Sunday, October 13, 2024

The World of Critical Role by Liz Marsham review

    THE WORLD OF CRITICAL ROLE is a nonfiction book that chronicles the creation of the Critical Role Twitch stream that has since exploded into a massively successful multimedia franchise that includes comics as well as animated cartoons. In a very real way, it contributed to the massive successful of 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons as well as led to a slew of imitators for everything from Call of Cthulhu to Shadowrun.

    The origin of Critical Role was Felicia Day convincing Matt Mercer and the other voice actors playing at his home game to air their D&D game on her channel. From there, they proceed to develop a massive Twitch following and that moved on to becoming a marketing juggernaut. The book covers most of the history in a somewhat superficial but, mostly, accurate way.

    I say mostly accurate because the book more or less writes out Orion Acada and his character of Tiberius, only mentioning him as a “guest” party member despite his role in the founding of the franchise. It also overlooks some of the smaller controversies that dogged Critical Role. It doesn’t mention the backlash that Marish Ray got about her character of Keyleth or the controversy of “broomgate” where Laura stole another party member’s magic broom.

    Basically, this is a fine book but it’s also very much a love fest for Critical Role that doesn’t include any of the controversies or the occassionally unpleasant elements of fandom. It’s a puff piece that loses points because a lot of that would have been interesting and lended some authenticity to the story about the struggles some of the individuals involved had to overcome. We all know fans aren’t always great people, particularly against women.

    Despite this, the book has a lot of fascinating bits in it about the world of Exandria and the character arcs for the first two campaigns. There’s character studies of all the characters as well as biographies for the actors. We also get write-ups for Will Wheaton and other guest stars plus their characters. Just because it doesn’t dive deeply into the negative elements doesn’t mean it’s not something worth buying if you are a “critter.” We also get surprisingly deep into the real life backstories of the actors with some stories, like Ashley Johnson and Taelsin Jaffe being particularly fascinating.

    In conclusion, I don’t recommend purchasing this book if you are not already a fan of either Vox Machina or the Mighty Nein. This makes the most sense if you’re familiar with Campaigns 1 and 2 but doesn’t cover the events of 3 at all. Still, it’s a fun coffee table book and enjoyable for hardcore fans.

Available here

Monday, September 30, 2024

Space Academy Miscreants (Space Academy #4) now available for preorder!

 

NOW AVAILABLE FOR AUDIOBOOK PREORDER!

SPACE ACADEMY MISCREANTS (Space Academy #4)

“Captain’s log… we’re doomed.”

Captain Vance Turbo of the E.S.S Ares has managed to save the entire universe and gotten himself a big fat promotion for it. However, that doesn’t mean much as he’s just received a message that his daughter is in peril! His daughter that he didn’t know about because she was cooked up in a lab by his ex-girlfriend. Knowing he can’t take his ship on a personal vendetta, Vance decides to charter a pirate ship to head to the distant tyranny of Crius. Unfortunately, his journey isn’t exactly a secret and he finds himself ambushed. Ambushed by someone Vance never thought he’d see again.

Space Academy is an all-new series from the hilarious duo of C.T. Phipps (Supervillainy Saga, Agent G) and Michael Suttkus (I Was a Teenage Weredeer, Lucifer’s Star) that lampoons the space opera as well as military science fiction genres.

Vance Turbo remains the luckiest unlucky character I’ve created. Lucky because he grew up in a Post-Cyberpunk utopian future created by the sacrifices of people like Agent G, Kei Springs, and Detective Neal Gordon of the Moon PD.

Unlucky because it seems like every single threat to that peace falls to him to fix and everyone in the galaxy wants to burn down said Utopia for not being human friendly enough or too human friendly. Now he’s on a quest to find out if he’s a father that involves his long dead parents, his promotion to High Inquisitor (err, Protector), and the slave holding world of CRIUS! Yes, a link to LUCIFER’S STAR! Released on October 22nd! The Kindle is already up.

