What did you just read?

I must have missed it but two more books of the STYX Humanhive series made it into English. The first two are awesome. The premise is completely and utterly batshit but somehow it works.

Think if you took Mad Max, Zombie Plague, X-Men Mutants, Fallout style Super Mutants, apocalyptic wasteland, and extra-dimensional invaders and put all of that shit in a blender.

Ukerric said:

And I somehow missed that. The new two, that is, not the first two.

The fun bit is that the author reused the same concepts and setting, but made it a LitRPG (Respawn).

Click to expand...

Which one should I read first? Or are they separate enough that it doesn't really matter?

Ukerric said:

They're completely different takes on the same rough setting. STYX is the realistic version, Respawn the gamified one. Different places, plot, different characters (although they're all russian, ofc), etc, but it's the same patchwork of regularly respawning real world places, with the natives turning into zombies, etc. So whichever.

Click to expand...

It appears I read the first STYX book a couple years ago. I gave it a 3/5 on Goodreads. No memory of it, but I'm sure once I get into it again it will come back. That being said, I think I'll jump into Respawn first due to there being more books available right now.

I lived in Florida for some time. Florida is full of really interesting history. One of those interesting bits is the Highwaymen. A loose affiliation of black artists in the Florida who took to painting landscapes around the state without any formal education in painting whatsoever. While the majority of the Highwaymen stuck around the coasts of Florida so they could paint the ocean and sell more easily to tourists and whatnot Robert Butler here was a reclusive country type who loved the Everglades. Drove around painting things he liked and selling them while hunting.

As most of Central Florida has been developed by now he inadvertently catalogued a Florida biome that doesn't exist as much anymore.

Robert Butler is a pretty cool guy. As he got more popular he eventually ran into the DEI types and they kept pestering him about "HOW DID YOU DO THIS IN JIM CROW SOUTH?" Being an uneducated country boy he had no idea what that was. Straight told them he never experienced Civil Rights racism so if it happened, whatever. No further comment thanks. Also came up with the Highwaymen name for the art show circle. When told it was a synonym for highway robbers and has been for centuries still said no we're using it. I drive around in my car and sell paintings. What better word would there be?

Short read, but worth your time.