Books on deck

Just as a curiousity, here's the books I have on deck to read once I'm done with Abercrombie's Best Served Cold. Probably in this order.



Fool Moon by Jim Butcher

The Many-coloured Land and The Golden Torc by Julian May

Thief of Llarn by Gardner F. Fox

Swords of Haven by Simon R. Green

The Ginger Star by Leigh Brackett

Editions of Dungeons & Dragons

I'm on record (repeatedly, as a matter of fact) as having a kind of love/hate relationship with Dungeons & Dragons. While there are a lot of things that I like about it, there are a lot of "D&Disms" that I really don't like also. That said, I still play D&D more than any other roleplaying game, and frankly, that's probably how I want it.

So it's fair to say that despite my reservations, I've come to terms in one way or another with the various D&Disms, and want to use the system again. But at this point, more than at any other point in the history of D&D, which edition do you play is an interesting and relevent question.

The reason for this is, first of all, the OGL. The OGL has inadvertently opened the doors back to every single edition of D&D that's ever been in print. The third edition is, of course, expressly open and therefore impossible to stamp out, but by utilizing the OGL, gamers have managed to reverse engineer "retro clones" of various older editions.

And, of course, 4e is available as well.

Here's my personal opinion on each of the various editions of D&D, including a few that are technically not D&D at all. The attached graphic is kinda preview of what's to come, but let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet...

OD&D - Original D&D, retro-cloned via Swords & Wizardry. Honestly, I've never played this, except once as a kid before I considered myself a gamer in any fashion whatsoever. But… I also wouldn't. It's primitive. The roots as a tactical wargame are very apparent. It lacks something that I think is crucial to a good game today; rules to define characters. The simplicity of actually running the game is to be applauded, but it's mostly just simple because it's so primitive that it hadn't occurred to the designers to define things yet. The game was very poorly written, assumed that you owned other products (including products produced by a competitor!) and simply lacked options overall. The retro-clone version of it cleans some of that up, but this edition still offers me too little of what I want, and what it does offer can be had elsewhere in better form.

AD&D (1e) - Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, first edition, retro-cloned via OSRIC (Old School Reference and Index Compilation). I actually have bad memories of this game. While many D&Ders see this as the golden age of D&D, this is the edition of the game that eventually made me throw up my hands and give up on D&D. A fair amount of complexity was added to the game, although the complexity didn't address the issues that I personally thought were important. The game still suffered from a very high degree of arbitrariness, poor organization, poorly thought out add-ons and subsystems, and (although this is a minor annoyance) poor presentation and graphic design.

BD&D (all versions) - Basic Dungeons & Dragons up through Rules Cyclopedia, retro-cloned via Labyrinth Lord. I'm not honestly familiar with all of the many iterations of this "edition", which properly should probably be split out into several editions of very similar but not identical games. Basic was a bit of a misnomer, though---in no way was the game basic. It evolved almost as much complexity as AD&D (although much of its complexity had a different focus), it was in no way simpler to run, and it wasn't really less limited than AD&D either, for that matter. It was merely a concurrent game that was similar to AD&D, but… not. For my money, of all the TSR editions of the game, this is the one I'd be most likely to be willing to return to, but that doesn't mean that I'd be very excited about it. It was a continuation, if you will, of the tone of the OD&D game, but without the AD&D like mechanics. Therefore, I like and dislike mostly the same things about it; the ease and simplicity of running the game is good, the arbitrariness and lack of good definition around character abilities and traits is poor.

AD&D (2e) There is no retro-clone of 2e, because basically all 2e was was a re-write of 1e, a reorganization of 1e, and a removal of some of the stuff that made 1e good. Other than the organization aspect of the change, these were all "Bad Things"™ in my opinion; they didn't fix any of the problems I did have with the game other than the organization of the core books, and instead we got a watered down, "politically correct" version that had notably caved to pressure from some non-customers about what the game should and shouldn't include. There's little to recommend this version of the game at least until it became significantly revamped with kits, skills and powers, and other mechanical add-ons that made the game more robust. And even then, a lot of those add-ons created more problems than they solved anyway. 2e was also an era of innovative and unique settings. Not all of these were successes (I never could get past the fundamentally stupid high concept of Spelljammer for instance. And the execution, which had ideas like generalissimo space hippos, didn't help) but many of them are still well-loved. Looking at some of them that I've since picked up (I didn't actually play D&D during the 2e era myself) it's painfully apparent to me that many of these novel and interesting ideas were significantly held back by a clunky rules system at its core that was in drastic need of overhaul.

