Dragon’s Soul

by on December 25, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Okay, from the beginning, I have questions that are never answered. It’s part of a setup that is fine in it’s own right, but you do have to wonder at the biology.

Teku is a fifth child. Which doesn’t seem like it should be odd, but it is here. In this village, every…one is paired. The particular focus family has a mother and father, and two sets of twins. This is normal. And then they also have Teku, who is not.

This is odd enough that I was wondering if the inhabitants were even human, since there’s not a lot of early description, but yes, they are.

Of course, four kids per two parents is a pretty good population growth rate… if child mortality is very low. It sounds like that’s not a major problem, but we don’t see enough to have any idea.

All of this is really just important for the first chapter, as it is part of the initial equilibrium setup. From here we quickly get into (literal) transformative fantasy, which is the backbone of the story.

The second unexplained bit is the character’s sudden transformation from male human to female dragon. There’s at least some hints of unknown forces operating for this part, which at least makes it feel less ignored, and that maybe there’s an answer that the characters (and reader) don’t get to know. This a fairly obvious allusion to wish fulfillment for being transgender, including a renaming of the main character to Blaze. She struggles with the change in status for the rest of the story… but outside of that it generally isn’t a problem. Unique? Yes. But it obviously happened, and therefore there’s no point in tying themselves, or Blaze, up in knots about it.

So, this is man vs self, but instead of struggling with a choice or essential nature, it is a struggle to accept her own self-worth. (It’s kind of in the vein of the classic Andre Norton trope of a misfit finding their place in the world elsewhere, but with less struggle, and more spontaneous transformation.) External plot meanwhile is generated by the fact that dragons are in charge of ensuring magic—which is needed for life—flows through the land properly, and everything remains growing. Blaze’s old village should have been dead, but magic was flowing until just now, causing things to come full circle as the characters go back to investigate for a conclusion that has no plot twists whatsoever. (And it’s said that once an area is dead, you can’t just bring it back by re-establishing the life stream there. So, what took care of the world before the dragons took over?)

The general writing is good, and if you stay concentrated on what’s going on through Ember’s eyes, it’s a decent enough story. It’s not trying to be great, which is good, because the various unanswered questions hold it back already. If the description sounds interesting, go ahead and get it; it is by no means bad, it just has some problems that in the end don’t interfere with the story.

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Two Rounds of Plain of Alsace

by on December 21, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: CC:Ancients

After going on patrol, Patch and I went to our normal round of Commands & Colors: Ancients. This time was “Plain of Alsace” from Expansion 3. Germanics versus Caesar, with both sides about equal, but the Romans have Julian regions, Caesar, a second leader (the Germans just have Ariovistus), and two more cards.

Patch started the first game as the Romans with Order Four Right to get the Heavies into action and do one point ranged. I Ordered Lights to solidify my line. Patch Ordered Three Center to move his Mediums up, and Move-Fire-Move got me a hit on three different units. Patch used Line Command to get his right into contact and knocked out a Warrior, and did one block each to two others, with one evading, and the other retreating to the base line; but took three hits to a Medium in return.

Then I used Line Command to come into contact across the board, finishing off the Medium, destroying an Auxiliary, doing two damage to Caesar’s Heavy, three damage to an Auxiliary, and causing a lot of retreats, but I lost a Warrior outright. Patch Out Flanked, wiping out a Warrior, and trading blocks on other units. I Ordered Mediums, doing two hits to a LB, and an Auxilia, but whiffed on a one-block Auxilia, and took a few hits in return. Leadership Any Section let Caesar move into the center and destroy another Warrior. I Double-Timed into the center and my right, forcing a couple of retreats and finishing off a Medium. Patch used Leadership Any Section again, finished off a Warrior, did three blocks to another, and then finished him off, killing Ariovistus, after losing a three-block Medium. 4-7

I started the second game with Order Light Troops, doing one block to a Warrior. Patch Ordered Two Left, and did two blocks to an Auxiliary and took one in return. I Out Flanked and destroyed a weakened Warrior. Patch Ordered Three Right, forcing retreats with one loss. Order Two Left let me nearly knock out a Warrior with two banners. Line Command let his right move up and finish off an Aux, and then killed Crassus with a single hit on an evading MC.

Coordinated Attack did three hits across two units for no loss. A second Line Command re-engaged Patch’s right, doing four blocks across three units without me battling back. Order Mediums let me do some damage in the same area, killing Ariovistus on the second hit on a Warrior. Patch then Ordered Mediums to finish off a MC. I Counter Attacked to do a couple of individual hits and finish off an Auxiliary. Patch Ordered Three Right to finish off a Medium and do three hits to a second one. Inspired Right Leadership did nothing… except get Caesar ready to go into action.

Patch Ordered Lights to finish off an Auxiliary, and do two other blocks of damage, taking two in return. Leadership Any Section finished off an Auxiliary and forced a Warrior to retreat off board. Patch Ordered One (Mounted Charge) to finish off a Medium and do a block to an evading LB. Order Three Right got Caesar to the the Barbarian base line where he destroyed a Light and MC. 7-6

Afterword

Given the various Roman advantages, especially the hand size, I figured the Barbarians would be doing well to get more than a couple banners. But both of us had pretty good hands as the Barbarians, and did better than I expected. I might have done better with the Romans, but was holding my right hoping that Patch would finish off a one block Auxiliary and come into range of the Heavies. In the end, I pressed that just in time to wrap things up.

