A epic fantasy novel with not-Roman legions fighting goblins, not-French mages, giant eagle riding elves, dwarfs robbing dragons, and lots of other fun.

This book is quite large---I believe it would come to around 600 pages in paper-back---but I still finished it within 24 hours of starting.

It's got a bunch of different plots all running together, the big ones are the politics of Amorran Empire (the not-Romans from above), the various adventures one of their junior nobles/officers gets involved in as their command and control falls apart, and the relationship between the Iles de Loup (not-Vikings) and Savondir (not-French).

While some of these plots are resolved, at least somewhat, the book, despite its length, does come across as just the prologue to a far more extensive story, which I believe is the author's intention.

One of the possibly controversial elements of this series is that the main religion of the humans isn't some weird mixture of pseudo-Christianity and pseudo-paganism. The main human factions are medieval Catholic tweaked to adjust for the magic of the world, and the not-Vikings are straight forward pagans as you'd expect. Some people might find this problematic, but I rather appreciate it, it's nice to see an author willing to portray positive Christian characters and societies, and also to explore how such societies would be different in a world of common magic like your typical fantasy novel.

Obviously this might be an issue for some people who are less accepting of Christianity (and some Christians might think it's insulting), but in general the Christianity is treated similarly to the pseudo-paganism of typical fantasy worlds; it has power, but non-religious characters are portrayed sympathetically, and there's no authorial voice directly stating that Christianity is the right religion.

Overall I give it five out of five stars, or strongly recommend it.

Strengths:

• Lots of reading.
• Plenty of likable characters. (even the villains are often sympathetic)
• It's portrayal of the not-Christianity.

Weaknesses:

• Comes across as just the prologue to the rest of the planned series.

I don't play Warmachine or Hordes, but based on the combination of Correia and Tayler and the $0.99 price tag I decided to give some of their fiction a go.

This collection basically consists of four parts: a 1,000 word intro to the world of the Iron Kingdoms, three short stories of about 1,000 to 1,500 words each, and a glossary of about 1,400 words. The first things I noticed about the collection as a whole is that all three of the stories feel pretty short, but for a quick read they aren't too bad.

The first story, Scrap Ante by Howard Tayler, is my favourite of the three, and left me wishing it was longer. It's the first written fiction of Tayler's that I have read, and it definitely had the feel of his webcomic (Schlock Mercenary if you don't know; I strongly recommend it), and I quite liked it, so I'll look out for more of his fiction. On the other hand it felt somewhat incomplete; it's hard to describe why though.

The second story, The Last Hunt by William Shick, was my least favourite of the stories, but that's hardly a harsh criticism considering the authors he is being compared to. At least in this case Shick's writing did not raise above "workman-like", but that isn't bad; I aspire to the lofty title of "workman-like" for my own writing.

Larry Correia's The Worthy was interesting because of the glimpse of an alien, but sympathetically portrayed, culture in it, but it again felt incomplete.

Two of the stories felt somewhat incomplete, but one thing they all did well was evoke a picture of the world in which they happened. In all the collection was very short (and the words/cost ratio was less favourable than many of the competing small presses), with around a third of it's total word count being info on the world (the intro and glossary).

Strengths:

• Entertaining stories.
• Evocative of the world of the Iron Kingdoms.

Weaknesses:

• Shorter than expected (all three short stories are about the minimum to be short stories and not flash fiction).
• Aimed at fans of Warmahordes

I had some difficulty deciding how to rate this, but eventually I decided to go for the most generous route, and judge them as what they are: game fiction for the Warmahordes games. So I give it four stars out of five, provided you're a fan of Warmahordes or the Iron Kingdoms, if not you might not enjoy them quite as much and I'd only give them three stars.

This book is laugh out loud funny, it's probably one of the funniest books I've read in a while. The main character is a kind of stupid teenager with super-powers who hunts vampires, werewolves, trolls, etc.

If you're expecting a serious work you're going to be disappointed, this isn't it, but for what it is, it's pretty good.

The humour style isn't real common in mainstream works, but it reminds me of webcomics. It's a sort of free-spirited, funny-cool combination that doesn't take itself very seriously.