D&D (3e) The split between AD&D and D&D (or BD&D) was finally brought to an end after TSR went backrupt and was acquired by Wizards of the Coast. They released D&D 3e in 2000. This edition fixed many of my lingering problems and concerns about D&D as a game, but sadly, it left many others unaddressed, and in fact got worse in a few others. What I liked; 1) much of the arbitrariness was gone. There were now few mechanical subsystems that operated differently than the core rules, the core rules themselves operated under a very streamlined and consistent paradigm, and player options were brought to the fore. 2) character definition was significantly improved via a robust skill and feat system. You also were able to define your character many different ways via multiclassing and prestige classes. The classes no longer felt like bland straightjackets. 3) Subsequent games based on the same "engine" showed that it could be easily modded to allow for various different feels. D20 Star Wars, d20 Wheel of Time, d20 Modern and d20 Call of Cthulhu were all reasonably good games. 4) The OGL allowed for "third party" publishers to produce their own material for the game. At first, this was mostly just add-ons for D&D itself; adventures, new monster books, settings, etc. but as the movement matured, it paved the way for all new games, like Castles & Crusades, True20, and for that matter the retro-clones themselves.

However, 3e came with its share of the bad, too. 1) the combat system made it difficult to run combat without a graphical representation of the characters and their environment. Realistically, this means minis and a battlemap. While I like minis for their own sake, and I don't mind playing a tactical minis combat game, I'd rather not have my roleplaying game practically demand minis. 2) The game gets increasingly complex and difficult to run, especially at higher level. Higher level games, I've noticed, include an awful lot of flipping back and forth through rulebooks to see how exactly did that rule work again? 3) It didn't really address a lot of D&Disms. Levels in particular and the incredible difference between a low and high level version of the same character, don't model anything I know from fantasy fiction at all. 4) this isn't a problem for me per se, but it's one that I've heard a lot and I can see where it comes from. I took seriously the motto "Tools, not rules" and it fitted the GMing style I'd been accustomed to anyway. So, to me, the fact that there are a lot of rules covering a lot of situations was a nifty toolbox that I could dig into as I saw fit. Other players, however, saw it as a straightjacket and a complexity inducing nightmare, as they felt duty-bound to accurately reflect every single rule. As an example, calculating Jump skill Difficulty Classes: I saw the examples as just that---examples that gave me an idea what an appropriate DC should be to get the effect I wanted. Others spent all kinds of time actually calculating all of the inputs into a DC for each and every Jump check. So, although it's not a problem for me, I can see how this is a problematic aspect of this edition.

D&D (3.5) To be perfectly honest, I'm still pretty ticked off about 3.5. 3.5 was written, allegedly, to fix some problems that had come up with 3e. It did do that. A bit. It also "broke" as much as it fixed. And mostly, it just changed stuff that was fine to something else that was fine, so that you got no improvement, but you got a lot of confusion. Then to cap it all off, you were supposed to buy all the books over again that you'd already bought. Or at least a great deal of them; the three core books were re-released with minor changes, and the original run of class-based splatbooks was also all re-released. I've grudgingly made my peace with the changes, since it's easier to find 3.5 players and books than 3e these days, since there is a small improvement, and since backwards compatibility and online SRDs means that you don't really have to rebuy the books if you don't want to and you can still play just fine. The subsequent splatbooks are a significant improvement, too, which went a long way towards convincing me. But the entire deal left a sour taste in my mouth.

D&D (4e) I've never played 4e. I have no interest in 4e. As far as I'm concerned, it came about at a time that I had no interest in migrating to a new system. Also, whatever lingering problems I have with the system don't seem to be the ones that 4e addressed; in fact, if anything they made some of my personal concerns worse rather than better. I'm not a hater; I don't have a personal beef against 4e like many people on the Internet. I just have no interest in it.

Pathfinder. While not strictly a version of D&D, Pathfinder could be considered an "alt.4e; what 4e could have been like if it were more like 3.5." Or, you could call it 3.75 maybe. It's not published by Wizards of the Coast, nor is it published under the D&D brand, but this, clearly, is an edition of D&D nonetheless. The reasons it came about were Paizo being put over a barrel somewhat in terms of their business model. Wizards of the Coast dithered on the OGL for 4e, and even sent out some hints that there may not be one or that it could be crippled by restrictions. Paizo needed to keep publishing stuff, but couldn't get distributors to sell it if it was support for an out of print game. So, they needed to put 3.5 back in print somehow. Since 3.5, as a complete game, is open content under the OGL, in theory, all they had to do was package the SRD and print it, and sell it. Of course, if they were going to go to all that trouble, why not see about tweaking it and making a few improvements? This is what lead to the Pathfinder RPG. While I applaud Paizo for acting decisively to protect their business and make sure that the edition that they (and I) prefer is still in print, in terms of what the game actually offers, Pathfinder is plagued by the same problems that 3.5 was… it doesn't fix enough to justify rebuying all my stuff. The good news here is that Paizo suspected that might be true, and offered it, in addition to a hefty and expensive full color book with beautiful artwork that really pretty much justifies the price by itself, as a $10 pdf. The Bestiary (i.e. Monster Manual) is available as another $10 pdf. At that price, like I said, even if you ignore everything except the art, you've got a pretty good deal.

Small update

Keen-eyed blogsters may note that I've removed both the "What I'm Running" and "What I'm Playing" icons over there on the side. Scroll down. Just under the three "What I'm Reading" icons. Remember those?

