The Dragon's Review

Hey,

So I slowly meandered through The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham. It wasn't that the book was bad, I just had a bunch of other things *cough* video games *cough* that sucked away my free time.

Um, the short story is that the world used to be ruled by dragons, who enslaved humanity and split them into 13 distinct races (i.e. the beast people and the lizard people and the elves are all derived from human stock in the distant past). But the dragons are long gone and now it's just human/oid kingdoms and empires and stuff.

The book follows two groups of people. One group is a young orphan, ward of a bank, who is fleeing with the assets of a branch prior to an invasion of her home city. She hires on a mercenary captain with a heart of gold, yadda-yadda. The other group is composed of the invaders and their imperial court, the various faction heads and one hapless young noble being used as their tool.

There's some great banking/trading/finance stuff that's actually kind of fun to see (I like it when fantasy books delve into stuff that usually gets glossed over or ignored), but this is clearly the first book in a trilogy and there's the usual flailing about trying to get everything set up and things only start getting interesting and then it stops. So I'm not in a hurry to pick up future installments.

Oh, I also finished up a couple of smaller things: the Winter edition of Lapham's Quarterly was on the topic of the Future. This was probably the weakest of the editions I've gotten. Lots of fun stuff, but when you read a steady diet of science news and speculative fiction, the future is a topic you get some advanced ideas about. But it's always an interesting and eclectic mix of articles. They also have a new digital subscription for $30/year that might be the right price point for some of you. It's certainly worth a look.

I also picked up LAV-25 The Marine Corps' Light Armored Vehicle from Osprey Publishing. This is for my modern-era wargaming stuff. What can I say, I think the LAV-25 is a sexy piece of hardware. The book covers the basic LAV-25 and its variants (here in the US and overseas) and talks about it's deployment from the Invasion of Panama to Iraq/Afghanistan. Although mostly used as a scout/recon vehicle, it has taken on tanks (mostly the TOW-equipped AT version). I would've liked a bit more detail on how the vehicle is normally used and/or battle detail, but it's another solid Osprey overview.

Hopefully, I can get back onto a steadier reading schedule.

later
Tom

The Dragon's Review

Hey,

So I slowly meandered through The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham. It wasn't that the book was bad, I just had a bunch of other things *cough* video games *cough* that sucked away my free time.

Um, the short story is that the world used to be ruled by dragons, who enslaved humanity and split them into 13 distinct races (i.e. the beast people and the lizard people and the elves are all derived from human stock in the distant past). But the dragons are long gone and now it's just human/oid kingdoms and empires and stuff.

The book follows two groups of people. One group is a young orphan, ward of a bank, who is fleeing with the assets of a branch prior to an invasion of her home city. She hires on a mercenary captain with a heart of gold, yadda-yadda. The other group is composed of the invaders and their imperial court, the various faction heads and one hapless young noble being used as their tool.

There's some great banking/trading/finance stuff that's actually kind of fun to see (I like it when fantasy books delve into stuff that usually gets glossed over or ignored), but this is clearly the first book in a trilogy and there's the usual flailing about trying to get everything set up and things only start getting interesting and then it stops. So I'm not in a hurry to pick up future installments.

Oh, I also finished up a couple of smaller things: the Winter edition of Lapham's Quarterly was on the topic of the Future. This was probably the weakest of the editions I've gotten. Lots of fun stuff, but when you read a steady diet of science news and speculative fiction, the future is a topic you get some advanced ideas about. But it's always an interesting and eclectic mix of articles. They also have a new digital subscription for $30/year that might be the right price point for some of you. It's certainly worth a look.

I also picked up LAV-25 The Marine Corps' Light Armored Vehicle from Osprey Publishing. This is for my modern-era wargaming stuff. What can I say, I think the LAV-25 is a sexy piece of hardware. The book covers the basic LAV-25 and its variants (here in the US and overseas) and talks about it's deployment from the Invasion of Panama to Iraq/Afghanistan. Although mostly used as a scout/recon vehicle, it has taken on tanks (mostly the TOW-equipped AT version). I would've liked a bit more detail on how the vehicle is normally used and/or battle detail, but it's another solid Osprey overview.

Hopefully, I can get back onto a steadier reading schedule.

later
Tom

Video-drome

Hey,

So this Fall has seen a bumper crop of video games and I've been playing them. Here's what I've been playing and what I thought of them:

( Gears of War 3 )

( Batman: Arkham City )

( Saint's Row: The Third )

( Battlefield 3 )

So that's what I've been playing lately. You'll notice that Skyrim isn't on the list. Not my cup of tea, although I see it's been consuming the souls of a lot of you out there.

later
Tom