New Reviews, Humorous Memes curated by me, Andy Zach. I just read these books in the past month. Plus, I add some funny memes I’ve found.

I posted my most review the other day on Goodreads:

New Review – Mageling

September 14, 2023

Wow! This was my first exposure to J.L. Mullins and I can’t wait to read more!

He devises a world that is inherently magical and humanity must fortify itself within cities to defend against natural magic. Into this world comes a newly graduated mage, Tala. She was sold to a mage school by her impoverished parents to pay debts, so she graduates with a boatload of debt.

Tala foregoes the normal apprenticeship to a senior mage as a mageling and hires herself out as a full mage to a guild of caravan mages. She’s super cost and money conscious. She has a great deal of power and knowledge, but she is ignorant of much of the customs and economy of mages and caravans. But she learns.

That’s her best strength–learning quickly and diligently. Her greatest weakness is taking great risks. Her magic is focused on protecting her life–she has little offensive magic. But she’s very creative in using it.

If you like strong characters and magic, this one’s for you!

Andy Zach

Author 10 books

89 followers

New Reviews and Memes – One of my favorite cartoons!

XKCD is one of my favorite cartoons. The following example is why.

New Reviews – The Arcanist

My Review

September 8, 2023

Seth Ring continues his RPG fantasy about Thorn, a Titan and his main squeeze Vellin, who’s a plant mage, among other things.

Both characters are ridiculously overpowered, but that makes it fun, as other characters continuously underestimate them. Also, I like seeing how Seth Ring dreams up new adversaries for them to fight.

They also get sidekicks, such as Alph, a the Mad Master Alchemist. He also gets a romantic interest in this book, but she loves him for his mind. You see, he kept casting intelligence potions upon himself. As he got smarter, he brewed a better potion. Rinse and repeat.

So much for the characters. The plot? They’re climbing this tower. They have more powerful characters arrayed against them. They have to beat them, and improve their abilities at the same time.

Rinse and repeat. Enjoyable, if you like this sort of thing.

Andy Zach

New Reviews and Funny Memes

52 Sci-Fi Books for you!

Let me know what you think of these books or other ones and I’ll give you a free ebook!

I’ve got a group promo for you! Click here to get your SCI-FI WONDER SALE

Free Audiobooks!

You can also get free audiobooks! Claim yours by clicking here! This will subscribe you to my newsletter. Which books do I give away? Most of them!

First, I’ll cover my zombie turkey apocalypse parody, The Life After Life Chronicles.

Zombie Turkeys

Zombie Detective

---

Then we have:

My Undead Mother-in-law

Up next is Paranormal Privateers Click to listen

After that, you’ve got Oops! Tales of the Zombie Turkey Apocalypse

Following my Life After Life Chronicles, we go to my disabled teen superhero series, we have two audiobooks.

Secret Supers is available in Audible for free if you subscribe or if you’re from the United Kingdom.

The next book in the series is Villain’s Vacation, the second of my three Secret Supers books.

Finally, my third book, Secret Supers in Space, just came out this year!

Click here to get an autographed copy now.

Click here to get an ebook or paperback from Amazon.

For all free audiobooks, click here to get them from me.

Your August SciFi and Fantasy Books and Reviews. These are books I’ve read and reviewed this month, or someone else has.

I finished my most recent review the other day on Goodreads:

Your August SciFi > In Enemy Hands

My Review

This is the sixth book in the series. See the next review for the first book in the series.

August 14, 2023

Author David Weber is certainly not nice to his heroine Honor Harrington. She’s had her boyfriend murdered, lost an eye, and had a building she funded collapse and kill 50+ people, mostly children. This is after sexual abuse and attempted rape while she was in the space academy.

But it gets worse in this book. She gets ambushed and while leading her pursuers astray to protect a convoy, she gets captured. Then she gets handed to group of sadistic captors. And her best friends are also captured. And a man she trusted betrays her.

Doesn’t look good. But how it turns out makes this book one of the best in the series.

Andy Zach, Author 10 books, 87 followers

Your August SciFi > On Basilisk Station

My Review

This is the first book in David Weber’s series. I recommend reading them in order. I’ve got them all reviewed.

