Reviews

Graveyard Keeper Retrospective

2021-01-10T06:00:00Z

Back before my first child was born, I realized I had to make a choice: write fiction or write games. I didn't have time for both but I had a passion for both. For the last ten years, I've focused on the writing side but that didn't mean I stopped playing games.

It also doesn't mean I stopped analyzing games while I was playing. It is part of the entertainment for me, enjoying the plot and trying to figure out how they coded it. I do the same with movies, books, and almost everything else.

This week, I finished Graveyard Keeper, a casual slice-of-life game about managing a graveyard, creating zombies, and meeting a lovely village of personalities.

Overall, I found this enjoyable enough to play it for just shy of seventy hours, bought all the DLCs, and finished every plot I could find. I also went through all three endings for one of the DLCs.

The Controls

Thankfully, this game had a nice keyboard scheme. The primary action buttons were E and F. Unlike Stardew Valley, I found that I missed performing actions a lot less and it was clear what I was doing (most of the time). Having a bit “E” or “F” above an action item really helped.

Quests

Like many casual games in this genre, there is no real pressure to finish things in a hurry. If you miss a date, the worst that happened is you have to wait a week game time before you try again. Also, the order of actions isn't that important (baring two major plot pinches) so I found myself spending a day making wine and then another day just collecting honey.

That is the appeal for me lately. Casual games are nice being able to play for an hour or so before walking away to deal with family, food, or cleaning.

Graveyard Keeper had a somewhat nice quest reminder system. This is also something I missed from Stardew Valley, but having a screen where I can go and remind myself I needed to get a bucket of blood to a vampire or rustle up a gold-star burger. Part of the indicator also showed the person the quest was related and the game helpfully pops up with the list when you approach them.

Where it didn't work for me was I couldn't remember where I saw said characters. More than once, I randomly walked through every location in the map trying to remember who in the world this figure was. Having a “currently located” (since many characters have a schedule) or “sleeping” would have made it a lot easier.

Sadly, almost every quest in the game is “get X of Y” or “go talk to X” which quite a few things intended just to slow you down. Again, this is an artifact of this style of game but it started to get tedious in the last few days when I started just buying/plowing through plots.

Crafting

Crafting, like Stardew Valley and Crashlands, is a critical part of the game. There are a wide variety of different devices along the way ranging from a wood pile to a printing press. A number of them have upgrade and most (but not all) can be upgraded in place.

I like how most of the crafting devices have use even to the end of the game. Crashlands had the opposite, a bunch of devices that would be used for a short period of time and then abandoned for the next set.

Improvement wide, having a consistent ability to upgrade in place would have been nice for quality of life. Also, once an object is placed, it cannot be moved. It can only be destroyed (with recovering most but not all of the ingredients) and rebuilt in a new location.

One of the fun parts is that you can place the devices wherever you want… sort of. The game gives build spots that ensure there is room for the plot critical ones.

I'll admit, the places where the devices can be built had to be specifically shaped and designed to annoy someone with a touch of OCD like me. There is no way to fill every spot, no optimum arrangement. Also, there are some good chances where you can build two devices that prevents you from getting to the third.

Still, build and arranging is definitely my thing so it was nice to build.

Of course, having dozens of different devices spread out across multiple locations also meant a lot of time walking from place to place. Go to the dissection table, get some flesh from a corpse, go to the church table, make some paper, then over to the writing desk to create a chapter and then a book and then a prayer.

Thankfully, crafting devices can use every container in the area but with stack and space limits, I spent too much time arranging shelves because I couldn't just grab something from any shelf in the area. However, the game at least showed the contents of every container in the area which made it easier to know one of the twelve bookshelves had what you want.

This is probably one aspect that most of these games have. I have to lug stuff from one place to another. Arrange in boxes, try to remember where in the world I left the skulls. Or, in some of the later quests in the game, try to figure out which device had the mystical recipe that I needed to complete the plot.

In terms of casual games, it would be fantastic if there was some way to search all the recipes for all the devices and let me know which one I need to head over to (and ideally what I needed before I got there). In this regard, I think Satisfactory has a great pattern for this.

Another thing Satisfactory and Crashlands have is a build like, where you can say “I want to build a confession booth” and the HUD gives a list of ingredients. Satisfactory was just a tad nicer though.

Also, I'd love if there was a way to access all the craft benches and devices from the area. So instead of threading my way to a desk, I could just open up and see a control for the workbenches, mixer, and study table in one place.

Zombies

I loved that you can raise the dead to be zombies to do the tedious work. Apparently this came from a DLC, but it was at a point where making one more ceramic bowl was annoying. Being able to toss a zombie in front of the pottery wheel with a build list made things a lot more enjoyable for mid- to late-game actions.

Zombies also had zombie-specific crafting devices. So, you could install a zombie to make wine. You couldn't use it, but if you threw a zombie into it, they would build forever.

This is probably one of my favorite parts of the game by far.

Base-Building

I first encountered a game with base-building in Suikoden IV and fell in love. The ability to customize an area and see it grow just brings so much joy to me. Two of the DLCs have the ability with a tavern and a refugee camp. Both of them drew most of my attention (beyond the zombies and a desire to automate as much as possible). If that was the only part of the game, I would have played it without question.

Those two DLCs also provided supplies and money which made the rest of the game easier too. I'm glad I started them early in the game instead of finishing the main game first before starting them.

Plot

Overall, ignoring the quests to slow them down, the plots were enjoyable. The main one was the least emotionally engaging, but hearing the stories of everyone else really help make the game enjoyable.

I did not like the witch-burning plot though. That was detestable and non-skippable. On the other hand, the donkey plots were all entertaining.

Representation

This game had little in terms of representation. There were no queer characters, everyone was some shade of white, and no plots related to any of those. It was more of a Roman but there were still the Euro-centric social structures (king and church).

The game also had a depressing lack of female representation also and most of it was not positive. Every woman in the game was firmly in stereotypes while the men had more variance: the witch was ugly and old, the wives deferred to the husbands, the daughter was owned by the father, the singer was desired and beautiful.

(There was one nice bit related to the singer and her eventual romance which was a pleasant surprise.)

There were no children in the game. One of the DLCs explains why, so I'm actually okay with this.

With the DLCs, there was some nice displays of romance and loving relationships but… it was just a flash during Ms Charm's dance and a cut scene.

Replayability

To be honest, I don't see myself playing the game though. While the plot and nature really drew me in, once I lost a goal to keep going, I quickly lost interest. I need to work toward something and I don't have the time to try discovering every alchemy recipes or try to get all the achievements.

Baring a new DLC, I going to hang this game up while still recommending it. It caught my attention and gave me a lot of joy for seventy hours and that isn't something I'm just going to ignore.

If you like slice-of-life games like Stardew Valley, I think this is a solid, polished entry in that genre. There are some Inquisition plots that have to be experience, but I feel that was the only really major turn-offs being representation.

Devoid of projects

2013-05-15T05:00:00Z

This month has been a very hard month for me. There are a couple reasons, but one of the more obvious ones is my lack of creative projects. Sand and Blood is waiting for the editor to have an opening (hopefully this month) and the first five chapters of it's sequel, SAL, is sitting at WisCon's writing group submissions. Flight of the Scions is still in limbo, but I suspect I won't get back to that until after SAL and SAD are both completed.

A week from Thursday, I'm heading up to WisCon for the weekend. This year, I decided to do some panels, but due to me not understanding the website, I didn't get a single one I really wanted to do. Instead, I'm on three panels I'm interested in.

Build a World is an improv-style world development. It was fun to see how it turned out last time and I think I'm pretty good at creating worlds and plots on the fly, so I thought I would give it a shot.

The Glitch Memorial Panel is to talk about one of my favorite semi-social games, Glitch. It's talking about the game in general and so I feel pretty comfortable.

The final panel, The Female Soldier in Science Fiction and Fantasy, scares me though. I haven't really focused on stories about female soldiers but it is a topic that I'm interested in. In specific, I'm interested in the difference in portrayals of females in fantasy and science fiction in general.

I've been trying to do research on this panel so I don't quite sound like an uneducated fool. This research is basically going through the novels and movies I have in my collection (plus about six more that I bought) and trying to get a general "feel" for how they are shown.

Though it is poorly written, I have thrown my initial notes up on a website SF/F Women. I'm trailing behind what I've read/watch verses what I've written up because it takes a lot of time and focus to try to analyze every female character.

There is a fear that what I'm doing is a waste of time, but I've found a bunch of new book series that I never read but enjoy, plus I think I have a better handle on both how military women are shown in these books and movies, plus how difficult it is to find military women in my collection. I have, um, a lot of DVDs and could only five 12 DVDs with examples.

So, that is why I'm not working on anything really creative. No stories or novels. It feels wrong and I'm getting anxious, but I really want to be able to speak for twenty minutes on any topic the other panelists and audience brings up.

Fire-Heart by C. S. Marks

2009-10-18T05:00:00Z

Two years ago at GenCon, I wandered by this lovely little desk in the Author’s Alley that had a huge pile of books. I only picked up one of them at the time... something I normally do since I usually take a year to get through the meter-high stack of books I pick up at that convention. Then, I reviewed Elfhunter by C.S. Marks. The next year, I picked up Fire-Heart and finally got a chance to polish off the book. I also have the third, because I enjoyed the first one, but that is sitting at the bottom of my reading list just to give the rest of them a chance at a review.

Needless to say, I got to Fire-Heart in this last week and I was, to say the least, very happy with the novel. It comes in at a rather hefty 717 pages, with the story ending at 694 and the rest is appendixes and some rather nice maps. That makes it a pretty significant read and took me just under eight hours to finish it. I struggled with the first third of the novel, but it quickly smoothed out. By the end, I was obsessively reading the last 150 or so pages just because I was really getting into it.

Like Elfhunter, Fire-Heart is written with multiple points of view and a semi-omniscient narrator. I say “semi” because for most of the story, the little “and they would never see each other again” type of comments came true and represented lovely foreshadowing. But, there were a few places where the “never again” ended up being at least a few more times. I don’t like that dishonesty with the narrator, mainly because it was a stark contrast to the first novel and disappointing when it didn’t come trust. This is probably the one thing I disliked the most about the novel.

What I did love is the individual characters in this story and their development. Most of the character grow rather nicely throughout the story. There are a few shallow characters, mostly the villains, but otherwise everyone continued to progress and the story smoothly went from one major point to another.

Fire-Heart did have a great sense of humor in places. These came mostly from the creatures in the story. I love it when authors give a voice to the animals in the story and C. S. Marks didn’t disappoint here. The horses where the ones in this story and having their personalities shown in the story really added a nice touch to the entire thing; and built up an emotional attachment to them. It also shows that the author loves horses in the story, there is something about the detail and reactions that has a ring of truth to it.

The novel does have a rather extended plot, but suffers from being a “movie sequel”. You know, the type of movie where they make the second one solely to lead into the third one? This novel ended the same way with a cliff-hanger that was both obvious and promises to be an epic conclusion to the three books. I hope it doesn’t disappoint, but I’ll find out when it finishes. When I was talking to C. S. Marks, she mentioned that the desert scenes in the middle dragged on, but that is where I really got into the story. It was a tad long, about half the novel, but it was also appropriate for the plot and I thought well done.

One of the notable things about the world in Fire-Heart is that there isn’t that much magic. No spells flying around, no glowing swords. Instead, most of the magic of the world is subtle and rather gritty. I really like that since people just can’t pull some spell out of their pocket and save the day. Instead, success comes from hard work, talent, and perseverance. For me, this is actually probably the best part of the entire world and the writing style.

What I don’t care for, is the elves, but then again, I don’t like the stereotypical elves anyways. They are, as a whole, perfect in the story. The novel does bring that up and it is a source of friction later in the story. This gave me a lot of pleasure, actually, because I don’t like perfect anything when it comes to novels. Even with that, the elves were still a bit too perfect for me.

I do like the elves’ reaction to honey.

And it comes down to the final question: would I read it again? Yes, but probably when I have a long week to read all three of them in one shot. I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys really epic fantasy.

Warrior of Destiny by T. R. Chowdhury and T. M. Crim

2009-07-19T05:00:00Z

Previously, I reviewed the first book by T. R. Chowdhury and T. M. Crim, the Child of Prophecy, and I picked up the second book at GenCon 2008. But, it took me way too many months to get to this review.

Warrior of Destiny is a solid continuation of the first book and it dovetails nicely into the conclusion of that story and builds up a remarkably different story while keeping to the original tone. The book is 534 pages, a pretty hefty book, and takes a while to read. In my case, just over six hours, but they were an enjoyable six hours.

That isn't to say I loved the book. It is an decent fantasy novel, but not what I would call a great book. The story is split almost in two main plots for the entire length of the novel, with what I view as the main character, Adrianna, having adventures with learning how to be a mage, and the rest of the group from the first book. I found that Adrianna's adventures drew me into the story, but I found myself lagging while paying attention to the other plot line. One is obviously built up better than the other.

It doesn't help that the novel jumped back and forth between these two groups. In many cases, the point of view jumps in the middle of paragraphs which is one of my personal dislikes, but at least it kept in the same group. When the story is broken down into chapters and sections (an extra line between paragraphs), I would expect a POV shift at the section break, but there were times when the POV shifted between sentences, adding to the confusion of who was having those deep, inner thoughts.

