And now: A quick lesson in human nature.

At first glance, you'd think it would be a good idea to put this on the wrapping,
as a form of extra safety n'est-ce pas?

Dark Waters

Okay, we're in dark times again.
Submitted without further elaboration.
Except maybe that normal services will resume shortly. Maybe.

Review: The Devil you Know, K.J. Parker

I was aware of K.J. Parker's writing fame and author status, the background of his secret identity (now revealed), the literary quality of his work and so on and so forth and it seemed like he'd be a writer right up my alley. I figured I'd get round to him eventually but I held off for a while, because, well... because that's what I do.

If I think too much I just don't commit to anything so together with a short story collection by Sartre (because of a recommendation of a friend) I went and ordered the two Tor novellas by him. The one that caught my eye immediately was the one where a world-renowned philosopher sells his soul to the devil in exchange for wealth, health and 20 years of guarantueed life. There's alot more that he receives along with that but all that isn't really relevant without having the context of the story itself.

But then again, everyone knows the basic premise:
Man sells his soul, gets everything he wants and then tries to get out of the deal.
The story's world might not be the earth you recognize, its history might not ring any bells, its hierarchy of devils and angels might just be slightly recognizable but also just not quite (There were actually some interesting moments there.)
What matters here is that this is a fantasy story.

 'But of course,' I hear you say, 'there are devils and angels, of course it's a fantasy.'
'Yes,' I respond, quite patiently, ' and occasionally in a fantastical story you can take these elements as an allegory or as a metaphor to try and get at the heart of a point you're trying to make. And, you see the problem with this story is, that it sets up a character that is supposed to be the greatest philosopher the world has ever seen who signs his soul away. This, naturally, would lead any semi-intelligent person to assume that the basis of the resolution to the story; read: The philosopher will eventually get out of the deal, would be found in a philosophical argument.'

This, and you felt this coming didn't you, you clever little rabbit's bolt-hole, is not the case.

On its own, this is not a problem.
The resolution is well set up. The build-up and some of the clues are there and when the revelation comes it's one that fits with the story.

Do you see what I'm saying?
I'm saying the story is good, on its own. Rather quite good in fact.

However. For me, the problem is three-fold.

And I'm going to go and tell spoilers here.
I've said the story is good, that it's a fantasy with no strict ties to our earth and that the resolution to the tale does not reside in philosophical argument; this is a red herring by the author. He expects you to expect this so he can blindside you.

SPOILERS AND IRE up ahead.

Dark souls 3; some impressions

After the Senua's Sacrifice post I figure I really earned it to treat myself with the Dark Souls 3 impressions post. And with that you get some treats too of course.

In short; so far, I'm having alot of fun.

Welcome to the Seedy side of Lothric.

And the not-so-seedy side of Lothric

While you're here, don't pay any attention to the disturbing architecture...

...or to our disturbingly organic looking lantern poles,
also, please don't mind their screaming.

Here be Dragons, err... or at least, there were...

As is usual for the series it's not the bosses that'll kill you most, but rather the battles you fight in getting to them.

I actually was busy with these guys for a while before I got a decent handle on them. And even then they still sometimes manage to absolutely wipe the floor with me.

And then, on first try. But of course.

And what do I get for all that hard work?

Jep, sure... Thanks Dark Souls 3...

I can already tell you and I are gonna get along splendidly...

Review: Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

I finished Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice recently, a game that had been on my radar a long time. And though it eventually wasn't even close to what I expected it would be, it did still manage to leave quite an impression.

It was, in short, quite a harrowing experience. Hellblade wasn't exactly horror but it sure made me feel things horror usually makes me feel.

The story's as follows:

Senua is a girl growing up on the Orkney islands off the north coast of Scotland. She's a Celtic warrior and since she was a child she has been struggling with a form of psychosis. This has influenced her whole life and has made normal social interaction rather strained, to say the least. She leaves her village and isolates herself in the wild where she comes across a traveller, an ex-slave named Druth, who recognizes in her a fellow tortured spirit and who fills her head with stories of the culture and religion of the people who once enslaved him; the northmen.
Then, something happens...
And it is as a direct consequence of this event that she experiences a rather crippling blow to her psyche. As a result she sets out north in a kind of spirit quest, to the land of the nords.
We join the story as she has just arrived on northern shores. But the trick is that the way that Senua views the world is alot more fantastical and horrific than it genuinely is. It's hard to sift what's true and how much is imagination. But the trauma and the pain is real. At every step the emotional wringer that Senua's being put though can be felt. Her mental suffering is so genuinely depicted and incredibly well-acted  that it becomes at times quite painful to watch. The game is not for everyone.
You'll feel her suffering at a very personal and intimate level and it's something that I've not seen done like this in any game I remember playing.
But despite all the pain, the journey has meaning and the ending is worthwhile.

Special mention: Senua is motion-capture-acted by Melina Juergens who was developer Ninja Theory's video editor and stand-in for Senua's character while the company where perfecting their motion capture techniques. 

