive, merely tipping over chairs from time to time.) The author discovered he could ask Bob for matches, and they would appear from the ceiling. A trumpet no one in the village appears upstairs after hours of a trumpeting sound.

Things continue to worsen until Esther moves permanently into the home in the woods where she had been able to have peace before. The ghosts have left both Esther and the cottage, and things have returned to normal.

I found this to be absolutely fascinating. The unexplained events, the particular writing of the time, and so many other little facets came together to make this a real treat for me. There was a heavy emphasis on name-dropping, which I have noticed in other authors of the time as well, which can be grating, but I suppose it should be given a free pass in this case. I deeply enjoyed it and found it amusing rather than scary.

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Page count: 46

Objective quality: 4/5

Personal enjoyment: 4/5

Zoey’s parents kinda suck. Her mom is a neurotic mess and her dad is very distant. Her dad’s parents are amazing, and she adores them, but her mom hates them for some reason she refuses to let Zoey know. She still gets to go see them every once in a while, though, and she always looks forward to it. Every time she has a new guess as to what their secret is.

At the opening of the story, her grandmother dies. Her grandfather is understandably devastated by this. He’s sitting on the roof of an apartment building and staring at the stars. Zoey ignores her mother’s warning and dodges around the police officers to go up and talk to him. After that, her parents refuse to let her see him again.

Two years later, Zoey notices a call from Dirk on her dad’s cell phone. That was her grandpa’s name. She calls it back, and gets the reception desk of a retirement home. So, of course, she sneaks out to the retirement home the next day. He’s delighted to see her, but she was followed. Not by her parents or a predator or anything. By an alien, who has been holding a grudge against Dirk for a very long time, and brought some robots along.

The fight is over quite quickly. It seems Dirk is not the feeble old man he was made out to be. They go on the run after that, hotwiring a car to hurry back to Zoey’s family home. But her mother refuses to listen. Dirk is ushered out of the house, and just as he and Zoey set foot on the lawn outside, the entire house is lifted up by a strange green light. Her family has been kidnapped by Varkor, right-hand man of Emperor Zastan.

Dirk explains to her as they head for a storage center that he was accidentally drafted when he was 15. The draft notice was meant to go to a Martian with a similar name, but Dirk got it instead. He was taken to a war zone and handed a ray gun. But, as it turned out, the enemy army was only holograms, created by Zastan to keep himself in power, and Dirk ended the war and became a hero. Her grandmother he met later, serving as a Cosmic Constable. She was from Saturn. (The reason she, her son, and Zoey look human was holographic implants, though there isn’t much difference between Saturnians and humans in appearance.)

They get onto a spaceship that Dirk has “borrowed” from somewhere, and they pull on some uniforms. Dirk gives her an earpiece so they can communicate if they get separated. They’re almost out of fuel, so they stop off on a large space station orbiting the moon, that is hidden from humans by holograms (holograms are the answer to everything in this universe). Dirk activates their holo-disguisers and they drop the saucer off at the service station and head into the mall.

There are robo-guards everywhere, even giving a display of their power by atomizing a hologram, but Dirk gives Zoey access to her bank account and sends her off to have fun while he runs some errands. Of a somewhat shady nature. Zoey amuses herself at a clothing store for a while, then just as she is leaving encounters another robot about to atomize a homeless man. She stops the robot on impulse, and must flee for her life.

Hiding in a dance club, she bumps into an armored Saturnian Marine that leads her out to his own craft, latched onto the side of the station. He seems good-natured enough, as do his comrades (if a little slow), but their Sergeant is absolutely mad. She is locked up on grounds of suspected espionage and the sergeant threatens her, killing their last POW in a fit of anger before escorting her to the bridge and contacting Dirk.

Somehow Dirk ends up on the ship and takes control of the situation once more. Once things have calmed down, it comes out that the robots are under Zastan II’s control, and they have coordinated a simultaneous takeover of a large swath of the galaxy. There are only small pockets of resistance. The sergeant wants to toss a mini-nuke into the core of the lunar station, destroying it and creating a greater obstacle between Zastan II and the remaining free planets near the center of the solar system. Dirk is categorically against the idea, stating over and over that “any loss is too great a loss” when it comes to innocent casualties.

The three younger marines are clearly in awe of Dirk, answering in unison when he asks a question about the action figures of himself that he didn’t know existed. The sergeant on the other hand can feel his grip on the situation and his skeletal remains of a platoon slipping away, and attacks. After he is knocked out, the other two take the sergeant away, while Gaiven, the one who rescued Zoey, starts working on ideas for alternative plans.

