Month: September 2022

Menace Under Marswood by Sterling Lanier

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This entry is part 33 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As always, I’m posting this weeks and weeks after I read it. Well, weeks, anyway.  The back cover copy of this paperback seemed to promise a kind of planetary romance voyage tale, like a more modern (circa 1980s) take on Burroughs’ Mars adventures: a trip into the Martian “outback” to investigate a new threat among the people living in the Martian wilderness. It starts out very slow. The setup preceding the adventure proper—which I’d expect a writer today to cover in 5–10 (or maybe 15) pages—takes about a third of the book, with base politics, an encounter with a shaman and …

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Saga, Volume 2 by Brian Vaughan and Fiona Staples

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This entry is part 32 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As always, I’m posting this weeks and weeks after I read it. Well, weeks, anyway.  As I recently mentioned, I’ve got the entire Saga series (so far) on my iPad. I read the second volume recently, and enjoyed it. What really grabbed me was the voice: our narrator for a lot of the volume is the future voice of the infant in the present time of the story. The other thing I enjoyed about it is the fact its handling of in-laws: they can, after all, be a real trial for any couple, but when you’re star-crossed lovers from cultures …

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Roman Britain by David Shotter

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This entry is part 31 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As always, I’m posting this weeks and weeks after I read it. Well, weeks, anyway.  I picked up this book at a university booksale in Jakarta many years ago; I apparently read it in 2016, though I didn’t realize it until near the end, when I reached the most memorable portion of the book—that which discusses the role of religion in Roman Britain.  (I’m sure some of the viewers of Raised by Wolves would be interested in that chapter, since it has a discussion of the rivalry between the Mithraic cult and the Christians in that context. Nodens also comes …

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Sirenswail by Dave Mitchell

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This entry is part 30 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As always, I’m posting this quite a while after finishing the book. This was given to me by my friend Ahimsa Kerp, to whom I shall be returning it soon.   Dave Mitchell’s Sirenswail is a 2016 old-school adventure. It’s basically The Wicker Man in the age of Cromwell with some magic and weirdness mixed in. The historical setting is, obviously, because it was designed for use with LotFP, but you could adapt it to any old-school game and, with some work, to any setting you’d use for an elfgame.  It’s a part of that familiar subgenre of adventures focused on …

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The Graveyard Book Graphic Novel by Neil Gaiman and P. Craig Russell

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This entry is part 29 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As always, I’m posting this weeks and weeks after I read it. Well, weeks, anyway.  I sometimes feel like I’m the only person I know who’s never actually read a novel by Neil Gaiman. I have read a couple of short stories and a few of the Sandman comics, yeah, and I’ve seen Coraline, but I’ve never read one of his novels. Decades ago I signed out Good Omens (his early collaboration with Terry Pratchett) from the library: this was back in high school, and I never got very far into it. (I haven’t even looked at the copy of …

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