The Running Man, yet another Stephen King book taking place in a dystopian future. Dystopias have really gotten more popular since The Hunger Games. And even more so thanks to shows like The Handmaid’s Tale and Black Mirror. But back before they had really gone mainstream (mostly), you had stories like this. There is basically just one concrete rule of a dystopia: everything sucks. Not in the same fashion as a post-apocalypse setting like Mad Max, but still awful. Some organization, usually the government or a mega-corporation, has taken over. Things are amazing if you’re one of the 0.001% of people at the top and suck for everyone else.

In this variation, game shows are used by the ruling class’ to keep the poor distracted in line. And considering reality TV was not a thing yet when The Running Man came out, this idea was ahead of its time. Game shows were certainly popular back then though, so tit for tat. Now, we get this average Joe named Ben Richards competing in a game that is designed to be unwinnable because that is the only way to save his daughter’s life. If there is a more solid premise to set up a “man vs. society” story, I have yet to find it.

As the reader, you are clearly rooting for Richards. But as you get deeper in, it becomes more apparent how much the deck is stacked against him. At one point, he’s even straight-up told that by the people who made this “game”. But just because the Grim Reaper is going to catch you eventually doesn’t mean you can’t make the bastard work for it. Richards’ cautionary tale shows that he is a normal man, but also a clever one.

And on that note, I have to mention the movie adaption of The Running Man. This is one of those films that is the same as the book in name only. The book portrays Richards as clever and street smart, doing well enough in the game to make society’s evil overlords look bad. He starts to give the common people real hope and that makes him a threat. The film is a 1980’s movie that casts Arnold Schwarzenegger as the lead. That should really tell you everything you need to know about it. Some of the themes are persistent, but that is the only thing that stays the same beyond character names.

So, in summary, The Running Man is a short, entertaining story featuring a brave man and a cautionary tale. And go watch the movie if you like 1980s action flicks.

Side note: Be sure to check out my blog tomorrow for a special giveaway announcement, featuring 17 YA books and an Amazon Kindle Fire 7!

A copy of 13 Worlds was provided to me by the author in exchange for an honest review.

Despite only being a 102-page novella, 13 Worlds wears a lot of different hats. There are a lot of references to other works in here. Author J. J. Hair’s biography lists several other works he is a fan of, and it shows. I caught the Ender’s Game reference pretty quickly, among other things, but there were probably other references I did not even pick up on. There are also a lot of real-world allusions, the most memorable one being a planet with pretty much the whole population in quarantine because of a virus. Art imitates life, I guess.

Now, 13 Worlds does jump around a little bit. Assuming you have read the synopsis, you have a basic idea of the plot. The story goes back and forth between the crew of the planet-killer ship and people on the worlds marked for destruction. The idea being that they are knocking off civilizations on the verge of becoming a threat. Getting some Stargate SG-1 flashbacks off that.

The ideas here were great, but it was a little bit confusing in practice. With multiple settings involved, it’s not always clear where a chapter takes place. And it seemed like these different planets were unaware of each other, but they all used very similar naming conventions. For most of the book, I was not 100% sure whether these planets were in the same universe or if the spaceship was hopping between dimensions/realities. That does eventually get cleared up, but it happens pretty close to the end. And everything that happens along the way feels a little bit…incomplete.

By the end of the novella, 13 Worlds felt more like a pilot episode than a standalone story. There is clearly more going on here and, as a reader, I want to know what those things are. Some major events had to lead to what’s happening here. And the current events are just as clearly going to lead to even bigger things.

Another thing that stuck out to me was the world-building and character development. For a short novella rather than a novel with 4x the page count, the world and characters are fairly well developed. But it seems like this is a tiny bit of a much bigger universe J. J. Hair has created. One with a bigger story than what we see here. It feels like this is just the skeleton and could be a lot more once there is some meat on those bones.