It has some oddities in the language used in various parts. It felt like it could use the hand of a serious editor, on the other hand sometimes editors tend to flatten out the jokes a bit on comedic works in this sort of style, so it might be better to live with the occasional oddness. Plus either it got better, or I got used to it, because after the first story I pretty much didn't notice it any more.

Overall, I'd recommend it, since I thought it was hilarious despite the occasionally disjointed language, so I'm giving it a rating of "Good/Recommended" or four stars, and if the editing was a little better I'd upgrade that to "Strongly Recommended" or five stars.

Strengths:

• Funny.
• Interesting enemies.

Weaknesses:

• Some Editing Problems

Ideal Audience: Action/Horror fans who want a good laugh.

This book has various weaknesses, more on them later, but it's strength lies in it's characters, who are generally likable and interesting, particularly the protagonist. Which is a good thing because neither the plot nor the ideas contained in the book are particularly strong, so the entertainment value of the book almost entirely rests on the shoulders of the protagonist; fortunately Cooper manages to make this work.

Natasha, the protagonist, comes across as a good person, and you naturally want to see good things happen to her, but, and this may be a problem for some people, she is also very definitely a feminine heroine; she tends towards being reactive rather than proactive, passive rather than active. While the authoress describes Tasha as having martial arts training and significant combat skill, she never actually demonstrates it. This isn't to say that she isn't a courageous character, but most of the action burden falls on the males that surround her.

To give an example the two biggest action scenes in the book actually involve Natasha courageously running away from the danger. And I'm not being sarcastic here when I say courageously; in both cases she's leading the danger away from someone else, or towards a trap. She is certainly a heroine, and not just the "heroine" of this story, but she is equally certainly not an action heroine.

There are some hints of a Mary Sue in the main character, in that she's a magical special snowflake essentially, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that Wendy Cooper looks a lot like Natasha. ;-) On the other hand, the author has made Natasha a legitimately likable person, and not just someone that the characters all like for no good reason. (Though pretty much all of the good characters do like her, based on how she treats them you can easily understand why they do)

The one character weakness of the book is the antagonist; for much of the book the antagonist isn't even involved in the events going on, and after he comes onto the scene he isn't given any depth, or particularly interesting personality or background.

There's also some editing and formatting problems with the book. In my case they weren't enough to ruin my enjoyment of the book, but some people might be more sensitive to such issues. (I find it relaxes me to circle problems I find in books as I read them, so I've got a list of problems I noticed if the author wants to contact me with the email address on my profile)

I'm male and tend to prefer more action-orientated rather than romance-orientated fiction, so I'm a little out of the target audience for this book, but I never-the-less enjoyed it, and found myself losing a bit of sleep so I had time to finish it, so I'd give it a rating of "Good/Recommended" or four stars.

Strengths:

• The main characters are interesting and likable.
• There isn't any overt political or religious message.
• The characters don't offend my broadly conservative morality, but neither do they shove their morals in your face, so they will most likely not offend you even if you disagree with me.

Weaknesses:

• The Plot is lacking, and the antagonist is weak.
• The "mystery" elements are rather limited.
• The book needs some more work on editing and formatting.

Ideal Audience: Women who like paranormal romances, but prefer their heroine not to sleep with every Tom, Dick, and Harry who makes her all hot and bothered.

First the good: Their prices on Sawyer filters are the cheapest I could find, and their international postage was also quite cheap. I paid my order on the 29th of October, and under two weeks later I received the package here in Australia. They also offer some pretty good deals on various accessories if you purchase Sawyer filters.

Now a minor negative: They didn't put any padding in the box they used to ship my filters to me. Everything looks fine when I inspect it, and the box seems to have been handled pretty gently for a parcel, but for something that can break unnoticeably like a ceramic water filter it would have been comforting if they'd charged a buck or two more for postage and included some padding of some sort.

Note: I haven't had to try to return anything or otherwise have to deal with defective purchases, which would definitely be difficult for an international purchase like this, so I can't comment on what they are like in that regard.

Overall Highwater Filters have very good prices, with with cheap, fast international postage, I would recommend them, though some bubble-wrap would be nice.

Truthfully it's not for everyone, but it's a very small, free download, so I strongly suggest you try it out.