When Zoey points out the robots can’t see through holograms, that kickstarts the plan they ultimately settle on, in which they hack the hologram projectors in the mall to make dozens of copies of themselves and confuse the robots enough to pick them off one by one from safe cover. There’s an annoying little misdirect here where we’re made to think the plan failed for all of one sentence before we discover Zoey is just playing a video game while she waits on the ship.

She happens to see Gaiven move a switch without touching it through his helmet feed, and is amazed. It turns out Saturnians have a number of psionic powers, though they need to be trained in order to use them, and are trained since childhood much like language or science. The only two we directly see are the telekinesis Gaiven shows and a moment earlier where the sergeant reads Zoey’s thoughts through the reflection of her eyes.

Zoey happens to catch sight of the sergeant on one of the security cameras in the mall, and watches in distress as he shoots out the holo-projector that Dirk had been using in his section of the plan. Just as Gaiven tries to go warn Dirk, his armor is locked up by the sergeant. Zoey is left no choice but to pilot the ship into the station and warn her grandpa herself.

Dirk is excited and impressed when he sees Zoey actively helping him take out the remaining robots, but they don’t have long to be excited. They rush off for the core, finally allowing Zoey her own raygun, only to be captured once more by the other two, slower marines (referred to only as “Scrawny” and “Dopey” for the entirety of the book). Turns out they had been working for the sergeant even as they went along with Dirk and Gaiven’s alternative plan. There is another rapid scuffle, and Zoey has to dive to keep the nuke from falling into the core as Dirk and the sergeant battle.

Afterwards, they are presented with a coupon book and a cheese plate for their efforts. Dirk has to stop and give autographs for a while, and Zoey goes off to spoil herself rotten with new clothes. Gaiven is asked to stay as head of security in order to prepare for another attack in case Dirk can’t stop Zastan II in time. Just before they depart, Gaiven gives Zoey a very low-level book about the “psiences” (their term for their psionic powers). As she is reading through it and practicing, she accidentally reads her grandpa’s mind, just for a brief flash. Their ship was stolen from Varkor, and he had activated the homing beacon intentionally just before she came to visit him. He wanted to be done. This makes Zoey resolve to save him from himself, while he saves the universe.

As you could probably tell from my very long description this time around, I really enjoyed this book. It was charming, there were lots of comical parentheticals that didn’t feel forced or overdone, there was only that one moment of annoying misdirection that I really specifically disliked. The writing was very high quality for a free book, it didn’t feel half-assed or otherwise awkward or lazy. The characters were enjoyable, most everything actually mattered to the story, it was pretty great. Plus it doesn’t hurt that it’s a girl and her awesome grandpa.

~

Page count: 87

Objective quality: 5/5

Personal enjoyment: 5/5

Pretty straightforward porn here. Gay male interior decorator gets distracted painting a room an unnoticeably different shade of white because the gardener is cute. Offers the gardener a soda, they flirt, then skinny dip in the rich lady’s pool, you got your three basic food groups of written porn: blowjobs, handjobs, and good hard fucking. There are some somewhat clumsily inserted hints that the gardener is orchestrating this as more than just a fun little romp, such as him frequently glancing to random places or just happening to have condoms and lube by the rich lady’s hot tub.

The rich lady’s husband comes home and is conspicuously talking about something on his phone, the decorator assumes it has to do with the movie business, though it’s implied he’s not a hollywood producer but rather a porn producer. Of course the decorator does not suspect this, and the narration is not omniscient. He and the gardener trade numbers and part ways, though the gardener teases that he has something to show him.

When the decorator gets home he gets a text from the gardener with a video attachment. Turns out he was filming a porno! He says it’s for their eyes only though. Instead of using it as any sort of blackmail material, he’s using it as a reminder of how good it was, in order to float the suggestion that the decorator become a pornstar. I guess the gardener knows a guy or something (probably the rich lady’s husband).

Overall, pretty standard fare. Some parts were a little clumsy, there were mentions of the existence of bisexuality but not exactly in a positive light (a common attitude in the community, tragically), there was overuse of the word “sphincter” and “yelling”. I wasn’t particularly enthralled, but it was pretty quality as far as boring porn goes.

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Page count: 49

Objective quality: 4/5

Personal enjoyment: 3/5

The author first lists her credentials in the foreword, explaining to the reader why she is qualified to offer this advice to the general public. She has been a journalist, a volunteer in the Great War, and a wife. She also gives a brief summary of why this was written, and some of the opinions within. Here the beginnings of the eugenic undertones start to show, saying the church could not be against preventing the birth of the infirm or unfit.

The introduction consists of presenting the issue, and the moral arguments for and against. The author mentions the “ignorance of the public in regard to sex”, and argues that marriage should be healthy and happy, and being legal and religious is not inherently enough. The author presents sex as an integral part of marriage, which is not always true, but at the time would likely be considered a given. However, she does acknowledge that some people have no sexual desire at all, which is surprising to me.