I liked this duology, but I can see how it’s not for everyone. Things are a little more heated in The Awakened Mage, given how The Innocent Mage ended. A little, but not much. Certainly not much compared to most other fantasy books out there. As I mentioned in my review of The Innocent Mage, this series is really not high fantasy. It takes place in a high fantasy setting, but at it’s core it is a coming-of-age story. With a fair amount of slice-of-life storytelling used to facilitate that. The fantasy element is stronger here than in book 1, but it still takes a back seat for most of the story.

Now, an issue a lot of people had is the pacing. Given how much things started picking up at the end of book 1, it’s reasonable to expect things to be more intense for book 2. Well, that only sort-of kind-of happens. After they deal with the aftermath of the first book’s cliffhanger, not much happens until the grand finale. Everyone is forced to suddenly adjust to this great tragedy, and all their lives change as a result, but things do start getting back to normal until it all comes crashing down very suddenly.

So, when stuff starts happening towards the end of the book, boy does it happen fast. Secrets revealed, action, and more as the characters living slow, everyday lives are suddenly on a ticking clock. And it felt like this could have been done differently in 1 of 2 ways. Option 1: the protagonists dealt with the villain’s general instead of the big bad himself and continued into a greater story. Option 2: just have more stuff happen before the finale. Sprinkle the plot out over the whole story. I liked the main focus being character development, but again, it’s not for everyone.

There are apparently prequels and sequels to Kingmaker, Kingbreaker. The Innocent Mage and The Awakened Mage do not stand alone. But reading them alone…I don’t know. I enjoyed the books, but it felt like there could have been more. More self-contained within this series alone, without needing follow-up series later. But maybe Karen Miller could only get 2 books initially and this is what she wanted to do; I have no idea. But for all the complaints people have, the characters are (mostly) solid and the political aspect mixed into a slice-of-life story was entertaining. There are definitely worse books out there you could read.

Volume 5 of That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime goes past where season 1 of the anime ended. Some changes to the anime actually ignored the cliffhanger from the end of Volume 4, but that is understandable. They probably did not know if they were getting renewed and wanted a real ending if the show ended there. Season 2 is going to be a thing but is not out yet at the time of this writing. So, instead of any book vs. show analysis, let’s start with how Volume 5 compares to the previous entries.

For starters, there is no time-skip between this volume and the last. Up to this point, the various story arcs have been connected but relatively self-contained. This time we actually go back in time, seeing what was going on in Tempest while Rimuru was off in other countries. This covers a substantial part of the book until it catches up to where Volume 4 ended, and the story continues in earnest. All of this is involved with one of my favorite aspects of any fantasy story: world-building.

Up to this point, Tempest has really only dealt with their direct neighbors on a political level. But now that their influence is growing, countries that don’t share a border with them are starting to take notice. And not necessarily in a good way. This world still functions on a number of ye olde medieval principals, like conquering other nations militarily for their resources. Tempest is a new nation, so its military must be small and weak, right? Right? Riiiiiiiiiiiight…

One thing that does continue to be annoying is how unbelievably powerful the characters are. We’re not talking planet-busters on the level of Dragon Ball here, but the series is rapidly approaching the point where each character is a walking, talking nuke. To whatever degree of “being powerful” the story requires of the characters at any given time. Basically, a power structure more similar to the main universe of DC Comics.

If the power was earned, that would be one thing. A slow build-up, a training montage, whatever. But most of the time it’s Rimuru doing one thing and going, “Oh, I’m now 10x stronger than I was before. Cool.” And then all his minions also get powered up because of how power-sharing works in this narrative. I don’t know; it’s one of those things that makes That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime seems more on par with middle school fiction than anything else in Western literature.

The series is still entertaining though, having decent world-building and character development on top of the big flashy fights if that’s more your speed. And honestly, this is probably the best entry in the series so far. Here’s to hoping the next book holds up to the standard this one set.

The Long Walk, one of the few Stephen King books not adapted into a movie or TV mini-series. Not yet, anyway. This is actually the very first book Stephen King wrote, although Carrie was published first. And this is one of the rarer Stephen King stories where the antagonist is not some supernatural force or entity. It’s just…people. While this is far from his only book to indicate people can be just as monstrous as literal monsters, it is one of the few to exclude the monsters completely. People can really suck and as crazy as the situation in The Long Walk is, it’s not any more far fetched than any given episode of Black Mirror.