Anyway, it seemed apropos. I finished my Pbp game months ago. My kids game hasn't happened in months. Our Cthulhu campaign is on hold indefinately, and is likely to be something else when we get back into the swing of things anyway.

Gaming has reached a local nadir. It's sad, really, how our local group, which was once very healthy and vibrant, and most importantly, had a good solid group with lots of players, has shrunk to only three people who more or less consistently have time available to game. Two others are temporarily unavailable (but will probably be back again... sometime. Hopefully sooner rather than later) and two others just aren't at a place in their personal lives where they can consistently count on being available. Three others have moved away out of state.

*Sigh* In any case, I figured why leave those up as legacy icons when I'm not actually in the midst of those games anymore? When we really start back again, it almost certainly won't be those games, and not only that, who knows when that will happen anyway?

On the Weird Tale...

Here's a paragraph, which I snagged from the Wikipedia entry on "New Weird", which in turn is from the introduction to The New Weird by the editor:

"New Weird is a type of urban, secondary-world fiction that subverts the romanticized ideas about place found in traditional fantasy, largely by choosing realistic, complex real-world models as the jumping off point for creation of settings that may combine elements of both science fiction and fantasy. New Weird has a visceral, in-the-moment quality that often uses elements of surreal or transgressive horror for its tone, style, and effects — in combination with the stimulus of influence from New Wave writers or their proxies (including also such forebears as Mervyn Peake and the French/English Decadents). New Weird fictions are acutely aware of the modern world, even if in disguise, but not always overtly political. As part of this awareness of the modern world, New Weird relies for its visionary power on a "surrender to the weird" that isn't, for example, hermetically sealed in a haunted house on the moors or in a cave in Antarctica. The "surrender" (or "belief") of the writer can take many forms, some of them even involving the use of postmodern techniques that do not undermine the surface reality of the text."

Well. Quite the mouthful. Possibly even a bit pretentious at times. What I get from that, really, is that New Weird eschews the "genre binning" that has separated Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction, and gleefully combines conventions from all three as needed. I also like the part about being aware of the modern world; some of the earliest High Fantasy (such as The Well at the World's End by William Morris, or even The Lord of the Rings itself) was very much aware of reflecting an earlier period in earth's history; William Morris the "high Middle Ages" and Tolkien the "heroic age" of Germanic sagas. Most later fantasy writers adopted the trappings of the middle ages without adopting the modes of thought and belief, cloaking essentially modern attitudes in a Medieval setting.

New Weird, then, is more self-aware; it doesn't try to be "medieval fantasy"; it's just fantasy and the attitudes of the characters reflect that of the modern author and readers, and in fact do so on purpose.

Although I'm a little skeptical of New Weird as a movement, I'm rather fond of the older concept of the Weird Tale; stories that existed before the calcified divisions that keep science fiction, fantasy and horror as separate genres with separate conventions, and often separate space on the bookshelf of bookstores and libraries. If you take the concept of New Weird to be merely an embrace of that paradigm, without adding pretentious jazz that seem like non-sequiters (why is New Weird called surreal or visceral, for instance? Answer: I dunno, because it isn't. Or at least, isn't necessarily.) then my own tastes are definately leaning towards the New Weird lately. My gaming settings no longer resemble Middle-earth all that much; they resemble Barsoom warmed over with Charles Dickens, H. P. Lovecraft and Sergio Leone. I don't like the "epic quest" plotline very much anymore; I take plot direction from modern thrillers like Robert Ludlum, Ian Fleming or James Patterson.

However, I see a lot of those same things going on in "mainstream" fantasy, not necessarily just stuff that's called New Weird. Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora is very Ocean's Eleven-like in terms of plot, for instance. Joe Abercrombie's Best Served Cold is a revenge thriller, part Count of Monte Cristo, part The Magnificent Seven, that just happens to take place in a secondary world, but otherwise isn't too overtly fantastic.

After going through a lengthy adolescence, where fantasy writers were very beholden to trends of the past and the long shadow of writers like Tolkien, Howard, Leiber and maybe Moorcock, finally the genre is growing up, and "mature" books are coming out that take it in new directions.

Tale of the Thunderbolt

After blasting through the first three Vampire Earth novels, I'm going to take a little break before going on with them. Part of this is due to other external factors; I have constraints on the book I have right now; I have to read it within three weeks. Part of it is that I honestly need a little break from it.

While the book steps it up a notch in many regards, it also showcases some of the series weaknesses. The secret history of the Kurian world is further revealed, and that's always exciting. Valentine gets to go a bit more exotic with trips to Jamaica and Hispaniola, followed by a trek through Gulf Coast Texas. Woot! My old stomping grounds. The characteristics of the new Texas Rangers were cool. I liked them.

There's another hot girl in the story that he has sex with. This time she's much more of a major character instead of just a throwaway lust object. However, the sex scene was much more graphic. I thought for a moment there the publisher might have accidentally printed a page from a bodice ripper romance. That caught me a bit off-guard, since the previous two had done the "fade to black" oblique references to sex.

