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The Fifth Place #2
Slade
‘Just to reiterate, now we’re on the same page, I need a gun and I need to get out of here.’
Alexia Slade is being held prisoner in a place that exists outside of space and time. She will need all her cunning – and the remains of her sanity – if she ever hopes to escape and return home.
Jay Wulf has found a way through the Black Circle and out the other side. He gathers old allies and risky new ones as he sets out to explore a futuristic and yet completely broken world.
They will need all the help they can get. For this world is controlled and manipulated from the shadows, by somebody known only as the Spider. And he has taken quite the interest in the newcomers . . .
The Fifth Place is about the universe under mysterious control, and the group of antiheroic misfits determined to survive it and be free no matter what comes. Ideal for fans of Stephen King's The Dark Tower books, Garth Ennis’s Preacher comics, Joe Abercrombie, and the Farscape TV series, The Fifth Place is for those who want a pull-no-punches adult series merging western, sci-fi, gritty fantasy, dystopian, adventure and horror genres, with a diverse, irreverent and tragically flawed cast of characters to root for against all odds.
Alexia Slade is being held prisoner in a place that exists outside of space and time. She will need all her cunning – and the remains of her sanity – if she ever hopes to escape and return home.
Jay Wulf has found a way through the Black Circle and out the other side. He gathers old allies and risky new ones as he sets out to explore a futuristic and yet completely broken world.
They will need all the help they can get. For this world is controlled and manipulated from the shadows, by somebody known only as the Spider. And he has taken quite the interest in the newcomers . . .
The Fifth Place is about the universe under mysterious control, and the group of antiheroic misfits determined to survive it and be free no matter what comes. Ideal for fans of Stephen King's The Dark Tower books, Garth Ennis’s Preacher comics, Joe Abercrombie, and the Farscape TV series, The Fifth Place is for those who want a pull-no-punches adult series merging western, sci-fi, gritty fantasy, dystopian, adventure and horror genres, with a diverse, irreverent and tragically flawed cast of characters to root for against all odds.
- GenresWesterns
454 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 13, 2018
18 people are currently reading
26 people want to read
About the author
Set Sytes
34 books61 followersAuthor and purveyor of all things fantastical, dark and weird.
Please don't feed him onions.
Please don't feed him onions.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 26, 2020
With a lot of time on my hands at the moment because of the pandemic, it's given me a lot of opportunity to work on a number of things, including writing and reading. And after getting through Wulf and find it okay but nothing that set my pubes on fire, I decided to give the second book a try. Let it never be said, that I don't take cues from Andrew Zimmern and try everything at least twice.
Slade shows a lot of the hallmarks of an author finding their own voice over time. Wulf wore its inspirations clearly on its sleeve, both in theme, tone and writing style. Here it seems like Sytes is relying less on aping off of the works of China Mieville and more moving more into his own writing style. There's still some florid language here to be sure, but overall the writing is crisper, simpler and more appropriate for a world in which everyone uses the word fuck like a comma.
The characters like before are still a mixed bag. In the first section of the book, the majority of screen time is passed back and forth between Alexia and Jay, on account of the pair of them swapping bodies thanks to Jay pissing about with sci-fi tech at the end of the last book. The result is....kind of interesting but kind of wonky I guess?
Here's the thing. The majority of the character development at this time doesn't really focus on developing Alexia and Jay as characters, but rather is more of a reaction to them inhabiting each other's bodies. And when they finally do get their own bodies back, a lot of the subsequent development is spent focusing on their reactions to each other being in each other's bodies. Now that doesn't seem like such a bad deal, except that in the first book, Alexia had very little character to begin with. She was kind of a limp noodle that just followed Jay around. I kind of think the whole body-swapping idea could've been utilized better in a subsequent book, instead using this book to develop Alexia more as an independent character.
On the subject of the others, Jay is Jay for better or worse. His previous identity as a human on our earth is still kind of just brushed under the rug and doesn't really ever feel like it has a bearing on the plot, and since the original Jay Wulf identity is fading, the current Jay feels a little soft, which is ironic given that he's apparently got an erection that's so stiff it comes with its own elbow.
And by gun I mean penis
We do get hints of what original Jay was like, memories from his past that form a basis as to why original Jay was such a brute and a twat, but they kind of feel like things better utilized in the previous book as opposed to now.
