Killdozer

Arbiter Core, Book 1

By: Cory Gaffner

Narrated by: Eric Bryan Moore

Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's summary

Corruption runs deep in Hank's town. Every local bureaucrat is in someone's pocket. The obvious solution: Turn a bulldozer into an unstoppable killing machine.

Little does Hank know he isn't alone in this universe. A police force that patrols...well everything, is looking for new recruits and Hank fits their bill. These space cops call themselves the Arbiters and every Arbiter gets to chose their service weapon. Hank chooses the Killdozer.

Follow Hank on his journey of righteous revenge, bulging muscles, alien alliances, and bedding beautiful women.

©2018 Cory Gaffner (P)2019 Cory Gaffner

Ignorant

Just not what I expected at all. Lost me when the aliens came into play. Just dumb
Wasted credit for sure

Slow beginning, but the last half is really great

This book was definitely inspired by the 2004 rampage of destruction of Marvin Heemeyer in is a home-made armored bulldozer. If you don’t know about it, read about it. This isn’t a biography, just inspired by the events.
The story follows Hank who is a good guy at heart and gets fed up with the corruption in his town. He is especially hated by Eugene who has butted heads with Hank since their high school days. He gets sick of everything and decides he is going to take out the bad guys in town with his dad’s bulldozer.
This is where the story takes a sharp turn into science fiction. This isn’t spoiling anything because it is in the description. He is recruited to be an arbiter by God basically and he chooses his weapon to enforce justice and it is his killdozer.
This story is very unique and I did enjoy it. However, it doesn’t really get good until it takes the sci-fi turn and that doesn’t happen until halfway through. The LitRPG elements are very light in the novel and they don’t start showing up until this point -- they revolve around upgrading his bulldozer….it gains the souls of the evil folks he kills which give him points to upgrade his bulldozer in interesting ways.
I feel the strongest aspects of the novel are the side characters. There are several fleshed out side characters that are fun to follow – his alien companions especially. There is a lot of good banter and they have good chemistry.
One thing that did surprise me was the narration by Eric Bryan Moore. I had not heard of him before. He did an amazing job. He has a great voice and does very well with differentiating the characters.
All in all, I enjoyed Killdozer, the last half of the audiobook was very good. The story seemed to end as it just began to get rolling. The first half isn’t the easiest to get through but stick with it until it takes the sci-fi turn. I look forward to reading book two.
I give Killdozer a 7.5 out of 10

Don't judge a book by it's cover.

Ok I got this book for Free for review purposes and I'll be upfront, I didn't think I'd enjoy this. I was looking for another litrpg but was looking for something new that wasn't a fantasy setting. I saw the cover for this and it didn't strick my fancy at all. I read the description and still was wary of it but I said "what the hell" and gave it a go. I'M GLAD I DID. This is not the best litrpg out there let me be upfront. BUT. But this was a fun listen and an interesting story. I had alot of fun listening to this and the unique system definitely caught my interest. Anyone put off from the cover and description, I would recommend just giving this a go. I will be on the lookout for book 2.

I got this book on a whim... pleasantly surprised

so i got this book on a whim and was pleasantly surprised. A large twist in the plot made the book go places tht i wasa not expecting around half way. There was a fair amount of male macho man bravado. well mixed with realism... i could empathize with some of the main characters decisions. all in all decent book. Secondary characters could use more development. ut it kept my attention during the pandemic 4/12/2020

Killer story

So, gonna come clean here. I was a little devastated by this book and the direction it went. I’m sure that most of you, when you hear the word Killdozer automatically think of when the one crazy guy welded armor onto his bulldozer and set off to perform acts of murder and mayhem, and only managed to get himself killed in the process and only doing some property damage. Me? I am a horror junkie and as soon as I hear the word Killdozer I think of the old Clint Walker flick in which a bulldozer comes to life and starts greasing construction guys. Plus, you have to give it credit because it predated the ’77 horror flick the Car by three years, which went on to inspire Stephen King’s Christine. Hell, Killdozer even inspired Marvel Comic book, an issue that I actually have! So, I was all set for some madcap killing by a boy and his dozer.

Which wasn’t what I got.

Instead, Killdozer plays out like the start of the rampage that Marvin John Heemeyer, ya gotta say the three names or it isn’t right, went on before he got killed. The MC, Hank, is a fell who has been pushed past his breaking point by unscrupulous individuals out to break him for perceived past wrongs. We get to his initial assault on city hall when things take a severe turn.

Now, I have to say right off that even though I didn’t get the story I was hoping for or expecting that I still enjoyed the tale. Hank is one hell of an awesome character that you can’t help but like. He is sort of like Ron Swanson on steroids, all man, with a take no crap from anybody attitude. He is the kinda guy that would say I didn’t start it, but I am sure as hell gonna finish it. He carries the entire story on his huge shoulders, and to be honest it wouldn’t matter what he was doing, so long as he was the one doing it. I loved the guy. He’s hardcore, but not unfeeling. Tough but fair, and principled.