Syphilis is the largest obstacle to healthy marriage, according to the author. There is an argument that no one is inherently interested in promiscuous sex, which I also disagree with, but again is not unreasonable for the time and the point the author is trying to make. Additionally, the author speaks in support of brothels (essentially), only if they are kept clean and supervised. “We all want to abolish sin, but failing that we must cease wanting to poison the sinner.” Since STDs can strike anyone, the author contends that prevention and treatment is not removing consequences, because it was not a direct consequence in the first place.

Here eugenic undertones raise their ugly head once more, as the author advocates “voluntary and compulsory sterilisation [sic] of the feeble-minded and unfit.” The word “eugenic” is even used as an argument in favor of STD prevention. This carries on for some time, transitioning into a statement that conception should come only with the certainty of health of both partners.

The author puts the majority of the responsibility for prevention and control on the woman, The introduction carries on for a few pages more, giving examples of others speaking out in favor of the author’s recommendations, before the author begins to present the approved method of STD prevention and contraception for women. This consists of a suppository of some weak antiseptic to kill the sperm combined with some oily substance to create a film over the cervix and hinder entry, combined with a diaphragm (referred to here as a “rubber pessary”) to act as a mechanical barrier. On top of this is a strict regimen of daily cleaning, of all the orifices in the area.

This is reiterated several times, in varying degrees of brevity, before transitioning to STD prevention in men. The author prints verbatim a guide she gave out to soldiers in France during the war on prevention, including advocacy of flooding the urethra with clean water sufficient to distend it slightly in order to clean it fully. Which sounds painful to me. She then pats herself on the back for a while, which, to be fair, she does seem to deserve, as she has been fighting a “one-woman campaign against vd” with strong resistance.

There is a note between the conclusion and the appendices that the author will reply to any serious inquiries mailed to the publisher, which seems fascinating to me. How many letters must this woman have ended up writing after that?

The first appendix is a list of rejected methods, and why they were rejected. Surprisingly, condoms were rejected, for their interruption of direct contact. Vaseline and soap and water is reported to be relatively effective, but not sufficient by itself. There is a device that sounds very much like the modern IUD, and was dismissed on the grounds of being, not a preventative, but an “abortifacient”.

The second appendix lists where the devices advocated can be found in London. After this is a somewhat perplexingly long note that children must be taught these cleanliness procedures as children, since adults are often set in their ways. Then come the footnotes referenced in the body of the text itself, including:

some weird white-power type stuff that also isn’t cool

a note that brothels are very clean

a note that the author was banned from printing articles in New Zeland

one more advocacy for compulsory sterilization of the unfit which still isn’t cool

There was definitely some stuff that didn’t sit right with me, but overall I was surprised by how relatively open-minded the author seemed to be. Her argument was assembled quite well, though there were some things that were likely considered common knowledge at the time that were skipped over almost entirely, and there was a little more back-patting than necessary. It seemed relatively sound in terms of its logic, and presented failed ideas and the reasons they failed, which is an important step in any argument.

The writing was not overwhelmingly dry, and the method advocated does seem adequate, though more work than simply using a condom. As a whole, I found it really fascinating to look back from a modern understanding and see the differences.

~

Page count: 45

Objective quality: 4/5

Personal enjoyment: 4/5

We start with Dex, who is hunting the Dakimakura and suffers from an as-of-yet unidentified affliction. She feeds off neckbeards, choosing them as her favored prey. Some she transforms into nightbeards, others she simply enslaves using her charms and their own natures against them. Dex accidentally kills a neckbeard, thinking he is a nightbeard. Though the Dakimakura escapes, Dex is able to find her chat logs with some other lonely man-babies and take a guess at her next potential victim.

Paxton is a pretty normal “nice guy” trope. He’s interested in a girl at school that, to the reader, is super obviously not into him, but he’s convinced himself that he has a chance. His friend Chad has a crush on their friend Kara who recently lost weight and “became hot”. As Paxton is carrying some books to the office, he runs into a new girl, and forgets all about the other girl (she’s never mentioned again). Her name is Dasha.

That weekend, Paxton and some friends go to the Hole, where the teens all go to drink and party. Dasha happens to be there, and asks Paxton to walk with her, which is taken to be an invitation to something more whenever someone is asked to walk at the Hole. However, just as he is about to kiss her, he pulls himself away, for an actually decent reason: she’s drunk, and that’s not really consent. Then Darren, a jock, comes stumbling drunkenly in, and Dasha walks off with him instead.