The rest of the cast I can take or leave. Dol Sander is still underutilized, basically amounting to a silent assassin/dogsbody for Alexia. He comes, he goes, he kills, he talks like blender full of gravel combined with the world's quietest man. There's not much to him. Savvi is still probably the highlight of the book if only because her personality outshines every single other character. I'd say that's a benefit/drawback of her. She's so in your face, unapologetic and crass that she makes every single other character look like a wet blanket by comparison. One minute she'll be waking up Jay in the morning by effectively using him like a dildo, the next minute she'll be standing up in a bar and calling for any bloke who will shag her for three days straight, adding that if they fail, she'll cut their throat. How can you compare to that?!
The new characters are okay but again suffer from wonky execution. The Boss is probably the closest to being anywhere near Savvi's level in terms of personality. She's blunt, takes no bullshit, with a strong scientific mind and a deeply cynical streak about the state of the world she lives in. But her introduction comes with some strange....not plot holes but plot contrivances. Her introduction comes when it turns out Savvi was being Savvi and broke something of the Boss's. She demands compensation, Savvi acts like a bitch and Jay tries to smooth things over. They do, but then the group just ends up staying with the boss for the remainder of the book as basically rent-free tenants.
As for Vrowd, he's definitely got a personality to say the least. He's quirky, talkative and flamboyant. He immediately latches onto the group and seems generally pretty pleasant. Except that his intro is a literal backalley scene where the group distract a couple of thugs only for Vrowd to get the drop on them and bite them to death because he's a midget vampire. (Imagine Peter Dinklage or Warwick Davis except with fangs) After that, he literally just shacks up with the rest of the cast and becomes another moocher. Like, what the actual fuck?
And then there's the biggest problem with the book. Let me tell you a story:
NOT THAT STORY!
Early on in the book - when Jay is in Alexia's body - they're on the run through the facility known as the Fifth Place. Alexia had been kidnapped in the last book and brought here as a curiosity by the Servant. During the escape, Alexia suddenly starts pondering the disparity between gender, sexuality and identity, at which I thought "Oh here we go! Another writer soapboxing at me!" Except the passage lasted maybe a couple of paragraphs and even Alexia herself by the end thought it was poor timing for that. So the book continued on, Alexia finds herself back on the planet, gets back to Jay and co and the plot continues. And then more rants/diatribes came. The Boss sharing long-winded sci-fi tech mumbo-jumbo, ranting about the inverse correlation between technology and the complacency of society and so it went.
And that's when I had a revelation.
You'll notice I haven't talked about the book's plot so far and there's a reason. If I had to describe it in one word, it would be "aimless". Even at this point in the second book, it feels like Sytes doesn't have a solid idea of where he wants the story to go. After Alexia in Jay's body leaves the Black Circle at the start of the book, he ventures back into the Westlands, collects Savvi and Dol and returns to the Circle for the sole purpose of exploring what's on the other side. After Alexia and Jay finally reunite, the plot just kind of settles into the group going about day-to-day life with no real end goal in mind. A few ideas are thrown around but then never explored. When Jay is kidnapped and tortured, he's tracked down, rescued and then it takes an entire month before anything else happens that is related to that incident.
Then there's the Spider, the character who could feasibly be called the antagonist of the story. For the most part, they just sit there behind the scenes, pulling the strings but their influence on the story overall feels very minor. Even towards the end, their eventual answer is to send a strike force to eliminate the group, but all I could think was: Why didn't you do that sooner?
And that for me was what the long-winded rants/diatribes in the book were. Not attempts to sway the reader, but rather to pad out the book's length, because it felt like Sytes was still struggling with where to go.
Slade isn't a terrible book despite what I've written here. It's creative and engaging, the pacing might be slow in spots but the character moments - especially Savvi's - do bring it up into something engaging. But this is still very much a product of an author still finding their voice and style. The plot feels like it's drifting, the characters are still lacking in personality in places and the overall myth arc still feels undercooked. I'll continue with this series and if you can forgive the flaws I've highlighted here, you might be able to as well.
Slade shows a lot of the hallmarks of an author finding their own voice over time. Wulf wore its inspirations clearly on its sleeve, both in theme, tone and writing style. Here it seems like Sytes is relying less on aping off of the works of China Mieville and more moving more into his own writing style. There's still some florid language here to be sure, but overall the writing is crisper, simpler and more appropriate for a world in which everyone uses the word fuck like a comma.
