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Bastard of the Apcalypse II: Children of the Sea
So here goes Frame, again, on his own. Walking down the only road he’s ever known.
Not for the first time.
Not for the first time there was a fork in the road.
I’d promised my girl I’d kill them. Kill them all. Every last one of them.
I took a really good stab at it.
I did things that would make you sick.
Things that made me sick.
The enemy was defeated.
Not destroyed.
And I was sick and broken.
Mind, body and spirit.
I was a pariah to the people I’d defended.
I’d lost my girl, my home and my dog.
For one shining second, I thought I had a family and a future.
By my own actions all was torn from my hands.
There was nothing left but revenge, but I wasn’t fit for it.
It was a story as old as time.
A broken man gazed across the horizon.
A broken man took ship.
And gave himself to the sea.
A pirate’s life for me.
Not for the first time.
Not for the first time there was a fork in the road.
I’d promised my girl I’d kill them. Kill them all. Every last one of them.
I took a really good stab at it.
I did things that would make you sick.
Things that made me sick.
The enemy was defeated.
Not destroyed.
And I was sick and broken.
Mind, body and spirit.
I was a pariah to the people I’d defended.
I’d lost my girl, my home and my dog.
For one shining second, I thought I had a family and a future.
By my own actions all was torn from my hands.
There was nothing left but revenge, but I wasn’t fit for it.
It was a story as old as time.
A broken man gazed across the horizon.
A broken man took ship.
And gave himself to the sea.
A pirate’s life for me.
359 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 18, 2025
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 26, 2025
Joker of the Apocalypse?!
Oh, Chuck, what happened to you?
First off, I've been a HUGE fan of this writer since way back in the day. Discovered him when he was one of many writers in the Mack Bolan Universe. He stood out above the rest, even in the multiple spin-offs of Bolan's Executioner series.
In fact, after I grew kinda bored of the Bolan-verse, the once great Gold Eagle publishers came out with my all-time favorite post-apocalypse series back around 1986 called Deathlands.
And this was a time where post-holocaust series were popping up left and right in bookstores, in the Men's Adventures section of Barnes & Noble or B. Dalton and Waldenbooks.
Back then, I served in both the U.S. Navy and later, the Marines. When there were no cell phones or computers everywhere, most of us servicemen read books on long deployments. From Casca the Eternal Mercenary to The Survivalist, to Bolan and other macho military-styled action/adventure books and series - all made the rounds aboard ship and/or barracks.
Fast-forward to around 2010 or so, and the original writer of Deathlands, Laurence James, writing under the pseudonym James Axler, had died, and a slew of other authors came in and continued the series until Gold Eagle shutdown around 2016.
Very few writers that filled in for Laurence James were as good as he, but there were a stand-out few that took the long-lived, long-running series, (30 years total!), to new heights.
And Chuck Rogers was most definitely one. Unfortunately he wrote only 3 of them, but all 3 were stellar.
So with Gold Eagle publishers demise, a bunch of writers found themselves homeless. But the few that I loved and followed found new homes in the new market of self-publishing.
And Chuck Rogers starts his self-published debut with, astonishingly and surprisingly to me, a historical fantasy book called Heroes Road.
I never dreamed this was a genre Chuck would delve in, but he did, and he did it spectacularly!
But the problem with that book, and now this latest one, the 5th self-published book thus far, is the editing. It's atrocious.
But despite the editing nightmare, Rogers' solid writing got me through. And the subsequent sequel to Heroes Road, though a long time in coming, turned out great, thus worth the wait.
Then in between Heroes Road 1 & 2, Chuck delivers Bastard of the Apocalypse. Another winner, despite once again, its editing nightmare on seemingly every page. Once again, the solid writing got me through it.
Long, long, LONG waiting periods in between both book series, and finally the 3rd and final book in the Heroes Road trilogy comes out, and unbelievably and unfortunately, I didn't love it. Too many years had passed, but I personally think Mr. Rogers just didn't write the penultimate ending I was hoping for.
This happens to the best writers, whether they are self-published or NY Times best-selling authors. Shame, but it happens.
And very quickly on, from the very first chapter of this new sequel, once again the Editorial Nightmare strikes. But, unfortunately for me, it strikes not only in the form of misspellings to countless question marks used inadequately, but missing words to awkward sentence structure and total lack of storyline cohesion.
Now, Chuck has always infused comedic lines in his writing. But now it's literally taken over. Is this now supposed to be Comedic Action Adventure? Is Mr. Rogers trying to get on this new wave of comedic writers like Matt Dinniman's popular Dungeon Crawler Carl series?
God, I hope not. I tried Dungeon Carl, and personally it's not my cup of tea. It's like my movies and TV shows. Especially in the sci-fi, Fantasy and big action movies. Inserting good humor at the correct time and place like blockbuster movies like Die Hard, doesn't always work. It worked in classic movies like Die Hard because comedy didn't take over the narrative. Predator is another great example. Some small funny one-liners and situations didn't take over the overall darkness, creepiness, and seriousness of the situation.
