Dyson’s Dodecahedron Quest for Fun! CRRPG Addict Fantasy Cafe Lynn’s Book Blog Sitrep Hex and Violence Desperation Morale Banzai!! Dungeon Fantastic Gaming Ballistic Let’s GURPS The Collaborative GamerOkay, lets start by setting expectations: The advertising blurb mentions ‘the life of Archimedes’, suggesting a big, dense, fictional biography via novel. No, this is a tight fairly plot-focused lighter novel taking place over maybe a single year (probably not[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
This book gave me a bad impression early on when the introduction states, “All the land taken from Mexico, historians now acknowledge, could have been acquired peacefully through diplomacy and deliberate negotiation of financial recompense.” That’s a rather big pill[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
This book is two things in one. First, it is an art book showcasing Graham Turner’s art on the Wars of the Roses. Second, it is a light history of those wars, illustrated with Turner’s paintings, and a number of[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
So, the New Frontiers series settles down into a series at this point. There’s some rough patches. It’s still a shorter novel, and feels more like an expanded episode than a novel. Part of that… I think is that it[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Written about two decades before starting his epic five-volume history of the Hundred Years War, Sumption’s history of the fall of southern France follows along the same general lines. In this case, the second chapter goes into a general long-term[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Alexander Key definitely has a ‘type’, and this book is straight in his favored genre. Boy’s adventure with a super-powered (generally psionic) protagonist. Here we have a post-apocalyptic setting, where destructive weapons have reshaped the earth, drowning almost all the[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The C plot of an early TNG episode has Picard practicing a formal greeting for the Jarada. They’re very touchy about protocol, very insular, and this is the first chance in a while for the Federation to try negotiating with[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The third of Nick Holmes’ books on the end of the Roman Empire covers from the sacking of Rome in 410 through the death of Attila in 453, and then the end of Western Roman administration in 476. The good[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Tamora Pierce finishes off her second YA female knight series in great fashion here. There’s been a lot built up during the previous three books, and there’s a lot here. You can read this independently, but I recommend against it.[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Holmes’ second book covers from the recovery of the Roman Empire from the Crisis of the Third Century to the sacking of Rome in 410. Well, mostly. While the second book in a series, it is meant to be a[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…