The characters like before are still a mixed bag. In the first section of the book, the majority of screen time is passed back and forth between Alexia and Jay, on account of the pair of them swapping bodies thanks to Jay pissing about with sci-fi tech at the end of the last book. The result is....kind of interesting but kind of wonky I guess?
Here's the thing. The majority of the character development at this time doesn't really focus on developing Alexia and Jay as characters, but rather is more of a reaction to them inhabiting each other's bodies. And when they finally do get their own bodies back, a lot of the subsequent development is spent focusing on their reactions to each other being in each other's bodies. Now that doesn't seem like such a bad deal, except that in the first book, Alexia had very little character to begin with. She was kind of a limp noodle that just followed Jay around. I kind of think the whole body-swapping idea could've been utilized better in a subsequent book, instead using this book to develop Alexia more as an independent character.
On the subject of the others, Jay is Jay for better or worse. His previous identity as a human on our earth is still kind of just brushed under the rug and doesn't really ever feel like it has a bearing on the plot, and since the original Jay Wulf identity is fading, the current Jay feels a little soft, which is ironic given that he's apparently got an erection that's so stiff it comes with its own elbow.
And by gun I mean penis
We do get hints of what original Jay was like, memories from his past that form a basis as to why original Jay was such a brute and a twat, but they kind of feel like things better utilized in the previous book as opposed to now.
The rest of the cast I can take or leave. Dol Sander is still underutilized, basically amounting to a silent assassin/dogsbody for Alexia. He comes, he goes, he kills, he talks like blender full of gravel combined with the world's quietest man. There's not much to him. Savvi is still probably the highlight of the book if only because her personality outshines every single other character. I'd say that's a benefit/drawback of her. She's so in your face, unapologetic and crass that she makes every single other character look like a wet blanket by comparison. One minute she'll be waking up Jay in the morning by effectively using him like a dildo, the next minute she'll be standing up in a bar and calling for any bloke who will shag her for three days straight, adding that if they fail, she'll cut their throat. How can you compare to that?!
The new characters are okay but again suffer from wonky execution. The Boss is probably the closest to being anywhere near Savvi's level in terms of personality. She's blunt, takes no bullshit, with a strong scientific mind and a deeply cynical streak about the state of the world she lives in. But her introduction comes with some strange....not plot holes but plot contrivances. Her introduction comes when it turns out Savvi was being Savvi and broke something of the Boss's. She demands compensation, Savvi acts like a bitch and Jay tries to smooth things over. They do, but then the group just ends up staying with the boss for the remainder of the book as basically rent-free tenants.
As for Vrowd, he's definitely got a personality to say the least. He's quirky, talkative and flamboyant. He immediately latches onto the group and seems generally pretty pleasant. Except that his intro is a literal backalley scene where the group distract a couple of thugs only for Vrowd to get the drop on them and bite them to death because he's a midget vampire. (Imagine Peter Dinklage or Warwick Davis except with fangs) After that, he literally just shacks up with the rest of the cast and becomes another moocher. Like, what the actual fuck?
And then there's the biggest problem with the book. Let me tell you a story:
NOT THAT STORY!
Early on in the book - when Jay is in Alexia's body - they're on the run through the facility known as the Fifth Place. Alexia had been kidnapped in the last book and brought here as a curiosity by the Servant. During the escape, Alexia suddenly starts pondering the disparity between gender, sexuality and identity, at which I thought "Oh here we go! Another writer soapboxing at me!" Except the passage lasted maybe a couple of paragraphs and even Alexia herself by the end thought it was poor timing for that. So the book continued on, Alexia finds herself back on the planet, gets back to Jay and co and the plot continues. And then more rants/diatribes came. The Boss sharing long-winded sci-fi tech mumbo-jumbo, ranting about the inverse correlation between technology and the complacency of society and so it went.
And that's when I had a revelation.
You'll notice I haven't talked about the book's plot so far and there's a reason. If I had to describe it in one word, it would be "aimless". Even at this point in the second book, it feels like Sytes doesn't have a solid idea of where he wants the story to go. After Alexia in Jay's body leaves the Black Circle at the start of the book, he ventures back into the Westlands, collects Savvi and Dol and returns to the Circle for the sole purpose of exploring what's on the other side. After Alexia and Jay finally reunite, the plot just kind of settles into the group going about day-to-day life with no real end goal in mind. A few ideas are thrown around but then never explored. When Jay is kidnapped and tortured, he's tracked down, rescued and then it takes an entire month before anything else happens that is related to that incident.
