This is the second book I’ve read by C.J. Cooke (not to be confused by the other UK author C.J. Cooke who by her own description writes “…paranormal reverse harem romance books”) recently, the first being The Ghost Woods, and I’ve liked them both apart from the endings. The ending in this book just fails to convince.
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I read Nevada, which was great but I think might be a frustrating read for some. I’m not sure I really understood what it was “trying to say” but it was engaging the whole way through.
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“Play Nice”, the story of Blizzard Entertainment, it’s good so far
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they haven’t been playing that nice though.
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Just finished Red Side Story by Jasper Fforde. It’s the sequel to Shades of Grey which came out over a decade ago. I loved Shades of Grey and had given up on the sequel ever coming out but it finally did this year.
Shades of Grey is set in a dystopic society where everyone can only see one shade of color (or none) and are given jobs, authority, marriage partners, etc. based on their color perception. All throughout the first book there are hints that things aren’t quite what they seem and there’s more going on.
Red Side Story gives a lot of the answers to the puzzle of what is really going on. It does it well in slow drips that work with the plot, but I definitely prefer the first book. Could just be familiarity from having read it more than once but I think it’s that the atmosphere of confusion and slight forbidding really worked and getting the answers doesn’t feel as exciting.
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I liked Red Side Story a lot, but I’m pretty sure that it isn’t the sequel that Fforde was originally intending to write. Here’s the review I wrote on Amazon a few months ago:
Thirteen years ago, Shades of Grey upended the expectations for a Jasper fforde novel. It was brilliant, but baffling. By the end, the reader had a fair idea of what was going on, but “How?” and “Why?” were pressing questions. The sequel would, it was implied, answer at least some of the questions.
This is not that sequel.
I’m confident of that, because Red Side Story is very much a book of 2022-24. The setting and politics of this book echo the aspiring dictatorships of our time. The return of large-scale war to Europe, and the evil that Putin executes and Trump seeks to emulate are reflected in the major events of this story. But it’s still a human-scale story, of people, their desires and failings, and the urge for freedom. It answers most of the “How?” and right at the end, the “Why?” from Shades of Grey, but then ends before the characters think through the implications.
There needs to be a third volume. That’s necessary for justice to prevail over the vast crimes that have been committed in the background. Jane will understand them within a few hours of the end of Red Side Story, and Eddie won’t be far behind. Their achievements will be meaningless unless freedom is achieved for Chromatacia. The task looks impossible, but they’ve already done things that seemed impossible at the start.
The Brave New World that Jane hails in the last line demands it.
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I think you’re probably right. Have you read The Constant Rabbit? It is even more a dystopic novel of the past few years. It and the two color books have a lot in common. I wonder if he got distracted by everything going on in the world, wrote Constant Rabbit to try to get it out of his system before finally getting back to Shades of Grey, but too much was still there.
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I’ll certainly give you his hamfisted attempts at romance - across all his books, it rarely works.
I would (personally) disagree with the ‘societal’ development piece. In historical fiction, it is often a device that characters within a book achieve technological/societal advances or changes that would have occurred gradually through many people - it gives the reader at least a picture of the changes that were happening while having some investment in the results of those changes. Sometimes it works better than others - I don’t remember Pillars of the Earth being particularly egregious in this manner, although it has been a while since I read it.
Personally I enjoyed the heel/face stuff - simplistic in some cases, but very satisfying in others.
Conn Iggulden, as far as I can tell, is more widely regarded as a writer of great rip-roaring novels than being historically accurate - if you want historical accurate (and I believe Ken Follett, apart from one or two minor examples, like having lowly characters eat breakfast at a time when they probably wouldn’t have eaten anything until the main meal of the day) I’d look for Sharon Penman, Colleen McCullough or Harry Sidebottom
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After a bit of a dry period in which I had not read much other than RPG rules, I have been quite ill the last weekend and had no option but to pick up a borrowed copy of Final Empire from Brandon Sanderson that I kept waylaying.
