Amber's Weird Library

       After years of hearing about The Witcher I decided to give it a try. The Witcher books are now free for Kindle Unlimited readers so why not? I didn't think I would like it but it ended up being the kind of fantasy that I have been looking for my entire life. I even wrote a story similar to the first short story in the book The Last Wish as a teenager but hid it because I thought it was too weird.  (There must have been something going on in the collective unconscious in the late 1980's and 1990's.)  A similar story flashed in our minds, but, alas, I didn't have the confidence or talent of Andrzej Sapkowski.       I have also longed to read a fantasy story based in Eastern European folklore rather than in Western European folklore so that was an added bonus.      I was introduced to Geralt, the Witcher, in a very stereotyped beginning. The outsider in the tavern being challenged, he fights and kills so that the loca...

    WARNING: SOME SPOILERS       A wandering planet (planet comes from the Greek word meaning wanderer!) appears in the sky near the moon and causes destruction around the Earth. We jump around the world to see how this global disaster affects different people. It seems to affect most in a very sensuous way.       The book has several "spicy" scenes of older men seducing younger women in kinky ways. The aliens of the Wanderer are cat girls that one of our characters lusts for. The wandering planet seems to make the people of the world seek to let their inhibitions go and become sexually free in a dated 1960's way.        Free sex and rampant sexism aren't the only dated parts of the novel. There is also racism. One of the characters is a member of the KKK and three of the non-white characters are drug addicts treated as comedy relief.  While Leiber is attempting to show this side of American culture, especia...