Dex tracks down one of the man-babies the Dakimakura had been in contact with. His name is Edwin. After some threats, Edwin agrees to help Dex find information. They go to the Ren Faire, where they are taken to an underground tavern to meet with the Palantir, who is also known as Jiggles. Dex notices a note of warning inside his tankard and stops drinking, though Edwin receives no such warning. Jiggles reveals himself as a furry just before Edwin passes out. Jiggles tells Dex of the Elder before him, Qillson. He was taken in by the Dakimakura, and killed, but not by her. By Dex, at the beginning of the book. And, unfortunately, the warning in the tankard didn’t come soon enough.

When Dex awakens, he is chained to a table. The furries come down to greet him, and show him that he has been branded with Rainbow Dash’s cutiemark, corrupting his blood into that of a Brony. This has an adverse reaction with the red pill Dex takes to maintain his strength and stave off his affliction. Edwin, on the other hand, has suffered an even worse fate. His entire body has been mutilated into the form of a pony.

Suddenly, they are rescued, by the Guild. Edwin fights to the death, unwilling to live on in his new form. Meanwhile, Paxton has been flaking out on Chad like no tomorrow. He doesn’t turn up for any of their usual activities. Kara has been acting strange, getting weaker and more sensitive to the sun. When Dasha turns up at the comic book store, Chad feels the need to flee. He runs into Kara, who ends up nearly collapsing, so he takes her home. She mentions a kitty has been visiting her.

Earlier the furries mention that the Dakimakura can take the form of a kitten.

Dex awakens in one of the Guild’s safehouses, and has a violently negative reaction to the red pill, weakening him significantly. Dex reveals that he met the Dakimakura, when he was young. He was bitten, and needs the red pill to prevent the transformation. The Guild offers their assistance in the fight against her, though some of the members hold secret reservations that never really get followed up on.

Chad reveals his suspicions about Dasha to two friends, John and Randall. He arranges a stakeout, observing the comics shop, Paxton’s house, and Kara’s house. They all end up dozing off before dawn. However, that morning they go to Paxton’s and wait until he leaves before entering the basement to search for Dasha. They find a wooden box in the crawlspace, containing piles of untranslated manga, and a body pillow. That looks just like Dasha.

The comic shop that Chad and co frequent turns out to be owned by one of the guild members, and was broken into by the furries. Several shipments of untranslated manga went missing. Just as some of the guild are returning to supervise cleanup, Chad and co come rushing in with Kara. She’s been bitten. This is when the two groups unite.

Dex gets whatever information he can out of Chad, as the guild makes Chad’s basement their new safehouse. They whip up a new batch of the red pill to give to every member of the expanding group, in order to help protect them from the Dakimakura’s charms. (If you have not guessed it by this point, Dasha is the Dakimakura.) Chad begins acting suspicious, but Kara begins to recover, and they even manage to capture and recondition Paxton.

It turns out some of the red pill’s effects only work on Dex and his bloodline, such as the strength and speed. Strangely, these effects work on Paxton too. Dex explains that they need to destroy her places of rest, and they set about doing so. The first raid goes off without a hitch, though Dex is no longer able to invoke God’s name as he has slipped too far under her spell.

For the second raid, Chad insists that he go along. There is an ambush, and everyone is injured except for Chad. Then the lore of the Dakimakura suddenly gets added onto, as Dex says her servants are like a hive-mind: she sees what they see. This has not been mentioned before and doesn’t really come up again. The Guild makes an uneasy alliance with the furries, and set out on the third and final raid.

It, too, is a trap. The Dakimakura is no longer there, and instead they are mobbed by hundreds of her servants. The furry team that had been stationed nearby as backup turns out to be a bunch of empty fursuits. They have been betrayed.

During this, Paxton has gone to check on Kara, and finds to his distress that she has turned. We learn that they had dated once upon a time, before she was conventionally attractive. She bites him, and he becomes like Dex, improbably strong. He gets a vision from the Dakimakura, and sees Chad serving her loyally.

As the guild is fleeing the trap, they manage to capture one young neckbeard and get the Dakimakura’s location out of him. Everyone rushes to the airport. Chad and Paxton have a standoff, but Chad manages to escape to the Dakimakura’s side. She is escaping in a cargo plane, piloted by Jiggles. He nearly gets left behind, but manages to get onto the cargo plane again, where Dex and the Dakimakura are having a standoff of their own without noticing his presence.

The Dakimakura reveals that she friendzoned Dex, as she did with his father and grandfather and so on, back to the great great grandfather that originally woke her from her pillow-form. She calls the neckbeards misogynistic. Just as she is extolling the surprising virtues of a furry lover, Chad reveals his presence. He takes the red pill.

There’s one twist remaining, however. Jiggles is no longer on the plane; in his place is a brick of C4. Dex and Chad barely escape in time.