Then there's the Spider, the character who could feasibly be called the antagonist of the story. For the most part, they just sit there behind the scenes, pulling the strings but their influence on the story overall feels very minor. Even towards the end, their eventual answer is to send a strike force to eliminate the group, but all I could think was: Why didn't you do that sooner?
And that for me was what the long-winded rants/diatribes in the book were. Not attempts to sway the reader, but rather to pad out the book's length, because it felt like Sytes was still struggling with where to go.
Slade isn't a terrible book despite what I've written here. It's creative and engaging, the pacing might be slow in spots but the character moments - especially Savvi's - do bring it up into something engaging. But this is still very much a product of an author still finding their voice and style. The plot feels like it's drifting, the characters are still lacking in personality in places and the overall myth arc still feels undercooked. I'll continue with this series and if you can forgive the flaws I've highlighted here, you might be able to as well.
June 22, 2021
I did not finish this novel. It is such a departure from a brilliant first that it makes you wonder if the author was just lucky.
There is a distinct lack of voice that is revealed by how the story line meanders without focus. The POV is confusing in that the character build is a strange departure from the initial. The world building is just as confusing where you go from a wild west atmosphere into scifi extrema.
What this novel needed besides cohesiveness was a big dose of editing with a firm hand towards cogent writing. At some point I may finish this novel but don't count on it.
There is a distinct lack of voice that is revealed by how the story line meanders without focus. The POV is confusing in that the character build is a strange departure from the initial. The world building is just as confusing where you go from a wild west atmosphere into scifi extrema.
What this novel needed besides cohesiveness was a big dose of editing with a firm hand towards cogent writing. At some point I may finish this novel but don't count on it.
August 17, 2020
A great step up from the previous book.
Not everything is great and there are portions of the book that didn't really click with me, but overall I think the author does a great job and every negative aspect is outweighed by the good aspects of the novel.
So, with a bit of spoilers I am going to start with what I didn't like, and then I will tackle the things that I did enjoy (which are far more).
THINGS THAT DIDN'T CLICK
So, as I said, there are not many but they still exist so:
In my last review I talked about how the OG Jay Wulf wasn't given much importance and I still stand by it in this book. In the last book Jay was shot to death in his tiger form and it felt inconsequential, Alien Jay (AJ) didn't seem to care all that much and neither did Savvi (which isn't really surprising because she didn't really seem close to him and she has some kind of wall to keep her form engaging life in any other emotion than sarcasm and sneer. Although she cared enough to be worried for him when the mindswap happened, so...? I feel like I am getting some kind of contradicting messages there... Maybe I don't remember everything in detail) so I felt like there could have been some opportunity to further explore AJ character arc.
In this book AJ isn't given much more to work with and I even started to feel like some of the jokes that involved pop culture of our Earth were a little forced. Although my main issue with that is that I don't really feel coherence in remembering The Lord of the Ring or movies like that and, I don't know, traumatic events or the relationship with your parents... Things that really defines us as persons and not pop culture (I am not saying that pop culture can't, just that maybe it isn't the most important).
This isn't really a complaint but I don't know where to put it se here it goes. I loved that Jay and Alexia also get to merge and swap their minds (and how that justified in the text a second POV from Alexia), but it wasn't until 70% of the book that I realized that Alexia?s mind was in Wulf's body and viceversa. Now I don't know if it was a bad understanding on my part or it wasn't left clear on purpose but I found myself really puzzled when I found out that they were swapped all through the book.
Another thing I didn't like that much is how little consequence have some of the revelations in the book. For instance:
BIG SPOILER AHEAD FOR JAY .
And lastly, I didn't really like are some of the monologues that the characters start rambling in some scenes. They go on and on about some of the opinions they have on the world. And my problem isn't about what they say, I quite like this gritty vision some of them have (even though I don't quite agree with some of the things they say) and how it maked for a really interesting cast of characters. My problem was with how that opinion was presented, they give a monologue that doesn't feel very organic in a way that doesn't look like how a person would normally talk. I felt more like the author was trying to convey me a point of view and not how the character actually felt about the situation. Nonetheless, I also liked what they had to say and how well paced it was that I never struggled throughout one of them ramblings.
