Smudge Marks & Engel Werks Flash of Steel Playing at the World Dyson’s Dodecahedron Quest for Fun! Bruce Heard and New Stories CRRPG Addict Fantasy Cafe Lynn’s Book Blog Sitrep Hex and Violence Grumble Jones Banzai!! Dungeon Fantastic Ravens N’ Pennies Let’s GURPS The Collaborative Gamer Don’t Forget Your BootsSadly, the first impression of this book has to be that it lost Larry Elmore as a cover artist, and this one just doesn’t measure up to the previous covers in the series. But, the important part, the stories, are[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
I recently picked up the package deal of three of the Chicks in Chainmail anthologies on Kindle. I’m disappointed that the first two haven’t gone electronic. The general idea is fantasy stories featuring women warriors saving males in distress. The[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The start of epic fantasy stories often have a pacing problem. The desire to provide lots of background, and root you in an unfamiliar world mean that the plot moves like a freight train. It has a lot of momentum,[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
It took six years for the final volume of this trilogy to come out, and given the page count takes another two-hundred page jump upwards, I imagine it was in the category of ‘the book that ate his life’. The[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The second volume of the Fire Bearers trilogy expands the world, and the scope of the plot, with the book jumping up a hundred pages in length to compensate. The first volume left off in a bit of a quiet[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
I suppose a handy useful fact to get out of the way is that “Clay” is the name of the main character. So, this isn’t a god made of clay, but rather Clay’s god. Past that, this is the first[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The first thing I found out reading this is that I should read Robin McKinley’s Rose Daughter. I think I remember a friend enthusing about it at the time, but that recommendation has been lost to mists of time. Ursula[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
I know what you’re thinking. And no, the book isn’t about that. This isn’t a conspiracy of Arthurian legend. In this case, “Merlin” is an office title in an alternate-universe Britain (The Isles of Blest), and the conspiracy centers around[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
It is impossible to overstate how important this series was to me during the ’80s. If you want to understand teenage me, Star Trek, Robotech, Elfquest, and role playing games are essential knowledge. I recently picked up the Dark Horse[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The real problem with any truly special story is that doing it again is difficult. Especially if you take the same characters and find a new story for them to fit into as well as they did the first. This[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…