| Title | : | Without Law (Without Law, #1) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Kindle Edition |
| Number of Pages | : | 355 |
| Publication | : | Published March 23, 2019 |
He was wrong.
When roving gangs destroy all semblance of law and order, and the strong take what they want from the weak, Connor will find himself as the sole protector of an all girl’s college hidden away in the Green Mountains of Vermont.
Now, his only chance at survival is to show group female liberal arts snowflakes what a real man can do, and turn all four of them into survival and combat experts.
Disclaimer: This novel contains detailed sex scenes between the male protagonist and multiple women.
Without Law (Without Law, #1) Reviews
-
This book fails in two major ways.
If you want a shallow, quick exciting power fantasy with violence and sex, then you are out of luck. Be prepared for a long, boring almost slice of life domestic psuedo-drama with a lot pages spent on doing mundane tasks to live day to day. Don't let the cover fool you, this is not a 'sexy' book. It's the novel equivalent to a shelter game with thin characters who have boring sex.
If you want a fascinating post apocalyptic gritty thriller you aren't going to get that either. The tone is too ridiculous and the conflicts are empty. The book is long but takes very little time to get you invested in the conflict.
It's technically competently written but thats about it as far as positives. Give it a miss. -
tl;dr Terrible. Cartoonish characters, no plot. 1 star is free, the other is for the competent grammar.
The book starts with the MC coming from the mountains to a deserted city. While trying to figure out what is going on he meets a group of 4 girls and a janitor about to be raped. He kills the two would-be rapists and then we are introduced to the characters. Now, so far, we know absolutely nothing about the guy. All we know is he was in the mountains, because he is a badass and that's what badasses do: they live in mountains. Of course he offers to help the girls (and the janitor), because he is a badass: badasses have nothing better to do with their lives. So, when a situation presents itself in which he has to babysit 4 mentally-challenged college girls (plus a janitor) for who knows how long, he takes it! Because he is a badass. He is a complete stock character. It's like the character of a game, really, no backstory, no personality, just one thing: he is tough.
The other characters are similarly cartoonish. There's a blonde, what I think is the author's idea of a sorority girl. She is defined by two characteristics, she is dumb and she is a super-slut. She also can't go one sentence without saying the word "like". Usually, this by itself would not be enough to make me think it's wrong, but you can't put a character like this in a book and have all the characters around her just not noticing how stupid it is. She is such a slut that just as she meets the MC, he's just killed two dudes, there's blood all over his shirt, and as they walk towards their "house", I guess, she just takes his arms and presses her breasts onto him. Because that's what girls do after they were just about to be raped and witnessed two guys getting killed. And the MC is completely OK with this, of course, being the stock character that he is, he is not entitled to a personal opinion on the matter. Then there's the bookworm girl. She wears glasses, of course, she is skinny and she talks sheepishly towards the floor. All the time. I won't write about the rest, this is enough to prove my point.
Honestly, I feel perhaps I'm being a little unfair towards this author, since I haven't really finished the book, but you can't really write this and expect me to read it all the way, can you? Perhaps, in a point to which I haven't gotten, the janitor kills the "MC", because he was the main character all along, and enslaves all the girls so we can have a nice story without having to read "like" every other sentence, but I somehow doubt this will happen. -
Rating 2.0 stars
This book failed on so many levels but the main failure was in the execution. The idea was a good one. In a world without power and society has seemingly failed, a former ranger comes across a group of 4 women struggling to survive. He has extensive survival training and helps teach them how to live off the land. That's a pretty interesting idea. This book was billed as a post apocalyptic harem adventure though. It failed at being either one. There were also way too many cliche characters that brought nothing to the story.
The story starts with Tav leaving the woods. He was a former ranger and after he got out he needed time to decompress so he spent a year living in the woods. When he heads back out into civilization he comes to a small town and finds 2 bikers assaulting 4 women and an older man. He ends up killing the bikers and finds out that about 3 months ago the power went out in this place. The girls live at a local college and decided to stay over Christmas break instead of going home. They have been holed up at the college ever since and just now tried to come down to scavenge more food and water.
The majority of the story is just Tav teaching the girls how to live off the land. Fetching water, setting traps, making defenses. He even showed them how to fight with a knife ( yep, 1 whole hour and they are good to go). The girls are what were the most cliche. One athletic girl, one sex crazed hot chick, one bookish girl, and one flower power hippy chick. Despite all the non stop talk about sex (mainly from the sex crazed girl Tara), there were actually only two episodes of anything happening.