There are a lot of inner thoughts in this novel. In itself, I don't consider this bad, but I didn't really get a sense of emotional interplay for those thoughts, and this book focused a great deal on emotions. At first, I found the rapid-fire change of emotional states, from hatred to lust back to disgust, to be difficult to handle. Later, I found the reason and I enjoyed that twist greatly. But, in writing, the transitions were brutally fast and made it hard to swallow some turns of events.

I touched on world-building in the last review, but I like their world. I find it interesting what they are creating and their deviations from the original story, but I don't like their word choices or character names. Too many "S" names all working together. It is still obvious this is an adventure, or at least based on Dungeons and Dragons. They use spell names, complete with italics, and class names. But, then change things that didn't really need to change. For example, there are umber hulks but instead of orcs they have orocs. Going with either all custom names or game names would made it easier for my comprehension of the story. Likewise, the units of measurement became cumbersome and I just ignored them in general. I think saying miles is better than zarcols, though zarcols are more "flavor", they also mean someone has to translate it while reading.

Finally, this book is somewhat randy. There is rape... it comes up a lot but there is only two attempted scenes. Nothing graphical really, but it happens to be one of the two things I will always mention in a review since it pulls the book from Fluffy's reading list. Beyond that, and in stark contrast from the first one, it seems like everyone is getting or wanting some. The main character who seems to lust after every male who's name starts with "S" or spends any length of time around. It might fit the character, but I felt it was a sudden change in personality from the first book.

The author's writing style improved drastically in this book. While there are long sections, it has more of a punch when reading it. The later half, like many books, felt smoother and it lead right up to the climax. Unfortunately, when the book was finished, I really wanted something more substantial. The conclusion felt rushed, with the final battle taking dozens of pages after hundreds of buildup.

Would I recommend it to someone? Depends on their interest. If they loved the first book, then they'll probably love the second. If they were fond of D&D adventures, then this is a wonderful book for them. For those who are pickier about their fantasy or need a bit more crunch with endings, I wouldn't recommend it. I'll buy the third one for sake of completeness and to follow the story, which still has potential, but I don't really see myself pulling this book out of the shelf again and re-reading it.

Code cleaning

2009-06-11T05:00:00Z

Weight Loss (4.1 of 14.7 kg)

College Petitions (2 of 4)

In the last few days, I've been cleaning up some of my base libraries in preparation of messing with Unit Testing and AdvanceMath. All of this to test my theories on generics with C# and get something closer to empirical evidence of what is going on. I don't like trusting my gut when it comes to performance numbers, mainly because performance is so subjective it isn't even funny.

Of course, I ignored this for a bit too long so I had to clean up some Subversion repositories (my writing backup is working 100%, naturally), so I can finish checking in my cleanups so I can work on the tool library (MfGames.Tools) so I can work on the Unit Testing command line interface, all so I can do this.

I love the dependency graph of my libraries. I will admit, I really want to work on the new project, but I'm fighting with tooth and nail to finish some of my older ones before I can "play" with new projects.

The problem is, the new idea has been obsessing me for three weeks now. I want to do it, but I feel that I can't with so much hanging over me. One reason I'm getting more productive and just getting things done. It's like a bribe, if I do the other things I used to love, I can do the new thing that I will no doubt love just as much.

That and this is a good programming week--Fluffy is out of town until Monday.

New Tricks by John Levitt

2009-05-06T05:00:00Z

Recently, I read New Tricks by John Levitt. This is the sequel to Dog Days which I previously reviewed. The short version is, I liked it. John retained the bits that I really liked in Dog Days and many of the things I didn't care for weren't present in this book. There were a few new things I wasn't fond of, but this is a good, solid sequel to the first.

This still isn't a book for Fluffy. Like the first and by the nature of this book, animals get hurt. Somewhat more graphically in this one, but that puts it well out of her reading range. Which is fine for me, because I thought the scenes were integral to the plot and not gratuitous. In this case, the horror of those scenes actually hits a lot harder than the first.

People get hurt in this story also. I found the human suffering scenes to be briefer than the animals, but they also didn't have the emotional impact that John built up throughout the story. You really feel for the spirit animals, the ifrits. Just not as much with the humans.

There is a fair amount of relationships in this book. I can't honestly say I felt anything for them. The romance was somewhat bland. Characters with a history together, even after a few years, didn't really connect in any aspect. Part of it was the plot itself, but I felt that John didn't really show that history.

Now, the new relationships, those were nice and raw, when they dealt with the main character. There is a wonderful sense of newness in his interactions, with interesting characters and quirks. The know-it-all showed up and was cryptic, but I really can't describe how much I don't like insufferable know-it-alls who won't tell things. Beside that, there were nice reveals of people's personalities and the little details really add to the story. Mr. Levitt also did a nice job of showing the dark magic users as "not evil" which I do appreciate. It is a trend continued from the last book and it is developed nicely in here.

The new revelations in the world's cosmology are very nice. I like it as the main character finds out more about the world and things behind the relatively limited area of the first. It shows depths in world building and a lot of promise in future books.

This is also a book where people don't magically heal from their wound, physically or mentally. While this is a trait that Fluffy isn't fond of, I really enjoy it. We are a combination of our pasts and I think this book really works on showing that.

One of the questions in the first book pops up in this book: where do ifrits come from? It got kind of annoying in places, because it seems like every single person in the world keeps asking that question. While it is developed better here, and I like the cosmology behind it, the question itself got tedious.

I still liked the story. John's writing style is very easy for me, I can lose myself in the words for a couple hours and come out feeling like I didn't waste my time. I've re-read parts of it already, as I like to do, and I still enjoy it. I would recommend it to anyone who likes their urban fiction a bit on the dark side, but I would highly recommend they read Dog Days first.

Cybermancy by Kelly McCullough

2009-03-31T05:00:00Z

I'm a programmer by profession and also one by choice. I also have that passion for fantasy and urban fiction that can't help by color my view of the world. When there are stories that combine these two together, I have to admit, I can very easily fall in love.

Kelly McCullough's book, WebMage started it. A child of the Fates who happens to use a divine computer network to program spells. Laptops, cellphones, and mainframes that become goblins, sprites, and trolls. Kelly created a fantastic world that remind me of Amber and still manages to keep a fairly sane view of computers and technology. Mixing in the Greek stories into everything really just adds a capstone to everything.

Recently, I finished the sequel to the first book called Cybermancy. This continues the main character's journey into becoming something more than just a a child of Fate. It continues the mixing of magic and technology of the first one, the main reason I fell in love with the series, but added more depth as he touches on some of my favorite Greek gods: Zeus, Hades, and Cerberus. Kelly gives the various divine forces wonderful personality. Even simple things like Zeus using the computer network used to control all of reality for its most basic purposes: porn. Or Cerberus' observations on his duties. It also has nice touches of some of the divinity lessons I've head in the years, all wrapped into a very well-written package. But, even with Kelly moves away from the worn personalities of Greek gods, he still builds great characters with the webgoblins, pixies, trolls, and various family members involved.

I never felt the story was forced in any part of the book. It just zipped right along, keeping a nice level of buzz through the story. The descriptions are light but flowing. I could learn a lot of from his writing style.

That isn't to say I liked everything in the book. The romantic subplot fell kind of flat for me. It wasn't the fact it was there, it started in the first book very well, but I simply didn't feel the passion between the main character and his beau. It is hard to keep up passion across two books and I don't think it survived into the second book as well.

There is also rape in this book. It is the classic story of Hades and Persephone, much like the Grimm Brother's version of some of the Disney tales. Raw and brutal, despite never seeing it "on screen" as it were. Kelly's descriptions, even glossed over and only a dozen paragraphs spread out through the story, it gives a sad but haunting quality to the story. There is a point to it, and it is tied nicely into the plot, but I can't recommend it to anyone who avoids those topics.

And, because of the nature of dealing with the Fates, Necessity, and all the other Greek gods, there are know-it-alls. Everywhere. This is one of those cases where I have to accept it. It isn't a matter of everyone knows what's going on, but everyone knows different sets of everything and acts like a know-it-all. Sadly, some of them honestly know-it-all. So, it's kind of a neutral comment.

Despite that, I loved the book. It flows smoothly and meshes right into my own personal hot buttons in fantasy: magic and computers. I also like the harsh view of the worlds. I like how people experience damage having their adventures instead of coming out smelling like roses. There is no doubt I'll be grabbing the third and fourth of the series.

Deader Still by Anton Strout

2009-03-30T05:00:00Z

As part of my weekend of cuddling and reading books, I got to Anton Strout's Deader Still. This was a book I was looking forward too and I wasn't disappointed at all. It is a good solid follow-up of Dead to Me.

I like books that only take two hours to read. Yeah, it takes months and months to write, but if I can lose my sense of reality, I simply read faster. And reading Strout's work is a pleasure.

There is very little about this book I didn't like. The main character and those around him are getting a lovely depth to them, both villains and good guys. It is nice to see how the bad guys from the last book ended up, and how differently they could go. I'm hoping that one of them ends up a proper mastermind by the time this series comes to end with flairs of Pendergast's family insanity.

The descriptions are lovely, just shallow enough not to mire you in the details but also rich enough to get you through the story. I like the descriptions of the various personalities, and the conflict between Simon's various "lives". I have to appreciate the growth of the main character's powers and, because of various things, I just love the idea of someone based out of Downer's Grove in Illinois. Not only because one of my novels is based out there, but because it just fit perfectly with the characters involved.

There were only a few things that kind of annoyed me. One was the jealousy subplot. It felt like a hammer when it came up and, like most other times, I think polyamory would have solved that just fine. But, it wasn't obnoxious or anything, just obvious. Thankfully, it moved past quickly enough and didn't drag out for the entire length of the novel.

The other is related too much with the plot of the book, so I'm not going to go into details. Just say I felt that things recovered too fast and rather abruptly.

There was only really one character who pushed things too far, but Anton already marks them as a deus ex machina. I am seriously hoping they end up broken in the next book, but I think Anton might be heading that direction simply with everything around it. And that, I'm really looking forward to in the next book.

Would I get the next one? Oh yeah. This is a nice, occasionally snarky, entertaining series that has a good depth and keeps moving forward. I'd also recommend it to Fluffy, if she liked urban fiction.

The Becoming by Jeanne C. Stein

2009-03-30T05:00:00Z

I recently read the The Becoming by Jeanne C. Stein. It is an entertaining vampire comes-of-age novel but it didn't really bring anything new to the table and I really can't say it is a great novel.

Ms. Stein's writing style is smooth and enjoyable. I devoured the book in an afternoon and then wondered where I lost the day. I also didn't put it down, taking it to the kitchen and everywhere else since I was enjoying it so much. The pacing was excellent, coupled with the descriptions, since it flowed very well through the entire length of the book.

Her writing is enjoyable, I didn't really care for the story itself. But, there were a few things in the book that really jarred me.

One is rape. There is a rape scene in the book, first chapter action, and that is one of the two things I'll always mention in a review. However, in contrast of the rape survivors I know, the main character managed to push the entire event aside and focus on her new vampire powers in a matter of hours of waking up. Just because she enjoyed it. This bothers me, mainly because it jars with my suspension of disbelief so much. I'm uncomfortable with anyone who can pass through that tragedy so quickly.

This book also has a few of the vampire powers that I've always disagreed with. Not being visible in a mirror has always disagreed with my slightly and psuedo-scientific mindset. I can't explain how getting a blood-borne virus or bacteria or something else would somehow bend light but only for reflections. The telepathy, strangely enough, I didn't have any trouble with, except for the fact it was too easy. Kind of like the beginnings of Magical Knights Rayearth where the first three episodes the girls get all their powers.

The world development had its up and downs. As I've mentioned in a few stories, I'm not fond of characters who know everything but "can't explain it right now". There are a few characters like that, which just left me feeling like I was just watching a joke, waiting for the punchline. I might even say not a very good joke since I figured out the villain of the novel somewhere around chapter five. There were a few nice plot twists, something I enjoyed, but they weren't exactly... well, surprising.

I can't say I wanted my life back after reading it, because I didn't. I did enjoy reading it, but it was closer to a new look at old ideas of something more radically different or something that really made me think. I probably won't buy the rest of the series until maybe book four to see if it sharpens up but I will get her second series, if she creates one. I like the writing style, I just need the content to be a bit more cosmo-shaking to really feel it was a great novel.

Dog Days by John Levitt

2009-02-22T06:00:00Z

I read Dog Days one weekend after Fluffy left town. I wanted to curl up with a good book, enjoy some sunlight, and basically just lose myself in a fantasy world for a little bit. I got that, but it wasn't the idyllic book I was half expecting when I picked it up. Instead, Dog Days ended up being one of those books that got me thinking long after I finished reading it.

In other words, I enjoyed it.

John's writing style is very easy on the eyes, but a bit hard on building a picture for me. It wasn't the dead silence as I try to picture the scenes, but the more fantasical creatures really were hard to picture. I managed to get through the 297 pages in about three hours which for me is a decent rate. I didn't really stumble over anything, except for a single scene in the park.

I like cosmology in my books. I like to see a hint of the rules behind what is being told. When they are splayed out right in front of me, it isn't as exciting as getting little hints and there. Levitt found a good balance of exposition through most of the story and pulled back the curtain in a very pleasant manner.