The plot feels eerily similar to that of the first two novels in most respects. There's a strong sense of deja vu after a while. It's also disappointing that vampires still play only a background role rather than a starring one... in a series called Vampire Earth, you'd expect that by book 3 you'd have seen more than a few "minutes of screen time" of vampires. Valentine generally has an easy time of it. Knight has him sprouting legends and cults, almost, in his wake wherever he goes, which is just a tad unsettling.

In spite of this, the book does show some maturation. Valentine grows as a character, being confronted with difficult decisions and the consequences of making them. The age old question of "how far is too far when you're at war" is broached. Valentine is presented with temptations to leave it all behind and take the selfish way out. The book ends not just on a cliffhanger, but on a double cliffhanger, with two major unresolved plot strands reversing direction literally in the last few pages.

Nonetheless, duty calls. I can't read the next one yet until I perambulate through some other stuff that demands to be read.

Just a quick FYI...

I'm not moving as quickly through E. E. Knight's Tale of the Thunderbolt as I'd hoped. When I'm done with it, I'm going to stop reading (temporarily) the Vampire Earth series, because I've got some other stuff on hold from the library that I expect to arrive any day now. First off is Joe Abercrombie's Best Served Cold but I've also got the first two books of Julian May's Saga of the Pliocene Exile from Interlibrary Loan.

I better read those while I've got'em, because it could be difficult to get them again for some time. After that, before I check anything else out from the library, I want to read some of the books I own but still haven't yet read.

Then I can pick back up with the Vampire Earth and Dresden Files books that need to be read.

Cuvieronius

I got (via interlibrary loan) a book called The Proboscidea : evolution and palaeoecology of elephants and their relatives which is quite a bit more technical than I hoped, so I'm not adding it to my "What I'm Reading" list; I'm just flipping through it and reading parts of it, not the entire thing.

Basically, though, it's the story of elephants and their relatives. The (so far) to me most interesting insight from the book is that probiscidean radiation appears to have come in three waves: the first wave being "primitive" probiscideans, including deinotheres and mastodons, a second wave of the paraphylitic gomphotheres, and the final wave of stegodonts and real elephants (including the mammoth.) That's of course an over-simplification, but more or less true nonetheless.

The interesting thing to me is the survival of several "primitive" branches of the proboscidean tree until very late times. The true elephants (including the mammoth) are all late appearing animals, so that they survive today isn't particularly surprising. Nor is it surprising that their close relatives the stegodonts still survived. The fact that gomphotheres were still going strong in South America as recently as 10,000 years ago (or possibly even later) as well as the American mastodon lasting as long is it did. Heck, even the bizarre "hoe-tusker" Deinotherium seems to have lasted until only a million years ago.

Anyway, I find the notion of these animals that we just missed being able to see living a very compelling and frustrating and sad thought. For some reason the mighty probiscideans have been a lot on my mind, too. Luckily, we've got some really good artists out there who know how to give us a very nice view of what these animals may have looked like; I've attached some such artwork to various other posts, but here one of Cuvieronius, an "elephant" that paleo-indians seem to have fed on in what is today Latin America.

Choice of the Cat

With extended family in town and other things that tend to reduce free time for reading, it took me a little bit longer to get through E. E. Knight's second Vampire Earth novel, Choice of the Cat, then I might have liked. But last night, I finished it and immediately picked up the next novel in the series, Tale of the Thunderbolt. Because I happened to have picked them both up from the library at the same time.

This novel was just about as much fun to read as the first one, Way of the Wolf. Perhaps moreso, even, since there was much less set-up and a more immediate jump into post apocalyptic vampire fighting action. Of course, by vampire fighting, I mostly mean "human minion" fighting, but David Valentine does throw down with a few of the Reapers too. He leaves the wolves after being set-up by a career-savvy jerk of a CO, and is inducted into the cats... augmented humans who serve more as spies and scouts. Of course, as a former wolf, he's really a wolf-cat... he retains the augmentations of both. This point isn't made explicitly clear, although Knight does show Valentine being able to outperform his cat-only trainer in a few things, notably sense of smell and endurance, which were legacies of his wolf upbringing. Maybe he'll also end up a bear before all is said and done.

Anyway, this is a reasonably well written and fun book. I have a few minor quibbles; the main antagonist isn't properly set-up; he seems to come a little bit out of nowhere. The ending feels a bit rushed (possibly related to the former complaint) as do a few of the interpersonal relationships. The plot is, if you strip away a few of the details, almost exactly the same as the prior book's. However, none of these are crippling flaws, and like I said, I eagerly moved on into the next book literally as soon as I finished this one.

One thing that I enjoyed was the relationship and banter between Valentine and Duvalier, aka Smoke, his cat trainer. There's some incipient sexual tension, a kind of platonic partnership that's not quite platonic, and she's as interesting a character as he is. Maybe moreso in some ways. From the looks of it, she makes recurring appearances in subsequent books as well. I certainly hope so.

Oooh!

Just for fun; the first three of these are recent(ish) pictures of the surface of Mars. The next three are from North Africa. If I hadn't just told you, you wouldn't have much to go on to tell them apart, would you?

