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The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure by William Goldman

Listen, it's not my fault. My history with The Princess Bride is composed of  a couple decades worth of WUUUUUUUV, TWUUUU WUUUUUV! and I never realized that there was an actual novel that went with the movie. I mean, obviously Fred Savage's grandpa read him the book in the movie, but I thought that was just a prop. I mean, I've spent more hours in bookstores than any sane person and I'd have noticed the thing at some point, right?

I mean, it's inconceivable that I could possibly not know about a The Princess Bride book if it existed. There was no chance that could get stuck in the Fire Swamp of ignorance of the existence that it would take to not know that there was a novel. Seriously, you couldn't have stopped me from getting one if I had known about it. I'd have all kinds of fun storming that castle. At least until a rodent of unusual size got to my bookshelf and ate my copy. Even then, I bet I could get my boy Miracle Max to bring my copy back to life so I could read it again.

And all of that makes sense until you realize that there actually was such a book and I didn't know about it. At that point I was all just like...

"My name is Jimbo McCoy. You killed my delusion. Prepare to buy!" Forunately for me, e-books aren't all that expensive and I won't need a wheelbarrow to carry it in.

Oh wait, you wanted an actual review and not just me acting like a bigger geek than normal?

As you wish.

Or not.

Suck it up, Buttercup.

Dude, put down the six-fingered sword and the iocaine powder. I'm getting there. I promise.

Although, all trash talk aside, it does occur to me that it has been far too long since I've watched the movie with my daughters, but I digress. 

Dude, reading this review must be like climbing the Cliffs of Insanity. 

Please don't go all Dread Pirate Roberts on me. I wouldn't like it if you mostly likely killed me in the morning.

Alright, alright. I'll say something meaningful about the book.

Dude...

The Princess Bride is the most meta book in the history of ever. There is so much here that got left out of the movie because it wouldn't fit, but like "Morgenstern" must have been the worst author in the history of ever. He mentioned a bunch of crap about the history of Guilder and Florin that would totally not work in an actual novel and Goldman is really snarky about it.

I mean, I know I'm putting on airs here and I haven't really earned the right to say this, but parts of The Princess Bride read like a review from Jimbo's Awesome SF/F Reviews. Seriously. Goldman has a similar whacky and zany sense of humor. Reading endless pages about the history of women's hats would suck, but reading Goldman's complaints about those pages is pure comedy gold. 

There is a lot more about Inigo Montoya's childhood and his relationship with his father in the book than there was in the movie. This is a good thing. The whole revenge angle takes on so much more importance when we know how close he was to his father, why his father was killed, and how humiliated Montoya was by his fathers murderer. This was good stuff that would have made the movie even better if they could have found a way to work it in. 

The Narrator of the novel, supposedly Goldman himself, is a source of great entertainment as well. The story goes that his father read the book to him as a kid and left lots of it out. That's where a lot of the meta stuff comes in. Now the Narrator wants his son to read the book and can't figure out why he won't. Then the Narrator picks the book up and finds out how bad it was..

Yeah, it doesn't sound like the kind of thing you'd want to re-write honestly, but he does and it's amazing. This strikes a chord with me personally because it reminds me a lot of the struggles I've had to get my kids to read the stuff I loved as a kid. I can't even get my oldest to read the stuff I love NOW and it can be a bit of a challenge to deal with mentally. It would be so awesome if they would, but..

Yeah.

Long story (overly) long this is the type of situation that I can identify with and I'm guessing a lot of you can as well.

Of course, all of our favorite characters are there; Westley, Buttercup, Fezzik, Inigo Montoya, Vizzini, etc. Not all of the lines were translated straight from the book though, and it's one of those things where you can end up disappointed not because something isn't entertaining, but because it's not quite the way you remembered it. That much is, I guess, inevitable as the movie writer, actor/actress, director and some other person that I forgot about probably all had a hand in rewriting the dialogue for the movie. It doesn't ruin it, but it is a little different and that took some getting used to. 

One suggestion I'm going to make is to skip the introductions to both the Thirtieth and Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Editions. They don't add a whole lot to the experience and they took a lot of time to get through. I was really surprised by this because I thought I was going to get something really awesome with these, but not so much. I've been more disappointed in my life, obviously, but I kind of wish I could have that time back.

Still and all I’m glad I read The Princess Bride. It was a lot of fun exploring something I had loved for a long time in a totally different setting. This was an experience I won't forget. That sounds weird, but it's true. If you haven't read the book, and especially if you're just finding out that it actually exists, I'd recommend reading it.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Boring Intros

Kevin McDonald's A Nation Interrupted: An Alternate History Novel

So, what happens when the Confederate Army finds out that their plans have been intercepted at Antietam BEFORE the battle, changes their plan, wins the war and the Confederate States of America becomes an independent country? How does the future change? World War I? World War II? Think about it: It took the United States and the engineers that built the Transcontinental Railroad to dig the Panama Canal. What happens if the United States doesn't do the work? What then?

ESPECIALLY World War II. What happens when the United States are not united anymore? What changes when the country that needs to save Britain isn't as big a nation and doesn't have the same population, wealth and industrial base? What happens if the United States makes a more tempting target than the Soviet Union? What then?

Those are the questions answered by Kevin McDonald in A Nation Interrupted. It's well written and, in places, terrifying. I could see this happening. He's done his research and it shows. And it's weird because a solid grasp on some of the problems his Germans would face, but he doesn't let that stop him or them. He finds a way around things the same way a real world general would have to. He makes it believable. His grasp on the effectiveness of strategic bombing is spot on as well. 

This is a book with an epic cast, although they seem to all be Americans. That works though, especially in today's day and age where many people would be offended if he had included the German point of view. It does lend a certain cardboard feeling to the villains of the piece but, let's face it, they are literal Nazis. Still and all, things may have worked a mite better if we had gotten an opposing viewpoint. 

On the other hand, it's good to see an author who doesn't kowtow to the Leftist stereotype of Americas as Nazis. The Americans in the book, for the most part, are strong, patriotic and opposed to the assholes that have invaded their shores. (Oh, did I fail to mention that the Germans invade New York city? I guess I should've mentioned that little tidbit earlier. Forgive me. It's Monday.)

McDonald pulls no punches in his depiction of Hitler's Final Solution to the Jewish Question conducted on American soil. There are chunks of that part of the narrative that are quite frankly heart rending and more than just a little disgusting. That's why they work. McDonald has done some real research here. He also does his best to resolve a real-world controversy about how the Allies should have responded to the death camps. I like this. First, because it's necessary but also because his resolution matches with my own take on the issue. 

I have a sneaking suspicion that McDonald my have consumed more than one Harry Turtledove novel because A Nation Interrupted has a very similar feeling to a lot Turtledove's work without the repetitive dialogue. The shifting viewpoints, the strategic acumen and the grittiness of the characters and situations remind me a lot of Turtledove, whose work I've been reading for over twenty-five years now. I enjoy Turtledove's work and, honestly, there's not really a bigger compliment that I could pay to an Alt-Hist novel. 

Don't tell him that. He'll think I'm calling him old. Nope, the old dude in this story is moi.

Anyway...

The action in this book is intense. We find ourselves flying along with bomber crews. We find ourselves sneaking past Nazis. The tension level in A Nation Interrupted is sky high and it stays that way. This is a very quickly paced book. It builds and builds and if you you're not squirming in your seat for the majority of the end of the book you're not paying attention. There is a lot here and the possibility of catastrophic failure is never very far away. 