Audible (Preorder): https://www.audible.com/pd/Space-Academy-Miscreants-Audiobook/B0DJ3MZ8FH

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Space-Academy-Miscreants-C-Phipps-ebook/dp/B0DHR8X69M/

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

City in the Dragon's Eye by Jordan Loyal Short review

    CITY IN THE DRAGON’S EYE by Jordan Loyal Short is one of the best fantasy novels written in 2024 and like the author’s DREADBOUND ODE series or Richard Nell’s KINGS OF PARADISE, probably the best thing you can get for “fantasy literature” on Kindle Unlimited. If you think this is overly high praise, take my advice when I say that this is a five-star book of an actual scale were five means “fantastic” not “I have no real complaints and don’t want to undermine the author due to the internet algorithm gods.”

    The premise is that this takes place in a 17th-to-19th century-esque steampunk world where magic exists alongside science, but it lacks the “cutesy” quality of much steampunk. It also has elements of the Post-WW1 era where the protagonist’s country has just lost a massive war with many veterans left broken by the experience while others feel they were betrayed by their leaders surrendering.

    Viktor has a particularly problematic affliction, though, in that he now has scales across his body from where he used magic that has infected him with dragon. I mean that literally in that people who use too much magic are turned into dragons and treated like lepers as it happens. He’s fired from every job and made an outcast. Seeking a cure so that he doesn’t have to spend the rest of his life in misery, he ends up uncovering a secret society that wishes to start a new war. Victor is no hero, though. He just wants to get cured of what is probably insoluble.

    There’s also Izola, who is working at a university with her ex-husband. Unfortunately, the latter has just achieved tenure and finds the prospect of his disgruntled former spouse moving up the ranks to be intolerable. Having her career scuttled in the most painfully banal way possible, Izola searches for another way to distinguish herself. Her path crosses with Viktor in a way that goes in several unexpected directions.

    The third protagonist of the work is an incredibly foolish young dandy named Devin who has coasted his entire life on his father’s wealth as well as power. Unfortunately, this has left him with an overinflated sense of importance that gets him into incredible trouble when he attempts to fix a fight for some quick cash, only to run afoul of a local crime lord. Lacking any real resources, he ends up not so much over his head but several fathoms down.

    Jordan Loyal Short is a fantastic writer of prose but his biggest skill is that he’s extremely good at creating vivid believable characters that aren’t typical of fantasy. Viktor’s worries about whether he’ll ever get a girl with his “tumor” or his family now that he can’t hold down a job are infinitely more relatable than your typical hero’s issue with a dark lord. Izola’s inability to be seen at her place of work and regrets about having gotten married too young to a professor who turned out to be only interested in her when she was a worshipful young teacher’s assistant is familiar in a way that former assassin or princess isn’t. Yet, this is still a fantastical world filled with monsters and sorcery.

    If I had any complaints about the book, it would be that I think naming the secret society “The Thule Society” was a bit too on the nose. It’s like the author didn’t trust us to get the parallels with the Weimar Republic. Despite that, this is a wholly original secondary world with more allusions to early 20th century history than actual parallels.

    In conclusion, if you’re looking for a fantastic new read this Fall then I think you could do far worse than pick this one up. Jordan Loyal Short is an author who manages to be dark without being grimdark and authentic when other authors are archetypal. The fact he’s an indie author versus a mass published one is almost as a shame as I think everyone should try this out.

Available here

Saturday, September 21, 2024

Lords of Dragon Keep excerpt

Hey folks, 

We’d thought you’d love to read a short chapter from the recently released LitRPG Lords of Dragon Keep by C.T. Phipps. A humorous tale of an ordinary man dumped into a world that is, unfortunately, more Game of Thrones than Narnia.

Chapter One – The Book is Finally Completed

“You want me to what?” I asked, looking up from my cubicle. It contained a messy collection of papers, Post-it notes, and a pewter dragon that was the only sign of my humanity permitted by employers. Such was the soul crushing nature of my job as an Epic DungeoneeringTM programmer.

