Reviews and Comments

For a variety of reasons I’ve spent most of the last several months reading books and other materials for Invisible Sun RPG. This a novella of material outlining some of the aspects of the story background, and providing some illustrative fiction for come of the core ideas for the setting. I have come to really love the setting and the game, and have been very impressed with some of the ideas and elements that have come out for it.

Unfortunately, Monte Cook’s writing is not quite as good as his setting and game design. This was a slog at times. It came together impressively at the end – bits that looked random and awkward in the early sections came to have a good role to play in the narrative, and there were some nice ideas in design and presentation too.

Overall, good, but harder work in places than it needed to be.

This it a re-read, I picked this up when it was first released.

In some ways, this is one of the more straightforward stories from China Miéville. It's a romp of a thriller in which esoteric religious beliefs ground an urban fantasy, as a museum curator, Billy Harrow, tumbles down the rabbit hole into a London of mystical cults, exotically arcane gangs, and clashing apocalypses.

Miéville's love for the crazy melting pot of London is on display, as he takes every bizarre sect at its word, and continues to twist the surreality dial over the course of the tale from "curiouser and curiouser" all the way to "gargling warthogs dancing the can can".

The writing is jarring mixture of his signature extended vocabulary at the service of a chopping London vernacular cadence that gets a little tough to read in places. That's just a sometimes thing, though, in what is otherwise a delightfully witty and loving wink at the power of faith and narrative. Excellent characters, some fun twists, and a setting that doesn't let you pause for breath.

Makes me want to reread some of his others now too.

Though V.E. Schwab has been on my radar for a while I haven't picked up anything by her before. I have now ordered the second two books in this series. This was an interesting, fun adventure, with lots of character.

This is a multiple-worlds story, in which dimensions with different forms or levels of magical power are connected through a shared sense of "London" (though the different Londons and the countries in which they exist are quite distinct from one another).

The primary protagonist, Kell, is a magic user who moves between the worlds. His relationship with his own world is "complicated", and things are made much moreso when he unexpectedly ends up smuggling something he doesn't intend.

There are some lovely ideas here, and the world-building is well-handled. The main characters are compelling and sympathetic, while still having some rough edges. Setting the stage across the different dimensions takes some time, and so the main plot doesn't kick in until about 100 pages in, but at no point does the book feel slow - there are enough sharp ideas and interesting people to keep things moving. Once things really get going it gets hectic, without much pause for breath for the characters or the reader.

Overall, this is a fun, period fantasy thriller, and a good read. As mentioned above, I have ordered both follow-up books, and did so before finishing this one, I'm looking forward to them.

The story is not without its drawbacks though. Once the world-building phase is done, and the main plot kicks off, that's more or less that for depth. The magic, which had felt like it had some nicely inventive components, gets very general to keep things moving, and there isn't much room for character development at that stage, so the villains are a bit cartoonish, and the differences between dimensions a little...one-dimensional.

I'm still looking forward to the next book, and hoping that the extra story gives Schwab an opportunity to expand and deepen some of the nice ideas here.

I haven't written reviews for the three volumes of comics that precede this and set the world for it - the BRZRKR limited run that introduces and sets out the tone and background for this fascinating collaboration between Reeves and Miéville (who is one of my favourite writers).

The comics are better than I would have expected, given that they are really a mish-mash of things that have come before - part Highlander, part Wolverine/Weapon X, part Interview with the Vampire, to name just a few obvious points of reference. The character work elevated it above the (often literally) pulp ideas.

Miéville and Reeves take that a step further here. The world and the characters get richer, and the storytelling more surreal. You can see a host of new references showing up (Octavia Butler being a crucial one). While I wouldn't rate it quite as highly as I would most of Miéville's other work, I think this is well worth a read, and richer than you might expect it to be in some ways.

I am very much a beginner when it comes to wuxia literature, and in particular to the work of its extraordinary master in Jin Yong/Louis Cha.

Over the past few years the first books of the great wuxia epic described as stories of the Condor Heroes have seen new official translations. The Legends of the Condor Heroes has been published as a quartet, and now this is the first book in a new series, Return of the Condor Heroes.

We're in a new generation, and off to an inauspicious start as the son of Yang Kang, a boy called Penance, has a difficult and messy induction into the martial world of the wulin and the jianghu. I won't say much about the plot - it meanders in the way that you might expect from what was serialised fiction in its initial publication - but the ways in which everything that matters is wound through with magical kung fu, superhuman feats of martial prowesse, and the still-unfolding historical river of loyalties, grievances, and challenges, is impressive.

It's a very easy read, jam packed with mystical kung fu. Looks like we're going to be waiting a good while for the official translation of the next volume, so might have to get stuck into some of the fan translations that are out there to follow up on the cliff-hanger ending!