The only reason I stuck with this story is because this author is somewhat easy to read and by the time I realized this story wasn't going anywhere for me, I was more than halfway done and just decided to bite the bullet and finish it. I wouldn't say I hated it (in which case I would have stopped), but this was kind of a pointless story that did nothing for me. NOT going to continue on. -
If you smack the hell out of the "I Believe" button, and ignore all the glaring plot holes you could fly a 747 through, it's not a terrible book. The author is talented and writes well; his dialogue is easy to follow and you never lose the path of the conversation.
This was a meh book from a prolific author that I think may be suffering from too high of a publishing rate. This book so badly needs more developmental editing. There are several areas where the author had a chance to enrich the story with small tidbits of backstory.
I picked at several weapon discrepancies and misuse of weapon terms. Since most of this author's readers within this genre are likely to be 1) male and 2) firearm enthusiasts, making basic firearm mistakes is unforgivable when a simple Google search (or better yet - a developmental edit with a firearm expert) would have answered the author's questions.
Calling a bolt the lever on a bolt-action weapon is an unpardonable mistake when a simple Google search will show you a diagram (even in color) with proper terminology for all the gun's parts so the author does not make a fool of himself.
This book has caused me to doubt if I will purchase another from this author. It was meh, and there are other indie author who publish better works that I wish to spend my money on. -
This reads less like a book and more like some guy describing his ultimate fantasy to me in great detail. The main character is a "Mary Sue" who has no flaws, thinks he's god's gift to women, and takes everything given to him as just his due. To me, a character has to experience some kind of growth for there to be a story. I'm sure there are a lot of people who want to read about the ultimate "alpha male" who is great at everything have absolutely everything handed to him, but I'm not one of them.
Specific spoiler-ish complaints below:
All 4 of the only women in the world that we know about are gorgeous, not an overweight or even plain-faced girl among them, and all of them immediately want him. They then conveniently decide to share him, with zero drama. Yeah... that would happen. The only other male in the book that isn't a "bad guy biker," is an over-the-hill neutered male who is there for help with manual labor and to give a wink and a nod to acknowledge the main character's alpha status when he beds all of the women. Again, no drama there... right. The only conflicts that arise exist only to show how amazing the main character is. Riiiiight... and of course, his heroics only make the females want him more.
The sex scenes weren't bad. But, of course, the main character (who hasn't had any female company for over a year when the book begins) riiiiiiiiight. I'm done. -
This book is a fun attempt at a post-disaster survival style novel. It's light-hearted, fun to read and overall an enjoyable book.
Where this book loses points in my mind is in not quite making up its mind in what it wants to be. It spends a lot of time going into great detail about the day to day tasks of staying alive, almost to the point where this was a manual more than a novel (the author has clearly done his research and wants to show it). It also sets up a polyamorous fantasy scenario of one man with multiple women and runs with this idea throughout the novel, always hinting that it will eventually go down this route but never really committing. There are two scenes that dip their toe into the water, but aren't written with the same creative flair or effort as the rest of the book.
I'd like to see a sequel either settle on being one or the other. Or, if it insists on being both things, then spend an equal amount of time and effort setting up both elements so that expectations can be met. Strangely, I think that if you came here looking for a gritty end of the world novel, you'd be put off by the sex and teenage girls. If you came here for the male-fantasy/harem element, then you'll be put off by the volume of the end of the world stuff. So no one truly wins.
However, all that being said I still enjoyed this and can recommend it with my usual caveats about this style of books (They're definitely not for everyone. If you come for literary perfection, can't see the fun side of adult situations in stories, or can't let reality go for the sake of a fun fantasy, then it's not the book for you). -
Solid book with a decent story.
Ok I thought that the book was good with a few issues that can be cleaned up in later book's. The characters are actually pretty cool for a first book with a ton of room for them to grow as the book progress in the growth of the plot. Overall I enjoyed it. -
DNF. Will come back to this some other time.
-
Easily the worse book I've read in many years. That includes the curve I give to SHTF type books.
-
First things first- this is Not a gritty survival of the fittest, thrilling violence and sex ride.
It’s more of a back to basics- build from scratch, train your own militia, slow burn survival series with erotic harem elements thrown in. If you’re into that, then this imo is handsdown among the finest out there.
Yes, the premise is guilty pleasure cliche- an ex-military guy who is the god of survival skills with 4 hot girls ready to be saved and trained to his whimsical designs. And the series gives you exactly what wild fantasies you paint in your head in all its glorious details! 😅
But what sets this apart above most of its peers, is the execution.