Be a video game designer!

Write amazing stories!

Program new worlds!

It was difficult to imagine I’d been so naive in college but, somehow, I’d convinced myself that this was the career I’d wanted. I’d ended up signing a lifetime contract, which seems like I’m exaggerating but doesn’t feel like it, with a company that had a non-compete clause for about a million years in every similar field. That was something that also should be illegal, but the company was fully willing to drag out in court as poor Sue Wilson had found out. Given the company was based in Ledziania (wasn’t that where Doctor Doom lived?) but I operated from their office in Michigan, I suspected there may also be some international laws at play as well.

The thing was that I’d been working at programming and pitching game material at Epic DungeoneeringTM for about ten years now. So far, despite claiming we were a family, I was the deformed relative they kept tied up in the attic and every single idea I’d proposed had been shot down. It had been endless parades of crunch, bug fixing, and working on live service monetization that made me feel like I was preying on my fellow gamers.

“Meet with Larry C.C. Weis,” Barbara Wojciechowski said. No, I have no idea how to pronounce that and my family was Polish. My mother is so ashamed. I only knew it from her nametag at the manager’s office. I don’t think she’d ever said her last name in person, or I might have been able to fake it.

Barbara was one of the Epic DungeoneeringTM staff that had transferred over from Eastern Europe to oversee the American part of the company and was an extremely pleasant fifty-something brown haired woman who I suspected had been a kindergarten teacher before communism fell. At least she treated her staff like children and sometimes pulled out a hand puppet to explain difficult concepts to us like, “You’re going to be doing a lot of overtime and not getting paid any extra for it. Oh, and try to find a job in this economy. Bark-bark.” The hand-puppet was a dog, you see. She dressed in a long cotton dress and tweed sweater that still had big mom energy, albeit the mom who locked her children in the aforementioned attic.

“You’re kidding, right?” I asked, looking up.

Barbara scrunched her nose. “Why would I be kidding?”

I blinked, wondering if this was a prank before realizing I didn’t want to know if it was. Larry C.C. Weis was the patron saint of Epic DungeoneeringTM and the reason it had gone from an obscure Eastern European gaming studio to an international phenomenon with multiple streaming shows and one other semi-successful franchise.

Sort of a Ledzianian George R.R. Martin or Iron Curtain Tolkien, Larry C.C. Weis had written the Dark Undermaster series and Epic DungeoneeringTM had bought the rights to it back it had probably cost sixty rupees and a goat. Okay, seriously, I’m not trying to be stereotypical here, but I just worked forty hours straight trying to get the Witch Queen of Angho’horak from clipping through her armor. Something I was pretty sure the base game programmers had done deliberately.

Well, in the wake of Game of Thrones, the Dark Undermaster series had ended up being an international success and the third one topped twenty-million sales. That was in addition to all the spin-offs and merchandising that had ticked off Larry C.C. Weis something fierce.

If you believed the online rumors, Larry had been so pissed off that he’d stopped writing the Dark Undermaster series right before the epic climax and was no longer interested in finishing it. This despite millions of fans anxiously waiting for the next installment and all the adaptations running out of material. Err, bring to life. It was particularly problematic for Epic DungeoneeringTM because they depended on their reputation as a scrappy underdog developer that honored the fandom despite keeping people like me chained up to our computers.

The Larry C.C. Weis?” I asked, blinking. I briefly wondered if there was another Larry C.C. Weis in accounting or something. It wasn’t entirely impossible since one of my fellow programmers was named Jon Snowman. I bet his parents were regretting that bit of naming convention. Then again, I couldn’t really complain myself given my name.

Barbara sniffed the air as if there was something foul in it. Her accent became sharper and went into full Natasha Fatale territory. “Yes, the writer.”