Halloween music showdown

I thought maybe I'd try this last night, but I started too late and I was too tired. About halfway through Nox Arcana's Transylvania, I was nodding off, so I quit and went to bed.

Next week, though, for sure. Nox Arcana's Transylvania and Midnight Syndicate's Vampyre head to head!

Pleistocene rewilding

I know nobody that reads this blog probably cares about this (ha! I assume someone reads this blog!) but I just became familiar with the concept of "Pleistocene rewilding" and since I was lamenting the Pleistocene megafauna myself just recently, it seemed an appropriate add-on.

Rewilding is the concept of reintroducing species into the wild where they've gone extinct locally. The best example of it is when wolves went extinct in Yellowstone. The local ecosystem was thrown for a loop, wolves were eventually reintroduced, and the local ecosystem eventually returned to a relatively stable scenario. Of course, a Pleistocene rewilding is much more significant than simply reintroducing wolves into the American southwest or whatever. How do you reintroduce sabertooths and mammoths when, of course, they're already extinct?

The answer is: you reintroduce closely related proxies. The Pleistocene rewilding starts with reintroducing and protecting some extant species into areas where they no longer live: some examples would be reintroducing grizzlies, pumas, wolves, bison and pronghorn into more southerly areas. As proxies, they've proposed lions, cheetahs, elephants, onagers or kiangs, Przewalski's horses, zebras and camels into the same region.

Workable? Almost certainly no. Problematic? Yes, on so many levels. But a fun and fascinating idea nonetheless? Absolutely.

True elephants

I'm talked about this before, but I was re-reading some info on these guys, and was struck again by the accident of semantic history that calls mammoths something other than elephants. True elephants are the descendents of Primelephas; the members of the Elephantidae family, and the taxonomically dubious Elephantinae subfamily, and they include four genera (counting Primelephas itself) Elephas, Loxodonta and Mammuthus. Elephas had up to twenty species at one point, but today is represented solely by the Asian elephant, with several subspecies. Loxodonta is only known from two species, both of which survive, and which are the African elephants. Mammuthus is known from possibly as many as 12 species, but more likely it's only about half that, as overspeciation of fossils comes about when paletontologists don't take into account sexual, regional or even merely individual variation within a single species. Mammuthus is, of course, the mammoth.

I've attached below a picture of the Columbian, Jeffersonian, or Imperial mammoth (in my opinion, all three are the same species), and looking at it, it's easy to see how it's really just "the American elephant." Compared to Elephas or Loxodonta, it's got a more sloped back, a smaller domed back to its head, and larger tusks, but is otherwise, absolutely a member of the same immediate family.

The Stegodons, on the other hand, are slightly different animals; still members of the Elephantidae family, but part of a different subfamily. Today, if we were to see a living Stegodon or other related animal, we'd think it was an elephant with a few odd features, notably extremely long, straight tusks.

Sigh. Once again I regret the accident of history that allowed me to live in North America after more than half of its fascinating megafauna went extinct.

Dire wolf

Here's another interesting little thing I found out. Although GIS hasn't really given me a great picture of one, I recently discovered that the dog breed called the Alsatian Shepalute, which is bred to be a big, companionable dog, has also been bred to resemble the dire wolf in skeletal morphology and structure, as much as possible.

Of course, dire "wolf" may not have been wolf-like at all, really. It's a separate species under the same genus Canis, but so are plenty of other animals including the red wolf, the coyote, various jackals, the dingo, and for that matter, the domestic dog. They also don't all have the same ancestry; it's presumed that some early representatives of the genus Canis separated in North America, making the red wolf, the dire wolf and the coyote all endemic, but the gray wolf actually evolved in Eurasia and then came into North America through Beringia. Given that, the very specific gray pelt with saddle-like markings over the shoulders that belong to the gray wolf would be difficult to imagine on the dire wolf.

The picture I attached is two possible dire wolf colorations, the left showing a wolf-like coloration, the right showing a more likely coloration scheme based on the dire wolf's ancestry in the southern parts of America and redistribution of the dire wolf in areas that later were only known as the home of the red wolf, the coyote, possibly the eastern wolf (if that is indeed a separate species and not a hybrid of gray and red wolves, or simply a gray wolf subspecies). I like to imagine the dire "wolf" is being tawny in color, shaggier than a wolf, possibly with a darker face, and looking like a big dog. Not unlike, for that matter, a big Alsatian shepalute.

Anchiornis

You may have heard of Archeopteryx, the "first bird." Well, here's some big paleontological news, that just broke over the weekend. An older bird has been found, again, from China, which is the modern Gold Rush of dinosaur paleontology. Anchiornis huxleyi (Huxley's near bird) has been discovered in the Oxfordian Tiaojishan formation in Liaoning, China. It's been described, based on two specimens, as a troodontid, which are closely related to dromeosaurs. The later, better known dromeosaurs and troodontids might even be seen here as secondarily flightless specimens, based on finds like Anchiornis and others from the late Jurassic. This little guy predates Archeopteryx lithographica by at least five and possibly as much as fifteen million years, and shows both plumaceous "dino-fuzz" as well as pennaceous flight feathers. Also like Microraptor, he had four wings; long flight feathers attached to the leg as well, and in fact (unlike any modern bird) even the feet were completely feathered.

