I finished the second book of the Dark Waters trilogy the other night, Bones of the Yopasi but I haven't quite started the last one yet. After being pretty bullish on the first book, I'm feeling just a bit more bearish now. Not that this book wasn't as good, because mostly it was, but because I'm just a little bit over MacNeill's obvious flaws. Notably: 1) many of his characters and their dialogue are caricaturish, and the more of that you see, the worse it feels like. I thought it was only mildly obnoxious and occasionally kind of amusing and endearing earlier, but after another novel full of it, I'm less convinced that it was a good idea. A full on Scottish brogue from a guy with Scottish ancestry who was born and lived his whole life in Massachusetts? That was too much. It was the straw that kind of broke the camel's back and now suddenly it wasn't amusing or endearing anymore; it was too much. 2) The namedrops of monsters and characters and locations is also getting to be too much. I appreciate some of it, but I feel like this is really over-the-top in this particular novel too. Again, too much too fast and it went from being a good thing to being an annoying thing.
Other editing gaffes; although he doesn't use homely (when in an American sense it should be homey) as often, he does a few times. He does mention several times burying the lead, which is also incorrect. It's not a lead, it's a lede. I don't necessarily expect authors to know these things. McNeill is Scottish, so it's not surprising that he uses homely instead of homey, because that's what they use in the UK. But it's not what we use in America, where his book is set. And lede/lead; unless you talk to journalists or at least read about journalism, you may not know that. That's not his fault. That's his editors'. That's their job to catch stuff like that.
This doesn't mean that I'm changing my recommendation on reading them. It does mean that... I dunno, I guess maybe they're not impressing me quite as much as I remembered. But I'm still enjoying them. But yeah; just in the last fifty pages or so, there were gratuitous references to "The Horror at Red Hook," "The Strange High House in the Mist", "The Terrible Old Man", "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," "The White Ship", of course "Call of Cthulhu," and probably more that I'm missing. It was a bit much. If you're not a Lovecraft fan already, these won't mean much to you and you may not even get them.
I also read the module portion of "Sins of the Saviors." I didn't mark it off, because the module portion is just a little over half the page count; I need to read the setting stuff on Rune Magic, Lamashtu, and the Eando Kline serialized short story, as well as the bestiary for this time around. All in all that's a good 40+ pages, but I might finish it tonight. This is one of the least memorable of the early episodes, because it's just a high level magical funhouse dungeon crawl. Not at all my style, and almost everything that happens feels either disconnected from the actual narrative, or only connected to it by fiat, so it feels forced and fake. The final one, "Spires of Xin-Shalast" has a slightly longer module section, and slightly less fluff and mechanical goodies section, for the same overall page count. Still, there's a meme among Pathfinder fans, I guess, that most adventure paths have very strong first halves and less strong second halves. I've always thought that this was true for Rise of the Runelords, at least.
I think the next adventure path, Curse of the Crimson Throne is also seen as a kind of classic, with more urban intrigue and whatnot. It also takes place in Varisia, but focuses much more on Korvasa. The third one is Second Darkness which seems to widely be considered one of the weakest adventure paths, forced into being just so Paizo could shoe-horn their alternate version of the Underdark and dark elves into the game. It also takes place in Varisia, I guess, starting in Riddleport, and somewhat staying nearby when it's not down in the Darklands. After that is Legacy of Fire, the last one to use the 3.5 rules, and after that is Council of Thieves, the first one that I'm not fairly familiar with, so I'm excited to get to that point and really explore new territory. Of course, after that is Serpent's Skull and Carrion Crown, which I deconstructed years ago here on this blog, and then we get to Jade Regent, which is the Orientalism adventure path, which I was never all that interested in, not being a chinoiserie punk myself. Which is a fancier word for weeabo, I guess. I don't know. The trawl goes on. After I finish Rise of the Runelords I'll probably take a small break and read something else, though. Push through on Freeport, and go back to 3e Forgotten Realms for a book or two or something.
I also started re-reading Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss, which is slimmer than I remembered. The first chapter I remember not liking, but I'm almost finished with it. The second and third chapters are great; new demon monster lists and of course the demon lords. Most of the rest of the book isn't bad either, although the obligatory "new feats, new spells, new magic items" is always pretty boring to me. Prestige classes, on the other hand, are sometimes interesting, especially late in 3.5's run, where they had much more fluff than they used to rather than just focusing on mechanics. After I read this, I've also got Monster Manual II off the shelf, as well as three of the slim Pathfinder Chronicles books (later rebranded as Pathfinder Setting, or whatever exactly they called it.) After those, I'll finally pick up Races of Eberron and get the Eberron trawl moving again too.