It’s been six years since I last read this book. This is the third time I’ve read it and I enjoyed it just as much as ever.

Honor Harrington just got her first command of the light cruiser Fearless. She’s 5 years younger than her executive officer Allistair McKeon and he hates her for it. But he’s just the start of her problems.

The admiral in charge of new weapons has halved her missiles in exchange for a grav lance. It’s a deadly weapon, but it only works at close range. Too bad the lightly armored cruiser is unlikely to survive any close-range encounters. Basically, the light cruiser is crippled, with only half of its offensive power.

Honor manages to use the grav lance once to destroy a superdreadnought in fleet practice maneuvers, but everyone then is out to destroy her. So the ship gets destroyed endlessly in fleet practice, depressing the crew.

Then the ship is assigned to the backwater of Basilisk Station. There the commanding officer, Pavel Young, was beaten up by Honor while they were in the Space Academy together because he tried to rape her. He had to apologize for sexual innuendo, but no one knew the full reason for his beating. He hates her guts.

Then he leaves her in charge of the entire station while he takes his ship to be repaired. It’s too much for one light cruiser to fulfill all the responsibilities, so she’s sure to fail and get a black mark on her record.

Only no one tells Honor that. This is where the story gets good.

Don’t miss this book or the series.

Andy Zach
Author 10 books, 87 followers, July 20, 2023

Your August Scifi and Fantasy And My Review

July 30, 2023

I think this is the third time I’ve read this book over the 20 years since it was written and each time I understand more and like it more.

Patricia McKillip writes fantasies and she writes them as mysteries. She doesn’t ever explain the magic that gets used. You have to figure out what’s going on. She doesn’t have conventional villains or protagonists. Very often they seem to switch roles unexpectedly.

In this book, she begin with a classic trope: a princess from a magical kingdom (Sidonie) has to marry a prince (Ronan) from another magical kingdom to cement an alliance. She doesn’t want to be forced into the marriage, but she dutifully goes along with it to save her kingdom from war.

The kingdoms powerful wizard is recuperating from a terrible battle and he sends his apprentice (Gyre) with her to protect her. He’s a very talented wizard in his own right.

They get to the Forest of Serre without incident and then everything goes haywire as the magic of Serre affects them.

Andy Zach

Author 10 books

87 followers

Free August SciFi Books for you!

Let me know what you think of these books or other ones and I’ll give you a free ebook!

I’ve got a group promo for you! Click here to get your 51 free SciFi books! Offer good until September 17th.

You can also get free audiobooks! Claim yours by clicking here! This will subscribe you to my newsletter. Which books do I give away? Most of them!

First, I’ll cover my zombie turkey apocalypse parody, The Life After Life Chronicles.

Zombie Turkeys – click to laugh!

Then you have Zombie Detective

Where reporter Sam Melvin becomes an amateur detective specializing in zombies.

My Undead Mother-in-law

---

Next we have:

My Undead Mother-in-law

What happens when your mother-in-law becomes and unkillable zombie?

Up next is Paranormal Privateers Click to listen

The zombies are sent around the world by Presidential decree to fight US enemies.

After that, you’ve got Oops! Tales of the Zombie Turkey Apocalypse

Following my Life After Life Chronicles, we go to my disabled teen superhero series, we have two audiobooks.

Secret Supers is available in Audible for free if you subscribe or if you’re from the United Kingdom.

The next book in the series is Villain’s Vacation, the second of my three Secret Supers books.

Finally, my third book, Secret Supers in Space, just came out this year!

Click here to get an autographed copy now.

Click here to get an ebook or paperback from Amazon.

For all free audiobooks, click here to get them from me.

Get Your Latest Books and Reviews, curated by me, Andy Zach. These are books I’ve read and reviewed this month, or someone else has.

I finished my most recent review the other day on Goodreads:

Get Your Latest Books > Forge Master

Ascending should have been the easy part…

But after being thrown into the void, Thorn finds himself stranded in a strange world filled with even stranger creatures.