That's once it gets started though. A Nation Interrupted takes a minute to get started. When I first started reading this, I kind of assumed that it was the first book in a series. It's not. It's a standalone novel, but it works well that way. I do kind of feel like McDonald could have slowed down the pace a bit and given us a trilogy here though.  

There are large chunks of time skipped over with a quick overview of the progress of the war. This works because it keeps things moving and tells the reader what they need to know. It is, also, a missed opportunity in my opinion. It kind of feels like McDonald was in a big hurry to finish a story that probably could have made him a bunch more money if he had allowed it to develop further and turned it into a series.

I don't want to take this too far though. My favorite season of Babylon 5 was the fourth season. What made it so great was that J Michael Stracz...

Strazi....

Strazy...

Uhh...

The guy who wrote the series didn't think it would get renewed for its fifth season, so he condensed the last two season into one season and it was freaking amazeballs. When the action gets thick, fast, and furious my eyes light up. There was a lot in A Nation Interrupted and it happened very quickly. I liked that.

And, let's face it, there are a lot of things you can say to an author that are worse than, "Well gee, Mister, I really wish I had more of your work to read, and I would've paid to do it." It's also not like McDonald hasn't published other stuff. I definitely plan to read it. I just kind of wish that it would've been more of this story instead of a completely new one. 

Truth be told though, I'm a little bit bitter. I just read a book that went with one of my favorite books of all time and not only did I spend my whole weekend reading A Nation Interrupted instead of reviewing that, this review forced itself out of my head before I could get the other one written. I blame McDonald for it. As punishment you should all buy his book and make him figure out who to spend all of that money. That'll show him!

Bottom Line: 4.75 out of 5 Fiery Crashes

A Nation Interrupted: An Alternate History Novel
Kevin McDonald
Braveship Books, 2020

A Nation Interrupted: An Alternate History Novel is available for purchase at the following link. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you.

A Nation Interrupted

Kimber Grey's The Chosen One's Assistant: Never Meet Your Heroes

Before I even get started reviewing Kimber Grey's The Chosen One's Assistant: Never Meet Your Heroes, I would like to point out that, not only was it based on Mikey Mason's  (Not Quite) The Chosen One. His music is epic and I highly recommend listening to it either on Spotify or Bandcamp. I loved the track the first time I heard it and I love it still. 

The Chosen One's Assistant is every bit as good as the song except better. There is a lot here and that makes it more fun. As opposed to five minutes of music we get over three hundred pages of story. And it's a lot more of a developed story in the book. There's just more time for it. 

And time is something that Tiberius (that's our main character) and The Chosen One (Who has no name. He's just The Chosen One.) don't have as something seems to have gone wrong and is causing the appearance of vampire stoats in an few days away and we're not sure where they're coming from but this can't be good and we need to put a stop to this...

And Tiberius, who has only been Tiberius for a short while (his gave up his old name when he signed on to be the Chosen One's Assistant. Now he is Tiberius like all of the other assistants before him and all of the ones who will come after.) and he's still learning. And listen, there's a lot to this whole Tiberius thing. He's got to handle all of the chores and all of the healing, meet with people, pray a lot...

And there's no training period. He just has to learn everything all at once. With no real help, since the Chosen One is rather self centered and apparently not overly fond of breaking in a new Tiberius every two years. There is a bit of hostility there. 

It's awesome though, because it makes sense. There is a bit of drill sergeant to The Chosen One who doesn't always have time to screw around explaining things. He's a man of action. He kills things for a living. He makes good money doing it, as does Tiberius, but there is a lot to it.

Tiberius has a lot to do outside of cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc. He's the one that's in charge of anything academic. He has to research the route to travel, research the threat once they get there, etc. He also has to meet with the townspeople to coordinate the big party when they get there and to figure out where to stay and whatever else. Tiberius works harder than I do and that's saying something. I respect this character. 

I respect the Chosen One too because, although he can be a bit arrogant at times, he is a true hero and he cares. He doesn't just face down threats for the glory or the loot. He does it to protect the people he serves. He does it because he is indeed the Chosen One and it is his duty.

He's also a goofball. There is some serious humor in this book and it comes from the Chosen One more or less wimping out. This is where the book is the most like the song, which was a comedy tune about how badly life sucked for the Chosen One's Assistant (he's not referred to as Tiberius in the song.) There's nothing here that you would have to read the book to get per se, but if you've listened to the song a few times (like I told you to earlier) then it goes from hilariously funny to "Oops, I think I dislocated a rib laughing at that one. Bonus points if you listen to the song after you read the book and realize all the stuff you missed the first time and start laughing all over again. 

The Chosen One is also a man of faith. Now, it's not a real world religion. Grey created a fantasy pantheon which she has done a fairly decent job of fleshing out and assigning roles to. There aren't a whole lot of interactions directly with gods, but I like what I see so far. I wouldn't mind seeing more about both the gods and their servants, but there are more books coming, so I guess I'll have to wait. 

But it's the actual exploration of faith in the book that has me hooked. Pretty much every fantasy universe has its pantheon. Most even have clerics or paladins. Very few (The Chosen One's Assistant and R.A. Salvatore's The Cleric Quintet are all that come to mind in High Fantasy. Declan Finn's St Tommy NYPD series is an urban fantasy that shows faith as well but that's about all that I've got in the world of Science Fiction and Fantasy literature.) that actually show acts of faith. Not just praying, but believing and trusting in the god you serve to see you through whatever it is that you're going through. There is strength in faith in the real world and for the Chosen One. Tiberius is working on his. I love the Chosen One's belief and his act of sharing it with others. That's not to say that this is a preachy book. It merely shows the champion and his faith and how he shares it with others to encourage them. Major Kira would be proud. 

There are some really awesome action sequences in the book, too. Tiberius isn't really up to snuff with all of this hand to hand combat stuff, but he's got balls. Big brass ones. I don't think I'd want to go into combat armed with the level of knowledge Tiberius has. I mean, it's good to have a dagger but it's better if you know how to use it properly. The Chosen One is, of course, a badass. Except when he's not. Nice foot guy. But, for the most part, the Chosen One can deliver a beatdown like few others. 

Grey's worldbuilding is first rate as well. She's got a good grasp of what is needed to make a fantasy town work and how trails worked in the Medieval world. She throws in just enough gut wrenching awful to make the totally awesome work even better and I like that about her. This is the first of her books that I've read, but it won't be the last. 

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Cramped Toes

The Chosen One's Assistant
Kimber Grey
Greywhisper Graphics Productions, 2022

The Chosen One's Assistant is available for purchase at the following link. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you.

The Chosen One's Assistant

Message for the Devil: A King Roger V Adventure by Jason McDonald and Stormy McDonald

King Roger is back and he's up to his armpits in trouble. There's a lot going on in the city of Charleston, South Carolina is in danger. People are dying hideously. Who did it? I didn't know. You still don't. In Message for the Devil by Jason and Stormy McDonald the police think it might be Roger himself. We'd never believe that though would we?

Part of the problem is with Roger. He grew up in a mystical land on the planet Gaia, sister to Earth, where magic is plentiful and customs are closer to Medieval European than they are to modern American. This creates some problems for our hero as he does not always know the right way to handle things. At one point it becomes obvious that he doesn't even know how to count change.  In some cases, I enjoyed that face immensely, because he acts more like a Player Character in a Dungeons & Dragons game than a modern American, but it makes sense in context. 

