Listen to the story that took Royal Road by storm with more than 60 million views and counting. Except, and sometimes also, when she’s poisoned and/or has set herself on fire. She’s struggling to survive, has no idea what will happen next, and is loving every minute of it. Magic she can use to fight even bigger monsters. With no quest to follow, no guide to show her the way, and no real desire to be a Hero-Ilea embarks on a journey to discover a world full of magic. Well, maybe not her wildest dreams, but it’s close. On the bright side, "killing those monsters right back" is now a viable career path! For she soon discovers her new home runs on a set of game-like rules that will allow her to punch things harder than in her wildest dreams. So maybe it's lucky that she wakes up one day in a strange world where a bunch of fantasy monsters are trying to kill her? Instead, the plan is to quit her crappy fast-food job, go to college, and become a fully functioning member of society. Unfortunately, there aren’t too many career options for hungry brawlers.
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Timothy lived a life only a psychopathic sociopath could enjoy and understand. Find out what a man trapped in his own mind will do to survive when he wakes up to find himself a zombie controlled by a self-aware virus. Timothy was not a good man in life and being undead clown zombie did little to improve his disposition. They are a rag-tag group of survivors who when pushed to the limit realize that they are all each other has. Traveling with her are Ben-Ben the high strung Yorkie, her favorite two-legger Jessie, Jessie's younger brother Zachary and Riley's arch-enemy Patches the Cat. This is the story of Riley, an American Bulldog, follow along as she tries to keep her pack safe from a zombie apocalypse. When the zombie apocalypse strikes without warning one dog will hold the fate of her pack in her paws. It details his never-ending battle against hordes of zombies led by their zombie queen, a 500 year old vampire named Eliza, hell bent on destroying everything Mike lives to protect. “Zombie Fallout” is the story of Michael Talbot, a sarcastic, germ phobic, OCD, ex-marine, prepper and his family and friends living through a zombie apocalypse. ZOMBIE FALLOUT 1-10 (additional Zero and 3.5) Worse, one in six die during the transition, and even if Jack beats the odds, he’ll have to navigate a fantastical world that’s home to vicious monsters, domineering AIs, and cutthroat players. Taking that leap of faith, though, means permanently trapping his mind in the game, killing his body in the process. Through a connection at Osmark Technologies, Jack’s acquired a NexGenVR capsule and with it, a one-way ticket to the brand-new, ultra-immersive, fantasy-based VRMMORPG, Viridian Gate Online. Still, there might be a way for him to survive Astraea: a slim chance, requiring a radical leap of faith. Jack Mitchel, a thirty-two-year-old EMT living in a tiny studio apartment on the West Coast, isn’t one of those winners. World governments are preparing for impact with deep earth bio-dome bunkers, but only a select few lottery winners will be saved. An international team of scientists is working around the clock to avert the cataclysm-few are optimistic. An extinction-level asteroid, 213 Astraea, is cannonballing toward Earth. All we know is that one night, a newly married Brown kisses his wife, Faith, goodnight and carries out an errand with a “present evil purpose” in the nearby woods, the classic literary symbol of descent into darkness as well as the historical site of witchery for those accused during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692-1693. This Faustian-style exchange is not clear, however, in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s eminent short story “Young Goodman Brown,” set in and around the Puritan village of Salem at the time of the famous witch trials. Irving’s Tom Walker, Wilde’s Dorian Gray, and Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus all follow this narrative: Walker trades his soul in exchange for being the wealthiest man in colonial Massachusetts, Gray for eternal youth and beauty, and Faustus for Mephistopheles to be at his beck and call for 24 years of conjuring. In the classic format of the Faustian bargain tale, when a mortal man makes a deal with the Devil, he seeks a well-defined, short-term personal gain - knowledge, power, authority, riches - in exchange for a long-term loss: his immortal soul. The need to tell the truth in the face of these pressures creates a unique conflict for incarcerated and also formerly incarcerated writers. The need to keep secrets, hold confidences, and protect the spot is extremely powerful in prison, a place of constant threat and surveillance from many quarters. “Don’t burn the spot, Piper!” was their entreaty, and while I was incarcerated I would never, ever have done so, for reasons both practical and principled. I remember rounding the corner of an outbuilding to find a huddle of nervous women sucking down smoke. This cat-and-mouse game, one with serious consequences, affected all of us whether we were holding contraband or not. The hunt for spots to hide cigarettes and - more challenging - spots to actually smoke them was matched by the hunt of COs on the prowl for violators. Some of the women I was close with were addicted to nicotine, and many more would smoke out of boredom or to relieve the abundant stress found behind prison walls. This had a big impact on the culture of the unit where I lived, a minimum-security prison camp where women had a lot of access to the outdoors. Incarcerated tobacco enthusiasts had one month to smoke their brains out, and then cigarettes became contraband. Of course, commissary first sold off all the remaining cartons of coffin nails, and the looming ban triggered a frenzied rush to stockpile. While I was doing time, the Federal Bureau of Prisons changed their smoking policy and the prison where I was locked up banned cigarettes. When Ruby loses control of her bladder one day in the street, Ephram is shaken out of his watchful pity. This is just the latest abusive chapter in Ruby’s life. It’s well known that the men of Liberty-except Ephram-take advantage of her from time to time. She is a wild thing who lives on her family’s land and charity. Her story is so much darker than anything Janie faced.