Inside GMT Playing at the World Dyson’s Dodecahedron Quest for Fun! Bruce Heard and New Stories CRRPG Addict Fantasy Cafe Lynn’s Book Blog Sitrep Hex and Violence Banzai!! Dungeon Fantastic Gaming Ballistic Let’s GURPS The Collaborative GamerGuy Gavriel Kay is an author who I really, really need to read more of. My first experience with him (Tigana) was very good, and I’ve been meaning to read more for a couple decades now. Thankfully, I was reminded[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
You’ve probably never heard of this war. There’s a good reason: John Harrel is the only one calling it that. This book covers what is usually considered two wars, neither of which seems to have any sort ‘official’ name. “Nisibis”[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The Children of Ynell series was originally published from 1977 to 1981, and was the first time I got involved in a series that wasn’t finished yet. In fact, I never did get the final book in a series I[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
This basically a follow-on to McLaughlin’s study of trade across the Indian Ocean. Despite being almost the same size, it feels like an appendix to it. Whereas his former book spent a lot of time giving specifics of particular trade[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Frieda’s biography of Francis I is certainly on the popular history end, and is well written and accessible. Moreover, not only did I find it accessible, but it gave me some desire to get back to Here I Stand, which[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
David Weber is a good author with a few glaring weaknesses. Sadly, all of that is readily apparent in this novel. The basic setup is that humanity gets to the stars, runs into an alien race apparently intent on wiping[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
This is mostly a reconstruction of the Sertorian War. There’s also some notes of the larger history of the Iberian peninsula, and people with an interest in the history of Iberia in general may want to pick this up too.[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The ‘ghosts’ that provide the excuse for the (admittedly great) title of this book are the cannenses, the survivors of the Roman army comprehensively defeated at Cannae. And there’s some interesting info on what seems to have happened to them,[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Typically, thoughts about the economy of the ancient world hit a wall of ‘they didn’t have a solid idea of how finance works’. Similarly, talk of the Roman Empire doesn’t generally get any further away than it’s immediate political neighbors.[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Despite the title, this is not a how-to book on how to get your own Crusade going. It’s actually a scholarly look at how the planning of the actual Crusades worked. Tyerman identifies broad subjects in planning and looks at[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…