Book recommendation…ish – Three Square Meals
So, while waiting for Amazon to sort it’s shit out with Michael-Scott Earle, and we can finally get some new Star Justice and Tamer books, I’ve continued reading a bunch of other novels, and I came across one I really like. I’ve been kind of sheepish about recommending it because… well, it’s “erotica.” At least that’s the category it’s listed under at Amazon, but quite frankly, calling it erotica is underselling it a bit. There’s a lot of sex in this book. Like, a lot. So if that doesn’t interest you, you’re just not going to enjoy it. You’d be skimming through… quite a bit of text to get to the rest of the story.
Unlike a lot of other harem novels, however, the sex actually factors heavily into the actual plot. Yes, it’s almost like the author came up with a reason for the characters to have a lot of sex, beyond them being horny for the usual reasons, and then wrote a story about it.
If the sex doesn’t turn you off, or, if in fact you don’t mind some sex (or a lot) in your harem books, there’s a shockingly good space opera to be had here. I would actually put it on par with Star Justice, which is something I never thought I’d say, as it’s one of my favorite series of all time. Another thing I like about Three Square Meals is that there’s a lot of it. The story is over 2 million words long and counting. By the time you get through the first three books, the overarching plot is only barely starting to reveal itself. What can I say? I enjoy it when there’s a lot of something I enjoy. In a shorter story, you get to see the characters interact with one group or another, but then that’s usually it. In this longer format, you get to revisit those groups and see the sometimes empire shifting consequences of their interactions with the MCs. Plus, IMO, the story keeps getting stronger as the cast expands and the momentum of the story builds.
Another thing I like about the story is that it does OP right. The main character, (and the women in the harem) get really powerful. (Something I like in my harem novels is when the women are really awesome too, go figure.) The story keeps escalating so that they have significant challenges, but importantly, there are a lot of great scenes where the MCs have awesome moments of OP-ness* and are able to wow their allies, and/or crush their enemies, and see them driven before them, etc. That balance is important IMO, and a lot of books don’t get it right.
So here are some links;
- The first 4 books are available on Amazon.
- Nearly the entirety of the story is available on Literotica. There’s a bit of a delay for the most recent chapters. If you’re unsure about diving in, you can start here, then if you like it, you can support the author at Amazon or his Patreon. The Kindle versions have had an additional editing pass, with some extra scenes thrown in for good measure.
- And the author has a Patreon, if you get caught up with all 2 million+ words and can’t wait for the next chapter to come out on Literotica.
*Hur hur, I said penis.
I’ll second that. The protagonists feel like Marry Sues most of the time, but there’s good conflict, and I really enjoy the steady technological and logistical progression.
I agree, I follow 3 Square Meals and it’s one of the best science fiction stories around.
Dude, I have loved 3 Square Meals since the beginning. Currently my favorite read. Glad to seeing it get some love.
we can’t have talks about good sexy books without talking Nozoki Ana.
having a literotica-link might actually be a bonus for some people – there’s a decent mobile app that’s better than some e-book-reader-stuff out there (and well… it’s free)
I did not know that. I’ve been reading in Safari reader mode, which works great except on the 200 page chapters when safari occasionally looses it’s place.
well, I was talking about android of course
there’s no usable way to install software on iOS, other than the app store.
And since both Google and Apple like to impose american morality on all of the world (violence good, sex bad), you’ll never get this there.
On Android this is less of a problem, because you can install things via plain apk-file or even completely independent sources (i.e. fdroid)
I made a small python script to scrap the literotica html and generate a one page local html file. Then with the kindle app you can email it from your computer to the kindle email and it automatically generates a simple eBook you can read in the app, saves your progress perfectly and you can read offline. I could share the script if someone finds it useful.
I thought you could view a page in Pocket reader mode, but apparently what it saves is a bunch of javascript or something and not the actual contents of the page, so that script definitely sounds useful.
https://github.com/Zorio29/LitE-Webscrap
Here it is the repo with the script I have. Is very basic, I stopped when I managed to have something that worked. If anyone finds any issue, I’ll try to fix it.
So… uh, I guess this is no good unless I have python… installed? Is python something you install?
This might be a bit rube-goldbergian for what I want to do with it.
Hahaha. I understand. Python is a programming language that needs an interpreter. The same way you install java to run Minecraft or something. You need Python to run python scripts. (Unless you package everything in an app thingy or something).