Sadly, this book isn't for Fluffy. She has some rules about reading books and watching movies. This book triggered one of those: animals (in specific dogs) get hurt or killed. She nearly broke my hand when we watched Payback. It's one of those illogical things, but I thought even those specific events were very well done, glossed over in the right places and emotionally meaningful.

The flow of the book worked well the sense of humor and confusion, winding back and forth until it came to a rather satisfying ending. It wasn't excessively graphical, but it did managed to poke me in one of the topics I don't like: prophecies. It isn't a major part of the plot, actually, I thought it was kind of tacked on as flavor and a lame joke, but it really didn't do anything to me. Mr. Levitt talks about it being useless until after it already happened, and I agree (and kind of wish it was just left out entirely). I really don't like hints for foretelling anymore than I like people who know everything but won't tell.

I also liked how Mr. Levitt showed the different styles and politics of magic. As an urban fiction, naturally there has to be some justification for the secrecy. It is one of those "yeah, yeah, move on to the other stuff" points for me, but it did pique my interest a bit. But, same basic idea: magic people have to hide.

Though, there was one point of that secrecy that I really liked. The entire discussions about enlightenment and withdrawing from the world. That is something I adored in Blue Moon Rising and I was extremely happy to see something similar here.

It is hard not to love characters in this book. Many of the main ones have a depth to them that just starts building as the story goes on. Someone I thought was going to be a secondary character, barely worth a description, ended up being a lot more important and kind of cool. Likewise, John created a wonderful personality in Louie, the spirit dog, and with Mason, the main character. I could easily get emotionally attached to both of them. I also started to get attached to the girlfriend in the story, but that went in a direction that I didn't even remotely expect.

And that leads to the final thing I liked about this story: people are touched by their events. I like that. It is one of those things I want in my own writing. The story ended on a good note, but it wasn't all roses and sunshine. Instead, he managed to give that emotional kick in the rear with the last few pages by showing the scars the characters gained during their recovery after the final happenings.

And I thought that was awesome.

Would I recommend it? Yes, to those who like their urban fiction a little dark and don't mind the occasional animal being hurt. I'll read it again, right before I grab any sequel.

The Bringer of War by Dylan Birtolo

2009-02-22T06:00:00Z

I'm fond of Dylan, mainly because he help inspire me to actually try to write professionally (which I haven't exactly done) but also because he lured me into the Author's Alley at GenCon. All with the power of his name. It's a great name. I like that name.

I also like his new book, The Bringer of War A stand-alone sequel to his first book, The Shadow Chaster.

It is really nice to see author's books over time. You can see a refinement in their craft, much like I noticed with the earliest Garfields and the later ones. Dylan obviously has gotten better at writing, the words flowed a lot easier as I read it and I could picture a lot more. Actually, there wasn't any scene I struggled with at all. Even the more action scenes--something I didn't care for in the last one--were much nicer and I liked reading them. And getting caught up in the action. It only took me about an hour and a half to read, which for a 227 page book, is good for me since the faster I read, the more I enjoy it.

This is a stand-alone book, but I think it really encourages you to read the first one. There is a fair amount of back story that is glossed over in this one, but not as deeply to explain everything. I felt that reading Shadow Chaser really explained stuff and I would recommend it to anyone reading this book.

This book does expand on Darien's (the main character) world. Actually, it does in a very nice way. He isn't really the "chosen one" anymore, which actually makes me happy. I don't like "one and only" thing that much and it made it a lot more enjoyable knowing that he is just very special and probably going to be abused.

Lots.

I liked when authors abuse their characters.

And it is a nice struggle for Darien in the book. I enjoyed reading it, but I didn't really feel entirely happy with the ending. While I loved reading the further adventures of Darien, I didn't really think the story advanced the entire plot much. True, it was a good story, but more like a middle episode of Babylon 5 or the second movie in a trilogy. It set up the grand and glorious fight, but didn't really get into the fight itself. Appropriately, the book's title already hinted of that. I was just hoping that there was a bit more warmongering before the end of the book. If Dylan doesn't write a sequel, I'm probably going to have to ask Fluffy to beat him up until he writes it.

One thing I really enjoy about Dylan's writing is that no one is perfect. Oh, there are some characters who get really close, but there is that tantalizing hope right at the end that they are as screwed up as everyone else. I cheered at that point. (Yeah, I talk to my books as I read them.)

The roaming POV in the story worked out well. It showed different personalities and helped really develop the Shadow in that world. I liked seeing the world from the different views, but also how others worked their shape-shifting into their perceptions. Dylan's world building is only getting better and I could easily see a fan starting a site just to track the growing number of fascinating personalities.

Only one major point kind of irked me about the book: Susan. As a character, she felt more like a limp log or an actress hired to look pretty. She didn't really do anything where she kicked a fair amount of ass in the first book. She was there, but I really hope to see her do more than a few scenes.

I still greatly enjoyed this novel. A good book and worth the money I paid for it. Obviously, I'm hoping to find a next one coming soon because I want to see what is next. Fluffy and I have read it and I've already pushed it toward another friend.

Crayon Physics Deluxe

2009-01-11T06:00:00Z

There are a few games that I really enjoy. There are the plot-heavy RPG's that draw me in for hours and the casual games that draw me in for hours. Sometimes, it's nice to find a game where you can start it up and just play around with it, then look up to find out that you just lost half a day.

Crayon Physics Deluxe is one of those games. A very simple game, relatively speaking. You draw boxes, chains, and hinges on the screen and get a ball to roll into the star. The wonderful part of the game is not the complicated puzzles; most of them can be solved by brute force. Instead, the draw of the game is how you can solve a puzzle. The program doesn't have "one true way" to figure out a stage. I lost hours trying see how complicated of a Rube Goldberg device I could create. I realized this at some point when I managed to build a catapult to launch the ball into a series of tubes just to get it along a straight line.

And that is the joy of the game. Not finishing a stage, you could probably do that in a few hours, but finding cool ways of finishing a stage, something that someone else might not have thought of.

Obviously, I would rather there be a Linux version of the game, mainly because that is my operating system of choice, but this will definitely hit the magic point of good entertainment for me (money paid divided by hours of entertainment is less than 1). I'm already 6 hours into that and I just installed it yesterday.

Happy Hour of the Damned by Mark Henry

2009-01-11T06:00:00Z

I love urban fiction where the main characters are snarky and the sarcastic. I like when the humor is mixed in with the horror and seriousness, but not when it is bolted on. It needs to be blended with the elements instead of "put a funny scene here" type of writing. It doesn't hurt when there is something interesting besides vampires in the story. And this novel gave me everything I wanted in that type of book.

Happy Hour of the Damned by Mark Henry is one of those stories. Written from a single point of view throughout the story. Actually, its a first person point of view with footnotes scattered everywhere. Even though I'll admit footnotes smack of academic papers, Mark uses them throughout the story very effectively (baring chapter 8 which used * instead of proper numbers). In fact, probably like most readers, I find myself reading the footnotes when I get to the page, just because they are as entertaining as the rest of the story. Actually, I read them first, then read the page.

The characters of the world are interesting, but I wouldn't say they got very much depth in story, but there are a few hints here and there of more. The gay vampire was one of my least favorite characters, mainly because he was the flattest character. On the other hand, some of the other vampires were fascinating, not only in how Mark shows their differences from humanity, but also how they deal with their own limitations. And, my favorite characters, are the evil little girls. But, I like goth lolita reapers. Can't say why, but death should wear a dress.

Which leads to cosmology. I like the limitations of the zombies, their inability to heal and therefore their desire not to damage their skin. It adds a very interesting tension to the story since two of the zombies are beautiful, but it's guaranteed to fade since they can't heal. Reminds me of Death Becomes Her.

There were a few things I didn't like about the cosmology. Two for the zombies, actually. One was the "breath" bit. I couldn't picture it and it seemed... deus ex machima-ish. I like the idea of the breath and how it could be used, just not the special effects of it in the story. The descriptions just fell flat for me.

The other was the scatological drawbacks of being a zombie. I won't go into details, but it makes sense for being dead. I just don't agree with the volume. It reminded me of the comment that all Japanse anime people are filled with high pressure blood vessels. One cut and they burst out everywhere. Same thing with the descriptions of this specific drawback. Too much out for too little in. The drawback is also scattered all over the place, but it is tied into the humor and somewhat gracefully done without turning into a fart joke every ten pages.

Didn't really mention the plot, did I? It's a decent plot, but I felt the story was more of a groundwork book with a good plot--but not what I would call great--filled with little surprises here and there. But, the real strength of the book is the personal crisis of the main character and the society of the not-normals. It explores the nature of the supernatural wonderfully, treating it with a grotesque glamor that leaves a pleasant aftertaste to the thoughts. With his style, Mark could write US Weekly for the dead and it would be just as addictive as that magazine is for Fluffy.

Overall, the story bounces back and forth between absolutely glamorous to dark and moody and back again, with more than a bit of dark humor to spice it. It brought the same joy that Undead and Unwed brought me and there is no doubt that I'll pick up the sequel the second I see it in the store.

A hermit emerges

2008-12-15T06:00:00Z

I had a very busy and interesting weekend, filled with in-laws, programs, and getting my grade in college (an "A").

Most of Friday and Saturday ended up being for the in-laws. On Friday, spent a few hours with FiL talking about everything and nothing. He made a really good pork roast and I did laundry. On Saturday, I helped my aunt-in-law set up her new Vista machine and help her learn the changes in Windows since we gave her a computer 5-6 years ago. Just a few little changes. :) It also reminded me, dial-up sucks when you are used to a cable modem.

And on my side of the family, starting the planning for the holidays thing. A couple good hours with my dad on holiday plans and how to render things in Blender. It's interesting that he and I both like the program, but we have completely different goals of what we want out of it. He wants realism, I want abstraction (line drawings are love...).

Beyond that, I did some work for Prebuild and got a bunch of patches put into the system. Minor little things, but I'm aiming for a release next Saturday.

I also got BooGame to compile and run under Linux. I honestly thought it would be a lot more work, but it just took a couple minor things and `mdtool`. Very cool since it means that I'm still on track for making Baby Squid God and CuteGod both multi-platform with a minimum of work.

Beyond that, not much more. I spent all of Sunday in the apartment, so I missed the notice to park on a lower level to avoid the -30 C tempatures that hit the city; I had the joys of scraping off my car in really cold weather this morning.

I should probably get gloves. Or, more importantly, more than a single glove.

This coming week should be mostly a writing week. I'm hoping to do a bit more programming in the latter half, but I want to write a short story (maybe two), do my Critters obligations, work on my commission, and write another chapter for my serial.

Oh yeah, and a petition. I really need to get off my ass and write my college course petitions so I can actually graduate next year. This is a Good Thing™ with our future plans.

World of Goo by 2D Boy

2008-10-13T05:00:00Z

Today, 2D Boy realizes the indie game developers dream and has their game show up on the Nintendo Wii. World of Goo is, in short, an amazing little game. I preordered it and got to enjoy a preview of the game before this weekend. Actually, I got the download code earlier last week, but I had to finish some of my own chores before I got the code.

When I finally downloaded it, I had to play through the first stages again. It wasn't a big deal, they added enough polish to the game that it was a joy to play. I love the puzzles since they required me to actually think. Some of them weren't obvious at first, but I managed to go through about 40 stages in just short of 7 hours. I even got two OCD (obsessive completion disorder or something like that, basically top score). Three of the stages were on my "swearing at the computer" list until I figured them out, but I managed to lose my entire Sunday simply playing this game.

There is something about those little goo balls. I love the little sounds they make when they wake up and when you toss them aside. Later, I'm suppose to get the profanity pack which will be adorable for me, but probably not for everyone. But, the attention to details, the sign painter's signs, and everything else made a really addictive game. It doesn't hurt that the game goes smoothly from simple mechanics to really challenging games, with enough things mixed in to really throw you a curve.

There were a few surprises that I really enjoyed. In the game, the play changes enough that you don't get bored, but 2D Boy decided to go without DRM on the game. No worrying about drivers breaking your machine or anything else. And... well, I was ecstatic. They have a sane idea of how to stop piracy (respect your users and ask them to just report it), but it was like a cherry on top of an excellent game.

The game is also coming out for the Mac and Linux in the coming months(?). Much of this is because they wrote using SDL, but they are also being nice and letting you buy one copy and get it for all the platforms. Again, these guys are doing all the right things and I desperately hope it works out for them. And, the small part of me that is a game programmer really hopes that I could write a game this amazing myself. From a technical point of view, these guys are definitely heroes in my book.

Its only $20, but definitely worth every nickle.

Weekend productivity

2008-09-22T05:00:00Z

Apparently, one way of getting over writer's block is to decide not to write and work on something else. The sheer desire not to do what I'm "suppose" to do is enough to make me want to do anything else. In this case, writing. After deciding to work on the baby squid god for the weekend, I managed to find the energy and desire to write just over five thousand words in a few short hours, finish the first draft a commission, get feedback, and update it. Nice feeling, even if one of the feedback items was "too romantic". Oh well, easy to fix tomorrow and I'll send it right back out with a couple hundred more words worth of expansion.

