Sablemage
Demi-God
Read
- 1632 by Eric Flint. A personal favourite. A small West Virginia town is transported to 17th century Germany and becomes embroiled in local warfare and politics; the book is unusual for portraying decent, working-class heroes. I didn’t like the sequels, which were co-authored with many others, but this first one by Flint alone is exceptional.
- The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman, third in the His Dark Materials trilogy. Will and Lyra, parted at the end of book two, reunite, and assist Lord Asriel in his war on Heaven, which is trying to enforce conformant obedience across the multiverse and using the afterlife as a prison camp; it’s a struggle between Law and Chaos, and Chaos are the good guys. (Spoilers? Yes, but it was published in 2000, so I regret nothing.) I didn’t enjoy this as much as the other two, because the pace is much slower until the last few chapters, but I am pleased to have finished it and learned how the story ends and the explanations for all that happened previously. I understand Pullman has written more about the characters, but I think their story is complete by the end of this book, so I feel no great urge to read the others. All the same, the trilogy is worth reading, full of ideas and well written.
- The Emilie Adventures by Martha Wells, two short YA novels set in a world with both magic and steampunk technology. In Emilie and the Hollow World, runaway schoolgirl Emilie stows away on the wrong ship, and so accidentally joins an expedition to rescue a missing scientist from the Hollow World which lies below the ocean floor; soon, she finds herself caught up in intrigue among the native species and rival explorers from the surface world. In the sequel, Emilie and the Sky World, we learn that Emilie’s surface world is someone else’s Hollow World when explorers from beyond arrive in the sky; but their ship is abandoned, and Emilie and her friends must work out what happened to them and make contact. Then the ghost pirates appear and a complex series of escapes and rescues become necessary. As always with Wells, I enjoyed the world-building the most, though the characters develop nicely in the second book, which I think is the better of the two.
- Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia. Urban fantasy for gun nuts. After killing his werewolf boss, accountant Owen Pitt is recruited by a group of bounty hunters which deals with supernatural creatures. At first the protagonist seems ridiculously overpowered, but as the threat level keeps ramping up that fades into the background, and the author goes into great detail about the hunters’ firearms and how they are used; I enjoyed the book overall.
- Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch. The second adventure of Constable (and apprentice wizard) Peter Grant, who must investigate why a supernatural serial killer is targeting jazz musicians in Soho. Who is doing this, why, and how are they connected to the ongoing series of gruesome murders and mutilations elsewhere? The same detailed knowledge of London and the Metropolitan Police as before underpin this witty urban fantasy, but now we also learn about jazz, and the backstories of the supporting characters. I can see myself reading more of these, and fortunately my local library has a number of them.
- Pax by Tom Holland. Rome in the time of Falco. The third in a trilogy (I haven’t read the other two, but it stands alone well enough). This covers the period from the year of the four Caesars to the death of Hadrian; Rome at the height of its power, whose emperors were all more complex personalities than I thought. A good summary of a period we have much evidence for, and written well enough to pull me along with it.
- The Protocol by J Robert Kennedy. What if Indiana Jones was an Iraq War veteran? Professor James Acton discovers something he wasn’t meant to on a dig in Peru, and finds himself on the run from black ops soldiers, cultists, and several police forces investigating the trail of bodies left in his wake as someone tries to silence everyone he might have told about it and recover the McGuffin. A good holiday thriller, and also a study in bad decisions taken by well-meaning people operating on incorrect or incomplete information.
- The Tank Lords by David Drake. One of a number of collections of stories about Hammer’s Slammers, a mercenary hovertank regiment; some I’d read before, some were new. The Slammers stories are grimdark, focussing on the lies and scheming of ungrateful politicians, and the trauma and sacrifice of the soldiers. The worldbuilding and technology underpinning the stories are better than I remember from my last foray into the Slammers 20 years ago, but Drake’s work remains grimdark until Redliners, after which he seems to cheer up a little. More of Drake’s work to come.
- Wargaming Campaigns by Henry Hyde. A large book, which I think of as the spiritual successor to Tony Bath’s Setting Up a Wargames Campaign, albeit greatly expanded, with more illustrations, and addressing options not available to Bath such as assorted digital tools. It still covers much the same ground – why one would play campaigns, rules for mapping, map movement, supply, characterisation of leaders, sieges, and so on – and cites many other authors in support of its arguments. Where Bath was biased towards ancients, Hyde favours horse and musket, but the book is useful for other eras too.
Did Not Finish
The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The particular ebook edition I’d chosen had numerous spelling mistakes, sections missing, and seemed to have the books in the wrong order. Better luck next time, perhaps.
RPG
The SWADE Dune campaign is on Hold currently (see what I did there?), so I reread Shadowdark, Mongoose Traveller 2022 Update, and Delta Green – Need to Know. In all cases that was a cover-to-cover job, so I am counting them against my total.
Source
Continue reading...