So the story diverges into a Green Lantern Corps or Nova Corps feeling, depending on whether you prefer DC or Marvel. Either way he gets offered an opportunity to join an intergalactic police force, and decides to power up his awesome weapon the killdozer.

Again, this is really about when the lit stuff comes into play, and fair warning, the lit stuff is pretty light. It feels a lot like sprinkles added into a cream filled donut with icing. Delicious and fun but not really necessary to the tale. It would play out just as well without the lit action as without. That means that the story is pretty good, because that is how every lit book should be, it shouldn’t depend on stats and quests to make it great. Again, the story is fun, the characters are interesting, and the story is involving.

Moore, a newcomer to the genre, does really well. I actually have one of his earlier audiobooks, The Undead Pool, which is an obvious parody of a well known marvel superhero and I loved him in that. Also, he also narrates the Bulletproof Adventures of Damien Stockwell, which I have been considering getting because they looked fun. Here, Moore does a fantastic job and he plays both genders well, and manages to let you feel the frustration that Poor Hank is going through. So, he keeps pace well, adds in emotion when and where it is needed and makes it all feel easy as he does so. This is someone that I would love to see hit the community with a big splash in the future.

Fina score 8.2 stars.

Just ok

I was given a free review copy of this audio book, at my request, and am voluntarily leaving this unbiased review.

This book is not without its charm, but overall isn't as fun or snappy as it could/should be.

The early part of the book seems modeled after the real life killdozer from the early 2000's, where a guy (in real life) modified a dozer and went on a rampage before taking his life. This is never referenced in this book, so I assume in this books universe this never happened. Like it is taken heavily, small business owner feels screwed by city council modifies a dozer with armor and goes on a mission to right the wrongs done to him. There are differences, of course, in this book he wants to live after and in real life the dozer was a tomb, real life dozer took months to build in the book it was done in a couple days, but it's all very similar.

The story goes in a completely different way, however, with aliens and demons and space Jesus and all. I won't go into any of that in detail, other than to offer the section on space Jesus and the religion of it was about 45 minutes long, or at least it felt like that. It also was unimportant to the story. It never really comes up again and feels like it was just added for time. It didn't make me feel anymore connected to the story, didn't help me understand better, it was just redundant.

Most of this book is in third person present tense, which is odd as the book starts in past tense. I had to go back and check after the switch. I have to say I didn't like the switch, it served no purpose. It didn't feel like a story was being told and then we caught up to it and moved on, it seemed more like the author forgot how he was writing and the editor didn't catch it.

This goes into my biggest complaint of the book, it didn't seem as the author was taking it seriously. I don't mean to say that it wasn't a serious book, it wasn't and I didn't expect it to be, but the author didn't seem to spend the effort to really write the book well. It felt, to me, like the author thought "its a bit of a silly book, so I don't need to spend too much time on it". Maybe I have the expectation that an author will put their all into every book they write, but I was disappointed in the quality of the story. Too much needless exposition, characters were all very 1 dimensional, tech was bland and the antagonists were completely unrelatable.

However, as simplistic as the story was, it wasn't bad. It was cheezy and predictable, it slowed down to a crawl for one character to long windedly explain simple concepts or space history to another character, but over all it was OK. There wasn't bad it just wasn't good either. I was bored but not upset listening to the book.

Narration by Eric Bryan Moore was, same as the story, not bad just not great. He has a limited range of voices in the book, his female voices are better than some I've heard but could use work.

All in all, an OK book, with an OK story with an OK narration. This is a neat concept, (it's been done before though) but isn't really given the time and effort to develop it into a great work. I likely won't continue the series.





***spoilers***

I just want to mention about the bad guys explanation of why he needs to be bad. I get the yin-yang idea, and how there's no good without evil, etc. However, his example of the fire break makes no sense in the book. He says everyone would be upset if a fire break was cut in a forest and it would be done for the greater good. Which no, most people would be happy with a fire break. If California, which has a lot of forest fires in the last number of years, cut fire breaks people would definitely be cool with it. Also, they attack a random town in America. How is that a fire break, or the greater good? If they wiped out a town in a densely populated country, like one of the 2 countries with over a billion people, then I could say, "OK they are trying to reduce population to, idk, help reduce global warming, or sanitation, or something". If they wiped out some hospitals, then it could be maybe it was to reduce the resources used to save dieing people, etc. But instead they just go wipe out a town in America. This is what I mean when I said the author doesn't take the book seriously. He presents an argument, with lots of examples, then just writes something else rather than develop the concept. The story has potential, but it is wasted.

Loved it

The narrator did a great job in the story was well written and fun. It also might have one of the best titles I’ve ever heard. I would definitely listen to book two.

Don’t buy

Awful book. Not at all what I expected. Not a historical account of the situation.