Inside GMT Flash of Steel Playing at the World Dyson’s Dodecahedron Quest for Fun! Bruce Heard and New Stories CRRPG Addict Fantasy Cafe Sitrep Hex and Violence Banzai!! Dungeon Fantastic Gaming Ballistic Ravens N’ Pennies Let’s GURPS The Collaborative Gamer Don’t Forget Your BootsAfter way too long, I’ve finally gotten to Thomas Harlan’s Time of the Sixth Sun series. It is well written and therefore easy to get into. It’s also potentially very hard to get into. At one level, this is general[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Dealing with the other battle on the 16th of June 1815, Osprey’s second Campaign book on Waterloo is more of a companion than a sequel. Interestingly, while having to cover some of the same ground, the introductory sections are quite[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The Battle of Waterloo is a much-discussed bit of military history for many reasons, so it was a logical choice for Ospery’s Campaign series. Really, the surprise is that it didn’t appear until book number 15. It is much less[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Peter Wilson’s history of the Thirty Years War is in the end a popular, or at least, enthusiast history. But it is organized more as a series of essays with subchapters and sub-subchapters. This is appreciated as it lets him[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
For the recent Tolkien Reader Day, I picked up the first of Christopher Tolkien’s ‘History of Middle Earth’ series. It takes a bit of unpacking. This is largely the earliest versions of some of the earliest stories. However, while the[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The initial book of the Hidden Sea Tales comes to a very satisfying conclusion, but there’s a number of dangling threads. Sofie gets to go back to Stormwrack, and pick up the investigation of this world which isn’t—and is—Earth. She’s[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The third “Swords and Fire” book wraps up the trilogy well. My objections from the first book persist, but are better here, as the story and politics have grown. And all the strong points remain. There is a good mix[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The final volume of Sumption’s history of the Hundred Years War does exactly what one would expect. Another eight-hundred pages on a bit more than twenty years of history. It’s excellent stuff as always, but I do feel like it’s[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
First off, the electronic version of this book is in better shape than the previous. That had obviously been properly proofread, but there were still some major formatting problems with scene breaks and the like. Well, not even that’s a[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
As with other Ailette de Bodard stories I have read, this is a largely character-focused story with unfamiliar signposts. In this case, we have three different stories going on at the same time, but they’re all focused on the same[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…