I'm not sure that, other than the confirmed earlier than Archeopteryx date, this is a particularly important find; we already knew about Microraptor from the early Cretaceous, and Pedopenna although the dating on that specimen is unclear, and Anchiornis resembled both to a great degree. It does, however, help us figure out exactly what was going on with the dinosaurs, particularly the paravian dinosaurs, that lead to the development of the earliest true birds.

Storm Front

Although it's not the first time I've read it, I haven't really reviewed Jim Butcher's Storm Front properly. And I just re-read it. Mostly, I think, that's because I managed to convince my public library to buy a new copy of the upcoming Dresden Files novel and put me right at the front of the list to have a copy. As soon as it's processed, it's mine for three weeks, which is way more than enough time to read through one of these. Anyway, knowing that in six months or so I'd be needing to read a new Dresden Files book, I figured I'd see what I could do about leisurely going through the series again, starting now. Storm Front is, of course, the first novel in the Dresden Files books.

It's not a great novel. It's interesting. It's got an interesting concept. Imagine Harry Potter, but if Raymond Chandler had written it instead of J. K. Rowling. "Screw this boarding school crap," he'd say. "Harry's a detective. In Chicago." Harry Dresden is also a very likeable character, which is good because the book is narrated by him, and (obviously) told from his viewpoint. Butler takes this interesting concept and manages to make it pretty fun, blending the conventions and formulae of a detective novel with an urban fantasy, with even a bit of Spiderman pathos; Dresden is the laconic, perpetually broke, magical superhero, who can't catch a break in any real-life issue, in a sense.

At times, Butcher's adherence to formula is jarring. He tries a bit too hard. A few plot elements seem really forced, coincidences strain suspension of disbelief, and a few plot holes have me scratching my head wondering why stuff happened the way it did. However, I don't mean this to be a negative review at all; Storm Front is a fun read. It's certainly good enough that the first time (and the second, and now just recently the third) time through I read it in just a few days and left it eager to pick up the next volume. Plus, obviously, I've read it a few times, which I rarely do for books unless they've got some pretty good mojo going on.

The deal with the Dresden Files series, though, isn't that it starts with an incredible bang. In fact, apparently, Butcher had no intention of writing Dresden at all; he had been trying to sell his high fantasy for some time with no success when a writing coach, or professor, or someone had convinced him to try his hand at "Anita Blake-like" since he had professed an interest in Anita Blake. Butcher thought it would suck, and actually wrote Storm Front (then titled Semiautomagic which I think it is a much cooler title, by the way) to prove a point; that it would be so bad, so formulaic, that it wasn't worth pursuing. Of course, he was able to sell it, and that's how he broke into the biz, and Dresden has been his paycheck to allow him to write some of the other stuff he really wanted to, like his Codex Alera series, which I haven't read at all yet.

Anyway, Storm Front is an interesting enough book. But the Dresden Files would only be a footnote in the vast sea that is today's urban fantasy market if Storm Front were as good as it got. Subsequent Dresden Files novels really made a quantum leap in quality from Storm Front; the next novel, Fool Moon is much darker, much stronger, and also funnier. Dresden's narration is good; he's got a cynical sense of humor, a dry wit, and it shows through in spite of what is otherwise pretty much a horror/detective story.

I highly recommend the Dresden Files, and I also highly recommend that if Storm Front doesn't completely capture your interest that you give it another shot with the second novel before giving up. I don't think Jim Butcher is for everyone, but at the same time, I'm not quite sure how anyone could not enjoy it on at least some level, especially anyone who's a fan of fantasy.

Sleeping Beauty

In Glen Cook's Black Company books, The Lady's mother was suggested to be the inspiration for the Sleeping Beauty legend except with a much darker vibe; she wasn't awakened by true love's kiss; in fact, she wasn't awakened at all, in spite of the The Lady's father's efforts to bestow his affection, or at least his appreciation for her beauty, and she concieved and gave birth to four daughters without waking up. I had thought that this was a marvelously dark and twisted idea.

However, while poking around for the early version of fairy tales today, I discover that the earliest known written version of the classic Sleeping Beauty motif, a section of the Medieval romance Perceforest originally published in 1528 and supposedly written down in about 1330 or so, has exactly that happen with the sleeping beauty, there named Zellandine. There, the prince Troilus doesn't bother waiting for her to wake up either, at least until after she's given birth to his two twins.

D'oh! These old fairy tale roots are really freaky. That's one that's unusual, but the cases of cannibalism, incest, and other really sordid, dark themes are simply rampant within these early versions.