The story itself is a mystery. Roger has been hired to find a ghost, but it's not just any ghost. Nope. That would be too easy. It has to be the ghost of a convicted murderess who was executed. Rumor has it that she said some nasty things at her own execution...

Yeah, it gets ugly quickly. This may have escaped your notice up to this point, but vengeful spirits tend not to be very nice people. Sometimes they can get downright...

Vengeful

Okay, that was terrible, but you get the point.

Hence the whole "dying hideously" that I mentioned earlier. Of course, it gets worse because Roger isn't exactly the most popular guy with the local police and they don't really understand some of his methods. I mean, do you know what a rust potion is? Do you think the police would? Think about it. I wouldn't and I'm a fantasy fan.

In a lot of ways, Message for the Devil feels like an early Dresden novel. The hero uses magic, even if Roger doesn't have the raw power that Harry does. There's a mystery. There's a supporting cast of characters that includes the police. There's even a human skull, although Roger doesn't name his skull "Bob." I've always had the feeling that Harry Dresden felt a bit out of place and Roger is certainly out of place.  Both heroes have problems with using technology, even if they manifest themselves differently. The McDonalds' world is probably about as well developed as Butcher's was after two or three books as well. (And yes, that means that the McDonalds haven't managed as much worldbuilding in two books as Butcher has managed in eight million. They'll get there. Just 7,999,998 books to go.)

There's a lot of action in Message for the Devil, too. This is not the Hardy Boys by any stretch of the imagination. Roger is a big fan of bladed weapons and the police, of course, have guns. There is plenty of fighting and running and hiding to keep things lively. This is one of those areas where Roger clearly doesn't not understand the customs and laws of the United States and has a chance to get himself into some very real - and very serious - trouble. He somehow manages to get out of it, at least for the most part. Sort of. Read the book.

That's not to say that all there is to Message for the Devil is all action. This isn't a Michael Bay flick and there is no lens flare. 

Huh?

Oh, yeah. Listen, I'm not sure how you would do lens flare in a book either, but I'm fairly certain that Bay would find a way to do it. Just don't pay attention to the fact that it doesn't make sense and you'll get it.

There is some fairly serious research taking place in order to solve the mystery. Speaking as a guy who has spent his time at libraries pouring over microfilm, the research in Message for the Devil makes sense. It reads like it was written by someone who has done some real research, for the simple reason that the characters in the book are smart enough to find the right place to go to and talk to someone who knows the story and where to find the information they need. This isn't a case of some rando jumping on the internet and solving a two hundred year old mystery in five seconds using Google. There's some real work involved here. I like that. The McDonalds some how manage to keep these parts from dragging out too long as well, so props to them.

There's some personal drama here as well. King Roger abandons his chance to return to his kingdom at the end of Thief on King Street. He did so for the love of a woman that he had just met. Yes, that is a cliche but it's used so often because it works. So while all of the insanity is going on, with murders and police problems and hauntings and...

You get the idea.

...Roger has to get to know the woman that he stayed for and figure out how things work with her. And, quite frankly, IF they work with her. It's not that she's disloyal, or that he is, but we've all been there. Making things work with a new person is never easy. He's a good dude and makes his way through it, but it's not as easy as perhaps he'd like it to be. I'm okay with it though. Easy stuff doesn't make a good story. 

Message for the Devil is, as mentioned previously, a sequel. While I certainly do recommend reading the first book, you should be able to enjoy this work either way. There is enough here to move the story along independently and what callbacks there are to the previous story are brief and well enough explained so that you won't feel lost. All in all, this is a story worth reading.

Bottom Line: 4.75 out of 5 Golden Coins

Message for the Devil: A King Roger V Adventure
Jason McDonald and Stormy McDonald
Parlatheas Press, 2024

Message for the Devil: A King Roger V Adventure is available for purchase at the following link. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you. 

Message for the Devil

CBS's Under the Dome

Under the Dome is the rarest of the rare: A Science Fiction TV series that is entertaining, exciting and got to finish its full run despite not having the word "Star Trek" in the title.  (And listen I've been a Trek fan since forever. I'm just saying that, other than TOS, Trek has gotten a lot of episodes for most of its series where other shows don't. I'm right.) It's a really cool show, despite being a bit on the weird side. I'm a huge Sci-Fi nerd and I'm the one saying that.

I don't want to get to far into the plot of the show. I'm not big on doing spoilers in general and this show has a lot of surprises that you deserve to enjoy for yourself. Lord knows that I did. I will say that no matter how long this show goes on, no matter how weird it gets, it's never more than five minutes from getting even weirder. Seriously, strangeness abounds. 

I mean, Under the Dome is based on a Stephen King novel and I'm pretty sure all of those are weird. I say "pretty sure" because, although I've seen a ton of movies based on his books, the only thing I've ever read by Stephen King was his book On Writing. I'm not sure I learned as much about writing as I should have, but even this dude's life has been weird in spots. Imagine writing a book like Cujo, that sold like crazy and got a movie and not even being able to remember it because you were riding the white horse. Crazy.

Even as weird as it is, though, it's still a believable tale if you can accept that the town of Chester's Mill was surrounded one day by an invisible, impenetrable and indestructable dome. What follows is some of the best tropes from post-apocalyptic literature and some of the awesome characterization every Stephen King movie seems to have. Seriously, it almost feels like I've met some of these people. 

At first no one knows what caused the dome, where it came from or how it is being powered. Things are revealed over the course of the series and that's where a lot of the weirdness comes from. It's not just the causes that are weird though. Sometimes it's the method of answering the questions or, indeed, the way that people come across the right question to ask.

There is a lot going on politically in the town of Chester's Mill and I don't want to get into all of it, but it will give you whiplash. No one knows who to trust. No one knows who to turn to. Then favorites start to emerge and things get crazy. The whole town turns into one conspiracy theory come true after another and each one weirder than the last. Sworn enemies in one episode are reluctant allies the next and soon best friends before eventually selling each other out and going back to emnity a few episodes later.

The thing is that it all makes sense in context. Every crazy moment is based on something that came before and leads to a logical outcome. I love that about this series. Every time I find myself saying "HOW COULD THAT POSSIBLY HAPPEN!?!?!?!?" The answer becomes "Well, first this happened, then that thing did and after the other thing, it couldn't have gone any other way." There's a reason that King has sold more copies than anyone this side of JK Rowling and it's not because he can't carry a plot.

The special effects for the series are really good for TV too. There are some shooting stars, and several disasters and they all look beautiful. I'd kind of like to see modern movies go back to looking like Under the Dome and spending the money on writers that CBS did for this series. This is a plot and character driven story. The effects add to it, but they're not what the show is based on. Under the Dome is what The Flash and Avatar: The Way of Water could have been if they had made an effort to do more than just look cool.

I want to talk about some of my favorite characters here, but I can't because I'd spoil too much. Trying to talk about what a character is like in a story like Under the Dome without talking about what they go through is basically impossible. I guess I'll just say to watch out for people with the following names: Big Jim, Junior, Barbie, Nori, and Julia. Those are some of my favorites because reasons. And one of my favorite actresses of all time shows up in Season Three, but saying who would risk telling too much. Let's just say I was happy to see her. 

And it's really the acting that makes Under the Dome as much as anything else does. The good guys are good guys, at least until they're the bad guys. The bad guys are bad, at least until they're the bad guys. And Big Jim is the consummate politician at all times, even when he's doing no-politicky stuff. He's also a used car salesmen with all that that implies. I'll shut up now. You'll thank me later.

Wait. That didn't come out right. 

Whatever.

