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Not quite what I had hoped for, though it has some redeeming features. It's a detailed book about the Shadow Realm, the fae plane of Kobold Press' Midgard setting. I bought it as a companion piece to Tales from the Shadows, an adventure compilation set in the Shadow Realm. I had hoped to enrichen my campaign with info from the book. While you get a lot of infos about the Shadow Realm, I'm just a bit disappointed about the Fey Courts section. While you get lots of info about the various courts, nothing swept me off my feet, and it didn't have as many adventure hooks as I had hoped for. Especially Corremel, the city of the setting, mostly has stuff that will let me embellish the trip there, but nothing that I feel aids me in creating rich, fey-themed urban adventures. It feels like a missed opportunity to me. I had hoped for more rich intrigues and inter-court squabbling, and I felt that every court is mostly self-contained and not as interesting as I had hoped for.

Artwork is absolutely top-notch, and the layout as well. All included maps are gorgeous, and the included battle maps for grid or VTT play are outstanding. I also enjoyed the magic item sections, and the Appendix with encounter tables and lots of random tables will probably see the most use in my game. I just can't use it much to create my own adventures, I can just use snippets.

Before I started reading this boxed set of three books, I hadn't really considered this system. Going in I thought it was Monte Cook getting in on the success of games like Blades in the Dark. Instead, it's a fresh look at modern-day heists with a sprinkling of Cypher system, presented in gorgeous art.

The setting is wild. Player characters are from the 39th century, aboard a generational starship called Celeste. Humanity has given up on colonizing planets and instead is focusing on warping reality and exploring other universes. But the Celeste is now travelling back, only to find out that they're stranded in the past, at 21st century Earth. And something is not quite right on Earth. There are objects that cause zones of Improbability. For example, a city is flooded with aggressive birds because of the pen the CEO of a company is using. The AI of the Celeste sends out crews to steal these objects in daring heists: the player characters.

Pretty wild, isn't it?

The PCs are so-called Liars because they can bend reality. When they speak a lie, it always comes true, but it's stressful for them to lie. Character Creation is easy. There are three archetypes. Pick two adjectives for things you are good at, pick something you are bad at, and that's pretty much it.

Additionally, you get to draw 3 cards during a mission that can give you specific bonuses in gameplay. The GM also gets cards to throw story twists at the players, and there's always a big turn in the final act of a mission. The more cards the players and the GM play the more the characters advance. I thought it's quite rewarding.

Artwork is very Comic-Style, full of diverse character, doing heists with tech gadgets, very cool.

The box has three books in it. Book 1, Liars, is pretty much the player's guide, Book 2 is for GMs, including a fantastic chapter on Improv, and a 12 mission example campaign. The final book is more stuff for GMs, like tables to create NPCs and guides on what to throw at players in heists, like different security systems, kinds of guards, etc.

I will definitely run this for my RL group, can't wait!

I wasn't getting on with the most recent Murderbot novella so instead I picked this up. For me, reading King is just comforting. There's only a hint of horror in this book but it intrigued me. The rest was a personal crime novel. The Saubers family is hit with the aftermath of the events in Mr. Mercedes, facing poverty. But then 13 year old Pete finds a trunk in the grounds by his home, full of money and notebooks full of writing, giving him the opportunity to secretly help his family. But then the real owner of the trunk is released from jail and Pete's nightmare begins...

This novel didn't actually have that much Bill Hodges in it. PoVs were mostly split between Pete, Bill, and the villain Morris Bellamy.

It was pretty good. I really hope that the final book returns to Brad as villain because he was far more interesting than Morris. There was a bit of foreshadowing...

A Betrayal in Winter greatly improves the premise of the first book in the series. It's set 14 years after the fall of Saraykeht in the first book, and set in Machi, a city far in the north. The andat, the servant demon of the city, is Stone-Made-Soft, and just like Seedless in the first book, he longs for his freedom, in a less menacing way. The ruler of Machi is dying, and as is tradition, his sons are now meant to kill each other, to determine succession. The first son is killed, but as it turns out not by the brothers, and Maati from the first book, the poet without an andat, is sent to investigate. And of course there's Otah Machi who has left his family behind, who is a legitimate heir and suspected to be behind the first murder.

This description should already point at the main strength of the book, political intrigue. It's very slow, and the reader knows all along who's behind the killings.

If I have to nitpick, it's that yet again, my least favorite trope, the love triangle, rears its ugly head. Though it's hard to even describe it as love.

I was ultimately satisfied with the outcome, and am looking forward to seeing where this goes next. A thing I have to mention is that Abraham manages to make this culture seem utterly alien to me. It's not classic Western fantasy at all. I appreciate that a lot.

Candela Obscura is the first TTRPG system by Darrington Press, more commonly known as the folks from Critical Role. As such, I found it an interesting choice that they did not go for stealing a share from the DnD crowd and instead released this game. It's a horror game set in a fantasy world with a technology level loosely equivalent to early 20th century. There's magick in the world, and it is bad, and it must be investigated by a society called Candela Obscura. Main location for the setting is the city of Newfaire, a mix between New York, Amsterdam, Paris, maybe Edinburgh. It's been built on the ruins of Oldfaire, a previous empire that used magick heavily and perished in a cataclysmic event near 2,000 years ago.