Went to Fluffy's family reunion. Rather nice, talked a lot, relaxed a bit, enjoyed some good food. Found out I have a uncle-in-law three blocks from my apartment who is into realty. Well, guess I knows who is going to probably help us find a place. Also ended up have a long talk with Fluffy about the future of our home, mainly how to juggle so many parts around in the next few months. Painful, but I think we needed to talk.

Finally, worked on the baby squid god. After three days of work, I came to a realization. I hope too much for things to go well. While I could make it perfect, it is going to take another week. And, if it takes me two weeks to do the squid, what about the eleven levels (seven plus inter-stage areas) and 10-20 opponents (i.e. victims to drive insane). I could do it, but not in a month. So, this morning after sitting up about it, I decided to switch to 2D. I have a better chance of getting it done and I really want to succeed. Not to mention, I might get some help with graphics from TIG Source since they love the pixels.

I know, you are all excited about another game project. Bet you want me to write or something. Well, I still have a short story coming up and I really need to work on Scroll of the Lands this week. But, not tonight, Fluffy is leaving for Illinois tomorrow and I'd like a few more short hours with her.

Dragon Prophecy by Melanie Nilles

2008-09-18T05:00:00Z

Dragon Prophecy is a 276 page book written by Melanie Nilles. It is the first of four books, but I consider it a long introduction to the series more than a stand-alone novel. It stumbles in the beginning, but ends with satisfying conclusions. If given a choice, I would prefer to read it and the next book back-to-back given its somewhat abrupt ending. Beyond that, I found it an enjoyable read with interesting characters and world development.

Plot

The plot starts off slow. It could be related to this being the first book of four, but it really feels like an extended introduction that lasts just over two hundred pages. The real meat of the story didnâ€™t jump up for me until the last third of the book. In addition, the ending reminded me of a friend who watched the first Lord of the Rings movie, when it cut to black:

â€œThatâ€™s it?â€

The conclusion of the book cuts off a bit more abrupt than I would enjoy. I was curious of how it would turn out, but not having the next book just made it a bit frustrating. Iâ€™d treat the entire novel as an introduction and setting of the scene, setting, and world, but as a whole, it doesnâ€™t really stand on its own as a novel.

The characters are enjoyable in the story. The main character I cared less about than Calli, the girl who followed her. I guess I really didnâ€™t click with that main character. Much of that comes from the way she is introduced, just a bit too different from everyone else and with a huge sign over her her head: â€œmain character here!â€ The secondary character, on the other, had a lot more depth and personality that drew my attention. It could be my personal preferences, but I like the spunky characters who donâ€™t give up instead of the ones who just kind of bob around for something interesting to handle.

The main plot is somewhat predictable. I never had a question of how it was going to end up, just a matter of when it would happen. This is emphasized by many of the characters who know just about everything--they just donâ€™t tell the reader what is going on.

Calli, on the other hand, seemed to have more energy and fire in the story and that is one of the major things that really drew me into the story. The focus on her struggles was more of the novel I enjoyed. It also stood out as the best part of the novel, ranging from the failures in the beginning to how she grew in the end. Not knowing how her plot would end also helped add to the curiosity and enjoyment.

Writing Style

Ms. Nillesâ€™ writing style changes through the book. In the beginning, many of the sentences stumble slightly and there is an overuse of passive voice. This gradually fades through the middle third of the book and it feels like she found her writerâ€™s voice just slightly after the midpoint of novel. At the same point, the action picks up from the slow start and move at a much more rapid pace. By the end, the descriptive voice and actions are enjoyable to read, but I could see someone struggling with the sluggish introduction, both in plot and in structure.

The novel is written with multiple points of view (POV). Thankfully, in my opinion, she sticks with one point of view per chapter. This is my preferred form of reading multiple POV stories and she writes it well. The writing style also uses many questions for the characters, not differentiated from the rest of the text. It adds a nice flavor for the story and is part of Nillesâ€™ voice, but it took me a little bit to get used to. I think in the latter half of the novel, it settled down into questions that empathize the plot instead of justifying it and I enjoyed it a lot more.

In the story, a great deal of characters speak mentally. The typographic use of just italic, with no quotation marks, made it difficult when reading it on the computer, mainly because I couldnâ€™t easily see where the italics started without paying close attention to the font. Having this broken apart, either by the *Mental*, (Mental), or Â«MentalÂ» (which I use) would have been better than the undifferentiated italics which are also used for internal thoughts. With somewhat standard conventions in other novels, it would have made it easier to read without having to stop to identify the purpose of the italics.

Likewise, there are characters who speak in poems in the story. As they are arranged, it doesnâ€™t flow well with the writing and I ended up glossing over them, mainly because of the effort to handle the startling break in the flowing of writing. The characters who do speak in poems fit appropriately with the poems, they just needs a bit more or less emphasis in my opinion.

Graphics and Typography

The font used for the book is lovely, baring the lack of distinction of the regular and italic cases. It really helps set the tone of the book and fits very well with the overall theme of the story. The preludes font, on the other hand, was pretty but kind of difficult to read. It set the tone of a hand-written letter, but I wasnâ€™t enamored with it.

The cover is a great closeup of a red dragon. I do appreciate the illustration being related to the story, but it didnâ€™t really jump up and grab me as some do. It probably is the 3D rendering or the plastic glossy look to the dragon.

The map inside the book is a simple drawing. I wish the map maker used the same fonts as the book; it looks out of place with the rest of the book and relatively plain. It does give a good impression of the areas, but it needs a bit more detail to really feel like a living world.

World Development

I like Ms. Nillesâ€™ writing comes out in the world development. Excluding the main plot, there is a fair amount of potential in the world setting and Iâ€™m greatly interested in seeing how that fleshes out.
There is a beginning of languages in this book, but not enough to really get a feel for the grammar or linguistics of it. Instead, it is more of a spice usage of the language, peppered in for flavor more than the foundation of entire cultures. An appendix with more details would appeal to my language-loving aspect but it still adds to the story.

The name space of the characters is fairly well spread out. There are a few characters with similar sounding names, but for the most part, each name is distinct enough that it stands out. The dragons have a distinct name, which is overly complicated, but it really sets them aside from the humans and I thought was a very nice, subtle approach to naming.

The appendixes are interesting, but kind of dry. I think they hint at a great potential in the world, but its more â€œtellâ€ than â€œshowâ€.

Conclusion

Would I read it again? Yes, but only after I read the next one. With the feel of an introduction, it really needs a chaser to follow up. The characters and plot are just starting, which makes a frustrating cliff-hanger at the end. There is a lot of potential in the world.

Would I read the next one? Definitely. I want to see how the world expand and grows in the stories, which is one of the things I find interesting. The character Iâ€™m mostly interested in, Calli, also has a great deal of flair and Iâ€™m hoping the main character follows suit once we get into the prophecy proper.

Personal Demons by Stacia Kane

2008-03-31T05:00:00Z

I just finished reading Personal Demons by Stacia Kane. I didn't get any fancy book version, just a nicely long PDF. Thought, when I picked it up, I figured I'd spent a few minutes while the pork chops grilled and read a few pages. Sixty pages later, I realized I really needed to get them off the grill before they started to burn. I think it was about 23:30 at night when I announced I wasn't going to sleep until I finished it. Not to self, don't start reading anything but Stacia Kane after 19:00 if I have work the next morning. (As usual, hopefully only minor spoilers.)

In other words, I enjoyed it a lot. She has a very easy style for reading and I found myself going through the story at a pretty good clip. She had a great flair for describing scenes and many of her characters have a really neat set of personalities. I have to admit, I love the cosmology of her demons, it is interesting without being too far off from the expected norm.

The fight scenes were pretty good, but one of them (the zombies) confused me for a while until I re-read it twice. Other than that, I could easily picture everything going on. The descriptions otherwise are what I would call light, but that actually fits very well with the style of writing. You don't plow through the setting stuff.

One of the things I did have to plow through was the accents. It is really hard to write accents and I find the cumbersome. It felt like that was the case since the cockney characters get less of a thick accent later in the book, which I think finds the right balance of accent verses readability about half-way through the story. Now, I believe that cockney is a great accent with a sense of humor and this story has that in great spades. My favorite characters, the bodyguards, are right on and I found myself laughing in some of the scenes.

There is a lot to like about the story. I mean, there were things that jumped up as being a bit irksome (and that I do myself, which is why I notice them), but every story has them. Mainly the demon's response to Fearbusters seemed a bit off. Ignoring the entire "you promised you won't work with someone else" bit of the beginning, which I thought stumbled badly, I'm not entirely sure why the demons considered Fearbusters to be competition since it didn't seem to be part of the commitment to demons things. And the rapid-fire personality change of Brian, as I saw it, as he got more involved with the plot. And to another degree, the entire Dante relationship subplot was a bit forced I thought, but then again, most urban fantasy stories seem to have it, so its almost a genre aspect more than a commentary on this specific novel.

Other than that, I really enjoyed the book. Would I read it again? Oh yeah. I actually recommended it to Fluffy because it doesn't have anything that she forbids (animals getting hurt or rape) and it has enough humor to keep her interesting. Not enough snarky people, but that's my thing more than Fluffy's. I'll grab the sequel (and a proper copy of this one) as soon as I can.

Dead to Me by Anton Strout

2008-03-19T05:00:00Z

I will admit, I've read Anton Strout's journal long before I knew about the book. It's part of his avatar icon and the branding thing that went along with that. Naturally, while I was in the bookstore, I noticed it on the shelf (exactly one copy left) and slowed down. It was a relatively generic person on a title with too many reds for my tastes (yeah, I judge books based on the colors of their cover), but I was looking for it anyways.

"Hey, I've seen that!"

Dead to Me by Anton Strout.

And I picked it up. Standing at a hefty 356 pages, this is remarkably a very easy read. His grammar is simply and very easy to imagine, it flows nicely across the imagination and really keeps at a relatively rapid pack. The story is first person point of view which a single character; a common trend with most of the books I've read in urban fantasy. The voice of the story is, for a lack of better word, snarky. Delightfully so, actually. There is a nice level of sarcasm in the story and it really fits with the character. There is also the heart of gold aspect to the main character that makes me actually feel for him and his trials.

I like how Strout brings the story into fore, with the first scene showing how psychometry works. I already knew the idea of the power, something about a movie in the 80's actually, but I like the presentation and the drawbacks of the power. That scene lead into the plot very nicely. The book itself has kind of a police version of Harry Potter in places, less fantastic but that sense of wonderment and playfulness carries well through the entire story. He even put in a Professor Snape-like character which is probably my third favorite character in the book (after the cat and the main character). I even like the paladin/scoundrel parts of how he uses his power for personal gain. Likewise, I enjoyed the red tape and paperwork descriptions as very descriptive of the scenario the character is in--and feel sorry for him as he filed it. As I said, a good character you can really get to like but isn't a shining bastion of good. And that is true for a lot of characters, there are a lot of gray characters between the poles of good and evil. Better yet, it seems like the good and evil are practically bed buddies which mixes everything up nicely.

Naturally, there are some things I didn't really care for. I felt the Jane/Simon interaction was rushed and a bit forced. Her journal really irked me for some reason, it seemed more shallow than I really wanted to accept. She also bounces between her personas too fast without enough transition in the story. Hard nosed to fragile in rapid time. It was jarring.

There is also the issue of the antagonists turning a bit stupid at the end. But, the resolution of that was utterly satisfying and wrapped up the book very nicely. It also setup more conflict between the various players.

As in some stories, there are too many people "in the know." Some of them are less effective, a good sign, but the guy on the train just kind of bothered me. I'm not fond of the omniscient seer. On the other hand, the old lady was perfectly acceptable. Something about how Strout showed her personality near the end really made her likable.

My favorite quote of the book, taken out of context is: "...hoping I could at least use the rotting zombie as a flotation device." For that one quote, I'd recommend you read it. It is a fun, cheerful read. Entertaining, well described, and a playful urban fantasy.

Halfway to the Grave by Jeaniene Frost

2008-03-17T05:00:00Z

Normally, I don't pay attention to covers. They are usually just random images on the front of a book; most of the time, I chose books by the colors they use. You know, blues and grays attract my attention more than reds and oranges. Yeah, its still, but it's part of who I am. I mention that because the cover to Halfway to the Grave, by Jeaniene Frost (blog), is a striking cover. I love the colors and I love the model they used for the picture. When I flipped through, I found it just as striking, so naturally I picked it up.

There are a lot of things to like about this book. Written from a first-person point of view, it is 358 pages long. The main character is relatively clueless but eager to perform her duties of clearing vampires out of the world. The insecurity and fumbling of the main characters is, to be honest, absolutely wonderful. It brings humanity to the character and it dull the edge of anyone who is faster, stronger, and better than your average human. Perfection is a great thing to aim for, but I honestly prefer my characters to be rather flawed. And in this case, almost everyone is deliciously, wonderfully flawed. And they grow! They develop as characters throughout the novel in ways that make sense (baring one set of scenes). They don't always succeed and they struggle with choices in a witty way that makes it very easy to read. It also swirls between humor, action, and love smoothly, bouncing from one to another while Frost manages to keep the edge of the story going.