The whole series is only thirty-nine episodes so it's an easy binge. I got through it in basically a week although a lot of that was being stuck in the house not feeling good for pretty much an entire weekend. I'm glad I did though. Other than the fact that I almost didn't get my laundry done that weekend at least. I kind of got wrapped up in what I was watching and lost track of little details like what the day and time were. 

And that's probably the best thing about the series. It's so good, so weird, so believable and you care so much about the characters (whether it's because you want to see them succeed or because you want to see them catch a bullet being a separate issue) that you can get lost and not want to find your way back. 

My one regret about watching Under the Dome is that I'll never get to watch it for the first time again. I really loved this show. Here's hoping we get more book to TV show translations, because this is how you can truly do justice to a long book with rich content. 

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Pink Stars

Under the Dome
CBS, 2013-2015

Great Lakes Comic Con After Action Report

 Did you ever have that feeling? You know the whole thing where something happens and you think to yourself, "I should have done this much sooner?" I was thinking the same thing yesterday when I got home from Great Lakes Comic Con in Warren, Michigan yesterday because, while it wasn't my first con (or even my first GLCC) and it wasn't my daughter Riley's first comic con, it was the first time we went to one together. I had a great time. He we both are with Ecto 1. 

Great Lakes Comic Con takes place four miles north of Detroit and I'm also a huge Ghostbusters fan, so there was really no choice. I had to take a picture with the Ghostbusters car. Oh, and did I mention Ghostbusters?

These guys were a lot of fun. They even gave me a poster for the movie. It's only four weeks away.Who else is excited? 

Of course I was there as a member of The Royal Manticoran Navy: The Official Honor Harrington Fan Association. We're a good group of people and we read lots of good books. Check us out!

Seriously, David Weber is an amazingly awesome author and the Honor Harrington books are his best work. As a personal favor, just because I like you, I'll let you know that you can download the first two books here: On Basilisk Station and The Honor of the Queen.  They're awesome books and I'm guessing you agree with my taste in books, so seriously, get them. Read them. Blame me when you buy the whole freaking series. I'm a big boy. I can take it.

Of course there was a ton of stuff to see and buy. That's a comic con standard. There were stands everywhere. Prices varied. I saw boxes of comics at fifty cents per book, classic comics at hundreds of dollars and like a billion different pieces of awesome art. That's standard at any comic con too and a lot of it was awesome. I didn't have the budget to buy all of the stuff I wanted and neither did any ten of the people you know, but if you can't go to a comic con and not just enjoy being around all the cool stuff you need to turn in your geek card and stop watching Firefly. You obviously no longer aim to misbehave. 

I've been a fan of GI Joe since his days as A Real American Hero back in the early 80s. I collected the comics and the toys as a kid and I still have a copy of the Sunbow movie from 1987. So when I walked in and saw The Finest (that's the GI Joe Cosplay society) there I had to get a pick, Those guys are awesome and they put a ton of work into their costumes. It was a real treat. Props to Central Command: The Fighting Fifth. You're a bunch of good guys.

Thank God for the Fridge. I was surrounded by snakes! And, if you spent any time at Hisstank back in the day, then you know old thatjimboguy was a loyal Joe. We kicked some serious tail in the GI Joe vs Cobra game on that site. I miss that game sometimes.

Speaking of serious cosplay, the TRMN booth was located right next to the booth of the 501st Legion. These guys set the standard for serious cosplay. Some of their members appeared in Attack of the Clones in the stormtrooper armor they had made to get into the club. I was impressed. They make some cool props, too.

Good times! I love these guys and I just noticed that I got the Han Solo in carbonite in the background. Seriously, when you're looking for good cosplay done right, look for the 501st. It's always a real treat to get a chance to meet some of these guys and it was super cool that our table was so close to ours. 

Of course, in the TRMN, we consider all cosplay/fan societies to be allies in the fight against...

Uhh...

Anyway, they're allies. And so I'm glad I got a chance to show them all a little love. Cosplayers are almost invariably kind and fun to be around. If you're ever at an event and you want to walk up to someone in cosplay, I recommend doing so. I've never had one say no to a picture and I've shaken the hands of quite a few. Of course, it's considered polite to start the conversation with, "Awesome cosplay! I love (insert character here)!" People like to be recognized for the hard work that goes into making these costumes. So let them know you appreciate what they did. You'll both feel good when you do it.

There were a butt-load of celebrities but I didn't get pics with any of them for budgetary reasons. It kinda sucks that I didn't get a chance to get an autograph from Eric Bischoff or Jason Moore and Noah Sult because I'm a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles guy, but it's all good. It's not the con's fault. It's nothing the celebrities did. It is what it is. Hopefully I'll get a promotion and have more money next year. And don't get me wrong. There were lots of other celebrities there. The celebrities I mentioned were just the one I was really excited about.

I played some D&D with my kid as well. There was a little group in the corner running introductory adventures. It wasn't my first adventure or Riley's but it was a good time. And, having only played in homebrew universes, it was nice to finally get to take a trip to Baldur's Gate. I know the place. I've read the books, but it was my first time there at a gaming table. The DM was a good guy whose name I don't remember and he did his best to get everyone involved. It was cool. 

The TMNT panel was at the same time as I was playing D&D so that was kinda rough, but we've all been there, right?

Of course, part of the fun of any con is getting pics with some of your favorite cosplayers that aren't really part of any cosplay organization, so here are a few of those.

Don't ask me why my hat is always crooked. I don't do that on purpose. 

The price was right, too. It was only twenty dollars for an all day pass. The food was about what you'd expect from a college expo center (the con was on the campus of Macomb Community College. I'm an alum, so that part was cool, too.) The prices were decent, too. I got dinner for myself and my kid for less than it probably would have cost me to go to McDonalds and we both got personal pizzas and a twenty ounce bottle of pop. So that part was cool.

All in all, it was a fun day and I can't wait to head back. I also managed to snag myself an autographed book, a comic from and indy comic maker and a Ghostbusters poster, so that part was good. I mean, it's not humanly possible to go to one of these and not buy SOMETHING. I can't wait to go back next year. Hopefully I can get Riley to come. She'll be in college by then, so we'll see how that goes but I plan to be there regardless.

A. Trae McMaken's Dwarves of Ice Cloak, Books 1-4

(Author's note: The author of this review loves dwarves. The author of this review wishes he was a dwarf. The author of this review writes his own dwarf based fiction. You will see the words, dwarf, dwarves and dwarven a lot, although I think I only used the word Dwarfdom once. For that you should be thankful. Unless you love dwarves like I love dwarves in which case I'm sorry I didn't up the dwarfness. For those of you bothered by this phonemon, I have the following to say. "DWARF UP AND READ THE REVIEW!!")

I have, in the past, been told that epic fantasy stories can only take place in worlds with high magic. I don't think I've ever believed that, but I've always seen it as a wee bit of a challenge to refute. That is the case no longer. A. Trae McMaken's The Dwarves of Ice Cloak, a four book series, puts that argument to rest. This is fantasy as epic as I've ever seen. It's got dwarves. It's got trolls. (and not the internet kind) it's got a dragon at one point. And no dwarf story is complete with goblins as an enemy, even if the author decides to use the dwarven word for the instead. I'm perfectly good with seeing an ursi get a spear to the chest. I mean, it's less typing for the same effect, right?

Good stuff, that.

