The Gaming Den

Just finished Andy Weir's The Martian. Good book and fun reading, but despite the obvious PR reasons I have a hard time believing the way the book presents

not only all of the US Government, but the entire world up to and including the Chinese space program setting aside all other concerns and working together to save one guy at a cost of billions of dollars.

Forcing my way through the WH32K - War of the Beast Novels . .
Did i rant here about how Games Workshop is shitting on 40 years of 40K canon yet?

Stahlseele wrote:Forcing my way through the WH32K - War of the Beast Novels . .
Did i rant here about how Games Workshop is shitting on 40 years of 40K canon yet?

If you had to take a dump I could think of worse places to take a shit.

Indeed, the lore of 40K has kinda always been shit thrown at the wall and see if it sticks keep throwing moar shit.

The only people who enkoy 40K lore have actually created their own fanlore that uses just about 0,1% of the official material and outright ignores the remaining 99,9 %.

Fun fact, did you know the Imperium makes smart missiles by grafting people inside them so they'll do the maneuvering? Because AIs are evhul, but sacrificing people in horrific ways to get a bonus to your to-hit roll is perfectly kosher. Unless you don't worship the emprah, in which case you're a filthy renegade.

yes, i do know that.

and i can't even blame Matt Ward for this bullshit <.<
it's actually written, in part, by Dan Abnett, who has written some, if not most, of the really good 40K stuff . . So much so that people have started calling it the Daniverse . .

But the stuff they are putting into the War of the Beast basically invalidates ALL of the 40K canon!

I got around to reading Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.
...Litcrit people are the worst. THE WORST. I admire AH's restraint; my overview of the existing body of critical work would've comprised an unending stream of asterisks.

maglag wrote:The only people who enkoy 40K lore have actually created their own fanlore that uses just about 0,1% of the official material and outright ignores the remaining 99,9 %.

Yep

Found a book recently released as a free PDF: A to Z of Cthulu mythos

http://www.rollespilsakademiet.dk/mytho ... nglish.pdf

If anyone wants Numenera books released as part of the Torment: Tides of Numenera kickstarter - I can send them to you.

phlapjackage wrote:Found a book recently released as a free PDF: A to Z of Cthulu mythos

http://www.rollespilsakademiet.dk/mytho ... nglish.pdf

Funny that. I've been on a Lovecraft kick recently. I make no pretense of being a really perceptive or scholarly reader but...

I keep noticing his longer works all followed the same sort of...structure, like a narrative zoom-in.

Take Shadow over Innsmouth: First it shows what the neighbors think of Innsmouth, then you get what the place actually looks like, and then you get the history from a non-Deep One local, then you get the locals trying to kill the narrator, then it turns out the narrator is a Deep One descendant, too, in the end.

Call of Cthulhu does the same thing: First the Cthulhu cult is talked about in broad detail from vague dreams and sleepwalker's sculptures. Then Inspector Legrasse got a close look at the cult and heard about them in some detail, and then the sailor saw Cthulhu himself.

In addition to racism and wise old academics saving the world, Lovecraft was really fond of that narrative device of increasing detail and immediacy towards the end of the story, after spending the first part of the story in a very broad summary, often just of a locale.

I found a collection of all of Howard's Solomon Kane stories.

I'm actually liking these more than what Conan I read. Maybe because Solomon has a BIT more depth and maybe because the howling racism isn't quite so loud.

It does make me wonder why they've never done a movie on this guy. Hell, a video game would be awesome, too. Although possibly that's what playing the Witch Hunter in Vermintide is for.

Maxus wrote: It does make me wonder why they've never done a movie on this guy. Hell, a video game would be awesome, too. Although possibly that's what playing the Witch Hunter in Vermintide is for.

They actually made a movie version in 2009, though it wasn't exactly a big time production.

The movie wasn't terrible, as I was expecting. I did dislike that they make Solomon some sort of reformed/cursed pirate mercenary. I mean, there are hints at a bloody past on the seas for him in some stories, but the movie made it too central and I think it diminished the character. James Purefoy was good casting tho.

I enjoy that Solomon Kane reads very well as a Reborn from After Sundown with a past life as an African warrior, given his uncanny affinity for Africa. He even has Sands of Time wherein a description of him dodging an attack it suggests in another timeline he would have died.

I bought Moby Dick but then lost it and now I am on the hunt for the Moby Dick novel

erik wrote: I enjoy that Solomon Kane reads very well as a Reborn from After Sundown with a past life as an African warrior, given his uncanny affinity for Africa. He even has Sands of Time wherein a description of him dodging an attack it suggests in another timeline he would have died.

Re: Solomon Movie

I'll have to check that out.

And that totally didn't occur to me, but I can see it now.

Also, what. Reformed mercenary? I mean, I just finished the damn collection, closest you get is him being ashamed of something men under his command did while he was in the French army. But I suppose they just can't imagine someone being a Puritan these days.

BLAME!

I wanted the final volume editions so I ordered two on Amazon so far, awaiting the rest to be published.

I know, I know, you can read it online, and I have the files saved, but I wanted the books....

