Flash of Steel Playing at the World Dyson’s Dodecahedron Quest for Fun! Bruce Heard and New Stories CRRPG Addict Fantasy Cafe Sitrep Hex and Violence Banzai!! Dungeon Fantastic Gaming Ballistic Ravens N’ Pennies Let’s GURPS The Collaborative Gamer Don’t Forget Your BootsFor the recent Tolkien Reader Day, I picked up the first of Christopher Tolkien’s ‘History of Middle Earth’ series. It takes a bit of unpacking. This is largely the earliest versions of some of the earliest stories. However, while the[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The initial book of the Hidden Sea Tales comes to a very satisfying conclusion, but there’s a number of dangling threads. Sofie gets to go back to Stormwrack, and pick up the investigation of this world which isn’t—and is—Earth. She’s[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The third “Swords and Fire” book wraps up the trilogy well. My objections from the first book persist, but are better here, as the story and politics have grown. And all the strong points remain. There is a good mix[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The final volume of Sumption’s history of the Hundred Years War does exactly what one would expect. Another eight-hundred pages on a bit more than twenty years of history. It’s excellent stuff as always, but I do feel like it’s[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
First off, the electronic version of this book is in better shape than the previous. That had obviously been properly proofread, but there were still some major formatting problems with scene breaks and the like. Well, not even that’s a[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
As with other Ailette de Bodard stories I have read, this is a largely character-focused story with unfamiliar signposts. In this case, we have three different stories going on at the same time, but they’re all focused on the same[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
This is a bit surprising as an ‘Elite’ book in Osprey’s line, but it is certainly worth the extra pages over a regular Men-At-Arms book. I am also happy to see post-Roman Gaul and Britain considered together, especially as this[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
So of course I come to the “first” of the Epona books last. Admittedly, it was the third one written (out of four), so I’m not completely out of order, just mostly. Not that it really matters, since while they[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
I started listening to podcasts at just the right time: There was a minor explosion of good historical subjects going on. This was largely due to Mike Duncan, and his History of Rome podcast. Not that you can tell by[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
So far as I know, Carl Sandburg is hardly known today, though my edition of this set starts with a recounting of a speech he was invited to make before Congress. Generally, he was a poet, but became so fascinated[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…