A Celebratory Review

Hi,

So I just finished working my way through Celebrant by Michael Cisco. This is one of those "literary" books. The kind that's almost more poetry than prose. It's really more about images and ideas than it is about coherent plot. So it's not casually recommended unless you really like that kind of stuff.

The basic gist of the story is that there's this homeless guy called deKlend who is searching for the mystical city of Votu. A city of Natural Robots, where the city's future slumps down from high up in the mountains and pushes into the present, where gangs of pigeon girls and rabbit girls sweep through the city and the Bird of Ill Omen watches over it all.

There are lots of great bits, lots of tantalizing details that could easily spin out into their own stories, but it all rambles back and forth as deKlend rockets around through time and space and the various other characters intersect with him. But again, it has more of a generalized idea of a plot.

It was an interesting read, but a bit of a slog to get through.

later
Tom

The Professionals

Hey,

So a company called Khurasan Miniatures produces an excellent miniatures including a bewildering array of 15mm sci-fi ranges. In particular, their Nova Republik range is very well-rounded with infantry, tanks, APCs, and other equipment. I've been wanting to put together a full set of gear to form the core of my 15mm sci-fi collection.

Because the minis are so good, I was also determined that they should get a worthy paint job. A guy named Rich working at a company called Hobby Services regularly sells 15mm sci-fi groups on eBay. They usually get snapped up within a few hours of his posting them for sale. His work is great and he's been tapped by Osprey and Ground Zero Games to do the paint jobs for GZG's upcoming line of miniatures for Tomorrow's War (Osprey's sci-fi variant of Force on Force). So the guy has his chops down.

I got in touch with him and he agreed to take on the job. Earlier this week they showed up. So here's some little dudes I didn't paint, but I'm really happy I got someone else to paint for me.

( Little Dudes behind the cut )

So that's my group of professionals. They look even better in person than in the photos and I'm really jazzed at how well they came out. Now I just need to find some opponents and get them on to the table. Of course, the general rule of thumb is that the better a group of minis look, the worse they do when you play with them. Well, die in style I suppose.

later
Tom