Reading the Red Rising trilogy (saga? fourth comes out soonish I think) by Pierce Brown. Sort of meh. The first book is a mash-up of Harry Potter, Hunger Games, and Lord of the Flies....IN SPACE! Sort of. 2nd and 3rd books are more "sci-fi"-ish, although still not by much. The protagonist is a bit of a Marty Stu. But it hasn't been bad enough for me to stop reading yet, so I guess it's got that going for it...

JonSetanta wrote:BLAME!

I wanted the final volume editions so I ordered two on Amazon so far, awaiting the rest to be published.

I know, I know, you can read it online, and I have the files saved, but I wanted the books....

Speaking of Tsutomo Nihei works, I've been reading Aposimz legally with the Comixology app.

Nice to know my money is going to things I like

I really enjoyed Victoria Aveyard's Red Queen. And then the sequel was so bad I couldn't finish.

I really, really loathe books where the main character insists on telling us about what a sack of shit they are. I told Ess halfway through the book that hero was turning into baby Hitler, and while - apparently - she doesn't end up with that fate - she does end up still a sack of shit making stupid decisions. And all nuance of the other main characters became lost as their three dimensions were compressed down into two and then further into one. It was like the author had a cheat sheet for the characters: Name, Power, Defining Trait/Theme.

From the reviews on Amazon, I'm not the only one, and I'm quite looking forward to saving myself the four days I'd otherwise spend on trying to finish the series.

I'm getting around now to some books I received as gifts that had been on my amazon wishlist for a while.

First, Old Man's War, I enjoyed. It was fun enough the whole way through and I recommend it. There's other books in the series/setting, I'm putting them on my to do list.

Now I'm reading Shadow Ops:Control Point. I'm about 100 pages in and if I finish it that's only because I did ask for it, and I feel I should pay my penance for getting someone to buy it for me. It's taken those 100 or so pages to establish an unlikable character who I kept hoping wasn't going to be the protagonist. Any dead character at this point would've made a better story, as would the main antagonist so far. I really wanted the main guy to die and then have the story hand off to someone else, but it hasn't happened and by the book jacket it's certain not to. The lingo is lame, the anti-magic hysterics feel like the idea for this book formed in the 1980's. There's so far nothing I like about it.

erik wrote:First, Old Man's War, I enjoyed. It was fun enough the whole way through and I recommend it. There's other books in the series/setting, I'm putting them on my to do list.

I jumped into the book having no idea what it was about (a perk of buying e-book bundles) and enjoyed it as well. I haven't read the other books.

erik wrote: Now I'm reading Shadow Ops:Control Point. I'm about 100 pages in and if I finish it that's only because I did ask for it, and I feel I should pay my penance for getting someone to buy it for me. It's taken those 100 or so pages to establish an unlikable character who I kept hoping wasn't going to be the protagonist. Any dead character at this point would've made a better story, as would the main antagonist so far. I really wanted the main guy to die and then have the story hand off to someone else, but it hasn't happened and by the book jacket it's certain not to. The lingo is lame, the anti-magic hysterics feel like the idea for this book formed in the 1980's. There's so far nothing I like about it.

I'm so sorry. If I had knowned, I would have warned you.

The Trilogy gets worse, by the way, despite introducing a more likable viewpoint character..

Maj wrote:I really enjoyed Victoria Aveyard's Red Queen. And then the sequel was so bad I couldn't finish.

I really, really loathe books where the main character insists on telling us about what a sack of shit they are. I told Ess halfway through the book that hero was turning into baby Hitler, and while - apparently - she doesn't end up with that fate - she does end up still a sack of shit making stupid decisions. And all nuance of the other main characters became lost as their three dimensions were compressed down into two and then further into one. It was like the author had a cheat sheet for the characters: Name, Power, Defining Trait/Theme.

From the reviews on Amazon, I'm not the only one, and I'm quite looking forward to saving myself the four days I'd otherwise spend on trying to finish the series.

I read the whole series last year. It didn't hit my "couldn't finish it" terriotory like Sword of Truth or the Great Gatsby did, but there's a bunch of stretching things out in the middle books and a serious downhill turn into straight romance novel territory where Mare gets to be a helpless prisoner for a whole book and the continuation of the two princes fighting over becomes really perplexing as Mare's character goes ever flatter. I just kept asking why would either prince be remain obsessed with this plain commoner rebel girl when the other superpowered princesses from actual noble houses and/or foreign lands with useful assets are all repeatedly described as more attractive and when Mare spends so much time moping?

Sorta book related. Another book series that I’ve never gotten around to is Altered Carbon. Tho there’s a tv minseries that just came out and i recently watched that, possibly spoiling the books. But I did enjoy the show.

I also rescued a bunch of old sci fi books (60’s, 70’s, 80’s) from my father in law who was offering them before tossing a bunch that had been sitting in his basement. Reading various Jack Vance, Timothy Zahn and others. Probly gonna dip back into that big box of books rather than complete shadow ops.

erik wrote:Sorta book related. Another book series that I’ve never gotten around to is Altered Carbon. Tho there’s a tv minseries that just came out and i recently watched that, possibly spoiling the books. But I did enjoy the show.

Most of the time, unless the book is terrible, the books are better (have more information, etc.) than other versions of the same series. If you're going to read the book and watch a show, watch the show first.