Parker – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

August 11, 2024

Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City (Review)

o image there is a “Roman” sort of empire, with a huge city and a privileged founding race (literally blue-skinned), an empire that spans most of the known world. Imagine you are a white-skinned “barbarian” who has elevated himself to a position of commanding a regiment of engineers – and hey, you like just building bridges. You also are a smart-ass and a realist with a touch of mild Tourettes. And then your content life of engineering and problem-solving is upset when you realize that a massive army has been moving around inside the borders of this empire. It has […]

November 3, 2024

How to Rule and Empire and Get Away with It (Review)

companion book to a wild breakout novel, Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City, this book picks up a couple of months after the completion of the first one. Of course, you might have thought that the siege was broken in the first book, but no, that’s never mentioned and the barbarian leader Ogus, outside the battered walls, still wants everyone in the city dead (gruesomely). So this time, our story comes from an actor of plays and a playwright (he publishes them like he’s grinding sausages) named Notker. His other skills include witty impersonations of political figures. So he’s […]

May 11, 2025

She who became the Sun (Review)

o the only way I can describe this novel – it’s Mulan without the music, the side-kick dragon, all the feel-good nonsense of commercial franchising. Hey, I have a thing for historical fictions about actual princesses. What can I say? So, an unnamed girl exists in a central Chinese farmland during a horrific famine in 1345. Her brother, Zhu Chongba, is prophetized for greatness. And she, a grubby little famished thing, faces “nothing”. But when bandits ruin their shattered lives, her brother lays down and literally dies. And the grubby little girl, she takes his place. His fate shall be […]