Of course, the classic Sleeping Beauty motif has older roots; the Brunhild and Sigurd story from pagan Germanic mythology is also suggested as a sleeping beauty source. Of course, that's also difficult to date; the Nibelungenleid and the Volsunga Saga, both of which have Brunhild references, were only written late, but are believed to have roots going back to 5th or 6th century greater "Germania"---although actual textual evidence doesn't even get us quite as far back as Perceforest---sometime in the 13th century.

Halloween music

Well, I wasn't really going to talk more about Halloween music, but since that raging fangirl nicole can't leave me alone with her very poor understanding of rhetoric (or the concept of checking definitions before posting words with which she's obviously only vaguely familiar) it's been on my mind a fair bit.

Let's recap what I said, shall we? Just so that there's no confusion for anyone who's capable of a rational conversation in the English language.

1) I knew of Midnight Syndicate from a year or two ago. I used to be disparaging of the whole idea of what they did, preferring to listen to actual movie soundtracks with real orchestras and all that jazz, but after giving them a listen at a Halloween store, I bought into the idea and picked up a few Midnight Syndicate CDs. They weren't bad, and for a certain kind of mood evocation, I arguably didn't have anything that worked better.

2) This autumn I became aware of another band working in the same medium called Nox Arcana. I also found out that Nox Arcana and Midnight Syndicate had a shared history; one Joseph Vargo was a significant part of Midnight Syndicate's early history as a producer and "creative director" and he's also the founder of Nox Arcana.

3) I also later found out that they left on pretty bad terms; I read in particular an interview that Joseph Vargo had done for Gaming Report, and left hosted on his own site. Based on Vargo's own comments, I got the impression that Vargo was a egotistical prima donna, and that he came off as a bit of a jerk. I said as much here on my blog.

4) On Wikipedia, I found out that Vargo had also alleged that Midnight Syndicate had plagiarized the concept of his own CD Darklore Manor when they made The 13th Hour. I knew enough about copyright law to know that you can only copyright the specific expression of an idea, not an idea itself, so the fact that he would even make this attempt made him look even more like a jerk. I also commented that it was ironic that he would make that claim, and then go on to record albums that were very obviously "inspired by" Midnight Syndicate CDs.

5) This prompted me to do a few other Google searches, and I found the court document from Case 1:07-cv-01197-JG that showed that the plagiarism claim was thrown out of court. As of course it would be, as anyone even kinda sorta familiar with US copyright law could easily have predicted.

That's it. nicole's claims that I'm a Midnight Syndicate fanboy are absurd; I said right up front that I'm still pretty skeptical about their musical acumen for one thing. Her claims that there's more going on then what I've posted about are probably quite true; of course there is. However, that's irrelevent to me, because I'm only posting about what I'm posting about and I'm not posting about what I'm not posting about. Duh. Plus, her claims are based on rumor and hearsay which she sadly doesn't know how to distinguish from actual evidence or proof.

Anyway, enough about nicole. I've been tempted to reinstate comment moderation because of her, and her ridiculous protectionism of her goth idol Joseph Vargo. Vargo is a (very, very minor) public figure, and as such anything he says publicly is open to criticism, and contrary to her delusions, that is neither slander, libel, defamation or anything else even closely similar to that. Especially when I've been very careful to not comment on anything that was a rumor or hearsay, even when she brought up speculation and hearsay and demanded that I change my opinion because of it.

My comment number 4 above, though, has prompted me to propose an experiment, which I'll probably start next week when I've maybe got some time to start it. This experiment is based on two ideas: 1) although Nox Arcana's sample mp3s didn't impress me too much, that's partly because they were out of context. Now that I have some (most) of their complete CDs, I think that they're the equal of Midnight Syndicate, certainly. In fact, I'd venture to say that almost 99 out of 100 people wouldn't be able to tell the difference between their work anyway. I personally don't have any horse in this ridiculous online factionalism between them; I'm not a fan of one and not the other, and I think it would be absurd to be so when the music is so literally the same. 2) As a mentioned above, Midnight Syndicate and Nox Arcana each have a number of albums that focus on the same themes. NA alleges that Darklore Manor was "copied" in The 13th Hour while I snicker and point out that they have several CDs that did the same thing to pre-existed MS albums, so they really should both just shut their traps about it at get back to work recording more music.

However, why not put these matched pairs in head-to-head competition with each other? Here's my proposal, I'm going to listen to each matched pair album twice; once just to listen through and once to make notes and observations. Granted, this kind of music is "background music" so I expect that my attention will also wander a bit, but that's why I'm going to do it twice to give myself time to really catch whatever differences there are between them, and then I'm going to write a head-to-head competitive review of each matched pair, picking which one I think is my favorite and explaining why.

This may be more difficult than I think; it occurs to me that there may not be an easy way to pick a favorite with music that's so similar in tone, theme, and execution, but I'm going to make the attempt anyway. Also, before I can completely do all the matched pairs, I need to actually find one more of the CDs still. I may have to download Blood of the Dragon as an amazon mp3 album (for $8.99---not a bad deal) in order to do this, but that's OK.