THINGS THAT CLICKED (a lot)
I will say it bluntly: if the last book had a divisive cast of characters (for me some of them were hit or miss) and lacked in some places, this one improves it by a lot. I loved Alexia Slade, and that was a really welcomed surprise. See, in the last book she ended up abducted by the baddies and I was worried that she was going to need some old fashioned rescuing. Nothing further away from reality, Alexia (with the help of AJ's mind) was not only able to get out of there on her own, but also managed to have the best and most imaginative passage of the whole book in the Fifth Place, and not happy with that she also had to kick off all the events of the series. You know, because Alexia fucking rocks.
But if you need some more to satisfy the urges of good characters the other two introduced in this book have got you covered:
The newest addition and my personal favorite is Vrowd Volsyng, a half dwarf-half vampire but full flamboyant character that gets introduced midway through the book. He really did hit all the marks for me (I love how polite and friendly he is) and changed the blance towards a really well exploited cast. I am really looking forward to the next book knowing that maybe he wil have a bigger role to play in there.
The last book had a lot of poetic landscapes and interesting visual choices (like a purple sky), this are some tiny details that I found myself fascinated with because for me it shows a lot of imagination and courage to change the status quo of details that are expected to be always unchangeable (like how we expect the sky to always be blue). Now you have a blue desert and the "Fifth Place". I won't talk about it very much because it's something that I feel you have to read for yourself, but I will say that it's a gorgeus read.
I also liked the pacing of this book, how the first third is dedicated to close the plot form the previous book. After that the plot is almost nonexistant which gave you time to hang out with the characters and have a very needed time to get to know them, individually and as a group.
And lastly:
I fucking hate Savvi. And I love it. I think that maybe she comes to represent every single thing that I hate about a person. She is always abrasive, sarcastic, always in your face, it feels like she always needs to be the center of atention, she needs to feel that she is better than anyone else around her, she needs to always be hurtful, can't trust nobody and excuses everything she is and does in how fucked up her life has been. She is so deep in victimising herself that it is pathetic how she needs to be the one to do the hurting. I am really liking to find enjoymente in reading a character that challenges me in so many ways, even though I can't really bring me to enjoy it every time. And the fact that she seems that she is going to be lees in the next book is also something to look forward to, because I feel like she works better for me the less she is featured directly and more thought about like a presence or a concept.
All in all I really liked this book. Much more than the last on to be fair. That said, I hate rating things out of 5 so I'm going to give this book a 7'75. I think the author is really finding his own writting and improving a lot. The only thing I find lacking is a bit of subteltly but I am sure it will improve more and more. I look forward to read the rest of the series.
Not everything is great and there are portions of the book that didn't really click with me, but overall I think the author does a great job and every negative aspect is outweighed by the good aspects of the novel.
So, with a bit of spoilers I am going to start with what I didn't like, and then I will tackle the things that I did enjoy (which are far more).
THINGS THAT DIDN'T CLICK
So, as I said, there are not many but they still exist so:
In my last review I talked about how the OG Jay Wulf wasn't given much importance and I still stand by it in this book. In the last book Jay was shot to death in his tiger form and it felt inconsequential, Alien Jay (AJ) didn't seem to care all that much and neither did Savvi (which isn't really surprising because she didn't really seem close to him and she has some kind of wall to keep her form engaging life in any other emotion than sarcasm and sneer. Although she cared enough to be worried for him when the mindswap happened, so...? I feel like I am getting some kind of contradicting messages there... Maybe I don't remember everything in detail) so I felt like there could have been some opportunity to further explore AJ character arc.
In this book AJ isn't given much more to work with and I even started to feel like some of the jokes that involved pop culture of our Earth were a little forced. Although my main issue with that is that I don't really feel coherence in remembering The Lord of the Ring or movies like that and, I don't know, traumatic events or the relationship with your parents... Things that really defines us as persons and not pop culture (I am not saying that pop culture can't, just that maybe it isn't the most important).