I can explain everything if you want, but I understand that sometimes even opening the Windows command prompt can be quite daunting for the inexperienced, I’ve been there.
This is one of the very, very few times I’ve tried to install and run a Python script, so please forgive the noob type of problem I’m having. :) I’m running Win7, and have installed Python 3.7.3, Unidecode-1.0.23, beautifulsoup4-4.7.1, with soupsieve-1.9. I then tried to run Parser tp get TSM01 like your example in your README.md, and got the following error:
You entered TSM01.html
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “Parser”, Line 40, in (module)
soupPage = BeautifulSoup(regPage, features=”lxml”)
File “C:\Program Files (x86)\Python37-32\lib\site-packages\bs4\__init__.py”, Line 196, in __init__
% “,”.join(features))
bs4.FeatureNotFound: Couldn’t find a tree builder with the features you requested: lxml. Do you need to install a parser library?
So, where do I find the missing parser library and how do I install it? Any other “gotcha’s” I need to look out for as a noob?
Thanks in advance for the help. :)
Followup–
I installed lxml-4.3.3 and now Parser works as advertised. Very nice! I’ll have to play around with it and see how flexible it is for use at similar sites. Thanks you very much for this!
Cheers and Regards
More followup; :)
Possible enhancements to Parser:
(1) Optionally include path to parse and filename to generate in command line, such as:
python Parser three-square-meals-ch-01 TSM01
(2) Optionally include path to text file with list of files to generate, such as:
python Parser list
where list.txt is of the format:
three-square-meals-ch-01 TSM01
three-square-meals-ch-02 TSM02
three-square-meals-ch-03 TSM03
(3) If using option 2, can choose to stop on error, ie if path does not exist, or continue but list the error, and if you are listing the error, then choose to list errors to console or to an error file such as errors.txt or something.
(4) If using either option (1) or (2), for the path, if just the “last part” is listed (three-square-meals-ch-01), then the default base path is assumed (https://www.literotica.com/s/), while if https, or http, or even just www is present, then it is assumed that complete paths are listed.
(5) For option (2), include the ability to list a “base” path to use as the first line of the file, such as if list.txt is:
base=https://www.literotica.com/s/
three-square-meals-ch-01 TSM01
three-square-meals-ch-02 TSM02
three-square-meals-ch-03 TSM03
then it would translate to https://www.literotica.com/s/three-square-meals-ch-01 etc, where if list.txt is:
base=https://www.someothersite.com/
three-square-meals-ch-01 TSM01
three-square-meals-ch-02 TSM02
three-square-meals-ch-03 TSM03
then it would translate to https://www.someothersite.com/three-square-meals-ch-01 etc.
Maybe that’s too much to ask for, but it’s just a thought. Would you mind? TIA
Cheers and Regards
Hey, thank you for checking it up. I’ll update the description with the requirement of lxml to avoid the same issue ;)
About the enhancements I was thinking maybe allowing for a long string of parameters when calling like: “python Parser https://www.literotica.com/s/ three-square-meals-ch-01 TSM01 three-square-meals-ch-02 TSM02 three-square-meals-ch-03 TSM03″. I’ll have to think if it is easier to have the list of url-site then the list or names or all together.
Whichever you think is better as far as the order of parameters. But, for example, if you wanted to convert all 118+ chapters of TSM, I think it will be easier to create that list in a separate “list.txt” or whatever, rather than have a long, unwieldy command line. But that’s just my opinion. Thanks for your willingness to continue to work on your script. It’s definitely quite useful.
Of course, yet another option that could possibly work well for littercotica.com would be the ability to simply specify the author, and have all of their posted works converted, one file for each work. I guess the file names would have to be the same as the listed work’s name, but those could be rather easily be manipulated after the fact using an existing Bulk Rename Utility. Just a thought.
Cheers and Regards
I’ve updated the script with list, author and parametrized mode. Now you can have a file with all you want to obtain or use the author UID (number in the url in the author page) to get everything there. ;)
WOW! Thank you very much! I’ll be sure to check it out and let you know if there are any problems.
Cheers and Regards my friend
Except there is? I’ve had a few apps on my phone that did not come from the appstore and I did not jailbreak my phone. I’m currently at work so I can’t give you the link but maybe once I get home.
