Plot: 4/9. It’s tiresome and bland records of encountering three Moderans in a post-apocalyptic world without thrilling scenes I expected at first such as fights and wars: I would give a higher score if some futuristic wars were rendered with more detail instead of weird and tedious dialogues.

1

When the narrator went from Old Land to Moderan, he found tamping machines loafing around and pummeling the ground from time to time. The overseer explained that in order to build an immense plastic floor covering the polluted Earth, those machine should ram wherever they detected hollows. Sometimes, he had to kick their rumps to avoid colliding bugs in his own non-conventional method.

In the end, he drove the narrator to hospital and regretted his old-age that forbade him from embracing the narrator’s brilliant prospect of being changed into a metal man and becoming a stronghold master.

2

As a cyborg on his way to his own allotted stronghold, the narrator came across his disheartened ex-commander that was maimed by the narrator who had to push the explosive button in the war of Landry. Waiting for his own death, the disabled refused the narrator’s invitation of coming back to the battlefield.

3

The narrator received a strange traveler from Far Wide trekking to his stronghold in the full belief that the narrator possessed a supposed happiness machine. The narrator finally managed to persuade the hysterical wanderer to find it elsewhere.

Core: 3/9. It might be the mental status of people in a post-apocalyptic world. Clearly, it didn’t include any sensible science here and read like a bland parable.

Character: 5/9. Admittedly, three characters were all memorable and lively in various degrees. I love his expression in particular.

I came far enough. In miles. In time. In blasted hopes and withering dreams.

Ignorance can be admirable, if the person came by it honestly. Flippant, half-baked wiseacring is about the worst thing in the world, compared to honest ignorance.

And such an odd way to expect it, happiness dispensed by some magic machine gauged to beauty and truth and love in a resplendent place at the end of a long trip.

World and Others: 4/9. I would give a higher score if it could use a series of events rather than dialogues to reveal the world building. Meanwhile, whom on Earth were they fighting against and where were his so-called battalions calling him king in his stronghold?

Overall: 4/9. Bunch had a peculiar writing style that I might never forget about it and couldn’t reject hereafter, though he’s not my cup of tea, since as a reader who treated science fiction as just one of unique, sophisticated, and sobering entertainments, I don’t appreciate his horrible attitude of science fiction for meaningless anguish.