Finally, there is an epilogue. Chad and Kara are talking, as they walk through the Ren Faire. She gets angry at him for being so shitty to her, but supposedly he “sees the truth” of her just using him for validation. That was confusing to me. Paxton is no longer effortlessly muscular like Dex, as the one who turned him has been destroyed, but Dex has not reverted to his natural form. Paxton reveals that the Dakimakura they destroyed was not the original. Sequel time!

I’m really not quite sure what to make of this one. There are a lot of typos and unintentionally fragmented sentences and other errors, though the “about the author” says he currently lives in the Ukraine, so it’s relatively likely English isn’t his first language. There are portions in which neckbeards and the concept of the friendzone are challenged, and there seems to be a warring of ideals within the author. For example, when Kara assaults Paxton, she is referred to as a rapist, while there are multiple pages dedicated to a verbal tirade against “friendzoning sluts.” Both the attitudes “all women are like that” and that of the previous statement being sexist are expressed with equal seriousness and negative consequences.

It’s really unclear whose side the author is on, and that did lessen my enjoyment, as well as the quality (inconsistencies in the narrative and in the lore). However, there were a lot of parts that made me eager to keep reading, and I never felt like I was forcing myself through it. Pretty fair, overall, I suppose

~

Page count: 231

Objective quality: 3/5

Personal enjoyment: 4/5

This one is pretty straightforward. We’ve got two cousins, male, in Kentucky in the 1920s. One, Tom, keeps very heavy-handedly thinking about all the tragedies that have befallen him and his dark secret and how he wants to move far away where no one knows what he did. I hate this. It is not naturally woven in at all and it is a blatant attempt to grab the reader’s attention. It doesn’t work.

They go out to the railroad bridge because Tom only feels alive when he’s afraid because he’s probably a fucked-up kid. His cousin doesn’t want to cross the bridge, but goes halfway before a train approaches and forces them to dive for the narrow catwalk below. The cousin turns back after this, but Tom insists on crossing the rest of the way, watching the next train pass before turning back and crossing again.

Another train approaches just as he nears the side he started on, after he spent several moments contemplating the steep drop and thinking if it was a good enough death for his father maybe it would work for him too. He ends up having to dive for one of the ladders attached to the catwalk in order to keep from being hit. His cousin is pissed.

Then there’s some random pages like the “about the author” and stuff about the bridge then a sample from the novel these kids are from which I didn’t read, just on principle. I don’t know why the info says this book is 60 pages, I highly doubt that. (I don’t know how amazon estimates these things, but I’m not going to manually count pages, I don’t love you that much.)

There were no egregious errors, but there was no character. The heavy handed hinting at this boy’s past was more intrusive than intriguing. Like when an amateur manipulator is trying to get something out of you and they haven’t invested the time to make you even consider doing them a favor. It was obvious this was only written to hook people, and not because the writer felt it helped the characters or the plot or anything. An exercise in commercialism.

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Page count: 60

Objective quality: 3/5

Personal enjoyment: 3/5

In the beginning, Tony, the narrator, is fat and divorced and old and sad. He happens to get an invitation to the wedding of a girl he dated when he lived in Germany many years prior, that he remembered fondly but hadn’t heard from in a long time. He resolves to lose weight before the wedding, and if he doesn’t lose enough he won’t go.

He’d tried various diets and weight loss plans many times before, with little success. Eventually, fortuitously, he was scrolling through Clint Eastwood’s wikipedia page and stumbled on the man’s fitness habits. He resolves to eat only when he is hungry and stop when he is not.

For the next 3 months, he does his best to hold himself to this, and it works. He loses a little weight, and he eats a lot less. He spends a lot of time talking about the “club of overeaters”, and offering support both for those attempting to leave the club and those content to stay in it. I must point out here his remarkable level of fat acceptance, which is rather uncommon. He simply states that if one is happy with how they are, they do not have to change, as long as they keep up with their doctor’s appointments just in case.

When he is still not losing weight at a rate that would reach his goal for the wedding, he has an imaginary phone call with Clint Eastwood. Clint suggests he eat what his mother fed him as a child. This would be largely vegetables, lean meats, and the like. When he does this, he sheds his excess weight much faster. He includes another caveat here, nothing that while he gives an example of his typical meals during this period of his diet, these are simply what he ate, and while they worked for him, are not the only “right” way to go about it.

He reaches his goal weight almost 2 months early. He travels to Europe and spends some time exploring before returning to Germany for the wedding.

It turns out his former girlfriend is not as beautiful as she made herself out to be. She had sent a photograph, supposedly of herself, but she looks nothing like it. Instead of attempting to seduce her as he had secretly hoped he could, he ends up supporting her through her depression and isolation. He meets her daughter, almost half his age, and they get together instead.

I deeply appreciate the accepting and supportive tone of the narrator. While it is not an issue that I myself have to deal with, it does apply to some of my friends and family, and it is reassuring to see them as being treated with the kindness and respect they deserve. The advice given is also very reasonable, and the author very carefully points out that what was right for the narrator is not inherently what is right for the reader. That is a very important point to make.