The writing style is relatively plain by elegant, playful with a few places being abrupt. Since I read books by imagining scenes, I was glad to find that I could picture everything as it was being told; one of my measures of a good book. Another is how fast I can read it. Stories I enjoy the most take less than two hours to read because I find myself immersed in the scenes. This was one of those books, sweet and descriptive. Coupled with the personalities that grow in the book, it actually drew me into the relationship between Cat and Bones but also into the interactions of how Frost built up her vampire world.

The vampire foes were great. There was something nice about intelligent enemies, foes that give a challenge and keep on going. The foes in this book are built up in the same way. Catching the players at every point, being smart without being omniscient (I hate perfect villains too) but there was a point when I realized they just turned stupid. Sadly, this is one of the few scenes I really didn't care for the book. That point in the book felt rushed but also in slow motion. Great fight descriptions, lovely detail, but the antagonist got a bit too stupid too fast.

Likewise, I really didn't like the end of it. It was one of those endings where you want to just slap the main character for doing something obviously stupid. Not going to go into details, but I really wanted her to pick the other choice. Instead, she latched onto a different ending which, while leaving it open nicely for a sequel, didn't really appeal to me. Say I'm ruined by Fushigi Yugi, but after the relationships were developed, suddenly breaking them just irked me a bit.

In part, there are multiple stories in the book. One of them is her fight against the vampires and the other is how she interacts with Bones. Both are critical to the story, but only the latter has really damn good seduction and sex scenes. There is also this tale acceptance and resistance, like the ebb and flow of waves. For the first couple of times it happens, its enjoyable, but after while, I get to that slapping mood.

There are a few scenes of attempted rape, which will bother my lovely mate, but otherwise the sexuality stands well on its own. That is to say, it got a flush out of me. The parts about vampires being highly monogamous amongst themselves and territorial, while it was amusing, seemed a bit forced. Not to mention, somewhat contrary to the general impression I have of most vampires. Crime seems to be rather prevalent with the vampire community. True, most stories would be rather boring if nothing bad happen, but it hit one too many for me. On the other hand, there isn't one gender, religion, or social group that seems to be singled out; that I found to be a pleasant bonus.

Even with those points, I found myself devouring the book. Two hours flat for 384 pages is a pretty good clip for me. As I mentioned, the writing style is very easy on the eyes and the imagination, building up a story while letting the imagination fill in the rest. The characters grow nicely in the story and the relationship between the two main characters is touching.

Would I buy the sequel? Yes. It is a good book and the characters are endearing. Though, if Cat keeps on this relationship roller coaster, I'll still want to slap her.

Nina by Liz DeJesus

2008-03-13T05:00:00Z

Nina, written by Liz DeJesus, is a lovely little tale that paints a moving story much in the same way as the main character paints her own life. Short at 157 pages, it is a great read for an evening without really forcing you to throw yourself into the book.

The book does start off slow. Kind of a surreal view of the world and rather disjointed. In one way, you could say the writer was getting used to the feel of the story, but in another you could almost say the story starts much like the painting theme that goes through the book. It starts rough, just a few colors here, highlights there. The descriptions are sparse at first, but then they start to develop as Nina develops her personality. As the reader learns more about her, and as she learns about herself, the story gets a richness of flavor. However, this does make the first forty pages or so seem a bit sluggish, mainly because of the need to establish a point of view of someone who is basically a child but fully grown. Once past that, the story is definitely more endearing as you want to see what directions she goes in, and where this strange path ends up. The little bits of magic in the story, paintings coming to life and the subtle effects are a very nice touch; a bit of fantastic to mix with the art.

I like the exploration part of the world. Stranger in a strange land type of story, where you see the world differently through someone's eyes. There are a few popular culture references that will probably fade away in a few decades, but overall the part I liked the best was that exploring of life. Food, interest, television, and art. Oh, the art part I like. The detail of the paintings, the personality of art itself. That is a wonderfully rich part of the story, popping up constantly and keeping the theme of the story going. Naturally, with the main character's origin as a painting (says on the back of the book so I don't consider that a spoiler), the story lends very well to imagining her world as a painting itself. Constantly being repainted over again. And it fits nicely with the story and keeps it together.

There is rape in the story. This means that Fluffy won't read it. Actually, the story appears to have a bit of a bias against males in general. There aren't that many good males in the story. Being that gender, it didn't really bother me because I was actually raised with a similar belief, but it could be off-putting for those who are.

On the other hand, for the main females of the story, it was nice that Liz established Andrea as a lesbian and Anna as heterosexual. I found that it is hard to write about those two opposing views; in this case, that difference also got muddied as the story goes on. By the end, it seemed like the logical direction for the characters was to avoid men entirely. Despite the Anna not being a lesbian, every relationship she has with a male is... well, doesn't seem right. And she ends up moving in a direction I didn't feel really fit with the character. All because of Nina.

There is a big decision near the end of the book. The decision and what happens fits perfectly with Nina and Andrea, but I wasn't entirely sure Anna did what she did. I decided it was Nina's attraction--everyone is attracted to her--but it almost felt like a forced plot.

Finally, one of the common threads in the story is about choice. It shows up with Elijah, a stranger to visits her in her painting, and this decision in a year's time. The back of the book talks about it:

She has one year to decide whether to join the rest of the world, beginning life anew, or to remain a painting forever.

There were three possible endings to the story. One of them was pretty obvious not going to happen by the middle of the story, which was fine. But when that final decision came out, it just kind of rushed out. There was no real question, no real trial. It was a done deal long before it got to the end and how it ended actually made me profoundly sad. Sad not for Nina, but sad for Andrea and Anna. In many ways, it was a good type of sadness. The end was like one of those paintings that you just find yourself staring at for hours, thinking about the thoughts of the artist. I kind of wish there was more struggle with that final decision, but I still thought about it long after I set it down.

This story is a lot like that. It is a painting of words. Beautiful but tragic in so many ways. The writing style is clear and easy to read, it flows past the eye nicely, but it has a slow burn in the beginning and smolders long after you set it down. Would I read it again? Yes, I think I would. Maybe not tomorrow or even next month, but there will be that point when I'm browsing through my library and I decide I want to enjoy some art again. And then, I'll relive that beautiful sadness.

Opinions on Rogue Galaxy

2008-03-12T05:00:00Z

Well, being sick has some major advantages. One is that I can finally finish a long-running RPG game, such as Rogue Galaxy. It's a two year old game, so there will probably be a few spoilers in this one. As for a simple summary: a hundred hours of gameplay shouldn't be fifty hours of grind.

The game itself is a Playstation 2 game, with some interesting concepts and a pretty zippy story. Baring one major thing, I actually enjoyed the game for the plot. The major thing, well it gets pretty obvious. Most games have a theme in their story. Sometimes it is just a young man's attempt to stand up on their own, to reach the stars they always dreamed up. That story was a good one. I like that story. Even the tender moments where he finds out that his father has been watching over him, helping him gain his full potential. Or his mother, a mere ghost waiting for him to return to her so she can help him reach that potential. Fairly good story (and the mother was pretty hot too). From there, we can talk about his love interest, the main female of the story. Tragically, she is also an orphan, raised by a dread pirate most of her childhood. We find out her parents sent her out ten thousand years ago in a lifeboat from another galaxy, to save her and themselves. And then they wait for her to return where she has to defeat one to reach her... full... potential.

Okay, I can live with that. Oh wait, another player character. Oh, she lost her mother when she was young. How terrible. Oh, and her sister was blinded. Oh, and the creature who killed her mother was the village god. I can live with that.

Another player character! Oh, he is fleeing his family! And they are hunting them, his wife and daughter. Showing up in monster-infested dungeons.

Well, that would be... nope. We have the pirate who wants to bring his dead girlfriend back to life, the villain who wants to bring his wife to life, the queen that took on powers of evil to save her son, and the scientist who put the memories of his dead son in a robot. Oh, and the warrior who is pining over his best friend turned evil and the elf girl who loves him for ten years but neither will admit it. Don't forget the ghost lady waiting forever for her husband who's corpse was fifty feet away! Or the ghost king who cannot move on until his two ghost sons finally resolve their thousand year spat.

Of the seven characters you play, one of them doesn't have some sort of family issue either holding them back or driving them forward. He just has some sort of unrequited love thing going on with his apprentice, but otherwise same damn thing.

So, detect a pattern?

You know, I like themes. I do like themes. But, when the theme is slammed into your forehead fifteen times with a 2x4, it gets rather tedious. That is probably the part about the game I didn't care for. It was like a sitcom plot where today's episode will be Obsessed Family!

Tedious describes a bunch of other parts of the game. The final dungeon took me six hours to complete. It ended up with nine consecutive boss fights. No chance to save, no chance to recover the healing potions which you can only have 30 of each, and seven of the fights were one-on-one which means if you died, you had to start them all over again. These nine fights were preceded by four hours of following a long, boring dungeon where every one of your seven characters can cry and sob over their individual family plot.

It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the combat. The game gives you some lovely attack spells, including the passionate kiss that inflicts a couple thousand damage. However, over half of the monsters are tall. What does this mean? Tall creatures are immune to fireballs, exploding kisses, or even this really strange penis extension maneuver called Random Beam (robot mounts the dog creature's waist and spins around). Because, of all the massive combat, it only happens on a plane at waist level to the characters. Even your gun appears to be incapable of aiming up when you damn well know that you have to hit them in the head. It's a good thing resurrections are cheap, because the computer-controlled players don't know that you have to jump up to attack often either, so they kept on dying.

In addition to the tall creatures, you have the shield ones. They require a power attack to hit. Hold down the button for a second, pray no one hits you, and release. Once broken, you can smack their ass. This is fine, I thought Final Fantasy X did it very well, but they decided to mix it up by giving some of the creatures barriers! Barriers work just like shields, no damage until you break it, but strong attacks don't work. You have to use the barrier gun, which requires nine button presses to change if you don't have it equipped. And the barrier gun doesn't work on the shields. This is annoying since only you can break barriers. It is more annoying when they throw six creatures, two are shielded and two have barriers, and the bastards won't hold still long enough for you to target the right one with the right attack.

I hate the barrier gun with a passion.

If I ever use a barrier gun in this way, you have my permission to shoot me. With a high-powered 2x4 launcher. And that is why I do reviews, to figure out what I like and don't like about a game.

Things I liked. Well, there was some. The bug hunting game was okay, but a bit cumbersome to actually do. Same with the weapon combination minigame but it took way too many button presses to analyze, scroll, click through the weapon stats, cancel it, page back to the frog, combine the weapons, page back to the weapons, select the two weapons, then cancel the combination process.

The factory bit was actually pretty cool, except for the need to layout the damn extension cords on the factory floor. Why yes, an epic game of organizing cords to get your artifacts! Such fun!

That was also tedious. And boring.

The game had a lot of potential, but it got most of its hours from grinding and tedium instead of actually fun play. There are places where you just run straight for about two minutes to get to the door. Just to show off how big the stage was.

I try to find something enjoyable with every game I play. There are probably only two things I liked about it. The experience point system was based on revelations. Each skill had 2-6 random items you find that I guess you gather together, meditate on, and unlock a power. That was kind of cool, actually. It was a bit more realistic in some ways, though contrived in places. I actually like the factory bit, it was a lot more enjoyable that Star Oceans building and I could actually see a minigame about building things that I could create using ideas from that game.

Also one cut scene for a power attack. You have your normal array of people screaming as they power up their weapons, a pirate drinking beer and powering up, the love interest farting on a sock and killing people with it (the insta death charm, she's got 3 levels of it!), the flaming explosions, winds.

And then the coffee drinking power boost. Just a single character sitting on a chair, sipping some coffee and sighing happily. And everyone gets a boost in attack power. The first time I saw that, I laughed so hard it hurt and I almost lost the fight. It was worth it. Just a single point of silliness that really did wonders for my mood.

Other than that, I couldn't wait for the game to end. I don't like endurance trials in my RPGs. If you are padding out the "hundred hours of gameplay" with thousands of pointless fights and tedium, it isn't a fun game.

Elfhunter by C. S. Marks

2008-03-06T06:00:00Z

I just finished another novel I picked up at GenCon by one of the many excellent authors in Authors Alley. In this case, it was Elfhunter by C.S. Marks. The book itself is 501 pages of perfect bound binding, but the story ends on 428. The rest of the book is a series of appendices. Mostly, I ignored the appendices when I read the book, mainly because I'm not personally fond of them. (Yeah, I'm guilty of using one in Muddy Reflections but I'm already planning on striking it). But, they are appropriate to some stories. This is a good one, but I didn't feel they were really needed given the voice of the novel.

I did struggle with this book. On the levels of writing, typesetting, and world conventions, there were a lot of little things that stood out against my own expectation that I had trouble focusing on them. On the story itself, there is a little gem of a story with very nicely designed characters who have a lot of love, personalities that were just enjoyable to read, and basically a good story. The hard part was just getting through the writing style to really enjoy those gems.

Now, my focus on reviews has more than one purpose. One, I strongly believe that I see myself through others. So, things I most dislike are very frequently the things I, personally, need to change. In addition, it lets me see how other storytellers create their stories, and for me to say what I like and I don't like about it.

Start with conventions. I never really had to, but this book deviates from a few of the normal conventions its worth noting. The font used isn't one I'm familiar with and it is very readable and easy on the eye. For some reason, I also notice typographic elements like that in a story. It fits well, though I wish they matched the font of the title with those of the chapters, but you can't have everything.

