Quest for Fun! Bruce Heard and New Stories CRRPG Addict Sitrep Hex and Violence Desperation Morale Banzai!! Dungeon Fantastic Gaming Ballistic Let’s GURPS The Collaborative GamerPreston’s book on the last Jacobite Rebellion is an interesting volume. It looks for balance not by stripping away all romanticism or propaganda, but by embracing them. What papers and people were saying on both sides is looked at, not[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Uprooted is big, sprawling, epic fantasy-type of book that really benefits from not being done as a trilogy the way so many in the genre tend to be. Not that it would take a lot to structure it as such,[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
As a series with a name like “The Queen’s Thief”, it would be natural to assume that each book will be another exploit by Eugenides, with a decently similar setup and just a bit episodic. No. The Queen of Attolia[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Amphibious Thing is another Kindle book that I picked up on sale, though I was uncertain that I’d care much about the life of an early Eighteenth Century person I’d never heard of. Thankfully, the book is well-written and fairly[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Enchantress From the Stars has a bit of an ambitious high concept, and pulls it off very well. The main ‘problem’ with the book is a galaxy full of inhabited planets where all the naturally-occurring intelligent life is human, or[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
White Mare’s Daughter is technically a historical novel, but I find it hard to classify it as such. This takes place way back in prehistory, around 4500 BCE or so, featuring a pair of cultures that it is impossible to[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Osprey’s book on siege weapons does it’s intended job of introducing the subject, but that’s about it. Sam Thompson’s gouache illustrations show a nice variety of specific examples of machines, but the rest of the book tends to be unspecific[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Massie’s book on Catherine the Great is first and foremost a biography, and never loses sight of this fact. As an empress, there is a temptation to equate her with the state, and end up with more of a history[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Zita is young girl (I’d guess around 10) who gets whisked away to wild adventures in space where she survives with courage, daring, and a number of friends she makes along the way. In this, it reminds me strongly of[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Peter Heather’s study of Western Europe after the fall of Rome comes in four parts, with the first three being similar, and the fourth different. Each one is about a separate attempt to restore ‘imperial’ rule to the Western Roman[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…