There were occasional editing mistakes, and it was not exactly riveting from a narrative standpoint, but I do appreciate it for what it was and would likely recommend it if someone asked.

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Page count: 78

Objective quality: 4/5

Personal enjoyment: 3/5

We start with a man (Nick) hopelessly obsessed with his ex. To the point that he makes a habit out of screwing girls that look like her. That ex (Sofia) is dating a new man, a rich art collector who has a habit of cheating on her (Josh). On one of these occasions, he happens to choose a woman who is doing much the same thing as our first man, seeking out those that look like her ex (Lucy).

Nick happens to bump into Josh and Lucy at a pub. Josh gets nasty. Nick breaks his nose. Josh throws an epic temper tantrum that lasts many chapters and involves enlisting his right hand man, Samoan Sam (who is actually Maori), in a fair amount of criminal activity.

Lucy and Nick end up chasing lookalikes at the same bar that night, and Nick puzzles out that they’re there for the same reason. Nick’s wet-blanket roommate Konrad is along as well, and though he expresses derision for their habits, he ends up chasing after a lookalike of his own ex for a brief period afterwards. Eventually, Nick and Lucy make an attempt at serving as each other’s wing-person, but the pair of lookalikes they go out with end up getting together with each other.

Lucy’s sister Amanda happens to be a lawyer, and gives Nick some advice on the pending trial for his scuffle with Josh. Samoan Sam broke Konrad’s arm while Konrad was home alone and drunk one night.

Nick loves to go talk to his mother’s headstone. His family were all hippies, and his father is living in a cave somewhere. Somewhere where Lucy has to travel for her work as some sort of booking agent, and she suggests he and Konrad come along to celebrate his birthday. Konrad begins reading the in-flight magazine out of boredom and some twisted sense of spite, but becomes fascinated with the pop star Corsica Coleman.

At this music festival is where Konrad meets his ex’s lookalike, who eventually convinces him to go get her some cocaine. The elevator of the shifty building happens to lose power as he’s trying to return to her, and he becomes trapped with Corsica herself. Something about him sparks a change in her. Meanwhile, Lucy and Nick are out for drinks (which, when Corsica doesn’t show and Lucy isn’t there to put one of her bands in the empty slot, eventually costs her a job). They get very drunk and very affectionate.

After that night, Nick and Lucy are essentially dating, though it seems they never really made that clear to one another. Nick goes to visit his dad, Ilove (what a hippie name, right?) which goes surprisingly well. After their return, Samoan Sam does some more weird illegal-but-not-exactly-threatening stuff (the poor horse plushies) just before the trial, in which Nick is only given a fine and some community service, instead of the jailtime Josh was pushing for.

Konrad, meanwhile, seems to have fallen for Corsica, despite his highly vocal disdain for popular culture as a whole and frequent derision of her in the past. We learn that Lucy’s ex didn’t leave her, he died pushing her out of the way of a speeding car. She feels the need to seek his forgiveness before pursuing Nick wholeheartedly. Corsica meets up with Konrad several times while staying out of the public eye and they share happy dreams of changing the world for the better. Josh trashes some paintings in a fit of childish rage. Sofia begins putting her suspicions together and goes to warn Nick of the danger he’s in.

When Samoan Sam returns to the apartment with an equally large friend, Konrad manages to fend them both off, through force of will (and liberal application of his arm cast from Sam’s previous visit). Unfortunately, Sofia’s visit throws Nick back into the pit he had so nearly escaped, while Lucy falls ever deeper for him. Eventually Lucy grows curious about Nick’s paintings that he guards so carefully from the eyes of others. She is horrified to discover they’re all Sofia.

She confronts him, and that is the end of any fond interactions between them, as it comes out he slept with Sofia very recently indeed. Corsica and Konrad organize a benefit concert, with great help from Lucy. Josh comes to Lucy’s home in a fit of despair and sleeps on her couch for a night. When she finds a lovingly crafted note saying only “Sofia” that Josh had dropped by mistake, she is hit by a stroke of brilliance.

A new exhibit is set up in Josh’s gallery, to replace the paintings he destroyed. An exhibit full of Nick’s works. Sofia herself features as a living art piece, infatuated with Nick now that he’s “made something of himself”. Corsica shows up to announce the benefit concert they’d been working so hard on behind the scenes. Lucy refuses to attend, despite her single-handed orchestration of the event. Sofia reconciles with Josh after Nick rejects her.

Corsica publicly announces her romantic feelings for Konrad, and Nick makes a last ditch effort to win Lucy back, a carefully painted piece of Lucy and her deceased lover performing together as students. It fails. Lucy leaves for Germany with the band she now manages and unfortunately there’s a sequel.