Now Chuck Rogers is writing more like Tropic Thunder than Die Hard or Predator.
It's one thing going into a movie or a book knowing what you're going to see or read, but these last two books in both of Rogers' series feels like a bait and switch.
This latest book just felt much too juvenile to me. Both in situations and dialogue. Sometimes less is better.
I can't believe I'm not only giving one of my favorite authors a one star rating, but questioning on whether I'll ever read another one of his books.
Please, please, PLEASE Chuck, go back to your original writing style! Get back to writing serious Doom & Gloom books, with your awesome action-filled sequences and smaller slices of comedic relief injected into the narrative.
Oh, Chuck, what happened to you?
First off, I've been a HUGE fan of this writer since way back in the day. Discovered him when he was one of many writers in the Mack Bolan Universe. He stood out above the rest, even in the multiple spin-offs of Bolan's Executioner series.
In fact, after I grew kinda bored of the Bolan-verse, the once great Gold Eagle publishers came out with my all-time favorite post-apocalypse series back around 1986 called Deathlands.
And this was a time where post-holocaust series were popping up left and right in bookstores, in the Men's Adventures section of Barnes & Noble or B. Dalton and Waldenbooks.
Back then, I served in both the U.S. Navy and later, the Marines. When there were no cell phones or computers everywhere, most of us servicemen read books on long deployments. From Casca the Eternal Mercenary to The Survivalist, to Bolan and other macho military-styled action/adventure books and series - all made the rounds aboard ship and/or barracks.
Fast-forward to around 2010 or so, and the original writer of Deathlands, Laurence James, writing under the pseudonym James Axler, had died, and a slew of other authors came in and continued the series until Gold Eagle shutdown around 2016.
Very few writers that filled in for Laurence James were as good as he, but there were a stand-out few that took the long-lived, long-running series, (30 years total!), to new heights.
And Chuck Rogers was most definitely one. Unfortunately he wrote only 3 of them, but all 3 were stellar.
So with Gold Eagle publishers demise, a bunch of writers found themselves homeless. But the few that I loved and followed found new homes in the new market of self-publishing.
And Chuck Rogers starts his self-published debut with, astonishingly and surprisingly to me, a historical fantasy book called Heroes Road.
I never dreamed this was a genre Chuck would delve in, but he did, and he did it spectacularly!
But the problem with that book, and now this latest one, the 5th self-published book thus far, is the editing. It's atrocious.
But despite the editing nightmare, Rogers' solid writing got me through. And the subsequent sequel to Heroes Road, though a long time in coming, turned out great, thus worth the wait.
Then in between Heroes Road 1 & 2, Chuck delivers Bastard of the Apocalypse. Another winner, despite once again, its editing nightmare on seemingly every page. Once again, the solid writing got me through it.
Long, long, LONG waiting periods in between both book series, and finally the 3rd and final book in the Heroes Road trilogy comes out, and unbelievably and unfortunately, I didn't love it. Too many years had passed, but I personally think Mr. Rogers just didn't write the penultimate ending I was hoping for.
This happens to the best writers, whether they are self-published or NY Times best-selling authors. Shame, but it happens.
And very quickly on, from the very first chapter of this new sequel, once again the Editorial Nightmare strikes. But, unfortunately for me, it strikes not only in the form of misspellings to countless question marks used inadequately, but missing words to awkward sentence structure and total lack of storyline cohesion.
Now, Chuck has always infused comedic lines in his writing. But now it's literally taken over. Is this now supposed to be Comedic Action Adventure? Is Mr. Rogers trying to get on this new wave of comedic writers like Matt Dinniman's popular Dungeon Crawler Carl series?
God, I hope not. I tried Dungeon Carl, and personally it's not my cup of tea. It's like my movies and TV shows. Especially in the sci-fi, Fantasy and big action movies. Inserting good humor at the correct time and place like blockbuster movies like Die Hard, doesn't always work. It worked in classic movies like Die Hard because comedy didn't take over the narrative. Predator is another great example. Some small funny one-liners and situations didn't take over the overall darkness, creepiness, and seriousness of the situation.
Now Chuck Rogers is writing more like Tropic Thunder than Die Hard or Predator.
It's one thing going into a movie or a book knowing what you're going to see or read, but these last two books in both of Rogers' series feels like a bait and switch.
This latest book just felt much too juvenile to me. Both in situations and dialogue. Sometimes less is better.
I can't believe I'm not only giving one of my favorite authors a one star rating, but questioning on whether I'll ever read another one of his books.
Please, please, PLEASE Chuck, go back to your original writing style! Get back to writing serious Doom & Gloom books, with your awesome action-filled sequences and smaller slices of comedic relief injected into the narrative.
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