So, the book centers around the titular Long Walk. This is a yearly contest where 100 contestants, all teenage boys, keep walking at at least 4 MPH until only one of them is left. And yes, “left” means “still alive”. People who drop under the speed limit get 3 warnings. While it is possible to have warnings reduced, after the third one your reward is a bullet. Provided by soldiers who get to take turns riding in a half-track along the roadside.

Now one thing that’s amazing about The Long Walk is the level of world-building given the limited setting. The contest takes place in Maine, because this is a Stephen King story, and later spills over into Massachusetts. Just from the characters talking amongst themselves, readers learn a ton about this world. There was some kind of disaster that made society fall apart and it seems like the military, or at least parts of it, picked up the pieces. The Long Walk is one of the ways their leader, the mysterious Major, keeps his thumb on society.

And as much as I like to geek out on world-building, that’s not really what The Long Walk is about. It is a deeply psychological story as the physical and mental stress of the contest starts to set in on the walkers. They have not slept for days, they start running out of food, their bodies are being pushed well beyond their limits, and they keep seeing people dying around them. And the named characters are all fairly complex, each having their own reasons and motivations for signing up for The Long Walk in the first place. Yes, this is a volunteer event. No Hunger Games shenanigans here.

There is so much that can be said about this book, both directly about the book’s content and the themes it covers. Far more than I can do justice to in a short little review like this. Bottom line, it’s a good book about the hardship life puts us through and that we put ourselves through. Reading it is emotionally painful but at the same time, the story remains sincere. And while the whole concept is still horrifying, The Long Walk is less straight-up horror than a lot of King’s other books. So, a good choice for people who want a taste of his writing style without sleeping with the lights on.

There seem to be a lot of mixed opinions about The Innocent Mage, so this review will address that as much as the book itself. Fantasy books tend to follow a pretty strict set of formulas. Generally, we can group these into sub-categories like High Fantasy or Epic Fantasy. While The Innocent Mage certainly takes place in a High Fantasy setting, it’s not really a High Fantasy book. This is, at its core, a coming-of-age story placed in a more slice-of-life format. Both for central protagonist Asher and his friend Prince Gar. So, let’s break down exactly what makes this book different, starting with the magic.

You can’t have a fantasy book without magic. Well, you can, but it’s very rare. Fantasy fans tend to obsess a bit over magic systems. What is magic and how does it work in this world? What are the rules? While magic can have some semblance of an explanation, the whole point of magic is that it does the impossible. Characters do have to understand it to some degree but going too deep kind of ruins the point. Not to mention the fact that the two main characters cannot do magic, which is a major plot point, so even though they are surrounded by magical people it makes sense that their own experience is limited.

The other big thing is the setting. This country is the last haven in a world otherwise in a post-apocalypse scenario. But it has been this way for centuries, so everyone is really chill about it. Life goes on normally for these people. This helps to make it more of a slice-of-life story. And most fantasy books do not do that. There is typically a sense of adventure or danger in fantasy books that tends to be prominent or at least semi-reoccurring. But The Innocent Mage is more like Harry Potter; life is normal (with a bit of magic) for most of the story until Voldemort pops up towards the end of the book.

This combination is where I think a lot of readers draw issue with The Innocent Mage. It breaks the mold in several ways. Now it is understandable why some readers are upset with this. When you enjoy a genre, you expect certain things from it. You don’t walk into the theater to see an action movie and enjoy it if the film turns out to be a more of a rom-com. I, personally, liked The Innocent Mage. It was refreshing to see something simple and low stakes, at least for Part 1 of this story. These stories do not always have to be about big epic magic, they can just be about life with the magic in the background. Things will probably pick up more traditionally in book 2 given the cliffhanger at the end of book 1, but I still found The Innocent Mage to be calm and enjoyable.