The text is written in block form, which is actually the way I write, but doesn't seem to be the normal method for publishing. No first line indent and extras space between the paragraphs. While it is the style I write, I don't know many novels that actually set their words this way and occasionally it felt blocky on the eye. By the time I got a hundred page in, it didn't really jar me that much. I could easily grow to like that one, but as I said, I write that way and specifically format it the other way. It was obviously a typographical decision on their part since there are more than a few paragraphs that start with a few spaces. They were very obvious when reading but probably an artifact of the writing style.

Conversation also gave me a bit of trouble. In the book, C. S. Marks uses italics to denote Elvish language. This was really helpful from the little notice page in the beginning of the book. Now, the problem is, almost every single spoke word in the book is Elvish. I mean, they speak in Elvish, whisper in it, and do everything in Elvish. So, a lot of the book is in italics. That probably caused me the most trouble with writing conventions. Using parenthesis ("()") for whispering was fine, through there were a few sections I thought Elves were whispering in common tongue when it probably should have been Elvish, but the writer was clear enough to figure out what was going. There were a few cases of unspoken communication verses whispering that use the same conventions; those caused me a bit more trouble but they happened infrequently.

Given the frequency of Elvish verses Aridani (their common tongue), I would have probably swapped the two. I'm a strong believer in mental and unspoken communications, I used to use parenthesis myself since I thought they worked out well with So You Want to be a Wizard series which I respect. I ended up going with the angled quotes (« and ») for mental communication because I use it frequently.

The tone of this novel is past tense with an omnipresent voice. There are a lot, and I mean a lot, of cases where you'll read about someone's decision, then know what the end of their action is. Kind of like foreshadowing with a very large club. By the time you are done, you have a pretty good idea who is going to die in a later book. I found it distracting. In rare cases, this can be very enjoyable, but it seems like every couple paragraphs will tell you how it really is or how it will end. If those were stripped out, the book probably would have lost thirty pages and still kept the story strong.

C. S. Marks has a passive writing style. I never really noticed it, and I'm guilty of it myself, until I read this. There are a lot of "had" and "is" in the story. It felt very regular in format, almost a cadence in writing. It was very obvious in the beginning and near the middle-third. Its one of those places were a much more active tense would have really helped with the tone of the story.

The last part I didn't really care for the story is some of the world setting. Words have a powerful thing. You noticed when Elves all the time, but the rest of the races aren't. Elves are just about perfect, which is perfectly acceptable from Tolkein based works, but I have to really compliment C. S. Marks for not making them too perfect. They create flawed perfection and that was one of the best parts of this story. Elves get jealousy and make mistakes, they grumble and bitch, then even lust after others. You know what, I absolutely love that part. I don't care for their apparently immortal nature (don't care for immortal anything) and the persistent emotional drama they all seem to suffer. Monogamy doesn't suit this world's Elves; sorry, most of their giving of hearts and claiming the only one, given their expected lifespan of forever, is just unreasonable. Its a nice plot hook to isolate the main characters, but I got frustrated with their insistence of "love or death" theme they have going on. I'm not also big on lifemates or soulmates in general, so take that as you will.

Finally, names. I'm picky about names. When you read a large story with a good number of characters, you start to notice trends in their naming. I mean, in my stories, I have a problem that most of my characters have similiar sounding names (Maef verses Welf for example). I found most authors have a problem with leading characters. In this case, "A", "G", and "O". There are a lot of characters with names that start with that. Even the high powered seer naming an Elf with a "G" name and telling her that her child will also have a name that starts with "G".

Personally, I only know one family that does that. It's my friend Matt, who's brother Mark and Mike are all children of Martha and Matthew. Their cousins all start with "D" (Dustin, etc). This is somewhat common with a lot of writers, but its one of those hot buttons of mine.

Now, beneath those layers of frustration and struggle, I found a story. A good story. A very solid story. And that is why I finished it instead of just tossing it aside. The basis of the story is set very well with the Gorgon Elfhunter (named on the back of the book so I don't feel bad). While I don't claim that he was better than Darth Vader (who I thought wasn't that great), he was a very intelligent, forceful, and creative villain for the story. They could have just written the story from his point of view and I would have be ecstatic. It is hard to write a smart antagonist that doesn't just turn brain-dead at the end of the a story to lose. No, I was very happy on his end and frankly, if I were to read the next one, it would be primarily for him.

The other, relatively secondary character, is Eros, the horse. I like him. There is something about that horse that just made me smile and as soon as I realized I was reading about the world from his point of view, I got excited.

Otherwise, the main characters are well developed and have a good depth of personality. I felt the omnipresent voice kind of made them flatter where they could have had this bounty of secrets and desires that wasn't immediately revealed, but they were excellently crafted. There was this right about of tension between the characters, unrequited love, and realistic expectations. People keep secrets and while they were a bit free to share them, overall it was a story about wonderfully flawed, obsessive people doing the right thing.

The attention to detail in the story was spot on for me. Minor little things like the honey tied various parts of the story together, but also the specifics of the scenes around them. There wasn't a lot of scent-based descriptions (one of those things I noticed), but the details of texture and temperature were there. the world was very nice and I really found myself being pulled into the story. The underground scenes were as lush as the surface ones and I just really liked how the scenes itself were portrayed.

I liked the story and the characters. I really did. They were buried under more than a few layers of typographical and stylistic things I really didn't care for. And the big question, would I buy the sequel?

I don't know. I'd probably page through it a few times and see if there is some interesting non-drama scene, or if I found Gorgon or Eros. If so, I'd probably pick it up without question. If I can't find those, probably not. I'd check again with book three (I'm sure there will be) and if I found Gorgon or Eros, I'll pick up book two just to complete the set. It's a big book. Even at 450 pages, those little details can really stand out in your head. I would recommend it for those who don't really notice the same things as me, or have the ability to look past those things to really enjoy the excellent story within.

Shadow Over Shandahar by T. R. Chowdhury and T. M. Crim

2008-01-25T06:00:00Z

Well, in this week that I've been sick and had plenty of time to do basically nothing. Instead, I decided to get through one of the books haunting me since GenCon. So, I read Shadow Over Shandahar by T. R. Chowdhury and T. M. Crim. This is a 505 page, perfect-bound book produced by BookSurge and and a lovely cover by Lindsay Archer.

This is the first book of a small series, I know of three books so far since two were on sale at GenCon and the third was coming soon. The main character in the story, or at least the bulk of the story focuses on, is Adrianna, a girl with a father who hates her birth, a missing sister, and a remarkable talent for getting people to trust her. She also has a strong Talent which lets her cast spells and Gifts for foresight and seeing things as they are. These set up a really nice focal character for the interwoven plots to center on.

One of the talents of the writers is the multiple plots going in and out. I happen to enjoy these type of stories, seeing how they come together and split apart as the story goes on. I think they pull this part of the story off. The individual plots are very well done, with characters being driven by a wide variety of different reasons for adventuring.

There were a couple of things I wasn't fond of. The story is based in a variant of the D&D universe (exact spell names, classes, etc). I have absolutely no problem with that and happen to enjoy it. At least the classes aren't capitalized (one pet peeve), but it really felt like there was a lot of renaming to make it sound different. For example, larian instead of horses (or mules), halfen instead of halflings, and Cimmerean instead of drow. There are some distinct creatures and places in there, but most of it is just renamed D&D stuff. I'm really hoping that later books focus more on the stuff outside of the known fantasy world, there is such wonderful hints of promise there. I really like when writers go beyond the foundation that got them writing.

Another good aspect of their writing style is details. There are nice little details without being overpowering. Some of the little details, like Adrianna's scar, is actually a very nice touch that carries through the story. One of the best details that I like, and probably what made the story for me, is that the characters actually lost. As in barely able to drag themselves home type of lost, which is something you don't really see in fantasy stories that often and made a nice refreshing change of pace. Kind of made up for the "you all meet in a bar" introduction to the characters.

It was a hefty read. I found myself struggling a bit in the second hundred pages, but after three it sped up nicely. The various interactions of the characters really smoothed out and I felt that the first chapter made way to a much smoother writing in the later ones. The last two hundred pages went past faster than I expected.

Would I get the sequel? I did enjoy the later bit of the story, but I really struggled through the beginning. So, I would buy the next one, mainly to see how the excellent story turned out, but probably not the for the world development as it stands. I really hope they expand out of their initial base into more creative territory at least with multi-classing at least.

A Prisoner's Welcome by Shane Moore

2007-12-11T06:00:00Z

One of the many books that I picked up at GenCon this year was A Prisoner's Welcome by Shane Moore. It took me a while to get to this one, mainly too many projects of my own, but this weekend I managed to finish it, and despite not really being asked, decided to post my opinions of it. Really, I asked permission at GenCon, but I suspect Shane Moore doesn't know my review style.

A Prisoner's Welcome is a pretty heft book at 553 pages in length and perfect bound with a pretty good quality. It was daunting in places to read, mainly I had it out on my bed table for a few weeks before I got to finishing it, but overall, I was very glad I did.

As I read it, it got pretty obvious that Shane's world is pretty much based on a generic fantasy world heavily inspired by Dungeons and Dragons. At least, that is what it felt like. You had people referring to each other as classes and races, powers and skills that were pretty much aligned with the game, and even the bestiary could be culled from those sources. This really isn't a hindrance, in my opinion, but I'm glad he at least didn't capitalize the classes. I don't know why, that just bothers me. Knowing the mechanics or the inspiration helps you understand and appreciate it more, plus it means that you don't have to wonder what in the world as "daraka" is (he doesn't use it, but just to use it as an example). Instead, you know an elf has pointy ears and probably squeaks when you squeeze them. But, there was this strict focus on "one class per person" that seemed to railroad the character concepts for me. I did like the characters, I just felt their characterizations were restricted by the framework in which they were written for. In effect, their personalities were limited by their class and race a bit more strongly that I appreciated; a bit of deviation would have been nice, or even some more obvious multi-classing.

Now, using a established baseline for your story doesn't mean everything is derivative. I love Mr. Moore's death knight. It was probably one of the best mental processes of corruption, growing evil, and betrayal that I've seen in story. The knight has to be one of my favorite characters, not because of the depth he had, but how he showed true change throughout the book. I actually felt sorry for him, and I know it probably wasn't part of original plan, but the most of the characters felt shallow compared to the one. Shane also expands on a baseline world in excellent places, surprising me with little twists when I thought it was going to be an obvious answer culled from some book. Those little jabs of creativity help craft an engrossing story that delved deep into a common mythology for writing but still kept it interesting enough to keep on reading.

The characters had a reasonable amount of depth, but most of them didn't really didn't feel like they had full dimensions to them. The "good" characters were the ones I liked the least, mainly because they didn't evolve as quickly or as richly as some of the others, but they were still likable characters. I felt that some of the secondary characters (the thief couple, the death knight, the general) really shone in the personalities, drives, and even evolution of their character throughout the story. I like change. I like characters to change over time and I didn't really get that from many of the others.

One of the things that didn't change in the book was one of the most common threads throughout the story: betrayal. Everyone is betraying someone. The good guy has an entire plot over cheating someone. Every single politician is backstabbing someone. Even the paladin was betraying someone at one point in the story. With the exclusion of only a few characters, it seemed like it was a major thread of the story and probably the thing I like least about the story. In some ways, the story might have been better called "A Prisoner's Betrayal" but it isn't my place to name books. Just read and enjoy them.

I did enjoy it. The writing style is closer to mine, with relatively simple words and easy to read on the eyes and the mind. Shane has a wonderful light touch with descriptions. Outside of combat, it is like painting with hints and highlights, letting your mind fill in the rest. You get such lovely teasers of outfits, colors, and scenes, and then the story moves right back into plot. In combat, the descriptions get more detailed and lush, but also a lot more bloody. This isn't a story for Fluffy. The violence and rape themes were too much for her, even though they were effectively glossed over, they did overly dominate a reasonable hunk of the story. But, all the scenes, violence and not, were wonderful. The location and struggles were very well done and it kept the story moving very quickly forward. I ended up reading the last three hundred pages in one night, ending around three in the morning, so I obviously enjoyed the story.

There is a curse with the sparse descriptions, however. In writing style, I saw two things that kind of frustrated me as a reader. One was the change of view. Shane would switch POV of the story in the middle of a chapter, but there was very few transitions to indicate the change. You'll be learning the internal state of one character, seeing the world through their eyes, then the next paragraph, you'll be seeing the same character with a different POV and it sometimes left me wondering if someone had a brain fart. Later in the paragraph, I'd figure out the POV changed. The other is emotions. They jump out at you. There wasn't much transitions between the emotional states (quiet to anger for example), but looking back I could see where they could have happened, it just surprised me when it did. Between those two things, I occasionally struggled to read the story but they were, at most, minor distractions once I realized his style and learned to anticipate it.

I found the book to be enjoyable. It hung nicely on the large body of work of pre-existing fantasy but it added just enough twists and flairs to the story to really make the world feel different and unique. The characters had depths, but I felt some of the secondary characters were much better developed than the primary ones. His writing style is easy to read and enjoyable to do so, but it jumps around a bit more than I was comfortable with. Knowing how he writes, or at least getting comfortable with his style, made the latter half of the book considerably more enjoyable to read. Starting the book again, it seems like it is true, his style flows fast, once you get it.

