Posted on by Alexander Case

Final Fantasy XV: The Dawn of the Future – Book Review

Final Fantasy XV had a lot of DLC planned, to expand on the game’s story by providing additional plot details during the big time skip before the game’s final act, expanding on the game’s backstory, and even providing an alternate ending. We got… some of it. We got the backstory expansion. We got some elaboration on what characters were doing when they were off-camera at certain parts of the game. However, we didn’t get the whole story – we didn’t get the expansion discussing the time skip, and we didn’t get the alternate ending. However, the game’s writers wanted to make sure that story was told, leading to The Dawn of the Future – which adapts one released episode, and the plots of a bunch of unreleased ones, to give an alternate ending.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Book Review: Sailor on the Seas of Fate

When I reviewed Fortress of the Pearl, I was partway through the next book in the first of the more recent Elric omnibus collections, and I came to the realization that book was written less with the thought of “How do I fit this story within the larger Elric saga?” and more “I have an Idea for an Elric story – where do I put it?” By contrast, Sailor on the Seas of Fate, which was published soon after Elric of Melnibone, feels like Moorcock continuing with the concepts he had with that first story – setting up the chain of events that lead to where the first published Elric story – “The Dreaming City” – picks up, and in the process further building up the concept of the Eternal Champion Mythos, based on the other incarnations that had been published at this point.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

The Fortress of the Pearl: Book Review

The Fortress of the Pearl is Michael Moorcock, in 1989, writing a book set between Elric of Melnibone (1972) and Sailor on the Seas of Fate (1976). The current Elric omnibus collections put this in that space in the chronology in their reading order, while my previous video on the Elric reading order recommended reading it significantly later. Re-reading the book now, in its place at the timeline – I think my assessment is accurate, but not necessarily for the reasons that I thought originally.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

The Jasmine Throne: Book Review

With The Jasmine Throne, by Tasha Suri, I’m finally getting back to being caught up with the Sword & Laser Book Club picks – more or less (November’s pick is Six Wakes, which I read a while back, so I’m using this month to catch up on some other books). While I liked the novel, my thoughts on The Jasmine Throne are complicated in ways that somewhat intersect with my views on She Who Became The Sun, and in ways that don’t.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Book Review: Vampire Hunter D, Vol. 1

For the Spooky Season, I decided to do something a little different from my usual string of horror films – having picked up the Vampire Hunter D audiobooks from Audible, and since I have a commute again, I decided to get started listening to those on my way to work – and having finished re-reading the first one, it would be appropriate to give my thoughts.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Book Review: Amongst Our Weapons

Lies Sleeping, the seventh book in the Rivers of London series, left a lot of open questions about the world of the setting while it wrapped a bunch of the threads around the Faceless Man. Probably the biggest one was around the Sons of Weyland – a group of practitioners who were also powerful magical craftspeople – having made various battle staves, along with the magical wards in and around The Folly. On top of that – The October Man also built up some more groundwork for various magical practitioners and organizations outside of England. Well, Amongst Our Weapons decides to pick up both those threads and runs with them. There will be some minor spoilers below the cut.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Book Review: Game Wizards: The Epic Battle for Dungeons & Dragons

Previously I have read and reviewed Playing at the World, the book about how Dungeons & Dragons came to be. Game Wizards: The Epic Battle for Dungeons & Dragons, is one of two follow up-books by Jon Peterson essentially about how Roleplaying Games went out of the hands of Gary Gygax & Dave Arneson. In the case of Game Wizards, it’s about how Gary & Dave lost their control over the game, through hubris and arrogance.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

She Who Became the Sun: Book Review

This weekend is Worldcon, and several weeks before the convention (basically the week before I got COVID), I finished reading the last of the novels that were up for Hugo Awards that weren’t part of a series that I hadn’t already started reading – She Who Became the Sun by Shelly Parker-Chan – a novel inspired by wuxia fiction, inspired by the rise of the Hongwu Emperor. It’s an… interesting book, but one which had some points that I stumbled over.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Project Hail Mary: Book Review

So, full disclosure, I never read The Martian. Haven’t read Andy Weir’s second book, Artemis, either. Both books were on my to-read list, and when the 2022 Hugo Award Nominees came around, and I saw that Project Hail Mary – Weir’s latest book – was on the list, I decided that it was time for me to get around to reading some Weir.

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