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 BootsAs the Crown of Stars series nears its end, this book loses its individual identity. There’s no real ‘spine’ overtly holding this book together as a unit. No new characters to speak of. As a result, The Gathering Storm does[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The very beginning of The Disfavored Hero directly states that this is an alternate Japan (Naipon) where myth is real. This is something that should never be said in a novel. Let your creation stand on its own feet, and[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Book four of Crown of Stars follows the usual practice of giving time to four major plot threads. The new major character this time is Adica, the Hollowed One of a tribe that is part of an effort to cast[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Book three of Crown of Stars introduces Zacharias as the new viewpoint character to help hold the book together as a separate unit. His story is largely passive, as he follows Sanglant’s mother, who re-enters after her exit in the[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The second book of Crown of Stars definitely suffers from a fracturing of the plot, with eight different viewpoint characters, most of which get turns from the get-go. Only one of these is a completely new character, and Anna’s story[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Ages ago, I started reading Kate Elliot’s Crown of Stars series, but lost track of just which book I had gotten up to, and so kept putting the rest of the series off. I’ve just started rereading the books to[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Michael Payne’s latest book is a bit unusual. It’s broken into four uneven parts, each of which contains several short or very short stories, each of which is preceded by quote from some work from that world. These smaller stories[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Poul Anderson’s A Midsummer Tempest starts out with a fairly straight telling of the Battle of Marston Moor. There is a difference: Prince Rupert of the Rhine is captured at the end of the action. And then, the second chapter[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
A friend who has been the source of a number of good recommendations over the years recommended Sing the Four Quarters back when it came out. It always stuck in my mind, and I’ve meant to get to it for…[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Smudge picked this up at APE 2015 last week. It’s a self-published graphic novel of a webcomic that finished up a couple years ago. The general high concept is Victorian fantasy, and it delivers on that quite well. The art[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…