Although I have an insurmountable amount of digital product in particular to read in front of me, my physical copies of things to read are actually getting manageable. I don't have too much stacked up. In fact, I need to start thinking of what novels to read a few months into the new year, because I'll probably be caught up with what I have in the batting order in the next little bit. It'll be time to go box diving to see if I can find books that I either haven't ever read in spite of owning them for some time, or at least haven't read in years and might be interested in reading again. It probably wouldn't kill me to buy a few new novels too, for that matter.
I've also been asked if I'd be willing to be a "substitute DM" for a group that I'm not in, but which overlaps a couple of people with people that I do game with. I'll get more info on that, but if I do run for them, one or possibly even two sessions in early December, I'll probably need to read something to run. Maybe I'll do the first Freeport module, especially if I get committed to two sessions. A two-shot, as it were. It was initially pitched to me as standing in in their current ongoing campaign, but if I'm not misunderstanding that, I don't think that's a reasonable approach. I don't know jack squat about their ongoing campaign or the characters, etc. I'm not even a player in that game. I appreciate the vote of confidence, but that's a tall order. I'd rather do a one or two shot separate from that.
Not that I'm trying to do so, but I wonder if that will let me poach a few of the better players for a better group. My own group, which overlaps two or three players with this group, has two solid guys (other than me) and two somewhat flaky ones who miss a lot and make scheduling often difficult. Ideally, I think we'd like one or two more reliable players, and then we can either take or leave the flaky ones.
But I've been specifically told by one of the players in my group that... er... she doesn't recommend that we attempt to get at least one or two of them in, because they're not the most fun to hang out with. I don't know them well, but I know one and maybe two of them at least well enough to have suspected exactly that; they're kind of super talkative know-it-all smartboys who have to get the last word in on every conversation types. Not creepy, just... not fun to hang out with either. Gammas, mostly.
It's better to play shorthanded than play with the wrong people. Or even not play at all than play with the wrong people, honestly.
UPDATE: It's Friday morning. I'll read some tonight and this weekend, although tomorrow in particular is a bit more busy than I'd like (I'd really love a staycation day where I literally didn't have to leave the house. I have two unscheduled PTO days left for the year. I can roll them over, but I get a lot of PTO next year too, so I might well take just some staycation days in early/mid December. Goals for this weekend to read:
- Read "Spires of Xin-Shalast" and close the book on Rise of the Runelords, at least for this trawl.
- Finish Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss
- Read at least the next Bleeding Edge module in the Freeport Trawl. Maybe the next two, if I'm lucky.
- Queue up and maybe start the next 3e Forgotten Realms trawl book (Lords of Darkness)
- Queue up and start the next novel, Dweller in the Deep by Graham McNeill. As soon as I finish that, I finish the whole Dark Waters trilogy and the whole Arkham Horror two-trilogy novel set that I own. Arkham Horror also published some standalone novels and story collections, but I don't own any of them, and probably won't ever bother. These two trilogies do it for me sufficiently.
- Queue up and start the next physical copy gaming book, which is actually going to be Classic Horrors Revisited, a relatively slim softcover book by Paizo from back in the
late 00s.January 2010. If I'm really on my reading game, I may even finish this. When I went out of town, I took three hardback 3.5 books, Stormwatch, Hordes of the Abyss, and Monster Manual II, but on a whim I also threw three Pathfinder Chronicles books; Classic Horrors Revisited, Undead Revisited, and Mythic Monsters Revisited (I think. I guess I need to make sure those are the ones that I grabbed, but I think so.) In the meantime, I also ordered and received a used copy of Darklands Revisited, so I went ahead and added a whole Pathfinder Chronicles/Setting (they rebranded partway through) trawl, which is quite lengthy. Sigh. More trawls. I'm going crazy with them. I can't put anything else in the queue until I finish what I have already off my shelf and in my backpack, but once I finish all of those, I'll turn to Races of Eberron, Into the Darklands and Darklands Revisited. But that won't be this weekend for sure, and probably not all next week either before I get all that done. - I'd really like to finish the last of the Heirs of Ash novels, another Eberron trilogy that I'm reading on my Kindle app on my phone, before the end of the year. It'll go pretty fast once I just get it started, but I need to just get it started.
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