The executives at Epic DungeoneeringTM had developed a love-hate-hate relationship with Larry as I’d understood it and it had trickled down to the middle managers like Barbara. Some of my fellow programmers had even developed the hissing and spitting at his name that seemed in vogue but most of us kept a wry respect for the old dude. After all, we all had developed a burning hatred for the guys at the top. They may have started as fellow geeks, but they’d all ended up as Sauron rather than Frodo.

“Why the hell does Larry C.C. Weis want to speak with me?” I asked, wishing I had some coffee right now, but I’d have to fight six other guys at the break room who had been working even longer than I had. “How the hell does Larry C.C. Weis even know who the hell I am?”

“Listen, Aragorn,” Barbara started to speak.

“Aaron,” I said, softly correcting her for the fifteenth time.

“It says Aragorn on your employment sheet,” Barbara said, as if I didn’t know my own name.

“Yes, but I go by Aaron,” I said, annoyed.

“Why?” Barbara asked.

“So, I could survive high school,” I replied, sighing. “As Aaron Bartkowski is more likely to make it past their freshmen year.”

“Mr. Aragorn Bartkowski,” Barbara said, reaching into her dress pockets (which was a good thing to see they had) and removed the hand puppet. She then started speaking in a little children’s dog voice. “Grr, you need to go meet with Mr. Weis and get some contracts signed. He requested you personally. Bark-bark.”

I stared at her. “Is the hand puppet strictly necessary?”

I bet you thought I’d been kidding about the hand puppet? Well, welcome to my life.

“Ruff! Yes,” Barbara said, not displaying any self-awareness. “Otherwise, it’s your job. Bark.”

I took a deep breath. “So, is he in Latveria? Do I have to get a plane ticket? Please tell me you’re springing for it.”

“Ledziania,” Barbara corrected. “It’s on the border between Poland and Romania.”

“They don’t share a border,” I said, wondering if Barbara was aware of where the company’s home country was. I mean, I wasn’t, but I had an excuse. “It’s supposed to be between Poland and Belarus, though I’m not sure where in the big national forest there that it’s supposed to be.”

“Whatever,” Barbara said, wiggling her hand puppet’s nose in the air. “Either way, he lives in America now and has since the first Dark Undermaster game. Louis.”

A well-dressed bespectacled man with smoothed over red hair in a suit that he wore constantly came over. Louis Tolliver was Barbara’s majordomo and reminded me suspiciously of Wayland Smithers from The Simpsons. The fact he was sucking up to Barbara made me wonder if he shouldn’t have been slightly more ambitious as a yes man. In his hands was a black briefcase that he handed over to me like we were in Pulp Fiction.

“The code is 1-2-3-4-5,” Louis said, nodding.

I stared at him. “Big Spaceballs fan, huh?”

Louis looked confused.

I shook my head and opened the briefcase, revealing a bunch of white sheets of paper as well as a gold bracelet that looked like an oversized Ring of Power. It even had the elvish looking writing on the side. My eyes watered a bit and I swear, I heard a little bit of whispering coming from it. I shook my head and the sound dissipated.

“This is the contract for Lords of Dragon Keep,” Barbara said, looking from side to side as if she was spreading secret information.

Which it was. “What? Really? It’s done?”

Lords of Dragon Keep was the mythical fourth and final volume of the Dark Undermaster saga. The one that he had been working on for the better part of eleven years and everyone had long since given up on him completing. I was surprisingly excited, and it reminded me of the fact that I used to be a fan of the series as well. Well, at least until Season Five of Dark Undermaster when they’d tried to wrap up the story and ruined everything.

Hell, there had been a time when I’d been a “Undermasterling” every bit as fanatical as any other in the fandom. I’d loved how dark and gritty Westeros had been but had done the teenage boy thing of thinking, “but what if they added more sex and violence.” The kind of kid who didn’t understand grimdark was meant to be a pejorative. Knowing that the story was going to be finished was something that caused a little chill to run down my spine. Even if it was nonsensical for me to be involved.