Here's the matched pairs. I'm listing the MS one first, just because I already had them and it's easier for me. Plus, M is before N in the alphabet:

• Midnight Syndicate's The 13th Hour vs. Nox Arcana's Darklore Manor
• Midnight Syndicate's Vampyre vs. Nox Arcana's Transylvania
• Midnight Syndicate's Dungeons & Dragons vs. Nox Arcana's Blood of the Dragon
• Midnight Syndicate's Gates of Delirium vs. Nox Arcana's Blackthorn Asylum

Anyway... may be the best albums win!

Sigh

Well, I enjoyed Way of the Wolf enough that on taking it back yesterday to the library, I also popped into the shelves and got the next two in the series. I could have gotten the next four, but realistically I probably can't read those in the next three weeks before they come due. So much for my list of my own books I'm supposed to be making it through.

I'm also re-reading the first Dresden files book. I think it's the season; Halloween makes me think of Dresden or something. Plus, I just convinced the library to pre-order the upcoming new Dresden book in April and I've got an immediate hold on the book as soon as it's processed. Those are quick reads too, but... there's 11 or so of them. These two series will keep me busy for a little while...

Way of the Wolf

Way of the Wolf by E. E. Knight, is the first book in a series called Vampire Earth. It's an interesting concept; imagine the concept of Stargate, but instead of aliens being the source of our Egyptian mythology, they're the source of our folklore about vampires. They come to Earth via a system that's not unlike Stargates, and here the story is set about 50-60 years in the future, after the vampires have decimated the population, killing nearly ¾ of the population with a plague, and then rounding up most of what remained, having them live as little more cattle in some cases, and as cattle dogs in others.

Of course, the story tracks the career of a young man, David Valentine, who belongs to the resistance movement. Certain areas of the North American continent are largely free of vampire incursion, and serve as "at seige" nations of sorts, and David Valentine is a soldier for this group. The aliens themselves are at war; the vampires being those who became addicted to siphoning off "aura" from other beings (via drinking their blood) and those who don't. These less vampiric aliens brought a few key advantages to struggling humanity; the ability to unlock latent mental and physical abilities. David Valentine is a "wolf"---his senses, reflexes and stamina are greatly increases from his human normative pre-wolf days, making him a superhuman warrior... although still not exactly a match for a vampire one on one by a long shot.

Knight is a pretty good writer; he makes David a believable and interesting character, he describes a fantastic setting, and he manages to keep tension and plot structure at a nice clip. I found the book very easy to read through in a short period of time (of course, it's also not that long of a book; just shy of 400 pages in mass market paperback.) As well as the fascinating secret history aspect of the books, there's a lot of implicit setting stuff that I found really intriguing.

For instance, the remainder of the US has been knocked back into a technological Dark Age of sorts; kinda like the early 1800s. Knight also had society resemble the early 1800s, which is one of the things I found more interesting; small rural towns and the lifestyle of early American pioneers... but with the constand fear of vampire attacks.

This also comes at an especially opportune time, as I'm in the middle of developing my vampire kingdom module for my modular campaign setting, and this is a good model of vampire kingdoms ruled by various vampires, or "Kurian lords" as they're called here. Knight himself says that he first developed this setting as a roleplaying game setting, and ran games there for his friends.

Anyway... check it out. A fun new take on a classic idea.

Nox Arcana and Midnight Syndicate

Well, I've read a bit more on the shared history of these two musical groups, and the levels of pettiness, ego and douchery from both parties is pretty pathetic. But I won't bore you with the sordid and ultimately fairly boring details; suffice it to say that we benefit from it; when Midnight Syndicate decided that they wanted to go their own way without Joseph Vargo's self-professed "control freak" and "less than diplomatic" touch, we ended up with two outfits doing this kind of stuff and releasing CDs which means as Joe Consumer, we now have a lot of choice when it comes to dark mood music.

I've run around town at various Halloween stores lately (I mentioned two, but of course, that's in my suburb. There are two others a few blocks from where I work, for instance) and picked up most of the Nox Arcana CDs. I already had most of the Midnight Syndicate CDs from last year, or even the year before.

Although I don't know that it's worth my while to review them, since the reviews would all kind of blend together, I will at least list them, and point out that I've listened to them the last few nights while reading and it's certainly added to the reading experience. (Also: finished a book last night, and I'll be reviewing that later today too, assuming I have time to post the review.)

Anyway... here's what I've got.

Midnight Syndicate
• Born of the Night
• The 13th Hour
• Vampyre
• The Dungeons & Dragons Soundtrack
• Gates of Delirium

Nox Arcana
• Darklore Manor
• Necronomicon
• Transylvania
• Phantoms of the High Seas
• Blackthorn Asylum
• Grimm Tales
• Shadow of the Raven

I'd really like to pick up Blood of the Dragon assuming I can find it, because it's supposedly got a nice D&D-like vibe. I do think it's ironic that Nox Arcana apparently tried to sue Midnight Syndicate because they thought The 13th Hour was too similar to their own Darklore Manor, but they then returned the favor by doing their own thinly veiled answers to the D&D soundtrack and Gates of Delirium. Oh, well. Did I mention the pettiness?