But that's not what makes The Dwarves of Ice Cloak epic. Reading McMaken's series is almost like taking a history survey course (IE American History 1877- present or Japanese history since the Meiji Restoration) only it's taught using memoirs of the most important people during the time period. Imagine taking American History by reading four books: One about Washington, one about Lincoln, one about Reagan and one about like, Biden or probably someone later but I don't have anyone later to mention. (Oh, and for the record I have a BA in History and love reading that, too)

This analogy stuff, it's difficult okay. And yeah, it's actually a simile because I used like but whatever.

Listen, this is epic fantasy at its finest. The first book, The Crippled King starts out with one lone, poor, dwarven prospector on his own. During the series (of only four books) we see the rise and fall of a proud dwarven kingdom and a potential resurgence. A lonely mining claim becomes the capital of all Dwarfdom. It fights battles. It increases in size and wealth internally. It becomes someplace worth living and a capital worth having.

And the Ice Cloak dwarves are the dwarfiest dwarves that ever dwarfed. They work hard. They fight hard. They live underground for the most part, but have the inevitable surface dwarves that do the boring stuff like farming and husbandry and also the exciting things like scouting and ursi-slaying. But their miners mine, their crafters craft and dwarf-wifs and maids can craft just as well as the men with none of the factial hair. 

The Dwarven society presented in the books works is amazingly well crafted. I'm guessing that McMaken has done some studying in anthropology in his time. I'm also guessing that there is a huge pile, possibly digital, of notes that McMaken made to be able to keep everything consistent. Ice Cloak is home to a living, breathing group of people whose lives change over time. I got a sense of a grand history while reading these, but it's still undeveloped in most cases. A lot of the time when I started a new book I was wondering how we got here. I had to do a lot of the imagining myself and I like that because it's an excuse to write my own story. I just can't use the words "Ice Cloak." I'd even like to think I could do these concepts justice but we'll see.

As I alluded to above, there is a huge time gap between stories and the characters from one don't really carry over to the next. This kind of threw me when I first picked up Book Two, The Mouth of Fire. None of the dwarves I expected to see were there. It took me a bit to get into Mouth because of that but once I did I was off and running. For Book Three, The Second Gate and Book Four, Bones of Stone I didn't get that effect because I expected it. 

And that's probably another one of the strengths of The Dwarves of Ice Cloak. Although I recommend reading the books in order and all together, this is the kind of series where it wouldn't be at all hard to read the books individually or even pick up one of the later books by itself if you wanted to. There are occasional references that people who have read the prior books will enjoy and can hearken back to but they're not overly long nor are they all that important to understanding the story. They're basically just there as incredibly obvious Easter eggs.

None of the books end on what I would consider to be a true cliffhanger, but all of them end up somewhat unresolved. The reader is left to fill in the rest of the stories themselves and even reading what comes after (in the case of the first three books) doesn't fill in many of the details. I'm reminded, in a way, of the Dragonlance Chronicles, and how they skipped important parts of the story but then, the DC are much closer together in time. The gap between books is literally centuries. They still tie together nicely, but you don't have to know every word that has come before to enjoy the book in your hand right now. 

I'm sad to say that there doesn't seem to be a sequel to Bones of Stone. I feel like there was plenty of room to continue the story and that it hasn't happened. I'll be looking for it though, and I'll be following McMaken. He's got some other stuff out there and most of it appears to be fantasy, I'm sure to pick up another McMaken book sometime soon.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Living Steel Mining Picks

The Crippled King
The Mouth of Fire
The Second Gate
Bones of Stone
A. Trae McMaken
Lost Pathway Books, 2022-2023

David Weber's A Beautiful Friendship

The best way to follow up a super serious post about a graphic novel covering an important subject is by reviewing a Science Fiction novel about treecats.

Or sumfin'

Listen, this blog is a work in progress and sometimes it gets messy.

All of this to say that I recently read David Weber's novel A Beautiful Friendship. You purists out there may be tempted to point out that I did it because I was going to a meet up with a couple local chapters of The Royal Manticoran Navy: The Official Honor Harrington Fan Association. You may even be right. The fact remains that I helped plan the outing and I picked out the book (along with my buddy/Commanding Officer David) so neener, neener, neener. I read it. I loved it. And, put bluntly, who needs purists anyway?

So, right, the book...

This is the third time I've read the thing, and the first time I've reviewed it. My excuse is because this book is so old that I read it twice before I started my blog in 2015. No system's perfect, right. Better late that never?

I mean...

Yeah, the book.

A Beautiful Friendship is part of the Star Kingdom series which is in and of itself a part of the Honor Harrington universe aka the Honorverse. I've been following these books for about twenty-ish years now, going back to right around the time I met my ex-wife and before I had kids. My oldest is eighteen now. Suffice it to say that I'm a huge fan.

A Beautiful Friendship is a prequel leading back to the origins of the Star Kingdom (later Star Empire) of Manticore and also of the Harrington clan's beginnings as citizens therein. Stephanie Harrington, our heroine and all around likeable young girl, is on a quest to find something to do. Her family has recently immigrated to the SKM after living on a much older, more settled planet with a larger population, more forms of entertainment and people her age who aren't boring. The planet Sphinx is largely still wild with a small contingent of humanity on the planet, trying to make their way and build something.

Enter Stephanie who, quite frankly, is everything I taught my daughters to be; strong, smart, proud, tough and brave. She has a bit of that teenage brashness about her as well but that makes sense because she's a teenager. So when human settlers start reporting that celery is being burgled from their greenhouses (Sphinxian winters last a long time) she is intrigued. When celery starts disappearing from the Harrington greenhouse, she sets out to find out who or what is doing it. And what she catches on camera...

Fans of the mainline Honorverse books all knew what I was when they read the word "celery." What she discovers is the first treecat known to humanity. And when she finds out it has and uses a net made of local fibers, things start to get interesting. Treecats aren't the first sentient species known to humans, but there haven't been many and she's a kid. She's also afraid her parents will find out that she snuck out after dark, in the rain...

As adults we sometimes forget how badly it sucked to have to listen to parental instructions about everything. As parents, we know why they were necessary but that doesn't change the fact that we hated it. Weber does an awesome job of putting us back in that teenage mindset, wanting to do more than we're allowed to and frustrated because we can't. Of course, Stephanie is a Harrington and doesn't lack for personal initiative. She's also quite a bit less disciplined than her more famous descendant and finds ways around rules. 

Seriously, I had to pull out my copy of Better to Beg Forgiveness and make sure that it was indeed written by Michael Z. Williamson and not David Weber, because little Ms. Harrington lives that philosophy to its fullest. And, if it gets her in trouble from time to time, that just makes the whole experience more fun. Every story needs conflict after all.

I don't want to spoil too much of the book, but this isn't just a book about Man(girl) vs. Nature or Man vs. Parents. There is some serious villainy here and some more subtle danger emanating from pretty much everywhere around Harrington. She deals with it with equanimity for the most part. Stephanie Harrington is a girl who can keep her cool during a crisis. She's the kind of person I'd want along with me if I were doing something requiring guts and a calm mind, even if I might wish for a person with a bit more life experience.

There is a lot of really cool stuff here about the first few humans who bond with treecats, becoming almost the equivalent of a Treecat and their spouse. It's pretty cool if you've been following the series for a long time and maybe even cooler if you haven't. Those of us who are familiar with Honor and her treecat Nimitz take certain things for granted. Having read the later books, I know how smart treecats are. I'm used to the fact that they can bond with people and some very clear indications of the psychic abilities of treecats and their utility are listed in the later works. 