įor eleven years since that day in 1963, Ephram has watched Ruby deteriorate into madness. Where Janie had discovered herself and her self-worth before coming back, Ruby lost every spark of herself years ago. Her return reminded me of Janie Crawford’s return at the beginning of Their Eyes Were Watching God, but all similarities end there. He was there in 1963 when Ruby returned to Liberty, Texas, after the death of another childhood friend. Ruby Bell is the center of the eponymous novel, but our narrator is Ephram Jennings, a man who has known the strange, tortured woman since they were children. But this afternoon, I had to set aside Cynthia Bond’s Ruby because the book was too intense for me to handle all in one go-just like Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny Beautiful Things. So far, I have completed four books by reading constantly, only pausing to sleep, eat, and do my taxes. I’ve been on my Spring Break reading vacation since 5:00PM on Thursday and have, with brief breaks, been mainlining fiction ever since. We first meet Edie when she is about to go on her first IRL date with Eric, a middle-aged white archivist from New Jersey who’s in an open marriage. The only meaningful difference in status between her and the other Black girl at work is “one monthly student loan payment.” I have trouble making friends and men lose interest in me when I talk.” Edie lives in New York City and works in book publishing as a managing editorial coordinator she paints but can’t seem to get any real career traction on that front. “Here’s a fact,” Edie, the 23-year-old narrator of Luster, one of the most unsettling, scathingly funny debut novels of the year, tells us early in the book: “I have great breasts, which have warped my spine. In the present, Maisie has just begun her own business as a private investigator. There are two story lines going on in Maisie Dobbs – one is set in the present (which, in the context of this book is actually not the present, but in 1929 England), and one in the past, beginning with Maisie as a 14 year old and working its way up to her time as a nurse during WWI. I’d never heard of them until Alison suggested it for Tell Me What to Read. The author was one of the keynote speakers at TLA this year. How have I completely missed this series? They been enormous best sellers and the eighth book just came out last month. This story of a female private investigator, Maisie Dobbs, putting her life back together after her experiences in France as a nurse during WWI was a fun and quick read, with a main character I really came to love. The fact that Matheson uses science causes the horror of the book to blossom, there is a reasoning beyond the supernatural and that makes the story all too real. The deterrents against the vampires all have a base in science. This is a bacterium infection, there is nothing supernatural about it. He researches, searching for answers and here, as in many other ways, the book shines. He is an ordinary man forced to face extraordinary circumstances. He does not understand why he is the only one who has survived, he misses his wife and child – both victims of the plague, he is lonely. During the day he hunts them down, searching for their hiding spots, despatching them.Īs the novel progresses we are given a fascinating look into Neville’s mind. At night he is holed up in his boarded up house, taunted by the dead, especially by Ben Cortman his former neighbour. Neville survives though his sanity is sorely tested. They are little more than killing machines, some memory but not much in the way of faculty. As more and more succumbed to the plague the horrific truth is discovered, those who die do not remain dead, they return hungry for blood. It is centred around the character Robert Neville, the lone survivor of a deadly plague which has spread through the world. Written by Richard Matheson and published in 1954 the book has proven very influential, though perhaps not in the way one might imagine. A grim vision of the end of humanity, this is possibly the best way to describe "I am Legend". I was surprised to find after reading it that it’s apparently considered by many to be one of Ito’s greatest stories. Once I’d finished the book, it was actually the first story, “Billions Alone” (usually translated online as “Army of One”), that stuck out the most in this way. In many ways I like this collection, it’s definitely good, but I didn’t get particularly swept away by any of the stories I hadn’t read before. Additionally included are a colour poster and gallery of art featuring the subjects of some of his other famous works not included in the collection, which can be removed and displayed if the reader so chooses.Īs I’ve discussed in reviews for other collections, Junji Ito’s shorter works have become an increasingly mixed bag for me the more of them I read, and this book has unfortunately continued that trend. While the majority are Ito original stories, this collection is noteworthy for including a few stories by other authors, which Ito has adapted. Included is the fan-favourite story “The Enigma of Amigara Fault,” previously included in the deluxe hardcover of Gyo, with some bonus colour panels/pages featured in that story and others, unique to this collection. Marketed as a “best of” collection of stories by the author, there is a common thread throughout each of them related to compulsions and/or utter fixation. Venus in the Blind Spot is the latest collection of horror stories by manga artist and writer Junji Ito to be published in English by VIZ media. |