Grrl Power #1036 - The unseen... tentacle? (Patreon)

Thanks so much for your support! For serious!

Well, I'm glad everyone enjoyed my math screw up on the previous page. I'll have to come up with something a little more sensible since what I actually came up with was a number large enough to include every protein molecule from every single strand of DNA on Earth combined. Not just every human. Everything currently alive. Possibly everything that has ever been alive.

Crypto8536 commented "Out of curiosity, I found a big number calculator online and ran 4^(64^3). I put the result into a Word document with font size 11 and, because of the calculator, every 3 digits has a space behind it. It's 65 pages long."

It's not googleplex, but it's a pretty big number. Well, I have to own it. I borked that one hard.

I kind of feel like this page should have ended with Dabbler being shocked at Sydney's statement there at the end (not quantum field encryption shocked, but still) and called for a mandatory lady orgasm class when they get back to base, but... sometimes the space constraints on a single comic page are the only editor I get, and it's not always a terrible thing.

Book recommendation time! I just finished one I found fairly amusing, called Skyclad (Fate's Anvil Book 1). It's your basic isekai novel, except the (primary) main character is a young woman, and through no fault of her own, upon arriving at the new world, gets stuck with a class with powers that only work when she's nude.

Now, I know this sounds like a setup for a salacious sex romp, but the book doesn't remotely go in that direction. I'd say it's almost a missed opportunity, but it's not like the author didn't realize what the premise was. I think it was more of an excuse for him to heap some pretty reasonable bonuses on the MC for surviving "naked and unequipped," but even that stuff falls by the wayside as the story progresses. Anyway, I thought it was quite a bit better than the average isekai book, so I'm telling you about it.

The other series I want to recommend is probably something you've heard about if you're into the sorts of books I tend to pimp. Dungeon Crawler Carl. It's pretty popular, but it's still easy to miss books if Amazon's recommendations are screwy because you share an account with someone buying outside of your usual genres or if you don't hang out in LitRPG Facebook groups or whatever.

Anyway, I actually didn't like this book at first, because I didn't feel that the setup didn't really match the fairly casual attitude of the characters. The setup is, Carl is out chasing his ex-girlfriend's cat, when every structure with a roof on the entire planet, buildings and cars, etc, is instantly flattened into the ground. So like, what, 85% of humanity just dies in that instant. Then the announcement comes out of nowhere welcoming him to "The Game" which is your basic every-level-is-different/Smash TV dungeon dive. Basically alien youtube meets gladiator games.

Now, I don't want to read a book about someone suffering from crippling emotional trauma/survivor's guilt/whatever, but I also can't deal with books where something horrific has or will happen, and the characters don't seem to care about it. Carl has a few moments early on where he's like "OMG, everyone I know is probably dead." But otherwise he doesn't seem terribly broken up about the near total genocide of his species and the functional erasure of the entirety of human history and accomplishment.

At least, at first. I quit about 2 hours in on my first try, but after finishing up several other books I had a brief dry spell and gave Carl another shot. The books are well written, faintly humorous, (which I found to be at odds with the premise initially) BUT, after pushing through, I was more entertained than annoyed, and Carl does eventually start fighting back against the genocidal producers. I won't spoil anything, but by the end of the 4th book, he does fuck them pretty hard. It's fantastically satisfying, and I'm hoping for more to come. I'm awaiting the audiobook (all of which have been excellent) for #5, but I think it shouldn't be too long. I think it's just getting edited/approved but I can't say for sure.

Huh, two non-harem non-sexytime books in a row. Weird. Now go support the Tamer 8 Kickstarter, hah hah.

The kickstarter for Tamer 8 is up! It has already comfortably made its goal, I think it did that in the first few hours, but I’m letting you know so you can get the book and extra goodies if’n you want as soon as everything is available.