I must admit the first 50 pages or so left me very cold (as it had happened to me with his first book Elantris, that I never passed from the first 100 pages) and that had contributed to not progressing with the story, but between a couple more chapters I read the previous weekend when camping in Mahia, and this weekend being bedridden, I am halfway through and enjoying it now.
I must admit that based on the beginning of his first two books I was quite puzzled as to why so much success (when compared with other authors from his time that IMO have done better novel-starts than him), but now that the story is moving forward and the Allomancy is being explained a bit further, I can see where his hook is.
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Just realised I forgot to post October’s reading pile here. A small pile this month as I spent it mostly reading the entirety of the new PHB (and making notes).
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Is the new handbook worth it? I have a campaign that’s reached 16th level and will probably end soon, so I am wondering if it is worth changing to the new one or not.
It’s a mixed bag of changes. Some of them good, some of them bad, some of them just sort of done for the sake of being different.
If I were starting fresh, there’s some new stuff I’d be eager to try out (subclasses, spells, etc) and overall I think it might have lost some of the traps that could lead to a dissapointing experience for some players.
It’s a well-designed book too. Lots of nice art and it’s much better for teaching the game than the previous version.
But I wouldn’t switch over anything long-running. Especially as you’d likely find subclasses unavailable (only 4 per class are in the book and for certain classes level progression has been switched around, so old stuff is incompatible without homebrewing).
Maybe grab some of the improved mechanics (like the new rules for Exhaustion are way simpler and less punishing), but you don’t really need the book for that.
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I have it. There are some major changes to some of the subclasses, to nerf some of them a bit (I’m looking at you, paladin, just one smite per turn and as a bonus action) or to mess them up somehow (druids are a bit of a jumble now, I need to read deeper into them, they were a messy class to begin with). I have been told monks are way better now, but that was not difficult.
Races are species now, and there are no half-elven or half-orcs. Some of them, like the tieflings, have been simplified into three subspecies (it was impossible to keep track with all the heritages you had before).
Other than that, the glossary at the back is way better, the art is lovely, and you get way more pages for an extra 5 bucks…
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I think they’ve tried to level the playing field a bit by making some options less strong and therefore the obvious choice. Like taking away some of the resistances from the Bear option on Totem Warrior Wild Heart barbarian, so people might choose the others.
Wild Shape no longer just making you that animal is kinda bad and good. You no longer get a whole bunch of HP (just your level in Temp HP), but you no longer get knocked out of Wild Shape by losing them. No longer do you have to deal with sneaking in somewhere as a spider, getting stepped on, and suddenly there’s a full-size adventurer under their foot.
I wasn’t intending to buy it (at least not for a while), but I have a load of credit with the board game cafe for building their new website, so it was kinda free …
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Reading Batman: Resurrection by John Jackson Miller. This is a direct continuation of Tim Burton’s Batman film, occurring just a couple of months after. Only about a quarter of the way through it so far, but I’m enjoying it. Lots of references to the film, which makes sense as Gotham is still dealing with the aftermath of the Joker, and some bits that will later show up in Batman Returns as well.
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I was initially worried by this, because what good is being an elephant if you have nearly the same hitpoints as your character? However, after playing an abjuration wizard with Arcane Ward, a decent Con and level 1 False Life, small amounts of temp hp actually put me on slightly more hp than the barbarian, so it can really add up.
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The change I really like is that Armor Of Agathys now lasts until you run out of any Temp HP, not just those from the spell. Sadly, it’s warlock only and there isn’t (yet) a way to get it without at least one level of warlock.
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I though temporary HP did not add up…
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It doesn’t, Arcane Ward isn’t technically temp hp so you can still put temp hp on top of it.
Ward comes off first, then temp hp, then real hp.
It’s nice to charge into melee with more confidence than the fighter. With mirror image and shield etc, Abjuration Wiz Tank is very much a thing.
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