The writing was... inconsistent. There were moments and even stretches of absolute brilliance that I adored and that I immediately wanted to share with others, but at the same time those moments would occasionally disappear. There were typing errors, skipped words and misspellings and other minor flaws that shouldn’t have mattered but sort of threw me out of my groove, so to speak. I can understand the author’s choices but I was still deeply incensed that Nick and Lucy did not get back together.

I think perhaps a little more time spent editing would have been good. It feels like it was written in fits and spurts, as long chunks will have similar voice but not feel quite the same as preceding or following chunks. It seems to me that the thing the author needs the most is simply more practice, strengthening their “voice” so they don’t have to consciously direct energy towards being consistent.

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Page count: 280

Objective quality: 4/5

Personal enjoyment: 4/5

Maddie goes to a pool party at a frat that he’s trying to join. Everyone in the family has been in the frat. Maddie is also too gay to function. He has pot, but only for his migraines, which sounds like bullshit if I’ve ever heard it. He lives in the honors dorm and goes to coffee every sunday with his roommate and his roommate’s brother.

Maddie has the hots for JR (occasionally called RJ, through sloppy editing), who is the little brother of a famous R&B artist. He’s at a post-party frat meeting in which all the boys who didn’t get laid get prude-shamed I suppose? And he is assigned a new “Big”; a mentor of sorts. Maddie’s previous Big got kicked out for reasons unknown.

The Big/little dynamic of some sexual relationships irl is not actually played out here, it’s just weirdly alluded to by titles alone. That strikes me as odd. The call Maddie JR’s “little”, they call JR Maddie’s “Big”.

They go to a bar, JR lands a chick, Maddie tries kissing her friend but he’s just too goddamn gay. She happens to live across the street and hate their loud parties. I also live in an apartment complex in the middle of greek row. It gets loud.

Maddie bails on his roommate the following weekend, which pisses him off (understandably), then masturbates while fantasizing about JR, being cut short by his roommate coming home. And that’s the end.

This very much feels like it was cut short for some reason. Maybe another one of those attempts to get people interested enough to buy the next installment, but it’s not working. Maddie isn’t particularly likeable, and JR certainly isn’t either. Nor are the rest of the frat bros. The editing is exceptionally sloppy, leaving plenty of typos and other slip-ups. There’s really no reason I’d want to read on to find out why Maddie’s previous Big was ousted or what happens when(/if) he finally confesses to JR. Because I just don’t care about them.

~

Page count: 23

Objective quality: 3/5

Personal enjoyment: 1/5

We start off with a laundry list of links and an offer of a $1 million reward if you get Eric Skaggs the money he “deserves”. Also, for some reason people are referred to as “[name].com” which is weird. I knew from the title this would be some crazy conspiracy-theory stuff but I may be getting in over my head here.

Then we transition into a first-person narrative of an encounter outside the computer lab at college, in which the narrator already sounds to be patting himself heavily on the back. He mentions he came here to work on his website, and the person he bumped into perks up. The narrator explains his website combines yahoo search, geocities, and hotmail, (an illustrious collection--not) and earns $5000 a month. Ew.

The other guy, Chad, wants to start a website but doesn’t have an idea. He’s a graphic arts major that taught himself html in his spare time. Chad lies about a jeep being his. For some godforsaken reason. The narrator rambles about cars and how his BMW makes him feel pretentious and he misses his Camaro, get your head out of your ass Eric I think you’ve been eating your own shit for too long.

“Chad... failed with everything else in his life after the YouTube idea I gave him.” You realize that just makes you sound like even more of a douchebag, right? Skaggs is claiming that he predicted the convergence of television and internet in 1999. “Not many people knew about it except for those that kept up with such things like myself.”

Okay. He says Chad failed everything in life, but Skaggs couldn’t even be assed to write a full autobiography to jerk himself off with. That seems like way more of a failure to me. Also, his formatting is atrocious. Not anything like what you would want to see from someone claiming to be a web-design wizard.

Skaggs told Chad this idea in 1999 in exchange for 1% of the company. The domain name wasn’t registered until 2004. Skaggs goes out of his way to trash Chad’s academics, despite him going to the same goddamn low level state school, before he suggests Chad whip up a portfolio of digital graphics to try to get in good with a dot com company.

I suppose it is theoretically possible that Skaggs really did have this conversation with Chad, but it really feels that he specifically constructed this narrative in order to line up with the few facts he felt like providing. Including some weirdly specific and racist facts. He even encourages stalking rich men’s daughters.