Overall, it’s a good scenario, and there’s plenty of tools (if not cards) on both sides. It is very cavalry light, with just three MC on each side. Losing the two leaders early in the second game was a big surprise, and cut down options.

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Rogue Elements

by on December 17, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

The third Picard novel finishes up the initial run of prequels of the series (the fifth novel is a fourth prequel…). And it is easily the best of the lot.

Following in the trend of The Last Best Hope, I was expecting this to be full version of the background that eventually spills out during later parts of season one, where Rios was executive officer of the USS Ibn Majid, and has is career wrecked after the ship encounters a pair of androids.

Instead, we get a much looser story centered around how he got the La Sirena. Which is at least as logical a choice, and one we haven’t gotten anything on before.

It works well, and the story turns into a sprawling mess ranging from action, to the good ol’ Traveller campaign premise of making payments every month (only ever alluded to), to caper. It works because there is a bigger story than the La Sirena serving as a backbone for all this.

The main MacGuffin of the novel is the “actuality”, a particularly high-fidelity holographic recording. Particularly, some done by a particular artist that are exceptionally ingenious, and deservedly sought after. That comes a bit later of course, since we start with just getting the ship, and then complications start setting in. Overall, the plot structure is sound, and very well done.

Along the way, we get a lot of call outs to various parts of Trek lore, ranging from TOS to characters reappearing from TNG episodes, and events from The Undiscovered Country. These all naturally flow into the novel better than I would have thought if told beforehand. Miller takes a common premise (tramp freighter captain), adds a few things we know are coming (the emergency holograms), gets Rios going with a bit of action, hands him a problem (a debt that he can’t ignore—no matter how hard he tries), and then starts layering in the plot twists. Rios gets to grow past the immediate trauma of losing his Star Fleet career, and Miller keeps an air of fun the entire way.

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The Cartoonists Club

by on December 13, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

I’ve been aware of this graphic novel for the last few months, and picked up a copy recently. Not having gotten a lot of graphic novels lately, it is still surprising to see good color printing, and good white paper as a matter of course, and of course a Scholastic logo.

The opening of the book is familiar. Makayla is a deeply creative person, with stories and ideas floating through her head all the time. What she doesn’t have is a good way to start expressing all this. This wasn’t me, but I certainly knew people like this.

She has another creative friend, more involved in drawing, but with trouble finding anything beyond single, spur-of-the-moment, illustrations to do.

So, they team up, start a school club, attract a few more creative types, and start learning how to make comics under the light tutelage of a friendly library media specialist (good school!).

The focus of the book changes as it goes. We start out with a character focus, where we get to know the characters, and deal with various struggles on both an artistic front and on a personal front. As we go, this largely drops by the wayside, and we get more involved in how comics work, and how to effectively communicate through them, to the point of the last sections being fourth-wall breaking to show off some of the hidden assumptions of the medium. This latter thread is present all the way from the beginning, as the characters try to wrestle with just what they’re doing, and how you’re “supposed” to do it.

In all, this book is not merely a collaboration of Raina Telgemeier and Scott McCloud, it is a collaboration of their own stories.

If you want more stories of the struggles of middle-school kids in graphic novel form, there’s plenty to choose from, including Telgemeier’s own books. If you want a discussion of how comics work as a medium, the atmosphere is much more rarefied, but the outstanding work is McCloud’s Understanding Comics, which is a book that will really make you think.

It is also the pair of them explicitly handing advice on to the next (and future) generation. You want to do art, make comics? Start a club, gather other people together and start pooling your individual talents! There’s a nice section on expressing emotion and body language which is more involved than Understanding Comics. And there’s very practical advice on how to put together mini-comics and start getting out there on an extremely local level. In other words the book is about how to get your enthusiasm up, start creating, and take your first steps into getting your ideas out there.

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A Short History of the Civil War

by on December 9, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Fletcher Pratt is known to the SF&F community as the coauthor of the “Harold Shea” series (he did others, both with L. Sprague deCamp and alone, but those left a lasting impression). He is also known to wargamers as running a wargaming club in the 1930s, and publishing his naval miniatures rules in 1940.

He also did some historical writing, including a 320-page history of the ACW. It was originally titled Ordeal By Fire in 1935, and then the present title was given to the second edition in 1948. My dad was given a copy by his older brother around ’51, and it set him on the path of being a Civil War nut, and later a wargamer, and an author of books on the ACW. That particular copy has not survived, but he still has a 1963 9th printing of the Cardinal Edition he originally read. I have a 1968 Bantam edition.

In 320 pages Pratt isn’t going to, and doesn’t, say anything I don’t already know, but he does cover the subject well and energetically in that length.

He cycles through subjects, giving the broad movements, the battles, the leaders. Occasionally, there’s a chapter labeled as “Interludes” away from the war itself. Britain’s non-intervention, the draft riots, Gettysburg Address, the Second Inaugural. Everything is handled quickly, but never breathlessly, and passion in the writing carries things forward.

Overall, it’s a good book to develop a basic understanding of the ACW, and likely an interest in seeing more. Very good for all this is the maps. Unlike a lot of books that have a bare handful of maps, if that, and desperately need more, the list of maps here runs two pages.

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