If you haven't read those books though, a lot of it will come as a surprise. It's a voyage of discovery for Stepanie, her treecat Lionheart and indeed the entire human and treecat species. No one had a way to anticipate what was possible before Lionheart accidentally bonded with Stephanie, and the world takes a weird turn afterward because neither one of them know what to expect, either. As experienced readers we know some of what's coming, but even then, not all of it and the human element in the book leads places I never expected it to go.

A Beautiful Friendship was one of the first books I managed to get my hands on and read after my divorce in 2012. Times were rough then, and it helped me get through a pretty rough time. It's a lot easier to enjoy it this time and I'm glad I took the time to reread it. The writing hasn't changed but I have. This is exactly the right type of book to read if you need a quick distraction from life to make you feel better. People are surprised when they find out that I didn't turn to drinking or drugs when my depression got bad. It's thanks to writers like David Weber and books like ABF that I'm not stuck in lifelong drug/alcohol rehab. If a pick me up is what you need, hie thee off to the bookstore and pick yourself up a copy. If not, buy one anyway. It's a good book regardless.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Carry Nets

A Beautiful Friendship
David Weber
Baen Books, 2013

A Beautiful Friendship is available for purchase at the following link. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you.

A Beautiful Friendship

They Called Us Enemy - Expanded Edition Written by George Takei, Justin Eisinger and Steven Scott. Art by Harmony Becker

Life as a young boy in my the McCoy household centered around three things: Star Trek, sports and World War II movies. I've seen more John Wayne flicks than John Wayne. I knew the names of the bridge crew of the Enterprise before I could name most of my friends parents. And don't get me started on sports or the creative way my own dear father was known to use profanity while watching our local Detroit teams play (and trust me, the man was a master.) It really kind of sucks then that I'm not more excited about sharing an experience that involved both George Takei from ST:TOS and World War II.

Don't get me wrong. They Called Us Enemy by George Takei et al. is actually a very well written and well drawn graphic novel. (I'm going with the name "graphic novel" even though novel implies fiction and They Called Us Enemy is a true story because there is no word or phrase for a comic book that's non-fiction, at least to the best of my knowledge and belief.) I just kind of wish it hadn't been written.

Listen folks, I know that the United States has done some screwed up stuff in its past. I have a BA in History, I've studied a bunch of it. From the Indian Wars (and yes, conquest is common throughout history, but paying a bounty for scalps of your enemies is not) slavery/racism, etc. None of that is good and all of it bothers me, but I can't help but have a special hatred of the internment of Japanese citizens of the United States at at time when Hitler was killing camps full of Jews a little bit worse than the rest of it. Maybe I'm wrong for that, but it is what it is. 

For all of that though, They Called Us Enemy is a well written, entertaining, touching and oddly honest depiction of what George Takei went through when his family was forced into a camp. I say oddly honest because he speaks of train trips from camp to camp almost fondly when I would have expected nothing but vitriol. He also makes a point at the end about Americans being willing to talk about the camps and about the beauty of American democracy even if it does screw up at times. It would have been very easy for him to be much more bitter and he's not. That says a lot about him as a person.

The story is told simply but well. This is not some unreadable treatise by some academic hack. It almost feels like sitting on my grandma's couch cracking nuts and listening to my grandpa tell stories. The writers of this story hit the perfect note. I followed the story from place to place and from event to event easily. Some of it I could readily sympathize with. 

We get a really good look at young George and the Takei family. He does his best to show his readers his parents point of view. His pride in his father's accomplishments and hard work is both obvious and well deserved. His pride in his mother's accomplishments and ingenuity is both of the above as well. Sneaking a forbidden sewing machine into an internment camp was quite the trick and it was every bit as necessary as it must have been frightening to pull off.

The art in the book is simple but beautiful. It's well drawn and pulls the reader in but it's not too much. It's this weird mix of "we need to use the art to tell the story" and "we need to keep the art from getting in the way of the story" and somehow Harmony Becker pulled it off. I don't know how that's possible, but I saw it with my own eyes. Her drawings depict what happened but without any type of an artistic flourish. This was art that was written by someone who was dedicated to sharing a story and not by someone who wanted to show off.

I'll take it one step further: The art in They Called Us Enemy is all in black and white and that was a great choice. I like it for two reasons. One is that I grew up on black and white World War II movies and the monochrome look is not just nostalgic, but it evokes that old world feeling for me. With the lack of color I'm transported to a time that feels familiar even though it was over three decades before I was born. The other reason is a little more complicated, but I'll try to explain it like this:

There are some things that just need to be shown in a somewhat muted manner. I'm not saying they should be silenced, but I am saying that too much color can give a somewhat celebratory mood. No one goes to a fireworks show to see black and white explosions. Patriotic types in the US (and this is a group I belong to) talk about the "red, white, and blue" and not some monochromatic depiction of the American flag. 

Another black and white comic I talked about, Maus, used a black and white color scheme to good effect as well. It is good to keep somber subjects (and the internment of Japanese citizens is certainly something that no one should be proud of) in a darker, more solemn setting. 

I find it necessary to repeat something I said about Maus though: I would be careful giving this type of a comic to a young person, or a classroom full of them, if they didn't have the historical background to go with this. I linked my Maus review earlier. There were some statistics I pointed to at the time regarding the fact that younger people aren't taking the Holocaust as seriously as they should be. I sometimes wonder if that's because of things like comic books about these events. 

I've been told that works like Maus and They Called Us Enemy are the only way to get the emotional impact of their respective events across. That may very well be true. It's also true that most people don't take things they read in comics seriously. I know that Spiegelman and Takei both intended their work to bring attention to important subjects and get a message out. I just hope that their work doesn't accomplish the opposite of what they intended. 

So if you're going to hand a copy of They Called Us Enemy to a young person, make sure you give them some historical background. Make sure that they know this is one family's story and that there were many more families and camps than just the ones in the book. And make sure they know this isn't some made up story. That it actually happened. But read They Called Us Enemy and share it because it's both a good story and an important one. Just do it right.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Watch Towers

They Called Us Enemy - Expanded Edition
George Takei, Justin Eisinger and Steven Scott. Art by Harmony Becker
Top Shelf Productions, 2019

They Called Us Enemy - Expanded Edition is available for purchase at the following link. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you.

They Called Us Enemy

Happy Golden Anniversary Dungeons and Dragons

Once upon a time, long ago, a cousin of mine who probably wouldn't admit it anymore introduced me to a game called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, a game which was then in it Second Edition. It was a game that had everything a young man could ever want: Dragons, Dungeons, Gold, Fighting, Dice...

It was an adventure that never had to end because, once you were done with the current adventure, you could queue another one up. When I got tired of my dwarven fighter/mage/thief I could switch to playing my elven bard or my human paladin (which I _on no level_ fudged the rolls to make, unless you count reality) and off I would go in pursuit of more treasure, or that one annoying twit that kept arresting people and wanted to know what happened to the magistrate's amulet and why someone said they thought they saw me wearing it. (And that NEVER HAPPENED. Now, had someone said they saw it in my backpack, that may have been a different story.)

Now, if you were in the  mood to be pedantic (and if you're reading this, you're most likely a geek, a nerd, or both) you may be tempted to point out that my introduction to the game Dungeons and Dragons wasn't really my introduction to D&D overall. I had loved the cartoon when it was on Saturday mornings, even if I thought the Dungeon Master was a little creepy. But honestly, who wouldn't? I kind of still do.

And it didn't stop there. I discovered the various game world box sets: First Greyhawk, then Spelljammer, Forgotten Realms...