“Yes, the book is done. This contract provides us the rights to adapt the book to the game series as well as gives us all future rights to the franchise in exchange for a generous lump sum as well as a portion of all future merchandising rights,” Barbara said, her tone suggesting the terms were excessive in the author’s favor.

“Good,” I said, before realizing what I was saying. “Err—”

“Yes, well, he was very specific,” Barbara said, annoyed. “You’re also supposed to wear the bracelet.”

“Wear the bracelet,” I said, looking at the gold band. “Am I being punked?”

“I don’t know what that means,” Barbara said. “However, I expect your instructions to be followed to the letter. Be sure to make sure he signs the contract, though.”

“Isn’t this the kind of thing that should be done by a lawyer?” I asked, getting the increasing sense something very weird was going on.

“The contract has been approved by both parties, Mr. Bartkowski,” Louis said, his voice cold and flat like a robot’s. “Mr. Weis just enjoys meeting with the people he thinks are the important parts of game development.”

“Uh huh,” I said, wondering where he’d been for the entirety of the previous three Dark Undermaster game developments. The guy had been born in 1948 and probably hadn’t seen a computer until he was my dad’s age. Then again, I was used to the suits lying their asses off. On the other hand, if the guy had picked my name out of a hat or off an employee registry, I wasn’t about to complain. I could become the king of the internet by being the guy to leak this.

“You will, of course, be bound by all confidentiality agreements,” Barbara said, immediately crushing my dream of internet fame.

“Of course,” I said, sighing. I noted they still hadn’t said if they were covering my plane ticket. “So where does the guy live in America? Los Angeles? Chicago.”

“1313 Mockingbird Avenue,” Louis said. “It’s about a twenty-minute drive.”

I blinked. “He lives in Livonia, Michigan?”

I suddenly felt like an idiot, wondering how I didn’t know one of my favorite authors lived where I worked. Then again, he was supposed to be a recluse. Still, I would have thought that would have been the kind of thing I’d have found out.

“You are very easily surprised, Mr. Bartkowski,” Barbara said, maneuvering her little toy dog puppet to look disapproving somehow.

“Please don’t do that,” I muttered, creeped out. “Okay, I’ll go tomorrow morning.”

I’d finally managed to fix the Witch Queen of Angho’horak’s clipping nudity problem that would have been a selling point for the first game before they’d dramatically dialed back the Mature rating for DU3 so they could sell console versions on Xbox and Playstation. Now I was running on fumes and needed to collapse on my bed for at least four hours. I was going to be working through the weekend regardless, but I needed to make sure my brain didn’t leak out the side of my ear. You wouldn’t think it would be possible to become desensitized to boobs, digital or otherwise, but somehow it had happened.

“You’ll go now,” Barbara said, her voice sounding almost threatening. “Clock out of your workstation and head there immediately. Be sure to wear the bracelet and make sure he signs the contracts before you sign anything.”

Why was I even surprised. “Sure, I guess. Fine. Wait, why would I sign anything?”

“Don’t fail us like, Mr. Snowman did,” Barbara said.

I blinked rapidly and looked around for him. I hadn’t seen him in a few days but hadn’t paid much attention in the fury of debugging. I wondered if they’d been fired. Honestly, non-compete clause or not, we had a high turnover rate. “Is he okay?”

“You have a bright future ahead of you in Epic DungeoneeringTM, Mr. Bartkowski,” Louis said. “If you pull this off, you might be looking at a promotion. Imagine yourself as the Team Head for Pwiffle the Mobile Game.”

Pwiffle was the card game that came with Dark Undermaster III and had managed to get a bunch of free publicity from the Far Right when they released a topless card set during a particularly slow news day. They’d recalled that, as they’d always planned to do so, and the current version was designed to be sold to eight-year-olds who had access to their parents’ credit cards. The current Team Head, Becky, described it as being worse than an elementary school drug dealer.

“Super!” I said, faking as much as enthusiasm as I was humanly capable of, which wasn’t much. It wasn’t so much that I was opposed to selling out, but corporate life didn’t even pay you very much for your soul. I think Becky made like two dollars extra an hour.