The rules system itself is called 'Illuminated Worlds' and was created by Stras Acimovic, known for Scum and Villainy, and Band of Blades. To me, Illuminated Worlds really did not seem very far away from Forged in the Dark, but what do I know? It genuinely feels like a love letter to Blades in the Dark, only less punishing, not as heavy on the rules that make BitD such an intimidating system to run. Each character has three main stats, called drives: Nerve, Cunning and Intuition, with 3 moves each per drive. You can spend points in your drive pool to get extra d6, which reminded me of using Effort in the Cypher System. Each character has gilded moves, which allow you to roll a second set of dice that can be used to replenish your drive pool. When you roll, the highest die result counts, with 6 being a full success and 4-5 being partial. And that's pretty much it. As GM, you only have to set the stakes for a roll, there are 9 possible actions, it's pretty straightforward.

The book itself is gorgeous. From the beautiful cover, to gorgeous maps, to evocative artwork, it's really a gem. The setting is quite interesting, I always love a bit of technology in my fantasy game. As far as worldbuilding goes, I was a bit disappointed. Much like Blades in the Dark, Newfaire's city districts get one page each, with a few plot hooks, and that's it. I prefer my settings a bit richer than this, but this might be a me-problem. Also, why play this over Vaesen? Vaesen has the same premise. Secret society hunting magic, in the late 19th century. I love Vaesen and its super-evocative art, and it's folklore-rich stories.

My biggest disappointment is probably that I do not see longevity for a really long campaign here. The book presents many factions, and you can probably craft yourself a campaign arc here, but all in all it's probably best as a short story arc game, Monster of the Week style. I will definitely run it at my table, but much like the Critical Role streams, it might not have more longevity to have more than 3-5 assignments for a circle of investigators.

If you're looking for a fresh horror game, thought BitD is too complex and haven't tried Vaesen, I highly recommend picking this up. Despite my misgivings, I am excited to run this game in February.

City of Stairs was one of the best books I have read this year, and so I had high hopes for the sequel. I was not disappointed, even though we got a protagonist switch. Set five years after City of Stairs, Shara Komayd is now the prime minister of her country, and too busy to investigate issues on the continent. Instead, she sends General Turyin Mulaghesh, former polis governor of Bulikov, now in grand retirement. She's sent to Voortyashtan to investigate the case of a missing Saypuri. Turns out bad divine things are happening, and the General gets fully swept up in all of this. We meet Sigrun again, and his estranged daughter Signe, who is in charge of building a trade harbor.

A delight to read, always exciting to follow the plot along, and its only shortcoming probably that Mulaghesh is just not as entertaining as Shara was. The fantasy is very gunpowder-flavored, and if you don't know it already, war is a grisly thing, as we get to experience through Mulaghesh's backstory. Already looking forward to the next one. Criminally underrated, I think, this trilogy.

If I look back at all the books I have read in my life, I think I can say with confidence that Stephen King is my most-read author. Some of his works make me kinda cringe a bit now, but all in all, I just love his writing. Over the years, he's been branching out into many genres, away from just being a horror writer, and Mr. Mercedes is crime fiction, not horror. Sometimes it didn't even have that feeling of a Stephen King novel.

All in all, I really enjoyed it. Bill Hodges is an overweight, retired police detective who's in his 60s and struggles to find a reason to live. In comes Mr. Mercedes, a killer he was never able to catch in his active time, who ran a Mercedes sedan into a crowd, killing many people. Mr. Mercedes is trying to taunt Hodges into committing suicide. Little does he know that this will kick Hodges back into gear, as he renews his efforts to find Mr. Mercedes.

The novel reads as a back and forth. We early on get the PoV from the killer, who is a young man with a somewhat disturbing relationship to his alcoholic mother, and get to experience how his life gets more and more out of control. It is a bit of a nailbiter at the end there.

As mentioned above, I really liked it. I liked the cast, especially the highly unlikely 'investigator' Holly, a neurotypical woman in her 40s, Hodges' young helper Jerome, etc. Looking forward to reading the two next books, plus Holly, King's most recent book.

In this story of an alternate history China, we follow the rise of Zhu. As a girl, her elder brother is promised greatness, and she is promised nothing. But soon after her father and brother are killed, and Zhu is alone in the world, in Mongol-conquered China. Zhu decides to follow the path of greatness that was promised her brother, by pretending to be him. She flees famine to a monastery where she becomes a monk. Greatness is in her path, even though she constantly clashes with Ouyang, a eunuch general of the Mongol army.

It's a delight to read, and so very queer. It plays with gender roles so interestingly. Zhu has to pretend to be male, but encourages another female character to 'desire', something that women just don't do. And there's Ouyang, castrated, beautiful as a woman, craving nothing but masculinity and his Prince.

Can't wait to read the sequel.

I'm knee-deep in the doldrums of the Wheel of Time. Inspired to plod on by a stellar season 2 of the show, I was immediately confronted with the dilemma that I like every single character of the show better than the book equivalent.

All in all, very little happens here. Elayne tries to consolidate power in Andor, and I cannot stress how much I was bored out of my mind by that plot thread. Rand flees to Far Madding, and that was moderately interesting. Once again, Mat saved the day and a star for being the only likeable character, and for actually trying things, preparing to flee Ebou Dar. Also, the Daughter of the Nine Moons has arrived, and that's really the most fascinating bit about the whole book for me.

The finale was grand, and interesting enough, but all in all, I am just glad that it's over, hundo p. Can it get any worse? This is generally considered one of the better books of the doldrums, so I really fear the worst.