The author has clearly done his homework well and every thing is organised, in-depth and flows in order, one step at a time. This won’t help you survive an apocalypse but it is convincingly written, good enough for you to not doubt that the MC indeed knows his stuff. And it is made evident through his consistent actions and planning, rather than a single line that says he is awesome while making silly decisions and taping some virtual menu to build a fortress.
This imo is as realistic as one can get without losing the lighthearted harem/erotica elements.
It does a brilliant job at balancing the realistic and fantasy wish fulfilment aspects.
The harem is very well done as well. The relationships are handled without any rush and the women are distinct, interesting and have their own consistent personalities.
It also helps that the MC is a mature, laid back guy and takes things in stride. He is neither a horndog nor a blockhead. His decisions regarding other things is similarly balanced, between a nice guy that wants to help whenever possible, and a practical survivor who is decisive and prioritises his own interests and those he cares about.
And as obvious as that might seem, it’s actually rare for an MC to be so levelheaded in these genres, quite unfortunately.
Overall (Book 1-2) - 9.2/10 Among the best in its genre. I can’t recommend this enough esp. for Slice of life fans and those that love the build-it-yourself stuff with decent action scenes and erotica elements to spice things up every now and then.
A Must Read in my books, if only just as a ‘safe intro’, to sample what these genres are about and the reasons behind their increasing popularity in recent years. -
The book is garbage, but there are a few good parts to it. The main character is boring, the girls are interesting but under used and under powered, the antagonist's are more like Saturday morning cartoon villains, the apocalypse is less of a struggle and more of a minor inconvenience, and overall a lot of the survival tips and tricks are cringe worthy.
It was fun to listen to and if you don't care about accuracy, any sort of meaningful plot, or juvenile sex scenes this is for you. Honestly, even though the book is terrible, I enjoyed it just because of that fact. Eric Vall is a prime example of "cheap fanboy literature", and it is funny because of how wrong, and over the top it all is. -
Maybe I don't have much experience with shameless smut writers, but holy shit is this terrible writing.
-
well the only decent thing from this' are the covers!
-
Surprisingly good for both the Apocalyptic and Harem-Lit genres, if you're looking for that one good crossover this will fill your desires. Great dialogue, bright but gritty characters, you'll learn to care for these individual survivors and hate their adversaries.
Be advised that this is about recovering from very dark days, and there are bad actors out there, but Tav and the girls of the College he meets band together to take out the trash, and defend what's theirs.
Along the way these capable women learn a lot about what it takes to live while surviving, to work as a team of unique individuals towards a better life. One worth living after America without Rule of Law.
I'm writing this now, having consumed another half dozen volumes of this series, and I've come to realize that maybe more of you out there might enjoy them too.
Each book could stand on it's own, but I recommend that for the full effect you start here.
Enjoy! -
Eric Vall's books I have learned to approach with care, as several of them have obnoxious MCs, a feature/trope which annoys me. In this book he has tempered that, giving us a somewhat phlegmatic male lead who is competent but not annoyingly so.
It's a bit heavy on the minutiae of basic survival skills, but that is akin to having skill/stat info-dumps in litRPG books; a flavour element which will appeal to some, but is easily skimmed by others. The action scenes are good and reasonably plausible, and the female characters are being developed at a reasonable rate compared to the MC. It's a base-building/resource gathering book, and I'll be reading the next one to see where it goes from here. -
Massive improvement needed in these shallow female personalities
I enjoyed the survival education and the main character was well put together, but all other characters fell way short of real people. Maybe it was the narrator, but I believe not a lot of thought was put into the female personalities of this group outside of fairly standard stereotypes. I've seen more personality in lit RPGs where the female characters are supposed to be stereotype female NPCs. I'm gonna give the next book a try, but if the author adds anymore females to the harem before improving on the ones already there then I'm gonna call it quits for the series. -
Intriguing and interesting
So, I've held off on reading this series for a while due to other books by Eric Vall with more interesting Premises, but decided to give this a shot during some down time between other releases.
While the book was a bit slow to begin, it got to a decent place and we learned more about the characters through the trials they encounter.
A good start to the series and I will continue reading this series to see how things develop with interest! -
A good start to a post apocalyptic adventure
Not action packed but didn't really need to be. Character driven story of an ex military man coming back from a year of living off the land, and finding America in trouble post EMP taking out all electronic devices. An enjoyable read, don't expect a lot of action, its more a survival tale with harem aspects.