“This is exactly the story I told Chad to use” or, far more likely, you intentionally incorporated this detail into your own delusional narrative because it was already common knowledge. “He didn’t want to hang out with me” well shit, I wouldn’t either. You really sound like a pretentious asshole. Skaggs also claims that “$5000 a month” website of his wasn’t even public yet, and the dot com bubble burst a week before he was going to take it public. Then his domain name got stolen by “their India office”.

Then he went back to that same college he had trash-talked to Chad. Relying on the FAFSA. What the hell happened to all that money from his weird shitty frankenstein website? “I wanted to help everyone including those that needed the most help.” Wow, alright. He goes from financial advisor to social worker, then started a website called “BuckGet” that attempts to subvert the bureaucracy and ugliness to help people. It sounds really shifty just from the description of it.

Then, after all of this, he hears about YouTube starting to get big and tries to claim his piece. He is still bitter about it 12 years later. Then his ex girlfriend says something and he goes to google it and why he didn’t google it before I have no idea. He can’t even spell “googling” correctly.

Then he gets into some really creepy stalker-type shit. Sending emails to every address associated with Chad, applying to work at every company Chad is involved with, even speaking with Chad’s housekeeper on the phone for like half an hour. This guy is seriously delusional. Interestingly enough, Skaggs even meets another man named Herb that also claims to have been the mastermind behind YouTube, just like he does. He insists that Herb was the liar though. Then some filmmakers tell him to write this book.

He even offers to take this book off the web if Chad pays him his $16.5 million. If not, he’ll try to make a Social Network-style movie. So, he’s blackmailing the creator of youtube with precisely zero evidence and almost negative credibility. “Since I was laid off and trying to get in touch with Chad” making it even clearer that this is a desperate cash grab as opposed to anything resembling justice. He mentions Chad referring to him as “crazy” on twitter, and even puts his phone number on the last page of the book, which is crazy indeed.

Okay, here’s the thing. I have many years of experience with varying degrees of mental disorder, from many different categories. This man is either delusional or transparently manipulative. There is nothing even plausible about this story, and every claim he made had no substance to it at all. He offered no details that couldn’t have been pulled off of wikipedia, and the whole thing feels incredibly manufactured. I don’t know if he’s genuinely delusional or just a liar. I almost don’t care, since he sure doesn’t seem to.

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Page count: 28

Objective quality: 1/5

Personal enjoyment: 3/5

The narrator writes columns for a semi-legal advice magazine type thing. He’s struggling to come up with the final column he’s been commissioned to write, so he takes off on a spontaneous road trip. He ends up at a diner where he becomes involved in conversation with a rather grumpy man.

First the narrator divulges random “facts” about the publishing industry. Then he wheedles the man about his own life, disgruntled with his own candor. At first the man’s statements are vague and unusual, but it comes out he’s a famous action star. He seems to despise his life, and describes it as very taxing and dull.

Then the narrator goes home to find his wife sleeping with the divorce columnist. He takes over the divorce column. The end.

Maybe I’m just not jaded enough for this, the writing itself was perfectly adequate but the pervasive misery and, well, pessimism just really didn’t line up for me. Yeah, my life’s miserable sometimes but it’s not universal and it’s not inescapable. Everyone has some small moments of joy, even if they can’t quite recognize them for what they are.

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Page count: 7

Objective quality: 4/5

Personal enjoyment: 2/5

Kellie’s Diary is exactly that. It’s the diary of a 3rd grader named Kellie. There are actually two ways to read this story. It’s presented first as her handwritten pages, then in plain type if the pages are too difficult to read. I read the plain-type version.

Kellie was away at her grandparents’ for a while, and only just came home. Everything is fine at first. Then kids start getting sick, and even teachers. Once they get sick, they don’t come back to school.

Kellie ends up trapped in the bathroom of her school. A bunch of creepy people came in, and she ran away. She was stuck there overnight. Eventually she works up the courage to run to the cafeteria and get more food, since she only had her lunch in her bag. She stays in the school a little longer before running to a tree she always climbs.

She almost gets bitten as she runs to the tree. She doesn’t know what kind of monsters they are. She makes her way slowly back to her home. She stops by a friend’s house for a little while, but the friend’s mom chases her and trips down the stairs. Kellie borrows some food from them too.

There’s no one home when she gets there. She’s still relieved to be home, even if she’s still really worried. The next book picks up from there.

I like the idea of seeing the zombie apocalypse through a kid’s perspective. The misspellings and such add a little more realism to it. There are some things that make her seem a little younger than she is, but that happens.

Unfortunately, I feel like the handwritten version (after a quick skimming) was not really used to its fullest potential. Kids doodle in the margins, and leave little side comments, and get peanut butter and tears and whatever else on the pages. But the handwritten version was exactly the same, with a different font, essentially. Wasted potential.

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Page count: 34

Objective quality: 3/5

Personal enjoyment: 3/5