Any of you guys like to read?

That book is free on kindle. Weird, never seen that before.

Yesterday I finally finished reading Legends of Red Sonja (2014), released by Dynamite Entertainment; and I come here to tell you guys about my findings in it and what it ultimately taught me.

Before anything else, I must make it clear that this is a collection of 5 comics produced as Gail Simone's second Red Sonja story, however she wasn't alone for it. She was joined by 11 more writers, all of them women.
Another thing I should make clear is that Gail Simone's first Red Sonja story, Queen of Plagues, wasn't only excellent, but re-introduced Red Sonja in a way that makes her a more interesting character, giving a bunch of backstory that doesn't really involve magical properties (which has always been my biggest problem with her character); so I at least knew Gail Simone is reliable as a writer.

This paperback (as is the edition I have) consists in a story about 11 guys hired to kill Red Sonja, but most of the strips are spent on stories this group hears about her exploits in an effort to track her. So, it's an interesting direction it takes, because not only is the group the reader sticks with called "Grey Riders" - the most boring sounding name ever - but Red Sonja is the antagonist here; unfortunately most of what is interesting regarding this story stays in its basic ideas... Let me tell you about the issues:

- Each comic issue is structured as: chase story -> first side story -> chase story -> second side story -> chase story. The problem is that these side stories are rarely well realized within a few strips, the adventure-themed ones suffering the most from this limiation.

- Side stories: now, that's one problem in bringing in people who aren't inside a project... While the structure definitely limited the quality of the side stories, the writers and artists who went for the goofy or humorous stories didn't have much of a problem delivering, but the ones who went for romance and adventure... Fuck!... So, Red Sonja has 2 romancing moments in this story, the first one is bad, but that's excusable due to the structure, the second one, though!... I'll spoil it, she gets to save a forest god from a witch at the request of villagers, she notices the witch had no valuable possessions and no one was going to pay her for the job, so she proceeds to heavily suggest that the forest god could pay her for saving him through other means, and she gets him pregnant. Wow! What an asshole! To make it even worse, both of her lovers are shown fighting on the same side in the last panel.
... Just goes to show that she's such a hot character that even female writers feel the need to have her romancing something.
As for the adventure stories, I think that the only one that was well realized was the one involving a shipwreck, the others just weren't good - special shoutout to the side-story told by the corpse-man, which could've been a whole comic, but fell flat since it was a few strips long.

- Grey Riders: the name being boring isn't exactly a problem, in fact some characters could be called decent, such as their leader, a cimmerian who looks like Conan and has some wit to him, or the bow woman, Glasfindel, a bad-mouthed mercenary with a temper; what bothered me is that with exception of the cimmerian, 2 other characters who barely speak, and one character who betrays them midway, all the riders are shat on by Sonja or her friends like they're nothing throughout the story, greatly dimishing the tension of this "chase".

- Sonja?
Ok, Red Sonja is a huge asshole in this story, established! But what was the best part of Queen of Plagues? It was Gail Simone's imagining of Sonja, so even if she's written as a villain it could've been better if there were bits of her being herself. Instead I got multiple authors giving varied impressions on her, some good, some bad, but different enough that nothing really fits.

So, what did this story teach me? Never buy written, collaboration works, specially if Red Sonja is involved. When you have a character who draws so many different opinions, and a project that may limit an author's creativity here and there, it may be better to just leave it alone. In Legends of Red Sonja there's very little consistency in terms of character development, multiple partially realized stories, and to make it worse the protagonists shown to be so down below the antagonist's level of prowess and even character quality that they don't deserve to be protagonists, maybe they should've been scrapped.

And that's it for now.

No shit? I thought I read a real Clancy novel. Turns out I was just reading some bum's book? Bummer.

According to Wiki, the book I read was a genuine Clancy. Phew! Thought I'd wasted my time!

Edit: Also, turns out the only Clancy books that have ghost writers are the ones that are based on Ubisoft's video games. So the guy seems like the real deal, actually.

Just finished reading Ready Player One and holy shit was it good. It grabbed me instantly, and is now my favorite book. It's the perfect book for people on this forum. Check it out!

It's about a virtual videogame where pretty much everyone's connected. The creator dies and has no heir. Instead of just giving away the money he plants an Easter Egg into the game and the first one to find it wins all of his money and assets. It's full of 80's references, videogames, movies, music, TV series etc.

Maybe this is what Mark Zuckerberg bought Oculus for?