I could go on. The really important part is that the box sets led to books. I was introduced to The Dragonlance Chronicles by my friend Jeff Cauldwell, and I fell in love with the world of Krynn and fantasy literature in general (IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT, JEFF!!). My sister grabbed me one of the Greyhawk novels for Christmas one year. The Dark Sun novels were freaking painfully amazing and gave me flashbacks to the Thomas Covenant novels. Then came Spelljammer and it's take on space travel. OMG DUDE!!! Trek/Wars in D&D. I was in love.

And then came the Dwarven Nations trilogy. I have a serious love for the dwarven folk and, while I enjoyed Flint Fireforge (and named both D&D and Everquest characters after him) the reason I'm writing a dwarf centered novel, the reason I'm reading an unrelated series about dwarves now, and the reason I started the last campaign I DM'ed in a dwarven town was really The Dwarven Nations Trilogy. I love the little buggers. Hardworking, no-nonsense taking, and yes, I am one of THOSE McCoys (if you don't believe me ask a Hatfield) never giving up, stubborn asshole, and orc skull splitting dwarves are the most bestest things about fantasy fiction. 

Wait what?

You disagree? You're wrong. Dwarves are objectively the best thing that ever happened to fantasy anything. There is no counter argument. 

But I digress.

As usual.

Digression is, however, my strongest skill as a blogger.

Anyone who reads fantasy fiction and hasn't read R.A. Salvatore's Forgotten Realms novels needs to have their head examined while they're wandering off to the bookstore to grab copies. Start with Drizzt Do'Urden and then head over toward Cadderly the cleric afterward. I haven't reviewed the books here because it's been a long time since I read one, but they are magnificent. What's more, the Forgotten Realms are extremely popular in not just Salvatore's novels, but in pretty much everything D&D that takes place in digital form: Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, even Tiny D&D Adventures the old Facebook app before the Google Play store was a thing. And, of course, for pretty much all of the D&D movies. 

I know I'm in the minority in that I loved all four of the movies. I know that most of you would disagree. I know that the first three movies basically felt like bad B movies. I've also sat at more than one gaming table and I have to say that most of those tables couldn't even aspire to be B movies. 

And the thing with D&D is that it doesn't even matter which form you prefer. Someone else out there loves it as much as you do and they'll be happy to discuss it with you. I've seen it happen. Two geeks sitting next to each other not knowing each other and all of a sudden someone mentions painting minis or playing video games and two hours later they're best friends talking about stuff they've done in the game. I have personally walked up to someone reading a copy of a D&D novel at the library and started a conversation. She was cute, too, only I was married at the time. (But if you're reading this, I'm divorced now!) It happens.

And listen...

I'm not here for the Edition Wars. I've never played Basic D&D regardless of what color the box was. I started with Second Edition, but my buddy Pat (RIP, brother. I told you that shit was bad for you.) had a first edition copy of Unearthed Arcana and it never really occurred to us to convert anything. I've played Third Edition, missed Fourth, and have played and DM'ed 5e. It's time for the proverbial "every edition has its strengths and weaknesses" routine, only I'm not going to bother. Play what you like. Leave others alone and, if you're not a dick, you can sit at my table.

The crazy part is that D&D is not just a game either. It's a creative outlet. The first worlds I created, I created for D&D and for the Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game (First Edition). If you can read through all of the various subclasses and/or kits and can't come up with a new twist on an old trope (even if it's just by tweaking something there) then I can't help you. It's all there. And if it's not there, you can create it.

That is why, in my opinion, the greatest of all forms of D&D is the homebrew edition. Why? Because it's all about a DM, their players, and what works for them. I've never seen the sheer volume of homebrew that I see in D&D anywhere else. Even if you play modules, I can pretty much guarantee your group is home ruling SOMETHING at your table. The Rules at Written have been trampled over so many times that it's laughable. I LOVE THAT ABOUT THEM.

Oh, right. Podcasts. I forgot the podcasts. That's probably because I don't listen to them because I suck and you should hate me. Or sumfin'. If my cousin Hallie finds out I haven't watched/listened to Critical Role she's probably gonna kick my ass. I'll get around to it at some point. Probably. I should probably watch/review a season of something at some point. Someday. When I get the time. But never mind me. I know a lot of people love them and that's what matters.

Oh crap, I forgot the art. I love the art. Larry Elmore is basically the greatest artist ever to pick up a paint brush but there have been a whole bunch of amazeballs fantasy artists and a lot of them have made D&D related artwork. And then there are the magazines...

Listen, I've gotta work in the morning. I need to end this here.

And yes, I know the whole gaming license thing made some people mad. Wizards retracted all the crap and fixed the problem. Everyone is back to making their money again. It's all good. Let's all move on. 

Roll those dice. Have fun storming the castle. Kill the dragon. Loot the horde. Whine to your DM because you can't afford full plate at first level. But fire it up folks and let's lay some D&D. Thank you, Mr Gygax for the endless hours of fun and fellowship your creation has provided. Here's to hoping it lasts at least another fifty years.

Some Dungeons & Dragons related merchandise is available for purchase at the links below. If you click the links and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you.

Player's Handbook

Dungeon Master's Guide

Dan Abnett's Horus Rising

I have a confession to make. This is my Science Fiction and Fantasy Review blog. I've had it for eight whole years now. I like to consider myself an expert in all matters Science Fiction and Fantasy and, if you're not one, I can probably fool you into believing it, too. One of the reasons I say "fool" is that, before very recently, I had only a concept of the whole "grimdark" sub-genre. I mean, the name is pretty much self-explanatory but I hadn't actually read any of it for myself.

When considering what I should read to acquaint myself with such a sub-genre a pretty obvious candidate arose: The Warhammer 40k universe is the original grimdark universe and it is very easily available, as long as you don't mind robbing a bank to get it. I mean, it's not as expensive as buying the minis, but I've never played the game. I just know what the books cost. But that led me to another problem: 40k is a freaking gargantuan universe. I mean, I've seen bit universes before. I'm a fan of the Four Horsemen Universe. I love pretty much any Dungeons & Dragons fiction, but I'm  a bigger fan of Dragonlance than pretty much anything else and the amount of fiction in that universe alone can be just a  bit daunting. Neither of those, both of those put together, don't come near the amount of fiction in the 40k universe. I didn't want to randomly select whatever. That's just not me, so I went researching.

In researching my choice of a starting point, the one constant suggestion was The Horus Heresy, but the one thing every person who made a list recommended not reading was also The Horus Heresy. Apparently, fifty-four books (plus, I gather, a few more anthologies) is too much for some of these lightweights. But not Jimbo. Oh, no. The 4HU is almost that size now, and Dragonlance is even bigger. BRING IT!

So, off I went in search of tasty treats to my local Amazon website and found the first book: Dan Abnett's Horus Rising. It wasn't hard to find. Type the name in, up it pops, there goes my money and BAM! I'm lost in space riding along with the feared Luna Wolves on their mission to make planet Sixty-Three Nineteen compliant with the edicts of the emperor. 

What followed was a lot of fun. If you're as into giant space battles and armored troops charging face first into gunfire, you can't miss this book. If you look a little bit of political intrigue to spice things up you can't go wrong. If you look for the bond between brothers that have faced combat you're in the right place. I was carried along right from the beginning and finished the whole book in basically three days. It was amazing.

