Smudge Marks & Engel Werks Inside GMT Flash of Steel 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 Ravens N’ Pennies Let’s GURPS The Collaborative Gamer Don’t Forget Your BootsWarlord’s World is decidedly pulp. The Interstellar Patrol is a service in the Federation of Humanity with excellent ships and technology, and a fair amount of latitude in powers (one wonders just what the organization of the Federation is, but[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Starstrike wants to be a simple book. Aliens show up on Earth, and because we’re so much more experienced with war than anyone else, recruit a team of the best soldiers we have to offer to change the balance of[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Overall, The Weapon Shops of Isher was enjoyable, but it has a number of problems. Some of this is structural leftovers from being a combination of three short stories, but some run deeper. The novel starts with a prologue that’s[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The structure of Red Mars is in eight parts, with each one using a different viewpoint character (with two of them repeating earlier viewpoints). They cover about 35 years of the early colonization, settlement, and early terraforming of Mars. The[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Hexwood starts off conventionally enough. Earth is an unwitting backwater in the galaxy when an ancient device activates, and the ruling junta’s efforts to stop the problem fail. Life on Earth continues normally, except for our main character. She observes[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Effectively, the full title of this is “Against Stupidity, the Gods Themselves Contend in Vain”, a quote that is spread out across the three sections of the novel. I was a bit worried at first, as the book starts with[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
I’ve been meaning to read Dune for decades now, but the thick paperback on my dad’s shelf always intimidated me a little. I’ve had some knowledge of the book, being aware of the Avalon Hill game and having started Westwood’s[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The final volume of the Man of War series starts, as usual, in medias res with the USS Cumberland stuck in an impossible situation. Unlike the previous volume, this one flows naturally from the situation at the end, but there’s[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
I can remember coming across this anthology in the library when it first came out. I had completely forgotten that I had actually checked it out and read it until a few scenes in the stories started resonating with me,[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice was something of a slow burn for me. It was obviously solidly written from the start, but the plot is slow-moving, and unfocused. Early chapters alternate between two very different stories (with—more-or-less—the same viewpoint character) fifteen[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…