“Be sure to wear the bracelet,” Barbara said before waving her hand puppet in the air and speaking in the dog voice. “Bark-bye!”

I watched them leave. “So, this is what the tenth circle of Hell is like.”

As usual, there was no one there to appreciate my scintillating wit. Sighing, I reached into the briefcase and picked up the bracelet, which was a lot heavier than I expected. It almost felt like real gold.

“Huh,” I said, sliding it on my wrist where it was far too big. Almost immediately, it shrunk down tightly, and the elvish runes glowed bright as I felt an intense stinging sensation like a bee jamming itself into my skin. “Muther—”

I was caught off-guard by the pain vanishing as a little holographic display of the kind you’d normally see in movies appeared above the bracelet, which was obviously some kind of badly designed theme telephone.

The display was a little white and black box that showed a bunch of information spread across several menu screens. It was clearly an RPG character sheet, and I could hear the Dark Undermaster theme [violin version] playing in the background.

ARAGORN “AARON” BARTKOWSKI

LVL: 1
CLASS: N/A (see Menu Options)
ALIGNMENT: GRAY
AGE: 34
SEX: MALE
RACE: HUMAN

STR: 10
AGI: 10
CON: 9
INT: 16
WIS: 7
COM: 15
CHA: 13

ARMOR CLASS: 0

ATTACK: 0

HEALTH: 5

FEAT: Taunt

SPECIAL ABILITIES: NA (see Menu Options)

Okay. that was weird and slightly insulting about my wisdom. A lot of the menu options were blacked out but there was a typical collection of maps (this one showed Livonia, Michigan as well as the office) as well as items, spell lists, and so on. I played it with for a bit but couldn’t get the class options, so I just gave up. Also, for a cell phone, it didn’t seem to be able to call anybody or play any games. Typical.

Anyway, I decided to do the job. It wasn’t every day that one got the chance to meet one’s favorite author.


Lords of Dragon Keep is available on Amazon for Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, as well as paperback!

Tuesday, September 17, 2024

Two new series on Kindle Unlimited

Hey folks,

I'm pleased to announce that there's now two more series of mine available in Kindle Unlimited. The first of these is LORDS OF DRAGON KEEP, which is my new fantasy parody series. It is to the fantasy genre what the Supervillainy Saga is to superheroes. The second is FUTUREPUNK, which is the collected volumes of AGENT G, THE CYBER DRAGONS TRILOGY, and MOON COPS ON THE MOON.

LORDS OF DRAGON KEEP

"Give me the incredibly short summary of what the hell is going on, please. The kind you could fit into a movie trailer."

“You’re trapped in a video game world based on a hack dark fantasy author’s rip-off of better books.”*

“Uh huh. Maybe you could be a bit more detailed.”

Aragorn "Aaron" Bartkowski was a programmer working at Epic DungeoneeringTM, the world's largest fantasy video game company. Much to his surprise, he was selected to pick up the latest manuscript from reclusive author Larry C.C. Weis. Weis had been working on his newest book for over a decade and the good folk at Aaron's company had dibs on adapting it. Unfortunately, Weis was also a wizard and sent Aaron to the world that inspired his books.

Aaron proceeded to find himself in a Slavic mythology themed world where he's believed to be Weis' main character, Garland of Nowhere. Equipped with the powers of a RPG protagonist, Aaron must accumulate experience and equipment while navigating a setting that seems worse off than Game of Thrones and Dark Souls put together.

LORDS OF DRAGON KEEP is a LitRPG progression fantasy isekai that takes the grim out of grimdark with biting humor as well as intelligent exploitation of the rules. It has excellent world-building, a great supporting cast, a bit of romance, and lots of laughs. Oh and there's a talking raven.

