I’ve rounded the horn on 2016 Hugo Awards finalist novels, wrapping up Naomi Novik‘s Uprooted (paid link) on Sunday night. Seveneves (paid link) was a 5/5 that roared through my brain, and The Fifth Season (paid link) was a 5/5 that took a bit of time to get rolling, so I was curious to see […]
Uprooted is a fantastic look at a fairy-tale reality Read More »
I wrapped up my second 2016 Hugo Awards finalist novel, N.K. Jemisin‘s The Fifth Season (paid link), yesterday, and it was awesome. The Fifth Season is post-apocalyptic fantasy, which is unusual enough to pique my interest, but it’s doubly unusual: Its setting, The Stillness, experiences recurring apocalypses — Seasons — that can be decades or centuries
The Fifth Season’s recurrent apocalypse Read More »
I’ve been reading fantasy and sci-fi for as long as I can remember[1], but this is the first time I’ve ever become a member of the Hugo Awards voting pool. (A voting membership costs $50, and members also get to make nominations for the 2017 Hugo Awards.) My faithful Kindle Paperwhite (paid link) is already
2016 Hugo Awards: “So join. Read. Vote.” Read More »
I’m currently reading Neal Stephenson‘s Seveneves (paid link), and it’s blowing my mind. (This post is spoiler-free.) The larch Stephenson is one of my favorite authors, and Cryptnomicon (paid link) is both my favorite Stephenson book and one of my favorite books period. Quite apart from “just” being fucking amazing in every way, it sparked my
Seveneves is roaring through my brain Read More »
My wife, Alysia, got me The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens (paid link) for my birthday, and it’s a fabulous book. (The rest of this post contains spoilers for the film.) I enjoy these sorts of books as a fan, but I also dig them as a gamer. I’ve written about using non-RPG
The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens is great gaming fuel Read More »
More RPGs and supplements should be coil-bound, or offer a coil-bound version. Coil-bound books lay flat and stay open, making them a joy to use at the gaming table. Away from the table, I prefer perfect-bound (traditional softcover) or hardcover for reading, and hardcover for bigger table-use books (large-diameter coils suck, and a big hardcover
All hail coil-bound gaming books Read More »
I just started reading William Hope Hodgson‘s 1912 weird fiction work The Night Land (paid link ; also available as a free ebook). I’m interested in it in large part because the setting sounds fabulous — and rather well-suited to gaming. I say “sounds” because I’m not that far into the book yet. It’s a
The Night Land seems ripe for gaming Read More »
I finished Cixin Liu’s The Dark Forest (paid link) today, and it blew me away. I wasn’t sure he could follow The Three-Body Problem (paid link),and the first 80% of the book was a solid four stars — I thought that was about the best I could hope for, given how amazing and surprising and wonderdul
The Three-Body Problem (paid link) was amazing. The hook is great. The story it promises puts a twist on a premise I’ve seen before, but it’s solid. But underneath that story, unfolding throughout the book, is a story that went nowhere I expected it to, in the best way possible. Reading it reminded me of
Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem Read More »
Terry Pratchett’s final Discworld book, The Shepherd’s Crown (paid link), came in the mail today, a bittersweet arrival to say the least. I almost never buy fiction in print anymore, but I’ve got every Discworld book in print; it felt right that I should read this one in print as well.
The Shepherd’s Crown Read More »
