Video Game Review: Vermintide II

I played Vermintide II over its free weekend. I highly recommend it if you’ve got some time to kill and some friends to play it with.

Vermintide II is, as you might guess, the sequel to Vermintide. Both games are set in the Warhammer fantasy universe as the world is actually really coming to an end. No seriously, Games Workshop blew it up at the conclusion of the arc.  I played Vermintide some time ago on PC, and I was very terrible but I enjoyed it. I played the sequel on the Xbox and did much better but still not really great. Once again, I enjoy video games, but I am not good at them.

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Book Review: Mortu and Kyrus in the White City

This short story by Schuyler Hernstrom came to my attention as I wandered through the Mad Genius Club, I believe, or one of blogs of one of its contributors. It caught my eye because it addresses one of the more disturbing classic sci-fi short stories out there.

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Book Review: A Gift From Earth

I doubt the classics need much promotion, but in science fiction, the classic authors tend to be so prolific that some great work gets lost in the shuffle. Quite honestly I think their best work is not necessarily their best known work.

Such is the case for Larry Niven, in my humble opinion that is oh-so-relevant to the science fiction community (such as it exists in any definable sense anymore).

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Why I Hate Poe Dameron

I’ll preface this by saying that I increasingly despise what Disney has done to Star Wars. I grew up with the Extended Universe. In fact, my favorite book is Starfighters of Adumar. Wedge Antilles is my biggest fictional hero and Mara Jade is the coolest female character ever written.

Poe Dameron is the worst character in the Star Wars movies and I want to punch him in the face. Yes, worse than Jar Jar Binks. Worse then the other awful characters in Disney’s Star Wars, including Rose with her stupid, stupid, stupid line.  I shall now explain at length why I have this unpopular opinion.

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Book Review: The Clash of Eagles Trilogy

The Clash of Eagles Trilogy by Alan Smale goes somewhere I have yet to find any other books go, or at least go in a way that is well written and mostly kind of makes sense: what if Rome survived? What would happen if the Romans went to North America?

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A Guide to Heart of Darkness: Part 2

Intro

Part 1

Now we join Marlow in his journey to Africa. He leads us in with a horrible yet wonderfully written passage, which hits heavily on multiple themes of the book.

To Marlow, the whole thing is a farce played against the backdrop of a mute and unchangeable wilderness. A tedious, futile farce, heavy with death and dullness. His transport hauls him down the coast, dropping off soldiers and clerks at tiny little posts.

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A Guide to Heart of Darkness: Part 1

Intro

Heart of Darkness is a frame tale, a novel where a story is told within another story. It may actually be several frame tales in one, but we’ll get there when we get there.

We begin by joining the author’s company on a cruise along the mouth of the Thames, where they watch the sunset in serene brilliance- that is not without an ominous air.

There are many things to note about this opening scene.

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A Guide to Heart of Darkness: An Introduction

I am very fond of the novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I am one of the only two people I know with this fondness. The other one is my mother.

I’m writing this guide to Heart of Darkness to help people make sense of a book that can be hard to read and harder to understand.

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Book Review: The Macht Trilogy

You don’t often find fantasy novels that do a sincere interpretation of Ancient Greece (or Rome, either), but The Macht trilogy by Paul Kearney does it better than any other I’ve ever read. If you’ve got a son who can handle an R movie, he’d probably love these books, especially the first one. It’s a guy kind of book.

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