This isn't really a complaint but I don't know where to put it se here it goes. I loved that Jay and Alexia also get to merge and swap their minds (and how that justified in the text a second POV from Alexia), but it wasn't until 70% of the book that I realized that Alexia?s mind was in Wulf's body and viceversa. Now I don't know if it was a bad understanding on my part or it wasn't left clear on purpose but I found myself really puzzled when I found out that they were swapped all through the book.
Another thing I didn't like that much is how little consequence have some of the revelations in the book. For instance:
BIG SPOILER AHEAD FOR JAY .
And lastly, I didn't really like are some of the monologues that the characters start rambling in some scenes. They go on and on about some of the opinions they have on the world. And my problem isn't about what they say, I quite like this gritty vision some of them have (even though I don't quite agree with some of the things they say) and how it maked for a really interesting cast of characters. My problem was with how that opinion was presented, they give a monologue that doesn't feel very organic in a way that doesn't look like how a person would normally talk. I felt more like the author was trying to convey me a point of view and not how the character actually felt about the situation. Nonetheless, I also liked what they had to say and how well paced it was that I never struggled throughout one of them ramblings.
THINGS THAT CLICKED (a lot)
I will say it bluntly: if the last book had a divisive cast of characters (for me some of them were hit or miss) and lacked in some places, this one improves it by a lot. I loved Alexia Slade, and that was a really welcomed surprise. See, in the last book she ended up abducted by the baddies and I was worried that she was going to need some old fashioned rescuing. Nothing further away from reality, Alexia (with the help of AJ's mind) was not only able to get out of there on her own, but also managed to have the best and most imaginative passage of the whole book in the Fifth Place, and not happy with that she also had to kick off all the events of the series. You know, because Alexia fucking rocks.
But if you need some more to satisfy the urges of good characters the other two introduced in this book have got you covered:
The newest addition and my personal favorite is Vrowd Volsyng, a half dwarf-half vampire but full flamboyant character that gets introduced midway through the book. He really did hit all the marks for me (I love how polite and friendly he is) and changed the blance towards a really well exploited cast. I am really looking forward to the next book knowing that maybe he wil have a bigger role to play in there.
The last book had a lot of poetic landscapes and interesting visual choices (like a purple sky), this are some tiny details that I found myself fascinated with because for me it shows a lot of imagination and courage to change the status quo of details that are expected to be always unchangeable (like how we expect the sky to always be blue). Now you have a blue desert and the "Fifth Place". I won't talk about it very much because it's something that I feel you have to read for yourself, but I will say that it's a gorgeus read.
I also liked the pacing of this book, how the first third is dedicated to close the plot form the previous book. After that the plot is almost nonexistant which gave you time to hang out with the characters and have a very needed time to get to know them, individually and as a group.
And lastly:
I fucking hate Savvi. And I love it. I think that maybe she comes to represent every single thing that I hate about a person. She is always abrasive, sarcastic, always in your face, it feels like she always needs to be the center of atention, she needs to feel that she is better than anyone else around her, she needs to always be hurtful, can't trust nobody and excuses everything she is and does in how fucked up her life has been. She is so deep in victimising herself that it is pathetic how she needs to be the one to do the hurting. I am really liking to find enjoymente in reading a character that challenges me in so many ways, even though I can't really bring me to enjoy it every time. And the fact that she seems that she is going to be lees in the next book is also something to look forward to, because I feel like she works better for me the less she is featured directly and more thought about like a presence or a concept.
All in all I really liked this book. Much more than the last on to be fair. That said, I hate rating things out of 5 so I'm going to give this book a 7'75. I think the author is really finding his own writting and improving a lot. The only thing I find lacking is a bit of subteltly but I am sure it will improve more and more. I look forward to read the rest of the series.
November 3, 2020
While this book felt like quite a departure from the first in the series, it was no less enjoyable. Far more of a cerebral read, focusing on the different characters and their worldviews than a constant push for action. Also there is quite a change in scenery, and I finally understand now why the author refers to this as a "weird dystopian sci-fi" series. The first half of this story moves quite fast, switching frequently between Alexia and Jay's perspectives, and feels like there is a great amount of forward progression. Unfortunately the second half lagged in a few places for me, and definitely leans more heavily on the "dystopian" side of the story.
Still didn't stop me from immediately buying the third book, though.
Still didn't stop me from immediately buying the third book, though.