What I hadn't counted on was the way Horus Rising and its author, Dan Abnett, dealt with the moral implications of making war. There is a lot more to this book than its awesome action sequences. The Warmaster, the aforementioned Horus, has a collection of captains under him which form the "Mournival", a group of men which act as advisors and the collective conscience of the Luna Wolves.  I was a bit surprised by this. It had an almost Japanese air to it, like an idealized samurai drama, only the code of the Legions is nowhere near the Code of Bushido. It's more like the warrior-philosopher thing, the feeling that the code makes things right  and that it's what a warrior should live for.

The warriors, the Luna Wolves and their brothers in the other Legions, are dedicated to the truth as they see it. This is a philosophy of pure science. It is openly derogatory toward religion and I can't say I was all that happy with it. I'm a Christian, after all, and Christianity is no more welcome in the Legions or on Terra than any other religion. I can live with it though, because it's fictional. Still and all, it led to a bit of a villainous air to this story's heroes. I kind of like that though. Even the good guys aren't good. That's grimdark, right?

Missing from the first novel were the references I had gained from others. The Luna Wolves travel through space to fight a fierce enemy upon receiving a distress call but I don't remember any reference to "psykers" (assuming that I spelled that right) being burned alive. Clearly, there is more to this story and I need to keep reading, but I'm okay with that.

I've heard people wonder if it's possible to enjoy 40k fiction without playing the game. I can honestly say that I've never sat a 40k table and I've never read a single one of their rulebooks, but I loved Horus Rising. There is so much here. I don't feel like I've missed a single bit of background necessary to understand what's going on. I do feel like Abnett went out of his way to make sure he included what was there, but he does it without making his worldbuilding overly obvious. Some would refer to this as "Heinleining" in the details and they're not wrong.

I have to admit that I have seen several posters with 40k troopers carrying swords and chainsaw swords alongside their guns. I always thought that was leaning heavily on the goofy side, but if you read Horus Rising it suddenly makes sense. These are troops that use their weapons effectively and their swords are no exception. If some of them seem to like sword work a little too much that's okay. I enjoyed that part of the story and it's not like they don't have other ways to combat the enemy when a sword isn't what's appropriate.

I'm forced to admit that I can't wait to get and read the sequel. It's my understanding that this is a shared universe, but I've read plenty of those (to include the 4HU and Dragonlance) and that just makes me enjoy a series more. There is something about reading a long series by a single author that I really enjoy, but a new voice keeps things fresh. I'll be headed to download False Gods soon. I can't wait.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Cracked Carapaces

Horus Rising
Dan Abnett
Black Library, 2016

Horus Rising is available for purchase at the following link. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you.

Horus Rising

Travis Baldree's Bookshops and Bonedust

 

It's time, once again, for a relaxing ride down Fantasy Lane with Travis Baldree. He refers to his latest release as Bookshops and Bonedust  and, I have to say, it's a worthy prequel to his previous work, Legends and Lattes. In this latest release, our heroine, Viv the orc, is forced to take some time off to rehab a leg injury and comes across a new friend who owns (you guessed it) a bookshop.

The Viv of Bookshops and Bonedust is much younger and more action motivated than the older, retired (from the adventuring life at least) Viv of the original novel. She gets her wound in combat because she won't listen and stay where she's supposed to. She gets out too far out in front and gets herself surrounded because she won't listen to older, wiser people who have been there before. I like that though, because that's pretty much the standard text-book definition of "young orc." This is a Viv who still craves battle and loves the adrenaline rush that comes with it. I can still see enough of the Viv I know and love to recognize her, but she reminds me a little too much of me when I was a teenager and used to speed around the outside of the mall so I could hit the hill by the bank and catch air. (Thankfully, my mom doesn't read my blog so I'm safe revealing that here.)

This time, instead of former comrades looking for treasure, Viv's crew has a new target, a necromancer. The astute reader may believe that the "bonedust" reference comes from there, but I'll never tell.

Anyway...

Baldree knows his shtick and he knows his audience. Bookshops and Bonedust is nowhere near a carbon copy of Legends and Lattes, but it does contain a whole bunch of what made the first book a success; a relatable main character, a business to be built back from basically nothing and a supporting cast of stars with just enough of an outside threat to spice things up  a bit. The type of business he uses this time just adds to the fun.

I don't care who you are or what you looking like, there are three types of readers in the world; the type who wants to own a bookshop, the kind who wants to be a librarian and the undecideds who want both (for the record, I'm number three) and Baldree taps into that desire here. Viv doesn't actually own the bookshop in question but she gets to spend the day there helping out and reading for free. It sounds like a good life to me.

If you've read the first one (and if you haven't your wrong. Hie thee off to Amazon and pick up your copy.) then you know that the central problem of the story is Viv and her attempt to open a coffee shop in a town that has never heard of coffee. She shows a surprising level of business skills for a person who had led an adventurer's life before opening her place. I hadn't thought about that before, but Bookshops and Bonedust is where she learns those business skills, slowly and by guessing mainly. 

Fern, the owner of Thistleburr Booksellers (and why does the word Thistleburr remind me of Drangonlance character Tasslehoff? I mean, other than that he'd definitely have "borrowed" some books from there.)  is not doing as well as she might wish she was and Viv finds ways to help her out. It's a lot of fun, but it also lays the basis for what comes later the way a proper sequel should. Bookshops and Bonedust also reveals why Viv was in such a hurry to get pastries set up in her coffee shop later. I like that part.

There is a hint of a romance angle here, but it's a pretty relaxed one. When I think of romance literature I think of smut and there is none of that here. It's enough to make one's mind wander, but it's subtle enough that I would have absolutely no problem recommending Bookshops and Bonedust to my twelve year old daughter. Seriously, what's there is there but it fits with the relaxing theme of the book. 

Being a cozy fantasy, there's not a whole lot of violence. That's not the point. Don't get me wrong. I've been known to read Warhammer novels. I don't have a problem with mass battles and extreme violence but this isn't that kind of book. There is, however, a bit. The story starts with the fight where Viv gets her wound and there is a bit of a dust up at the end of the book. It's well done and easy to follow but Baldree keeps things where they belong and manages to keep the feeling of this thing cozy regardless of what little bits of fighting jump out at you.

The majority of Bookshops and Bonedust is set in the town of Murk and it kind of feels like a cool little port town. You know, it's that one town you wish you had homebrewed for your Dungeons & Dragons campaign and didn't. It feels just right with the docks, and the inn and all of the other little businesses thrown in, right down to the pain in the butt town watch captain. (And, trust me, every town needs one of those, either to drag your players into a fight they don't want to defend the town or to be a thorn in their backside when they're just trying to mind their own business and buy some spell components.) Honestly, given the fact that Hasbro/Wizards allows others to profit by releasing D&D related content, I could see a module featuring Murk as its setting bringing in some decent loot. Seriously, if Baldree ever decides to start a D&D podcast set in one of his towns I'd love a chance to run a character there. I'm just sayin'...

The one thing I was hoping for and didn't get was Viv's first drink of coffee. Granted, it's not the town where Viv ordered her coffee from in the first book (the name of which I'm drawing a blank on, but it was a gnomish town that doesn't get much screentime but feels like it would be a lot of fun) but it still would have been nice to see our friendly neighborhood coffee fiend with fangs take her first sip.

I don't want to spoil too much, but there is something that happens in the book which leads me to believe there will be a sequel. I can't wait to read it, if so. If not, I'm going to go into my bedroom and pout and suck on my thumb. I might even chew the nail a bit. So, anyway, here's hoping.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Satchels

Bookshops and Bonedust
Travis Baldree
Tor, 2023

Bookshops and Bonedust is available for purchase at the following link. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you.

Bookshops and Bonedust