Games played, Comics read, giveaways entered.

Hi All,

Still on vacation, and as usual not really finding the time to get to all the things that I packed for down time during the trip.

We just finished our second game of Conan Munchkin in as many days. My daughter won yesterday with an actual strategy and some fairly cunning play. It makes a barbarian father proud. My son won today, and although my wife helps him make most of his decisions, he had a pretty good end game for the win. My wife threatened me with the sofa after I played a Level 19 wandering monster on her to stop her from reaching level 9. She ended up having to run away and died in the attempt.

I purchased a couple of graphic novels yesterday. The first was King Conan: The Phoenix on the Sword

From www.comicastle.com

Good quick read, great art. I think you can't go wrong with any of the Timothy Truman Conan comics.

Next was the Walking Dead Vol 1.

From darkfaerietales.com

I am an avid follower of the television series and considered buying the compendium, but didn't want to carry the phone book sized thing in my luggage. So I've gone with the trade paper graphic novel. Even if you know the story from the show the book is different enough to keep it interesting. This book was like potato chips, I devoured it and wanted another immediately. Although it has a lot of swear words my 7 year old was very engaged by it and even picked it up and read some on his own. I'll take it because he is not a very strong reader and avoids reading at all costs. If he has to be exposed to a few "sentence enhancers" along the way, that's a price I'm willing to pay. He hears that and worse from his old man anyway, so who am I kidding.

Now onto pimpin' the giveaways.

I got over my self pity and threw my name in for the Darksword miniatures over at Wargames and Railroads here.

I then also jumped in on the 100K views giveaway happening over at Trouble at T'Mill, you can see the prizes for Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3.

Good luck to everyone entered.

Book Review: Halcyon Classics The Definitive H.P. Lovecraft: 67 Tales of Horror

Well I finally finished reading the Kindle Edition of this H.P. Lovecraft Anthology.

While the price was very good I will say that my interest in Lovecraft really ebbed and flowed. Some of the stories just didn't capture my interest as much and I found myself getting tired with some of Lovecraft's literary devices. But that is somewhat par for the course when reading collected works. I found Howard to get to me at times as well when I read the Conan anthologies.

What I was not prepared for was Lovecraft's racism. It doesn't come up in every story, and a lot of it is garden variety Anglophile world view of "lesser" races. His racism against blacks, or African - Americans if you prefer, is repugnant.

Sorry, but I gotta calls it as I sees it. I personally was totally unprepared for it. At first I was inclined to think that it was just a sort of period bias against barbaric non white, non Christians and it was that. But it was actually worse than that. I still enjoy the true horror stories and the Dreamlands stuff is pretty good but I probably would have come away with a better taste in my mouth if I had stopped at Call of Cthulhu and Dunwich Horror etc.

Gorgonmilk in the comments here pointed me to an interesting essay here.

I still enjoy the Cthulhu mythos and spinoff games, but I have to say I was disappointed to read this tripe from Lovecraft.

So I can't fault the book itself. Good value, you get a ton of stories. But if you only want to read the main stories and be subjected to to the other stuff less, maybe try a different book.

Review - Bernard Cornwell, Saxon Chronicles

Having recently finished Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Chronicles series I can highly recommend them. You can find a link with a quick synopsis and series order on wikipedia here.

Your book cover may be different.

Overall I thought the series was good. I like Uhtred and the action made for good reading. For me the series peaked at Lords of the North, dipped slightly at Sword Song, went back up at The Burning Land and then leveled off for Death of Kings.

Lots of action, intrigue and of course Shield Walls. One reviewer on Amazon mentioned that Death of Kings felt formulaic to them but I didn't really have a problem with that. It reminds me of a quote from an interview with Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon about screen writing. "What people need to embrace and accept, if you're going to be a writer in Hollywood, is that every single movie has the exact same structure, exactly, whether it's "Die Hard" or "Night at the Museum." - Ben Garant (full interview here). So my take is, if you're going to have an Uhtred novel, certain things are going to happen. Deal with it.

I would highly recommend this series if you like Dark Age stuff, a lot of period flavor and raucous battle. I thought that Paul of The Man Cave had reviewed this series, but all I could find was a mention of it in his review here. So it looks like I might need to give Robert Low's Oathsworn series a try.

