Tag: Fantasy

Review: American Gods by Neil Gaiman

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2010-05-09

9:00 am

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American Gods Amer­i­can Gods by Neil Gaiman

My rat­ing: 4 of 5 stars
I’m try­ing to remem­ber whether or not I’ve read any of Gaiman’s oth­er nov­els before, and I’m fair­ly cer­tain that I haven’t. I read Good Omens, but that was co-writ­ten with Ter­ry Pratch­ett, and the col­lab­o­ra­tion was genius. I know that the entire world seems to love Sand­man, of course, but I’m just not a fan of graph­ic nov­els. In fact, it took me a while to real­ize that the Good Omens co-author and the Sand­man author were one and the same. Con­tin­ue read­ing “Review: Amer­i­can Gods by Neil Gaiman” →

Reviews: Various Short Stories

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2010-04-24

8:57 am

4 Comments on Reviews: Various Short Stories

Book Reviews, Reading

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I just fin­ished read­ing a bunch of dif­fer­ent short sto­ries that have been lurk­ing in var­i­ous pro­grams on my iTouch. While they are reviewed in sep­a­rate entries on GoodReads, I’m going to try to put the reviews in one blog post. Con­tin­ue read­ing “Reviews: Var­i­ous Short Sto­ries” →

Review: Walking Dead by C.E. Murphy

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2010-03-07

11:00 am

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Walking Dead (Walker Papers, #4) Walk­ing Dead by C.E. Mur­phy

My rat­ing: 4 of 5 stars
I’ve enjoyed the oth­er Walk­er Papers nov­els, but Walk­ing Dead def­i­nite­ly showed more depth and matu­ri­ty than the ear­li­er vol­umes. Both the author and her lead char­ac­ter have grown very nice­ly. Joanne is far from per­fect, but she does­n’t make the same mis­takes over and over again, which is a pet peeve of mine and occurs all too often in some oth­er authors works. (There’s con­sis­ten­cy, and then there’s refus­ing to learn from mis­takes to the extent that I have to believe that a char­ac­ter is too stu­pid to live.) As for the author, it’s incred­i­bly refresh­ing to read a series that does not fall into the all-too-famil­iar para­nor­mal romance for­mu­la!
Con­tin­ue read­ing “Review: Walk­ing Dead by C.E. Mur­phy” →

Review: The Iron Hunt by Marjorie M. Liu

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2008-08-26

6:05 pm

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The Iron Hunt The Iron Hunt by Mar­jorie M. Liu

My review


rat­ing: 5 of 5 stars
The Iron Hunt is a beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten book with some inter­est­ing twists on estab­lished fan­ta­sy memes. To some extent, I felt that I’d come in to the world on book 2 or 3, but as far as I know (and from what Ama­zon says) this is the first book of the Hunter Kiss series. There was a bit of Buffy and a lit­tle Witch­blade, with oth­er ele­ments I’m sure I’m over­look­ing.

For once, it’s good to see a nov­el in which an estab­lished cou­ple has a seem­ing­ly-healthy rela­tion­ship. Max­ine and Grant have very dif­fer­ent skills, but they work togeth­er well. That said, this is not a romance, so some of Liu’s read­ers may not enjoy it.

Edit­ed to add: I just learned that there is, in fact, a pre­quel to this book in Wild Thing (an anthol­o­gy), which I had­n’t heard of before. I’ll cer­tain­ly be look­ing for it.

Next up: The Down Home Zom­bie Bluesby new-to-me-author Lin­nea Sin­clair

View all my reviews.

Review: Hotter Than Hell

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2008-07-04

9:56 pm

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Hot­ter Than Hell, the lat­est “Hell” anthol­o­gy is edit­ed and has an intro­duc­tion by Kim Har­ri­son. I don’t know if the sex­i­er trend is her choice, a response to mar­ket demands, or some­thing else again.

The anthol­o­gy is thick­er than most, with longer pieces–short novellas?–by each of the 13 authors. I read a copy from the library, but it’s one of the few antholo­gies that I’d con­sid­er worth the $7.99 cov­er price.
Con­tin­ue read­ing “Review: Hot­ter Than Hell” →

R.I.P. Robert Asprin

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2008-05-22

10:39 pm

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I only encoun­tered him per­son­al­ly once, on a pan­el the first time I attend­ed a con (Drag­on Con, 1988 or so?). I thought he was an arro­gant jerk. I’ve heard from oth­ers that he could be quite nice, so maybe it was some kind of schtick. I did enjoy all the Thieves World books, despite their unre­lent­ing dark­ness.

He was sched­uled to be at Mar­Con this week­end, so it seems his death was sud­den and unex­pect­ed. I wish the best to his fam­i­ly and friends.

TotD: Robin Laws on Roleplaying Games

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2008-04-10

11:22 pm

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RPGs, Thought of the Day

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I had­n’t ever thought of it this way, but I think the man is on to some­thing.

“One of my pet the­o­ries about the pop­u­lar­i­ty of role­play­ing games goes like this. Role­play­ing is fan­ta­sy shop­ping for guys. That is, men would, as a group, be more inter­est­ed in shop­ping if a) it meant nev­er hav­ing to leave the house and b) they were shop­ping for super-pow­ers. In that case, the typ­i­cal role­play­ing rule­book is like a Nie­man-Mar­cus cat­a­log for super-pow­ers. Depend­ing on the game sys­tem and char­ac­ter type, these extra­or­di­nary abil­i­ties might be called feats, spells, schticks, dis­ci­plines, skills, high tech gear, psion­ics, or what­ev­er. For lack of a a bet­ter all-encom­pass­ing term, I refer to these things as crunchy bits.”
Robin D. Laws, Robin’s Laws of Good Game Mas­ter­ing

Secrets of Good Game Mastering cover

MomoCon?

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2008-01-28

10:50 pm

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Fun, Geekery, RPGs

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Any­body going to Momo­Con here in Atlanta? I’d nev­er heard of it before today. It’s free, and may be in its sec­ond year (I’m not sure). It seems quite small, which could be nice. It’s local, which is a big plus for us. I’m unclear as to whether there’s any gam­ing hap­pen­ing or not, and there’s no men­tion of filk­ing that I can see.