I’ve been following the Sword & Laser podcast for a while, but I never really had gotten around to reading along with any of their book picks until this year, with The Fold.
Read moreThe Fold: Book Review
The Epic Crush of Genie Lo: Book Review
There are some YA novels that I have read that feel like I’m reading an anime. This is, in part, because some of the light novels that have been adapted to anime were aimed for YA audiences. The Epic Crush of Genie Lo is an YA novel that definitely fits that concept, though one with some very different and unique narrative hooks because of the point of view character and setting that make it really worth your while (and makes me wish it would get turned into an animated series).
Read moreThe Elder Scrolls: The Official Cookbook: Book Review
I like cookbooks. They are the fusion of my love for cooking and food, and my background in technical writing. I also love fantasy fiction & roleplaying games, with The Elder Scrolls series in particular. So, when I first played Skyrim and found there was cooking in the game, one of my first thoughts was “Man, an Elder Scrolls cookbook would be neat!” So, when one finally came out, I knew that I needed to check it out. Much as with the second Von Bek novel, I should have been looking at the Monkey’s Paw.
Read moreCity in Autumn Stars: Novel Review
In my review of The Warhound and the World’s Pain, I lamented that the book felt too short, and that the sexual assault sequence served no purpose. I should have noticed the finger curl on the monkey’s paw.
Read moreThe Warhound and the World’s Pain: Book Review
Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion series is interesting to discuss. Some stories have direct analogies to and inversions of Robert E. Howard’s work, like Elric. Others, like Hawkmoon, go in radically different directions. The first Von Bek novel probably falls more into the former camp – feeling like something of an inversion of Solomon Kaine, in multiple respects.
Read moreBest Reading Order for The Elric Series
After covering Count Brass, this time I’m taking a look at how best to read the Elric novels.
Read moreVlog: Why I’m Not (Exactly) Reviewing Count Brass
After much deliberation on this point, I’ve decided to talk about why I’m not doing a standard review of the Count Brass Trilogy, by getting to the series excess baggage through what is basically a review.
Read moreMatter: Book Review
Matter is my first step into the world of The Culture. I’ve heard bits and pieces about it through a variety of other sources, from the absurd ship names, to the concept of Outside Context Problems, to the absurdly high tech level – but I’ve never actually read a novel in the universe. While Matter is not the first book in the series, it is a pretty good jumping on point to the series.
Read morePlaying at the World: Book Review
This week I’m covering a non-fiction book on the history of Dungeons & Dragons, and the various influences that fueled it.
Read moreDoctor Who: Cat’s Cradle – Time’s Crucible Book Review
Virgin Books’ Doctor Who: New Adventures series was, back in the day, meant to provide fans of Doctor Who the thing they wanted after the show was put on indefinite hiatus after the serial Survival. Time’s Crucible is the 6th book in the series, part of a pair of thematically linked stories under the heading of “Cat’s Cradle”.
Read moreThe Friendly Orange Glow: Book Review
Histories of the computer industry tend to have a focus on the West Coast in general and California and Silicon Valley in particular. It’s where Apple and Microsoft came from, along with Atari. Occasionally, histories will head to Texas (because Texas Instruments) or New Mexico (because Microsoft was based there in a while, and that’s where MITS operated). However, the Midwest tends to get brushed over. So, when a book about the PLATO system, which came out of the University of Illinois, came up on my radar, touting about how much of modern cyber-culture came about on the system, I decided to check it out.
Read moreDragons of Winter Night: Video Book Review
This week, since we’re probably not getting GenCon this year, I’m going right ahead with the Dragonlance Chronicles, with book two – Dragons of Winter Night
Read moreFalse Value: Book Review
When I finished reading Lies Sleeping, the seventh book in the Rivers of London series, I kind of wondered where the series would go from there. I had thought The October Man might point out the direction of the story’s progression, but I wasn’t exactly sure. Well, I was part right – in that the direction of the story’s progression was going to get into more international practitioners, just not those in Germany.
False Value involves Peter Grant getting involved in the tech sector. Earlier books had set up an idea where technology and magic couldn’t get along – this book sets up a situation where the two can coexist, though parasitically if not symbiotically. Spoilers will be below the cut.
Read moreDragons of Winter Night: Book Review
Dragons of Winter Night, as a novel, runs into the problem of adapting what was we think of it into just a trilogy of books – a bunch of material has to be skipped over. We start off after the retrieval of the Hammer of Karass and the re-unification of Dwarven society (which would later be covered in Dragons of the Dwarven Depths), with that kind of setting the tone somewhat for how the show comes out.
Read moreIT: Book Review
Almost a year after the film adaptation finished, and almost 35 years after the book came out, I have read IT. Time to give my thoughts.
Read moreLegend of the Galactic Heroes: Book 10 Review
It has all come down to this, as we have the final book in the Legend of the Galactic Heroes series.
Read moreThe Electric State: Book Review
The Electric State is very much a different book from Tales from the Loop and Things from the Flood. Those books had a retrospective narrative – the point of view for those books was from the viewpoint of someone looking back on events with a sense of nostalgia. The Electric State, on the other hand, has a more conventional narrative, while still having significant themes of memory, but definitely without the warmth of nostalgia.
Read moreTales from the Loop & Things from the Flood: Book Review
A while back, on the internet, I stumbled across the work of artist Simon Stålenhag, in what was part of the Tales From The Loop project – though I did not know what it was at that time. So, when the art was collected into a series of books with a narrative behind them – along with a tabletop RPG, I figure it was time to properly check it out.
Read moreTales from Jabba’s Palace: Book Review
This time I’ve got the second of the Star Wars short story collections with Tales from Jabba’s Palace.
Read moreLegend of the Galactic Heroes Part 9: Book Review
This month we have the penultimate volume of Legend of the Galactic Heroes.
Read moreThe October Man: Book Review
The last book in the Peter Grant series of Urban Fantasy police procedurals wrapped up the end of the “Faceless Man” Arc, with the recurring antagonist of that series being taken down, while one of the members of Peter’s supporting cast who had turned to the Dark Side was now on the lam. In the wake of this, author Ben Aaronovitch has decided to, basically, explore a different chunk of this world with the novella The October Man, which moves the plot from the UK to Germany.
Read moreQuag Keep: Book (Video) Review
This week I’m rounding out my book reviews with what might be the proto-Game-Isekai novel, written in the ’70s by Andre Norton.
Read moreDragons of the Dwarven Depths – Book Video Review
I kick off my August GenCon licensed tabletop fiction reviews with a Dragonlance novel that fills a gap in the original Dragonlance Chronicles.
Read moreQuag Keep: Book Review
If I was going to describe the modern “Isekai” genre in brief, I’d describe it as “Game-based another world fantasy.” It’s not just fantasy where a protagonist is whisked to another fantastic world from ours like with the John Carter of Mars novels, or on the anime front with El-Hazard and Magic Knight Rayearth. This is fantasy where the characters are explicitly in a world that draws inspiration to games from gaming – sometimes by drawing the characters or their psyches into an actual game (ala Sword Art Online or Log Horizon), or a world which uses the language of RPGs like with Konosuba or Grimgar: Ash and Illusions. I would argue that if not the first of these, then one of the first of this particular genre – and was done in the ’70s by a woman.
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