Average people, living average lives on New Sonora, a farming planet just got invaded by Earth’s gamers in a new kind of propaganda filled genocide.
Oliver and his sister grew up on a farm on a world far form earth. His parent’s generation died out of a genetic sickness when he was young the entire planet is people over fifty (the colonist that came from earth) and under thirty (the 2nd generation born on planet). Raised by his grandparents and a nanny AI/farm helper bot Oliver’s whole life just flipped the script as the first wave of gamers show up for Operation Bounce House, which is pretty much pay to play to kill people game.
Things I loved:
❶ – The AI Nanny Bot Roger – Super funny as he still treats people in their twenties like grade schoolers in a classroom. Also, surprisingly good at tactics and psychological warfare. Hopefully Roger likes my review and I can get a smiley face sticker for today ☺
❷- Oliver – Much like Carl he is thrown into a war and at some point something breaks within him and the gamers didn’t see what was coming at them.
❸ – The documentary snippets – This was a great way to set up what life was like and give some depth and backstory to the characters fighting at the farm.
❹ – Cindy (the pig) and Some Chickens website – In the middle of a genocide leave it to the humans to want to make sure and save the animals ☻
❺– The entire last 30% – It was non stop action, emotion and a great ride with a satisfying wrap up at the end.
I have completely enjoyed Dungeon Crawler Carl (DCC) series. Dinniman’s crass and irreverent sense of humor really works for me and that is no different in this book. He builds great post-apocalyptic style worlds in the middle of a war with characters that step up be all they can be in ways they never expected. The story type fits into the framework of a first shooter game, told from the PoV of Oliver who pretty much had his head in the sand about the outside galaxy until the invasion.
The set up for the story takes a little time in the beginning. Listening to the audiobook it took a minute to figure out what was happening in the story as before many of the main chapters there is a little snippet of a documentary showcasing the lives of the settlers before Operation Bounce House or a military type briefing after with some statements REDACTED. However, once I got used the cadence of that and figured out the time jumps it really worked well. This is one of the times that having a digital copy of the words would have helped that issue.
I went into this blind, not reading the blurb and picking it up because it was a Matt Dinniman story. I’m glad I did as this had some great moments, fantastically fun characters and a lot of great smack talk with the enemy. My kind of ride.
Narration
Performance: ★★★★★
Character Separation: ★★★★★
Diction: ★★★★★
Pacing/Flow: ★★★★★
Sound Effects: none
While I was disappointed that this was not produced by the same group as DCC so we would get some sound effects mixed in this was narrated very well. I always enjoy Travis Baldree and Jeff Hays. They again brought their A-game to this series and delivered on the humor, seriousness and emotion to make this performance great.