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I don't know the reasons anymore why I chose this book. We bought it when my son was painting Warhammer alot. He is reading a quite alot and recommended one of his Warhammer books. Yet he moved out so I never figured which one he meant (and this one actually looked unread, I have to admit).

This book contains four short stories about Space Marines defending a certain planet that the Tau (Xenos) want to conquer even if they supposedly want to free it. So the books cover the entire campaign.

But Space Marines books are, of course, about Space Marines battles and fights, so these books are full of that: descriptions of weapons use and fighting and lots of gore.

I personally found this not always amusing, actually, and favored two of these stories:

Black Leviathan by Ben Counter: because it is a deep espionage and counterintelligence story and it also shows that the Tau are not as good as they claim to be.

Hunter's Snare by Josch Reynolds: which then tells us of a hunt to bring the Tau leader of the operationale theatre to dead. In the end, it turns out, the entire universe is about war, which will never end, I think.

But in any case, the two other short stories were not bad. I just favored those ones, but anyone else might favor others.

So if you like Space Marines or the entire Warhammer setting, go ahead. In these short stories you also get to see the world from the eyes of the Tau, which I have heard is unheard of in Warhammer books?

I forgot where I stumbled upon this book, but I gave it away as a present and the guy read it recently and was full of praise. So I read it, too, and can tell you: wow! Easy to read, funny, and page-turning by itself.

Aliens come to Earth and, reminding us of the Volorians from Douglas Adams, present legal claim to all of Earth, which we humans could have avoided by making or own claim before a court we never existed.

Very shortly after most humans are dead and all the rest is offered to fight through a dungeon. Whoever makes it to level 18 can reclaim Earth.

And so we go down with Carl and his cat into the dungeon. Turns out, Carl is the first to bring a pet cat into the dungeon, so they get a buff and thus, Princess Donut is a Dungeon Crawler just like Carl himself. A former show cat, she is now bent on becoming famous, for the dungeon crawl is watched on universal TV around the, well, the universe.

Sure. The story is a bit repetitive, but has anyone of you ever played Elden Ring or the like? Of course they are repetitive! Yet the story is fun as hell, it is interesting to see how Carl and Donut do, and the game messages are fun as well.

I went ahead and ordered book 2 and 3 of this series, because at the end of the first book, Carl and Princess Donut made it to the 3rd level (race and profession can be choosen) and did I mention it's 18 levels overall?

This book is indeed funny. Yet overall, it's terrifying, because it shows we're just a little away from total destruction of our society in the name of technology. This book does not bother with climate change, for it focusses on our insistence on technology to basically surveil and observe us individuals in the name of bettering us and our choices, which means, in the name of making us consume more and dumbing us down. It's funny how we make ourselves transparent, but the providers of these technologies of course never make their own lifestyle, mistakes etc. transparent. In this story, they do this in the name of national security.

There is an antagonist by the name of Guy Matthias, who is an amalgam of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, I think. It's fun to see him go down, yet of course the billionaires never go down, and so Guy stays where he is.

The overall tone of explaining in this book reminds me of Jarett Kobek's novel "I hate the internet".

I thinjk Joanna Kavenna is a name I should remember henceforth.