Would I read the sequel? Without a doubt. Shane has written a story that has some interesting concepts, characters I want to see how they turn out (mainly the general and the knight), and a style that I enjoy reading. I look forward to reading the next one, or at least checking out GenCon to see if he has it for sale.

Would I recommend it to people? It depends. It's a bit bloody and the rape themes obviously will cause Fluffy some problem. I have friends who would read it and friends who I wouldn't even ask. There is a gritty sense to the story that won't appeal to everyone, but for those who like that type of story, I think it is an excellent choice to read.

Into the Reach by Alana Abbott

2007-09-25T05:00:00Z

Finished Into the Reach by Alana Abbott yesterday during Fluffy's Tae Kwon Do tournament And I like talking about the books I read. So, guess what, I'm going to talk about it. I heard about the book when browsing the links of people who comment on my blog. Yeah, I'm pretty shallow but I'm also interested in reading what other people read, not only for seeing how real authors write thing but also for tips myself. At GenCon, I wandered past the booth, where I made small chat.

... it was two days later that I got to my list of "must-visit" booths and realized that I was already there. So, I picked up the first book of hers and put it on my to-read list.

I found the introduction catching and, given the time I had to read at first, it pulled me into reading more. The main characters all had a lovely level of depth to them, with the hidden secrets and drives that kept them going. The dream sequences in the beginnings of the chapters, on the other hand, didn't really add anything for me. I had to force myself to read through the italic sections. Actually, I got confused with a couple of them and had to read them a couple of times. Beyond that, the characters really had all the flaws that I really love in a story. In fact, the main villain was my favorite character in the entire book. He has such wonderful flaws and insanity and almost wish he had slightly more "screen time" for his heroic (anti-heroic) death.

On the other hand, I despised the dwarf (sorry). He was too perfect, knowing everything going on. It was that first encounter, when he prattles on everyones' apparent secrets that really irked me. It reminded me of too many game masters that did everything I hated. But, other than that character, I thought that Alana has a wonderful skill in creating characters who had some personality and depth to them.

Her descriptions are what I would call light and enjoyable. They didn't have the same richness of detail that her characters have, but they did give enough to get the idea of what was going on in the scene. I personally prefer a bit more details, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The major exception is the one woman's armor. Now, that was the level of detail that I really like. There were only two places I had a bit of trouble. One was the switching between the race/species and the character. Since I don't know the world setting, which I'm sure would help, it took me a bit to figure who was who. Plus, the race of the thief was used in the beginning and at the end, but not so much in the middle so I had to think for a moment. The other place was the fight scenes. I liked the settings of the fight, and their reasons were executed nicely, but the rapid-fire descriptions I missed a couple of things or I felt that it was rushed. That was really obvious in the final fight, where it felt like the fight was a paragraph or three at the moment, then it was over. That might have been since I was rooting for the bad guy, but he was nicely screwed up.

(As one point, I also didn't care for the picture on 147. The woman on bottom does not even remotely look in danger.)

I did enjoy the plot, but that ties nicely into the character's drives and secrets. They were woven together into a lovely story that smoothly lead into the next book (which I don't have). I will pick up the second and I'll definitely read the book at least twice more in the next year or so. The light touch on the details, interesting characters, and beginning of a plot creates a book that I feel the need to start reading the series from the beginning, even when I pick up the next one.

Summer Biking: (260.7 of 400.0 km)
Change of Honor (2 of 4 rounds)
Another Werewolf's Tail (2 of 4 rounds)
Commissioned Work (1 of 4 rounds)

Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy edited by W. H. Horner

2007-09-17T05:00:00Z

Yesterday, I finished reading Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy. It has a subtitle of "Humorous Tales of sword & Sorcery!" It is a collection of twenty-four short stories, edited by W. H. Horner and illustrated by Chris Chua and published by Fantasist Enterprises. The stories were short, less than ten thousand words, and I found myself reading 2-3 at a time before bed each night, kind of like popcorn. Some of them were hilarious, some of them really enjoyed flipping cliches over, but a few of them were "eh" to me, mainly because I couldn't really get into the story.

Now, I like reviews. I like honest opinions, even they aren't of praise. When I was at GenCon, I asked the authors if I could do a review and if they would like it and I got an overwhelming "yes." Actually, I was surprised that one author appreciated what I felt was probably my most negative review ever. But, maybe honesty is a good thing. That said, I absolutely love it when people do this same thing for me; I've found a couple surprise reviews of my stories in places and re-read them like 10-20 times.

I've never done a review of an anthology, but I'll do it as a bullet list. Seems appropriate, since I can't really give 5-10 paragraphs per story that might be shorter than that. :)

The main theme was followed pretty well in the story. The illustrations I felt were a tad too busy and kind of distracted from the stories. It might be the artistic style, but I prefer slightly less detailed lines in my work. Specially in the black and white story. However, they were appropriate for each story, which was nice.

Beerwulf by Lawrence C. Connolly: As the first story in an anthology, it really sets the tone for the entire book. Unfortunately, I really didn't get into this one. The writing itself is okay, but it didn't really flow that well for me. The characters were interesting, I liked the characters a lot, but the plot and structure didn't really do anything for me.
A Different Shade of Knight by Jason S. Ridler: Another story I couldn't really get into. There were some interesting characters, a nice opening, but I almost felt that it could have used a bit more... depth to it.
Assassin's Playground by A. G. Devitt: This story was interesting, but I had to struggle in places ot read it. Even the second time I read it took me a bit to really get into the story. I wanted to know more about the characters by the end, they had some interesting flairs that I liked, but other than that, it was just a bit too hard.
Mistress Fortune Favors the Unlucky by Eugie Foster: This one was cute. I mean, I have a fondness for noir-style stories and mysteries, but this had such a wonderful lighthearted-tone to it.
A Lesson in Heroics by Jeremy Yoder: Evil old ladies take their own sides. Enough sides. Great story, sarcastic and witty. This one I really liked.
The Ice Maiden Speaketh by Paul Crilley: This story reminded me of another short story, one I read so many years ago and set in Oz. It starts off with letters and moves smooth into the rest of the story. I liked it and thought it was pretty cute of a story, a nice set of dry wit to enjoy the story.
Keep Coming Back for More by Margaret Ronald: Ah, the stories of the henchmen, the victims, the Nodwicks. The ending wasn't that exciting to me, but getting there was the enjoyable part.
The Great Thrakkian Rebellion by Megan Crew: A short little tale of a rebellion. I thought the voice of this story was just perfect.
Always Read the Fine Print by L. L. Donahue: Interestingly, I didn't think this story was really that funny at all. I mean, not at all. However, as a fantasy romance, it very well written and enjoyable.
Heard It by Dale Mettam: Stories that go against cliches. This was funny, but it in the sense of a parody. My only real complaint about it, which was the entire point of the story, is that the characters knew exactly what they were doing. A story of "been there, done it" that worked in very nicely for the story but didn't really excite me.
Crossing Swords by Murray J.D. Leeder: I like the main character of this story. I like the noir tone to it and I like how it ended. It was also just different enough to make me wonder what was going on and I was actually pleasantly surprised by the end.
Hallah Iron-Thighs and the Hounds of Hell by K. D. Wentworth: I love hounds. I love stories where you can practically breath in the stench of descriptions and know exactly how bad it is. In this case, it was just perfect for that. The characters were quirky (a plus), no one was really that perfect (another plus), but the good guys mostly won out in the end.
There's Only One Dakon the Mighty by Elizabeth H. Hopkinson: This was a dry story. It was humorous for the content and the problems, but not for the characters. I enjoyed it because of his struggles but I couldn't get into the main character to really "care" about it.
Goblin Hero by Jim C. Hines: While I wouldn't call this story amusing, it was sardonic and dry. I actual read it as just a normal fantasy short story and I enjoyed it as such. Funny? Not as much, but well-written and something I would read again.
No Shit, There We Were by Michael Brendan: A short little ditty told from the voice of one person. This was amusing, but I felt that it could have gotten so much further. The responses to actions through narration were pretty good, it was just a tad too short.
But Before I kill You... by Lindsey Duncan: I struggled with this one. Not because of the topic, but mainly from the characterizations of the various people in the story. There were also a few places I had to re-read the sentences a couple times to figure out what was really going on. The topic, on the other hand, was adorable and I liked how it progressed very much.
An Incident at Black Tongue Tavern by Michael Turner: I didn't care for this one. I struggled to read it and really didn't get into it at all. There were some little cute points (harlot license and the last sentance comes to mind), but overall it was just a chuckle for me.
Deliah's Dames in Nomadsland by Melissa Lee Shaw: I didn't figure it out either, but it was a light-hearted tale. Not heavy on the humor. Almost a sexy little romp with just a bit of humor in all the right places. The ending... a tad neat, but otherwise I liked it.
The Atrocious Head-Bashing Troubadour by C. M. Huard: This one I liked. It was kind of silly, without any sense of reality, made fun of a few stories along the way, and had a great ending.
The Voice of Reason by Ken Brady: This was actually sad for me. I mean, how the story worked, it wasn't funny at all. As a story of irony, on the other hand, it was pretty well, I just didn't think it was that funny. It might be that I like that ride though.
In the Shit by Barbara Davies: I had to read this one twice before I really got into it. It had a nice sense of humor, but it was a tad graphic in places. Not that it bothers me, and I like how the resolution was unexpected as much as the entire problem.
The Wrestler's Apprentice by Stephen Castillet: The characters in this story I felt were pretty good, though the main character was just a tad "perfect" I felt while I read it, but it was enjoyable.
The Order of the Crimson Tunic by Kevin N. Haw: I like the format of this, the entire story told in letters home. Yeah, what was going to happen was pretty damn obvious by the third letter, but how it happened and how it ended was an absolute stitch. I like the strobe-like progression of the story.
Just Temping by Susan Sielinski: In some ways, I would have paid for this entire book just for this story. That isn't to say there weren't some really great ones in there, but this is my favorite of the entire book. I didn't see the plot twists until they happened, but it was one of those headsmack types of things that I just loved. Plus, it had a nice descriptions, interesting characters, and just a hint of personality in some people that made it really enjoyable to read.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. There were a couple I didn't care for, but mostly I felt it was a humorous book. There were a couple of stories that I told Fluffy that she had to read. I would recommend it for the story I did like just as much as the stories I didn't care for I could easily see as being great for some of my friends.

(Hrm, it is really hard to say meaningful things of that many stories at once.)

Summer Biking: (239.6 of 400.0 km)
Change of Honor (1 of 3 rounds)
Another Werewolf's Tail (2 of 3 rounds)
Commissioned Work (493 of 10,000 words)

Orthogonal Writing

2007-06-05T05:00:00Z

I almost got up to my goal in writing this weekend. I was doing great on Friday. Didn't even really play games, but then I decided I wanted to write a couple short stories for submissions. So, I ended up writing three of them. Well, the third was just for fun. So, I did lots of writing but not on the novel I should have been working on. I better keep track of that, I might be stalling or doing everything but what I should be writing again. I did pick up a couple books on metawriting, which I suspect will tell me I'm doing everything wrong on My Father's Bike. Fluffy says that I'm being really honest with the book and she likes the tone of it, but it is so hard to write this. It is a memoir, sort of, coupled with philosophy and I'm struggling since I can't control the characters or what I think will take a bit to explain I end up doing fairly quickly. Or, in the words of the Fifth Element:

"I have a doubt."

In other news, I also picked up a 24" widescreen LCD monitor. It handles 1080p properly. I'm going to grab the computer speakers from work and I should have a properly setup PS3 game system with a reasonable-sized monitor. I'm only using a 27" TV right now, so I doubt I'll really notice the difference. And a pair of powered computer speakers are comparable to a set of built-in speakers on the TV. I'm looking to that, but not the eight or more loads of laundry I should be folding tonight.

Oh, if you ever consider getting a Netgear Storage Central (SC101), don't. It's a piece of shit. Windows-only, doesn't play with Macs, doesn't like the drivers on my HP machine, and basically is nearly impossible to set up.

Â» My Father's Bike: 0.242 (19,346 / 80,000 words)
Â» Wind, Bear, and Moon Edited: 0.500 (2 / 4 weeks until 2007-06-15)
Â» Muddy Reflections Query: 0.167 (10 / 12 weeks until 2007-08-10)
Â» Summer Biking: 0.162 (64.8 / 400 km)

Retrospective: Okami

2007-05-25T05:00:00Z

Gorgeous game, Okami. I finished it last night. I had a moments hesitation when I considered getting all 100 beads in the game, to unlock the really powerful special, but then I didn't. Instead, I went through an hour of boss fights and cut scenes to get to the final boss fight which took thirty minutes alone. Didn't even need to cheat on that one, the conventions of fighting were very well established at that point and I enjoyed it right up to the end. Even the end credits were beautiful.

I will admit, I like non-photorealistic rendering (NPR). Okami is a case of NPR where you use a few tricks on a 3D model to make it look closer to drawn. Realism has its own issues, called the Uncanny Valley, but it is also something I'm not fond of. Give me a fast game that looked sketched and I am absolutely happy. This is also why, if I ever do it, I want to write a 3D rendering engine for NPR. To me, realism isn't needed for a good story. Style is.

