Battle Harem

By: Isaac Hooke

Narrated by: George Newbern

Length: 18 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's summary

Trapped in the uninhabitable zone with three machine women. All of them very hot. And very horny. Not to mention deadly.

Jason was a little short on creds, so he decided to get his mind scanned. It seemed like a good idea at the time: Get paid to license a copy of your mind for use in one of the numerous machines that run society. What could go wrong?

Turns out, a lot.

Jason wakes up in the middle of the radioactive wasteland that was created 50 years ago when aliens destroyed half the Earth. He has no idea why he's here, or what the hell he's supposed to do. Worst of all, he's no longer human: His consciousness has been installed into the AI core of a state-of-the-art war machine, a mech with enough firepower to raze a small city.

One would think the military wouldn't want to misplace something like that. Whoops.

Hunted by mutated alien bioweapons, Jason travels the wasteland in an attempt to piece together what happened. Along the way, he encounters a few abandoned war machines that also have no memory of their mission, machines that can't decide whether they want to join him or kill him. It doesn't help that in VR they all look like super hot women.

When Jason and his new companions discover what they're truly capable of, however, everything changes. And not necessarily for the better.

As his new team of deadly female war machines, The War Forgers, struggle to overcome their pesky human emotions, war is on the horizon. Can Jason pull the team together and overcome not only his demons, but those of the War Forgers, in time to save humanity? And more importantly, can he save the team itself?

Warning: This book contains bloodthirsty alien mutants, angry robots, violence, swearing, and a harem full of beautiful machine women.

©2018 Isaac Hooke (P)2018 Podium Publishing

I enjoyed it

I enjoyed this part of the series of this universe. Next is the A.I. Empire series.

Ok

I thought it was an ok story. I felt like it could have flowed better. At times it felt to jump and others the story dragged a bit. Overall a mediocre book.

Entertaining

This book is entertaining and good for long road trips. It is not a deep thought book but a light hearted science fiction book. Try it

it is okay

I didn't struggle to finish it it's just I didn't have punch motivation to finish, the characters aren't quite as developed as they could be especially by the end with so many characters. it did introduce a couple of relatively unique concepts which is why I bother to finish the book but character development Or at least character empathy is mediocre. if you're looking for action this is a good book though can't get repetitive.

hard to judge this

I like the story and am going to continue, But there's just to much sex and boracov's raping of women doesn't sit well. its another one of those series that feels like it's written by a feminist author that thinks she's on a winner because she can pull in a load of horny sci fi enthusiast's or teenagers. The story would be so much better without that. It feels childish and leaves you feeling torn or just wanting to return the book.

Wish I could have liked it better

So, yeah, not much preamble here. Like my title says I wish I could have liked this title better, really I do. Unfortunately it hit a pet peeve and the over all quality, while quiet good, wasn't high enough to overcome that distraction.

Pros.
1. Giant mechs, or giant robots, need I say more?
2. Well thought out strategies and technologies.
3. The world, as outlandish as it is, feels real and solid and thought out without any loose logic threads.
4. The MC isn't a whiny loser turned super god.
5. The book makes full use of the length to tell a complete stand alone story with enough twists and turns to keep it interesting, at least plot wise.
6. There is a ton of action but not to the point where the book seems bloated with it.
7. there were some pretty good belly laughs, there wasn't a lot of humor but enough to keep me amused.

Now for the Cons and really there's only three.

1. This is a pet peeve, I really hate the intrusion of PC culture and politics into my books. Really, women are just people and I hate when the newly emerging harem genre of books go to PC culture or feminism as if to try to say 'hey we're not sexists!' in the most cringe worthy ways. There were several instances in this book where PC culture would intrude and I'd just have to pause for a bit and shake my head since it broke all immersion. I don't care what one person says to another, that shouldn't lead to violence between intimate partners, domestic abuse is domestic abuse no mater which one is doing the hitting or getting hit. Once more there a quiet a few times the female cast does something particularly stupid and someone almost dies, or does die, and they get off with an 'oh we're so sorry' because they're women, which annoys me.
2. There is a really big lack of character development and distinction. I think this is largely because of the size of the cast, there's 11, more or less, main characters and they just kind of blur together. You never get to know any of them, and none of them stand out besides, Lori, Jason, and the Russian Ai (whose name I cannot begin to spell) very well and given this book is nearly 11 hours long I feel that's rather unforgivable. This is especially true since it means it's really hard to care to much about what's happening or the stakes.
3. None of the characters are actually likable, besides the crazy Russian and Lori. You know one of the keys to having a good story in genres where characters are the basis of the story, like romance, drama, and yes, harem? Having characters you actually like. None of these characters besides, Lori who gets a pass for being amusing and being overly genuine, are actually likable people. They're all fill a niche of Anime harem tropes, tsun-dere, Hime-dere, Koo-dere, dere-dere, and Shin, Shin doesn't get enough page time to really know who she is besides the hot bi Asian chick. The problem being that this isn't a light novel or an anime and none of the characters are given time to breathe beyond their trope, which is made worse by the fact that the five main girls really only embody the worst aspects of each trope.

Outcome: over all a decent book but with bland or dis-likable characters, a none to original plot, with some PC culture shoved in to say hey the writer isn't an ist of some sort. If you have nothing else it's not a bad way to spend ten hours, just not a terribly stand out good way either, thank god I listened to it while at work.

I guess the best way I could sum it up is, good well written plot, with completely forgettable or unlikeable characters and a few cringe inducing PC culture moments. So I'd say find something better, and I will be trying this author again sometime in the future but this book is another for the return pile.

not bad

our hero is an idiot and half the Harem are just the worst. honestly this needed more mech battles and less of the mc being that dumb.

great story but.

great story but the metrics are off if they going to be massive don't having them hide behind Tree

An entertaining ride, if a bit flawed.

This was a, umm, different type of story compared to most I enjoy. It was quite entertaining at times and pretty good through the first 2 parts. Sort of like a more adult Bob. Unfortunately, I rather thought that it went a bit off the rails in the final part.

Also, although I thought the narrator did a great job with the voices, I found his loud inhales distracting at times, most other narrators don't bother me as much.

Horrid narrator. The narrator was horrible.

The narrator was horrible. He actually made a good story impossible to listen to. It's a shame.