Yeah, Three Square Meals is good. Long and good. Took me two months of all available off-time to catch up, and then a month to catch up to all the other stuff I read.
The thing with Mary Sues is that they’re not Mary Sue, if it’s well justified, the characters have worked for it, and there’s an equally or more powerful enemy on the horizon. It’s more “training montage” – ish.
Porn with Proust?
I think for Sydney’s “final form” it might be interesting to see her combine the orbs into one rainbow gem of power, then implant it in her forehead over her “3rd eye”
Then Thanos will come and pry it out of her forehead, and it’s game over, man.
…That would require getting in Melee with Sydney. SHE IS MORE DANGEROUS IN MELEE! SHE IS MORE DANGEROUS IN MELEE!
Did I reply? (Sydney is dangerous in melee!)
My favorite is “Castle of my lesbian vampire ex-girlfriend.” It’s…it’s got a LOT of effort put into it, and surprisingly poignant writing.
Any suggestions for similar stories? Literotica isn’t exactly easy to dig through.
If I may quote a passage from chapter 1 of Three Square Meals *clears throat*
“‘Holy Fuck!!! You’ve got four balls!’ she gasped, gawping at the cluster of orbs.
‘I did say I’m slightly different, I call them my quad.’ John explained helpfully.”
Thank you for something that I couldn’t stop reading. Almost two weeks from start to current.
Yeah, I had the same problem. It actually caused me to fall a little behind on producing the comic for a while, but fortunately, that’s what the buffer is for. :)
One of my patrons mentioned your Blog post. Thanks very much for the kind words!
Now I’ll have to reciprocate and read through your awesome-looking story. :-)
*Added to favourites
Hey! Hope you enjoy the extra dozen or so readers. Hah hah. My audience is decent sized, but TSM is maybe a little outside what people who read my comic are looking for.
I’m virtually asexual and honestly, this is good enough for me to skip through the sex scenes to get to the story.
I’m really enjoying it.
I’m glad you’re enjoying it. It’d probably be too much work to do a ‘fade to black’ version of this story for people who just want the awesome space opera.
It’s funny, I enjoy good harem stories, but sometimes when I’m reading them, especially in the early parts of the story, I think it’d be amusing to see a harem story with either a MC who is oblivious to all the female interest, or who is asexual to the point of turning down women who are very much not used to being rejected sexually.
Have you read the Everybody Loves Large Chests books? That’s pretty close to what you described!
I’ve read those, but having an asexual sociopathic killbox as an MC isn’t quite what I had in mind. I meant an otherwise normal and gregarious human(ish) character.
That would be an interesting story, an MC who’s kind of both a catalyst and the eye of the storm, but oblivious and mostly uninterested in the tension and activity around them. It would be tricky to write well!
There’s more than one?!?
Three now, and counting.
Check out E. William Brown. His longer series the Daniel Black series has harem themes but is really really well written and even the female characters are also bad ass.
For straight up sci find, especially with different kind of aliens check out Glynn Stewart’s Dutchy of Terra series
God that Fimbulwinter book has a boring cover.
But I’ll add it to my enormous wishlist.
the cover is boring but story is great. Gamer from our world gets pulled into parallel world where it’s ragnorok and he has to protect Hecatate’s last remaining worshipper, gains magic powers on the dimensional trip, many shenanigans and much hilarity ensues.
Three Square Meals is also available on https://www.storiesonline.net – that’s where I read it.
There’s also an add-on to calibre to let you download it from there to read locally.
OMG, I had no idea Tefler had published them! I’ve been following on storiesonline.net since…well, I suppose when it was published there. Gotta buy them all now!
Based on your recommendation, I bought them from Kindle. Based on one of the last posts, I logged in to storiesonline.net (I have an author’s account there) and lo! 101 chapters available in html, text, mobi/kindle and epub. No charge.
Last I checked, literotica had 119 chapters online. (For those wondering, these chapters are like 30K words long – at least the later ones. The first book is the first 10 chapters, but I think the 4th book is only 7 or 8 chapters. I think there’s one big spacebattle chapter that has to be 90K words at least.)
Damnit, I started to read these, and OMG they are good, but have taken me away from my other books…
Maxima, Cora, and Dabbler all in the same room…. Let it BEGIN!