I'm pleased to share my latest book with y'all and thought you'd enjoy that, for the price of a cup of coffee, you can continue an author ruthlessly mocking dark fantasy. So toss a coin to your Witcher and pick up a copy.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Lords-Dragon-Keep-Dark-Undermaster-ebook/dp/B0DF38YSTD/

FUTUREPUNK

"The world is a neon-ridden hellhole, how did we get there?"
-Anonymous cyberpunk

A high-class corporate assassin. An ex-Yakuza smuggler. A detective with a robot dog. Three generations of individuals struggling against the rain-soaked technology dominated world of Futurepunk. A place where there are no heroes but only winners and losers. 

I wrote this nine-book series as an indie author who was absolutely in love with cyberpunk since the day he first booted up the original Deus Ex game in 2000. It found a decent-sized fanbase and the series remains one of my favorite works. I am now going to be sharing its characters and their journey across a shared world that spans a century of time. They're available on Kindle, paperback, and audiobook form.

I hope you enjoy.

Books 1 -3: The Agent G Saga

Books 4-6: The Cyber Dragons Saga

Books 7-9: Moon Cops

Saturday, September 14, 2024

Clan Novel: Ravnos by Kathleen Ryan review

    CLAN NOVEL: RAVNOS is the eighth novel in the Clan Novel series for the Vampire: The Masquerade line of tabletop RPGs. I’ve been re-reading the series for the past couple of years and enjoying the world of conspiracies, action, and interlocking plotlines. The series is not without its flaws and wildly changes tones as well as themes depending on the characters. However, it is still something that I think to be quite fun. I also note that the twelve book series has its own smaller series within the books, effectively following authors continuing their own stories when they do two or more books. In this case, Ravnos is a sequel to the Setite novel.

    The premise is that Hesha Ruhadze, Follower of Set high priest, has managed to finally acquire the Eye of Hazimel. The Eye is effectively the One Ring of Sauron (or Eye of Vecna) in that it bestows fantastic powers to its wielder but eventually warps your mind into a parody of itself. It also attracts the attention of Hazimel himself, who is restricted to using Khail Ravana as a minion in order to retrieve it. Khail finds himself stumbling on the erstwhile childe of Hesha, Elizabeth Dimitrios, and the Gangrel Ramona, who all have their own stake in the quest.

    The biggest flaw of this novel is Khalil Ravana himself. He is, deliberately, a complete scumbag. He’s a thieving, scheming, snivelling, cowardly irredeemable piece of ****. You can be a bad person as well as a protagonist in Vampire: The Masquerade, it’s almost mandatory, but Khalil is closer to Gollum rather than, say, Saruman. This is a book written by a woman but there’s a scene where Khalil waits in a woman’s apartment, watches her undress, then forcibly restrains her before draining her dry in a scene deliberately meant to remind you of what it does.

    Indeed, the fact that Khalil gets away with so much awful evil crap is something that makes the book a chore. Vampire novels almost inevitably work best when their condition is a curse and Khalil doesn’t have enough self-awareness to be cursed by it. He’s a living argument for why Paths of Enlightenment aren’t really appropriate for a vampire game or, at least, would be if he cared enough about the Path of Paradox to be anything more than “the path of what I was going to do anyway.” Indeed, the best part of Khalil’s story is when he chides Ramona for racism against Romani people, saying, yes, HE is a murderous thief but that’s just him. His family is rightfully ashamed of him.

    The best parts of the books are Hesha, Ramona, and Elizabeth’s sections. Hesha may be every bit as evil as Khalil, being a literal priest of a god of evil (which Set wasn’t in RL but is in V:TM) but he has far more depth as a person. Ramona is a vampire who wants to be “good” but is rather easily led astray by Khalil’s transparent lies. Elizabeth seems to have fallen in from another genre of horror entirely and is as terrified of Khalil as she is of Hesha despite the former being more Buffy vampire than Dracula in terms of intelligence.