Developer's diary picture

Unbeknownst to the head honchos she had already auditioned for the role whilst drawing on her own past to depict Senua's mental anguish. Needless to say; she was impressive.

Now, the developer has throughout the project worked closely with people suffering from psychosis and mental anguish and together with various mental health advisors, in an effort to be as true as possible to the experience of psychosis without exploiting it. They've tried to put it in as honest a light as possible, while at the same time gritting it up quite a bit, in order for them to try and break taboos and stigmatas associated with the condition.
They've mashed various forms of psychosis together though. Senua hallucinates and suffers from intense delusions, visions and flashbacks. She hears voices who constantly undermine her determination and sap her courage. She sees patterns and imbues them with inescapable meaning and ritual where they are in reality without point. At times she views the world though a luminescent lens while at other times colours can be oversaturated.

I don't have psychosis, obviously I don't. I don't know anyone who has, I think. But what I saw here seemed genuine and more than that, through its honest depiction, respectful.

Gameplay is mostly a mix of Senua running (or limping) around, solving puzzles by matching runes on a locked door with runes cleverly incorporated into the surrounding environment,

which, truth to tell, can get a little annoying when you have to do it again and again. But then that's also something that's in service of depicting compulsions and ritualistic ascribing of meaning in psychosis,

and a form of Souls-inspired combat.

There's a few bosses that are very memorable and my favourite was the one in the dark, though that one did take a frustrating while to get used to. But then when you finally get it, when you figure out how it works and fight accordingly and when you finally triumph over this creature, it feels so very hard earned.

And as an action hack and slash fan, specifically anything that From Software has lately put out I quite liked that aspect.
There's a part about three thirds into the game that's basically a 20 minute fight sequence, that takes place, because of the psychosis, in some sort of hellish vision that is twisting the landscape into mountains of grasping, clawing corpses under a reddish-yellow sky. A storm rages with yellow lightning while Senua is hip-deep in a valley filled with blood, rain lashing down around her, while she's fighting off various forms of demonic looking vikings.

Here is that grit I spoke of earlier.
I can't truly say it's not overdone because it really is at certain points, but despite that, despite its sensationalist trappings, it's the story that resounds the most. To tell more would be to spoil but if you can tough it out until the end you might not be disappointed.
I say might, because I personally was very pleased with it as I was expecting a different type of resolution but I can see how easily that specific ending might rub some people the wrong way.

Sound design is exceptional. In its voice acting in particular. Senua's anguished cries form a rather constant presence in your journey, while numerous voices fade in and out around her, voicing doubts and disparaging remarks and rarely offering anything positive or helpful.
Druth's lessons of nordic lore dot the landscape in runic menhirs and his animated tones alleviate some of the ever-present darkness.

There are other memorable voices, but to tell would be to spoil.
Music is present and though not paricularly memorable for me, does add a bit to the atmosphere, amping up during combat and gently warbling during the quieter puzzle sections.

Here at the end, I should say again, that the game simply isn't for everyone. It's meant to be mainstream and the developers have done their best but the story moves at its own pace and there's rather a large level of difficulty in combat at times that is quite at odds with its more sedate puzzle sections.

It's odd that I've written so much as I wasn't really planning to do a review for this game.
Senua's combat sections made me want to play the last game in the Dark Souls series that I hadn't yet played and I wanted to write a short introduction about how Hellblade made me pick that game up and then post a few pictures about how it's good to be back.
But then when I started to write it just all came out.

I'm very happy that I did this though because Senua's Sacrifice is a uniquely special game that really deserves the attention. If you can and if I didn't scare you away, go pick it up.

Book Haul: Ancient Warhammer

Look at that; 3 very ancient Old World Warhammer novels!

So ancient that the publishing imprint 'The Black Library' wasn't even around yet.

Instead these books were printed by BOXTREE LIMITED 'in association with Games Workshop'.

Storm Warriors has reflective print.

Ancient out-of-date maps.

Early Warhammer timeline!

Whilst reading the short stories I had a craving to go and collect some Old World fantasy. This is only the beginning again. Once I had the ambition of collecting the entire Black Library output. For 40k that's simply impossible these days, I have no interest in e-books and there's simply too much of it to go around. But with the end of the Old World its fiction has become (for now) finite and reading and collecting that side of things might just be achievable.

 I have not read either the Konrad saga or the Orfeo trilogy. The black Konrad omnibus was always something I wanted but I always missed out. I'll get around to it, one of these days...

Review: Black Library Games Day Anthology 2012/2013

Well if that date doesn't give you an idea on how huge my reading backlog is, I don't know what will.
Also. Damnit. This was supposed to be a short blog post!

Look at that stunning cover and gaze into the helmet of the Rubric Marine, witness his nothingness, his deathless state. Witness the undeniable fact that 'All is dust'.