After I read the H.P. Lovecraft collection that is.

Reading Update

So the first casualty of my attention deficit was my “now reading” list. I have now updated it with what I am currently reading (Fiasco by Thomas Ricks).

In the interim I read, or rather skimmed How to Build Realistic Model Railroad Scenery and another book in the series about modeling cities.

I then also read the Dark Horse edition of Conan: Free Companions

 and started reading a used copy of Conan: The Ultimate Guide to the World's Most Savage Barbarian by Roy Thomas.

The railroad modeling books are good, but you can get a lot of this info on youtube I think. So definitely a good library borrow.

Free Companions was a fun read, covering the story starting at the end of Conan's run as a mercenary captain in the service of Kjoth to the destruction of his Zaporazian (sp?) Cossack band just before the story where he ends up on the island in the Vilayet Sea (the name of that story is not coming to me right now.

The Roy Thomas book has lots of cool art and is thematically arranged, sort of like an encyclopedia. Fun stuff.

I bought the Ricks book awhile back and I guess it is fitting to read it now as the US prepares to pull out of Iraq.  

Be Ready Etc, Book Review

Now I must admit that this was a total impulse buy because of the cover and excerpts on the back. I was also, at the time, heavily into post apocalypse material.

I will say that I find Forrest funny and appreciate his quirkiness, but at times the book gets a bit much. Many dick jokes and overall locker room humor. While I have a high tolerance for this others may not be able to get past it. I would also say that the synopsis and pitch he gives to the publisher are probably more what I was looking for. Stretching it out into a book just made me want to put it down more than keep reading.

So from the back cover:

1. Have you dug up your wife's rose garden and built a fallout shelter, equipped with a prison where you can lock up annoying family members?

2. Have you mapped out an escape route to your safe zone?

3. Is there a vehicle of death siting in your garage?

4. Have you filled your go bag with all the needed instruments, including waterproof matches, postapocalyptic goggles, and at least one sexual party favor?

5. Have you learned how to milk various types of animals, including a giraffe?

You get the idea. So you have tips on how to survive, signs of a variety of coming apocalypti and tips for how to set up your own post A society (with you on top of course). There are also several side bars with interesting stores by Forrest and friends such as "Naked Etiquette" and my favorite "Ways to know if you are a F***ing fighter" especially #2 - You might be a fighter if you've ever given a stripper ringworm.

So in conclusion I would say this book is more like a limerick book. Better to pick and choose your way through than a straight sit down and read through.

Soft Apocalypse

Soft Apocalypse by Will McIntosh

 I have been on something of a post apocalypse kick lately, watching Blood of Heroes, The Book of Eli and the Road. This last Sunday while in LA I picked up this book and finished it this morning. I would have finished it sooner, but I ran out of light on the drive home and had to force myself to go to bed last night so I could get 5 hours of sleep.

 The story is very engaging and takes you along with Jasper as he tries to survive in the world slowly falling apart. It starts in 2023 and jumps varying amounts of time to the conclusion in 2033. There is a little bit of sci fi future stuff, but mostly it seems very current. The best way I can describe it is sort of like the prequel to Mad Max. Society is still functioning but there is 40% unemployment and gangs and tribes of the dispossessed.

 It seems like a great atmosphere to game. You're just trying to survive. Police, Fireman (which are now just another armed gang), thugs, Jumpy-Jumps (some kind of anarchistic group that wear random uniforms [Priest, Mailman, Milkman etc] and wantonly kill, Civil Defense and Army are all a potential threat. Not to mention being killed by people who think you are trying to rob them or bring disease to there community.

  Did I forget to mention eco-terrorists and designer viruses like Polio-X and flesh eating bacteria? Any way it seems like Two Hour Wargames would fit the bill nicely, perhaps the Zombie titles have all of those various ingredients in them already. Take out the zombies and you have it.

Anyhow here's the link to amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Soft-Apocalypse-Will-McIntosh/dp/159780276X

and to a more coherent review: http://escapepod.org/2011/03/30/book-review-soft-apocalypse-by-will-mcintosh/

I liked it, but then I also liked the Conan movie.