    If it sounds like I’m insulting the book, I’m not, well, not entirely. None of this is due to bad writing. Kathleen Ryan is fully capable of writing fantastic vampire fiction. I know, because she’s the author of Setite and that’s one of my favorite V:TM books. However, the protagonist is someone she tries to contrast against all of the others and he’s just not a great place to be in the headspace of. Despite this, I found myself still interested in the plotline between them. The Eye of Hazimel is the most D&D-like artifact in V:TM but it’s very strangeness is one of the reasons the plot works. No one else really looks for magical artifacts in the setting, so the one-eyed man is king.

Available here

Saturday, September 7, 2024

Elfsong by Elain Cunningham review

    ELFSONG is the second of Elaine Cunningham’s fantastic SONGS AND SWORDS series that was also part of the Harpers series (confused yet?). They’re a set of books which follow Harper Assassin (as in a Harper who is an Assassin not an assassin of Harpers, though she was accused of that too), Arilyn Moonblade, and Danilo Than who is a Wizard/Fighter who pretends to be a Bard but is also a Harper. Okay, now I’ve confused myself. The first book, Elfshadow, was fantastic and really deserved a much longer series. Thankfully, Elaine Cunningham managed to write five books in the series even if I’m sorry to say she never released the completed sixth one.

    The premise for Elfsong is that the main pair are split up after the events of the first book. Danilo Thann has been recalled back to Waterdeep and is once more working for his “uncle”, Khelben the Blackstaff. A disgruntled bard named Garnet has decided to strike back at the Harpers for, essentially, making the “Spoony Bard” trope into an in-game reality. She points out the grand historical tradition of bards, their important role in politics, and their grand heritage as preservers of history when written lore was unavailable. Garnet points out that bards have been reduced to being a bunch of immature wananbe superheroes in the Harpers and involved more in “fighting evil” than their historical role.

    I 100% agree with Garnet and note that Elaine Cunningham is using her knowledge of history to make the argument of the villain all the more effective. Elaine Cunningham is also one of the D&D writers who does extensive research on the game before she does her books so this one is littered with material from THE COMPLETE BOOK OF BARDS, one of the two best of that series alongside THE COMPLETE BOOK OF ELVES (without said book’s ridiculous elf-touting). There’s Dwarvish Jesters, Riddlemasters, and Elf spellsingers. Danillo also decides to Multiclass as Bard, which is probably as redundant a choice in class as has ever been made.

    In any case, Garnet’s revenge is a somewhat backhanded way of redeeming the honor of bards as she starts ruining their ancient songs and turning them into hit pieces on the Lords of Waterdeep and Khelben specifically. This is a pretty common thing for “sympathetic” villains as you have them make a perfectly valid point and then blow up a schoolbus of children to show they’re bad AKA the “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” effect. Mind you, this isn’t a bad storytelling device as if they weren’t doing villainous things then the hero wouldn’t be fighting them. Still, you have to wonder what benefit to bards there will be when she’s allying with the Devil-worshiping Knights of the Shield.

    The bulk of the book is the frenemy relationship between Danilo and Elaith Craulnobler the Serpent. An elvish crime lord, Elaith despises Danilo because he’s a human, he’s a Waterdeep nobleman, he’s courting Arilyn, and he’s a Harper. Not necessarily in that order. Elaith is very similar to Jaime Lannister in some respects in that he’s a naturally honorable person who, having lost his honor, decides to live down to everyone’s worst fears.

    In conclusion, Elfsong is fantastic and while I sympathized with Garnet’s cause, this is not where the book’s moral ambiguity lies. It is much more a character piece of Danilo versus Elaith over what constitutes morality. Elaine Cunningham has a very tense relationship regarding elvish and human relationships that I don’t recall existing anywhere else in the Realms. I also appreciated the handling of the behind the scenes of the Lords of Waterdeep, which we normally don’t get in the Forgotten Realms novels.

One small issue to bring up is that Elfsong, unique among the Swords and Song books, seems unavailable on Kindle. It seems fine on Barnes and Noble’s Nook and other formats but is not available from Amazon. I have no idea what this is about but has been the case for months as of the time of this review.

Available here