A very quick read (about 3 hours), this is one man’s tale of getting buried in the depths of a corporation. The story is funny, often ironic, and moves along quickly. It feels like a book version of Office Space, though with a larger cast of shallow characters. The “lessons learned” bullets at the ends of each chapter fit a pseduo-business book, but they rarely contribute much. The book is strongest as an indictment of corporatism and a personal tale.
I read it indifferently; the book starts off somewhat slow and very stylized, making it hard to really engage. The viewpoint character is decidedly strange and begins with amnesia (so that we can learn the world beside it).
In the end it’s a decent book– easy to set aside, a good intrigue (though hard to follow with the character names/relations so similar), and it has an interesting twist on the population explosion and containment.
I wolfed the book down. It kept me up several nights– I kept thinking just one more page, one more chapter. It was well written, and I really liked the characterization. As Jennifer said when she finished reading it, this book is going on our gift giving list. It has a lot to recommend itself to everyone, adult and teen.
Another solid six books in the series and a good conclusion to the world.
The Wind Trilogy is Elspeth’s and is about her long journey, training, and return. She’s a more complex character and not completely sympathetic, which is good. She’s given a number of gifts and talents, which seem to exceed the demand that’s put on them by a pretty wide margin much of the time. The book also introduces Darkwind who has a lot of POV chapters and his own struggles for the first two books before falling in beside Elspeth for the conclusion.
The Winds trilogy returns to a tighter set of POVs; typically Karal (the Karsite scholar). As the series goes on other POVs become more common, but the story is still Karal’s. Karal gets a lot less cool powers and status– most of the time, his efforts are like a Buffy scooby– inspiring, but not the person slinging the power or beating the bad guys by himself. The second book’s conclusion is a little disappointing, mostly because the third book’s conclusion is so similar. If you’re annoyed by “reunion books” where everyone in every other book makes an appearance, you might be annoyed– but it’s handled quite well and doesn’t dominate everything.
Game Resources
Chatty’s Tool Roundup, and Dragon Avenue’s Resource Page.
A 4e Form fillable auto-calculating character sheet (.zip)
Supplement tables, Reference screen (flash)
Setting and Adventure Ideas
Chris Chinn’s Five blades of Bahamut, Quest seeds, Airships
P3’s short series (a quick post each for 1-10, 11-20, and 21-30) extensible with lots of options.
House of Leaves is by Mark Z. Danielewski. It’s clearly a dark book; very sophisticated in its presentation, with layers on layers of meaning and narrative. I’m reading this now because it was recommended by Old Hat on CVGamers. I first remember reading about this in Poe’s liner notes for Haunted. [Side note: the relationship between the two is mentioned on the Haunted wikipedia page.
I’m not far into it yet, but it looks very promising.
I recently reread Mercedes Lackey’s Arrows Trilogy: Arrows of the Queen, Arrow’s Flight, and Arrow’s Fall. Evidently was the first trilogy written in the series, despite my reading the Magic’s Promise/Pride/Price trilogy previously.
I enjoyed the series. Some small elements felt repetitious– but given that this was the first series written I guess it’s the other books that repeat the elements introduced here.
Talia is inspiring and refreshing– from the very beginning, she seems like someone whose struggles are worthwhile. The petty humiliations and struggle to adapt to strange environments in the first book are very well written– I sympathized with Talia and hoped she’d find a way to endure.
I had a craving for some Lackey novels this weekend– specifically Tarma and Kethry. So I read Oathbound and Oathbreakers, which I enjoyed, but noticed some problems with them this time around. Afterward I read Oathblood, and kicked myself– the missing kickoff story is in there. (Oathblood is a collection of Tarma and Kethry short stories). If you’re interested in reading the series, here’s how I suggest you tackle it:
Oathblood: Sword-sworn
Oathbound
Oathbreakers
remaining short stories from Oathblood. [Note: Some of these are in Oathblood and Oathbound in very similar form.]
Quick compelling reads by Jim Butcher (of Dresden Files fame). I polished them off during our travels to and from Italy– there was a lot of time in plane and airports. Jennifer started reading them as I finished them, and also seems to be enjoying them so far.
Law of Survival is the third book in Kristine Smith’s Jani Killian series. It’s early, but I’m enjoying it much more than Code of Conduct so far. [As ever, more later.]