Together with his cute battle pet, the mysterious god beast Hati, and a sentient AI named Eve, Thorn must forge a place for himself in this new world. Unfortunately, the local guilds all have other ideas.

Oops. Protagonist Thorn has just ascended to a higher magical world–but the wrong one.

That’s good, for the Empress is out to kill or enslave him.

Meanwhile, Thorn is on a deadly jungle planet where the animals are all more powerful than he is, the magic works differently, and most of his past abilities don’t work here. Thorn focuses on just surviving, until he can get to civilization.

He gets there and faces the fact he has no money and no resources. He does have blacksmith skills, however.

Read and find out where that gets him.

Andy Zach
Author 10 books
85 followers

 Not a typical zombie story!

• Overall    5 out of 5 stars
• Performance    5 out of 5 stars
• Story    5 out of 5 stars

Based on the title and the cover, I originally thought the detective was going to be a zombie back in the 30s or 40s. That wasn’t the case, but it was still a hilarious amateur detective story and I loved the absurdity of it all.

It’s a short read (or listen, since I listened to the audiobook), but is packed with Sam in crazy situations with all sorts of zombies. His string of good luck is as unlikely as the conundrums he finds himself involved in, but somehow it works for him.

Phil Blechman was the perfect choice for Sam’s character. Lauren Testerman did a great job channeling Lisa, the poor woman who has to manage Sam and all his antics.

Ysobella Black
06-10-23

Book of Hosea (Bible #28)

I read through the Bible every year. I just finished Hosea, a small prophetic book. Genres of Bible books are always unclear: you have your choice of history, theology, prophecy, and poetry. Often, they’re all combined in one book. Still, the next book is remarkable.

by Hosea

it was amazing

bookshelves: bible

Read 7 times. Last read June 27, 2023.

Wow! Even if you don’t want to read the Bible, this book is interesting.

Set in the waning years of the kingdom of Israel, just before its deportation to Assyria, the prophet Hosea is told by God to marry a prostitute! As an author, I love that kind of hook! Hosea obeys and has some children by his wife, Gomer. Each one has a symbolic name. Altogether, his marriage to a whore, his children, and their names are a final message and warning to Israel, before death and captivity.

The message? Israel, married to God since Mount Sinai, has been like a prostitute to Him. The children’s names? Judgment or Vengeance–for God will judge Israel. ‘No mercy’, for He will not show mercy to them. ‘Not My People’, for Israel will not be His people anymore.

Then, following this stern message, God adds:

Yet the number of the children of Israel will be as the sand of the sea, which can’t be measured nor numbered; and it will come to pass that, in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’ 11 The children of Judah and the children of Israel will be gathered together, and they will appoint themselves one head, and will go up from the land; for great will be the day of Jezreel. (‘God Will Sow’ this is a valley in Israel where the city of Megido is–or the valley of Armageddon).

And that’s just the first chapter of 14!

Highly recommended. Read it now, in any translation. It’s a one-sitting read.

P.S. Hosea’s marriage to Gomer turns out well.

June 27, 2023

Andy Zach
Author 10 books
85 followers

Free June Books for you!

Let me know what you think of these books or other ones and I’ll give you a free ebook!

I’ve got a group promo for you! Click here to get your YA Superhero books!

You can also get free audiobooks! Claim yours by clicking here! This will subscribe you to my newsletter. Which books do I give away? Most of them!

First, I’ll cover my zombie turkey apocalypse parody, The Life After Life Chronicles.

Zombie Turkeys

Zombie Detective

---

Then we have:

My Undead Mother-in-law

Up next is Paranormal Privateers Click to listen

After that, you’ve got Oops! Tales of the Zombie Turkey Apocalypse

Following my Life After Life Chronicles, we go to my disabled teen superhero series, we have two audiobooks.

Secret Supers is available in Audible for free if you subscribe or if you’re from the United Kingdom.

The next book in the series is Villain’s Vacation, the second of my three Secret Supers books.

Finally, my third book, Secret Supers in Space, just came out this year!

Click here to get an autographed copy now.

Click here to get an ebook or paperback from Amazon.

For all free audiobooks, click here to get them from me.