September 23, 2020
Alexia in Wonderland
Take a weird dystopian western scifi journey down the rabbit hole. Add a dwarf vampire, a pinch of sentient junkyard, dash of biomechanical spider and you have a whole new layer cake to the Fifth Place series. Mad Hatter Set Sites is having a mushroom tea party, you're invited.
Take a weird dystopian western scifi journey down the rabbit hole. Add a dwarf vampire, a pinch of sentient junkyard, dash of biomechanical spider and you have a whole new layer cake to the Fifth Place series. Mad Hatter Set Sites is having a mushroom tea party, you're invited.
August 21, 2019
Expanded on what we all wanted to know about the fifth place and built a great dystopian future to set it in.
May 17, 2020
Slade answers what you wanted to know whilst tearing at your hearts strings but still wanting more. Loved meeting the new characters and cannot wait to explore more places with them.
March 2, 2019
Dragged a bit in the middle, as if the author was stalling for space, but overall still a fun and fascinating ride. I'll be picking up the third book when it comes out, because I have to see where this cast of people-I-love-to-hate ends up.
April 26, 2018
WARNING: Not for the faint of heart. Brutal, relentless, funny, heartbreaking, but above all entertaining.
SLADE, the second book in the Fifth Place series, takes the intergalactic consciousness-swapping of WULF a step farther. Jay’s found his way through the Black Circle, Alexia’s woken up a captive in the Fifth Place at the mercy of the Servant, and the gang has blundered into a whole other world—part Thunderdome, part Brotherhood of Steel, part BladeRunner, all with distinctly Set Sytes twists. There are more things in heaven and Earth-706, Jay Wulf, than are dreamt of in your philosophy...so many more.
The story here is brutal, relentless, funny, heartbreaking, and above all entertaining, with new antagonists and mind-bending revelations, but where Sytes really excels is character building. These aren’t cookie-cutter heroes. In most cases, they can barely scrape by under the heading "anti-heroes". They butt heads, freak each other out and freak out on each other, kill, steal, torture, wish they could do better but don't actually do it, and end up causing most of their own heartache. In other words, they're human.
My favorite characters from WULF were Savvi, the whirlwind of destruction, with her aggressively contrary nature and catlike mood swings, and Dol Sander, the unknowable, unflappable assassin. Both shined even brighter in SLADE, growing and changing with this strange new world, and reaching unexpected, brilliant new endpoints. At the same time, Sytes deftly wove new cast members into the story. The Boss’s cold, logical exterior and the depths of intellectual disappointment it hides, and Vrowd the dwarven vampire’s flamboyant gentility laced with cutting insults had me enchanted. In no time I was just as attached to them as if they’d been part of the gang all along.
I can’t even begin to guess where the third book of the Fifth Place is going to take us from here, I just know that I want to go there as soon as possible.
SLADE, the second book in the Fifth Place series, takes the intergalactic consciousness-swapping of WULF a step farther. Jay’s found his way through the Black Circle, Alexia’s woken up a captive in the Fifth Place at the mercy of the Servant, and the gang has blundered into a whole other world—part Thunderdome, part Brotherhood of Steel, part BladeRunner, all with distinctly Set Sytes twists. There are more things in heaven and Earth-706, Jay Wulf, than are dreamt of in your philosophy...so many more.
The story here is brutal, relentless, funny, heartbreaking, and above all entertaining, with new antagonists and mind-bending revelations, but where Sytes really excels is character building. These aren’t cookie-cutter heroes. In most cases, they can barely scrape by under the heading "anti-heroes". They butt heads, freak each other out and freak out on each other, kill, steal, torture, wish they could do better but don't actually do it, and end up causing most of their own heartache. In other words, they're human.
My favorite characters from WULF were Savvi, the whirlwind of destruction, with her aggressively contrary nature and catlike mood swings, and Dol Sander, the unknowable, unflappable assassin. Both shined even brighter in SLADE, growing and changing with this strange new world, and reaching unexpected, brilliant new endpoints. At the same time, Sytes deftly wove new cast members into the story. The Boss’s cold, logical exterior and the depths of intellectual disappointment it hides, and Vrowd the dwarven vampire’s flamboyant gentility laced with cutting insults had me enchanted. In no time I was just as attached to them as if they’d been part of the gang all along.
I can’t even begin to guess where the third book of the Fifth Place is going to take us from here, I just know that I want to go there as soon as possible.
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