In the end, I pulled Okami out and set it aside. I put it on its side to remind me that there is still more to the game, and if I get bored for some reason, it might be a fun game. The "new game plus" starts you over at the beginning, but with almost all of your equipment, brush strokes, and some new toys. And you can skip the cut scenes. If I do end up playing it, just to get 100% completion, it will be much faster the second time.

As much as it will be hard to resist putting in the next game, I should probably write tonight and prepare for this weekend's adventure. I'm not entirely healthy, but I think I can run for at least five hours of my normal ten. Knowing me, I'll try to run all ten of course. I just miss gaming. A month break makes one start to doubt the story and consider other systems as viable choices. :) That might also be since I'm working on writing up fightertype's Itrifore world as Hero System 5th Edition.

Â» My Father's Bike: 0.127 (10,169 / 80,000 words)
Â» Wind, Bear, and Moon Edited: 0.250 (3 / 4 weeks until 2007-06-15)
Â» Muddy Reflections Query: 0.083 (11 / 12 weeks until 2007-08-10)
Â» Summer Biking: 0.105 (41.8 / 400 km)

Opinions on Bridge to Terabithia

2007-03-11T06:00:00Z

Last night, Fluffy got cabin fever about noon. About normal, she was in the house for almost twenty hours and that is the point she starts to get twitchy. So, she saw a trailer for Bridge to Terabithia and was reminded that I expressed a small amount of interest in it. So, a couple hours of pleading later, she got me to get dressed (I'm sick right now), and head on over.

The trailer for Bridge is wonderful. It makes you think of a story where two teenagers are transported to a magical land, not unlike Narnia or the Neverending Story. Fantastic creatures, battles with the strange and curious, and even a magical land. The cold cruelty of the trailers is that it shows the sum of Terabithia. If you want to see young children enjoying the lovely fantasy world, stick with the trailer. There really isn't anything else. The rest of the movie is about a boy growing up and experiencing a very significant point of his life. Based on a novel I never read.

The movie is good, but it wasn't what I thought I was going to. It is the type of emotional story I grew up with, reading in the school library. However, I probably wouldn't buy it on DVD and I probably wouldn't watch it ever again.

Killing Turf Wars

2006-10-09T05:00:00Z

I can't do Turf Wars. I think the ideas is great, the images and I'm more than capable of doing it, I just don't seem to be making the time to do it. For the last two weekends, Fluffy has been out of town, so I thought to myself, what a perfect time to work on Turf Wars! Eight days of no distractions, plenty of time to figure out some bugs and mayb make it start to resemble a game.

What I did instead of write stories, play Exalted, and relaxed. In itself, I wouldn't have been bothered by it, but that is the same thing I've been doing for two months on the project. I basically haven't touched it since before GenCon.

Also, at GenCon, I got Mr. Helfers interested in my Mudd Fournier novel (working title is "Muddy Reflections"). I already have the major parts written, I just need to merge the two short stories and novella together, change how they all end, and basically package it. Doing that, I know I can do. Writing isn't a struggle for more, not like writing games is.So, while I'm going to stop on Turf Wars, I am going to work on a project I know I can do and want to do. It is due at the end of the year (Helfers looks at novels only in January, as I mentioned in the WBM entries).

It will also give me a chance to play with Triumph for fightertype. I know she would like to see Itrifore's world done up properly at some point, so I'll aim for that also. Both of those are things I'm much more comfortable with and maybe I won't find myself doing "everything but."

RiffTrax and The Fifth Element

2006-09-12T05:00:00Z

Last night, I got to watch The Fifth Element with the riff trax from rifftrax.com. While there were bits that wren't too funny, there was a lot of places that we. Specially the whole bit with Aziz. If like MST3K and pardoies, you might seriously consider picking up one. They are only two dollars or so and they play off a MP3 player. In our case, we had the DVD on the main speakers and the MP3 player on Bouncy's laptop. It was pretty good and they have a nice little system for making sure the lines are synchronized.

The Lost Keep of Kaywall by Charles Embrey Jr.

2006-09-10T05:00:00Z

I just finished The Lost Keep of Kaywall which I picked up at GenCon. I will admit, I didn't care that much for the book, mainly because of the mechanical presentation of the story.

The story itself was creative and interesting. I found the latter half more interesting when they were dealing with the actual Lost Keep than the first part of the book which details the growth of Clovis, a young Paladin. The descriptions of the buildings, the various puzzles and fights, they kept my attention and I actually found myself wanting to read the end of the book.

The first half, on the other hand, wasn't that exciting for me. Clovis was too perfect. As a boy, he was everything. As he grew up, he met gods at second level, defeated dragons slightly higher up, was twice the fighter as men double his age and even braver than dwarves. His only flaw was girls, but that's understandable, he was only in his teens when this happen.

Well, there was one more thing. Clovis seemed a bit strange on the whole "Father" thing. I felt that he already had one, he didn't need to find a better, more "worthy" father, which is the impression both me and Fluffy got out of the book. It was just the wrong social dynamic in the story and it kind of bothered both of us.

The story is set in an interesting fantasy world. There are dragons, beasts that mean harm, and Orcs. Lots of Orcs. Orcs have capitals, along with Bard, Fighter, Druid, Cleric, Paladin, and "Son." The world follows Dungeons and Dragons mechanics pretty closely. I suspect it is first edition, because Bards use druidic magic, but they didn't listen to the obscene requirements (fighter and rouge) needed for that edition. Charles described the leveling process closely, with made it more... understandable to me, but it caused trouble with Fluffy since she doesn't really like RPG's that much and didn't care about what happens when you level.

The mechanical aspects were joined by a somewhat jumpy flow to the story. Scenes seemed to jump from point to point instead of flowing smoothly, but I felt that was more of (implied in the back) following the results of an adventure.

Overall, I liked the book. The first half annoyed me, too many perfects but the second part is where the flow of the story smoothed out somewhat, I got used to the Orcs and Paladins, and the story really started to get going. The last hundred pages, I would say, were a great story that just started off slow. Would I read it again? Probably not. I would read another of his to see if things smooth out, but if Clovis is there, I probably won't.

Fat Dragon Games

2006-08-30T05:00:00Z

At GenCon this year, one of the things I was trying to figure out the most was how to bring minatures into the game. I wanted to start using them for the Exalted game, mainly to simplify the range and other variables discussions. So, I was looking at the various options. bil got me a huge two meter square and hex grid map, which worked perfectly. About half of stuff I picked up were tokens and the like.

I considered Dwarven Forge but they expensive but very pretty. I also considered building my own from foam, which takes the most work. I also considered Hirst Arts for an option, mainly because they let me make it and they make some of the most beautiful sets I have ever seen in my life. Of course, you build them up brick by brick it would take hours, nay weeks to finish and still require me to print them.

In the end, after I decided to go with Hirst, I found Fat Dragon Games. They are build your own stuff, but they use paper models instead of resin or anything else. So, I can print as many as I want and tape/glue and mount them on foam-core board. That lets me keep the flexibility and price of Hirst with the simplicity of Dwarven Forge.

I'm currently assembling a huge palace for this Saturday's game and I'm really happy with their product. The only drawback is their selection is somewhat poor, but it is still worth it.

The Shadow Chaser by Dylan Birtolo

2006-08-29T05:00:00Z

At GenCon, Fluffy dragged me into the writer's gallery because there was an author with the same first name as myself. Naturally, I just wanted to see what other Dylan's write like, so I was just as interested as she was. Imagine my surprise when he writes in a similiar genre and theme as I do.

The Shadow Chaser is a 277 page book written by Dylan Birtolo about a man named Darien Yost who finds out that there is more to him that he could ever imagine. The story starts slow, but moves into a fast-paced style that kept me interested until the end; I went to bed late to read as much as I could just because I was so interested in it.

The topic of the book was very enjoyable. I like magic in the "modern" world without turning it into the dark depression of World of Darkness. The sensations of the magic were nice, with a nice attention to the detail that the various characters didn't exactly feel when they were using it, it was more perceptions of others, almost a seeming instead of true transformations. Some of the character traits were reflected in their powers, which also one of those tiny little detail things I look for.

The fight scenes were creative, actually using the traits of the combatants and also reflecting the various changing environments. The difference between the multiple worlds really showed up in the various scenary and also the "feel" of the story, enhanced by the use of italics for the "other" world. That part I enjoyed a lot.

Some minor things stood out as I read it, ignoring the one typo on page 90 since those always get in there.

I frequently got lost on the point of view. In the middle of a section, the view would change from one character to another and there wasn't a good way of indicating that the view had changed; sometimes I would go back to try figuring who was feeling what when.

As a fast-paced story, it flowed very well, but it also felt rushed. The montage-like scene in the middle, where two of the characters go from little skill to fairly high in skill (in magic for one and rifles in the other) didn't really feel right. If she showed a talents for guns earlier, it would have made more sense than just a sudden surge in skill. It also make it feel like everything was rushed.

The only other thing that stood out was the problem of perfection. The main character has awesome powers and everyone else knows it, but Dylan doesn't explain why. Instead, its just there to drive the story where it could have given the story more depth to explain why everyone knows, including the non-magical person. Contrasting that is that the characters make the wrong conclusion in the story and actually carry it through until the revelation, which made a nice little minor twist.

Despite the main character having these impressive powers, he also has setbacks, which makes the story great. In the story, he has a natural talent, more than most people, but there was still a feeling of danger and he wasn't exactly able to depending on his l33t powers to save him, instead the character protrayed showed a great deal of intelligence.

Overall, I enjoyed the story. The characters have an interesting potential for personalities and also it leaves it open for the "what if" that I always love at the end of stories. Not everything was neatly tied up which I consider one of the best parts of the stories, mainly because it made me think of what happened next.

Fluffy, while not as verbose as me, really enjoyed the story and kept pushing me to read it, because she knew I would enjoy it. And I did. I'm looking forward to the next one, mainly to see how the world develops and the mythology of this tale grows.

Review of "Ultra-Violet"

2006-03-17T06:00:00Z

Now, I'm fond of bad movies. I'm really fond of bad movies, but I saw this review on Venus Envy (a comic about bi, gays, lesbians, and transsexuals, so might not want to go there, but I love the emotions in the story):

'Ultra-Violet' was the movie I had actually been looking forward to seeing the most. It was bright and colorful, which is actually something I really like in a movie (that and shiny aluminum foil), and looked 'over-the-top' bad, which is always fun. I can say this much: If you want to see a bad action movie, DO NOT PAY FULL PRICE to see 'Ultra-Violet'; go to a matinee, sneak in, break in after hours and run your own screening, or just buy s $3 bootleg DVD on your next trip to Hong Kong, but don't (for the love of god and all things holy) send money to the people who made this movie, or they'll just use it to make more.

'Ultra-Violet' is set in a world where, I shit you not, the government created a highly-contagious virus that gives everyone who gets infected (and you can get infected by touching blood, being cried on, or possibly even from getting a dirty look, apparently; sort of a Fristian AIDS) super powers, and rather than say 'This is a great leap forward for mankind; we've developed a virus that makes us healthier and strong and universally attractive", they decide to go ape-shit, let the CDC take over the government, and start herding 'hemophages' into concentration camps... because apparently it's very, very easy to round up everyone in the world who is infected with the most contagious disease since the common cold. The kicker, though, is when we find out that the super-virus is actually VAMPIRISM, which is something they mention repeatedly throughout the story but never actually has any bearing on anything, because these vampires can walk around during the day, don't drink blood, and have no aversion to churches or even spicy food.

The movie has about ten minutes of dialogue, all slow, convoluted, and as painful to watch as it probably was to perform ("I have 700 armed men here gaurding me. What do you think you're going to do?" "Kill them!"). The evil, Nazi-esque guards all wear heavy gas masks, but never think to use GAS on the scantily-clad vampire chick who's mowing through them like an unruly lawn. The Magoffin is a ten-year-old boy whose dark secret changes every twenty minutes without fail. At one point, my girlfriend started laughing so hard and uncontrollably that she almost passed out, and the people sitting in front of us moved EIGHT ROWS up (ostensibly so that we didn't ruin the movie for them).

All of these things, you expect from a bad action movie, but....

As a first-year art student who despises her CGI classes, I should not sit in a movie theatre and think "Damn... I could do better than THAT". You go to bad action movies to watch corny, over-the-top action scenes, but the fights in 'ultra-Violet' weren't fun so much as funny. Half the guards at the CDC carry ONLY katanas, in a world where everyone FEARS A BLOOD-TRANSMITTED DISEASE... and they don't even really use them well. It's like they randomly hand out assignments every week to decide who gets a gun and who get a sword. There's never any question about whether or not Violet will win; She doesn't actually take a hit until the final boss battle, and even then she doesn't even start sweating, which takes away the tension (the only thing that normally keeps the comedy at bay in these movies) and the whole thing becomes more of an endurance trial than an action scene.

This is not a movie that was written, it is a movie that was randomly cobbled together from the screamings of a fifth-grade class. Possibly sixth grade. If you go see this movie, GO DRUNK.

So, to sum up: Low-budget foreign import about vampires: GOOD. High-budget domestic film about vampires: BAD.

Also, the state of the Union is NOT STRONG!