This little booklet is a collection of 6 short stories meant to give you an idea of what GamesWorkshop and Blacklibrary publish in their fiction range. There's rather a big disparity in contents, with the collection of short stories focussing mainly on 40k fiction. The one Horus Heresy short story could've easily slotted into its 40k setting as there wasn't really much to distinctly set it apart from it. There also was only the one Old World short story to its contents, and that one a Time of Legends tale. Pretty disappointing as I'm one of those odd few who used to love the Old World more.
What can I say, Fantasy has always appealed to me more.

Distant Echoes of Old Night, HH
is written by Rob Sanders, whose writing in Redemption Corps and Atlas Infernal I found very hard to come to grips with and as it was there so it is here. Despite that, both were very viscerally satisfying, and Czevak is a very memorable character, mostly exactly due to Sanders' writing.

It's a typically bad-ass 40k story though and I believe it's better than most but as usual, Rob sanders' writing made it hard for me to enjoy this (A damn ludicrous claim I know) But it simply takes way too much effort to understand and visualize what is being described on the page, something that should be plain pulp. I'm giving way too much attention to something that, frankly, doesn't bear going into in this detail, as it's not even that big of a deal. But I notice it, and mentioning it here makes it clear that something, somewhere is pretty wrong. I'd like to say that it was a mistake setting at the front of the collection, both because of some required experience particularly with chaos marines and because of the difficulty of Sanders' writing, but that might again be because of my particular reading experience. It bears repeating here that English is not my native language. I'm good at it and prefer to read in English but sometimes with a particular writing style, due to unfamiliar composition or uncommon wording, I can still struggle.
That being said, it's been a long while since I had read any Black Library fiction and I must say:

It's good to be back.

Also I mentioned that this story fits into the 40k setting just as well as the Horus Heresy setting but there are of course many details that manage to set it apart. Specifically the use of Chaplains in the Death Guard, which were pretty much done away with after the Heresy in the fallen legions at large, except of course in the Word Bearers.

We follow Death Guard Chaplain Murnau on his descent to a despoiled agri-moon to root out what remains of a company of Iron Fist Space Marines, whose ship has crashed on the moon's surface which the Death' guard's arsenal has managed to turn from a verdant agri-forest into hideously toxic marshes and rotting sludge.

The title references chemical and radiation based weaponry, remnants from the age of chaos that preceded the birth of Imperium, which Astartes in the great Crusade, as a generally honourable sort, wouldn't have used. Of course, for the newly-turned renegade Death Guard chapter, those who will eventually revere the Blight-God Nurgle, using these weapons without compunction before their eventual fall into that god's dominion, manages to strike a darkly ironic tone.

Extinction, 40k
By Aaron Dembski Bowden; one of my favourite writers.

A simply perfect story.

Beautifully written with every part working in perfect economy to give a clear depiction of what's on display while at the same time giving a maximum amount of details with a minimum word count.
Flows easily and majestically and works well enough on its own but was actually designed as a teaser for Aaron's Black Legion series, of which 2 books are out now.

The short story is a collection of viewpoints from Sons of Horus marines that are under assault from every quarter, from every fallen space marine legion, for the crime of leading them into damnation during the Horus Heresy. Murdered where they stand or hunted down like dogs, their violent ends give a glimpse of the monumental rage and hate that is directed at them by their once brother legions.
The short story opens with a quote.

Legions die by betrayal.
They die in fire and futility.
Above all, they die in shame.

And this quote comes into its own as viewpoint after viewpoint comes to its inevitable end. Horrifically brutalised and battered but laughing and raging at their killers all the same, in a desperate effort to hide the pain and shame of their primarch's failure and how that failure has ripped apart the once-proud legion that he once commanded. They are taken to account for his failure and they silently but not without violence, own up to it, because they can do nothing else. The opposing force that is brought to bear is too strong, the foe's numbers too high and the once numerous Sons of Horus will never rise again.

Meanwhile, Ezekyle Abaddon walks the worlds in the Eye of Chaos and gazes impassively at the dying legion, being driven to extinction by those who were once their allies. No longer a Son of Horus himself, his eyes are fixed on the secrets of the worlds that are stranded in the realm of Chaos. Driven by hatred and curiosity, he walks on.

The Master of Mourkain
By Josh Reynolds, a writer I'm not familiar with, though I did once read a short story by him. I also purchased his Fabius Bile Primogenitor edition, which is just flat-out glorious, If someone wants to see some pics, just ask and I'll gladly show. Trust me, it's really worth it.

The Master of Mourkain is a good little warhammer tale of the Time of Legends series.
Time of Legends is the to go to for the storylines dealing with the world-defining events in the Warhammer fantasy universe, such as the forging of Empire by Sigmar, the sundering of the Elves into Dark Elves and High Elves, The war of the Beard, etc. but The Master of Mourkain is set somewhere in the massive storyline of the undead and the vampires: The Rise of high necromancer Nagash and the Blood of Nagash storyline, which was cancelled.
Cancelled due to poor sales apparently. But what do you expect if you're gonna switch formats between novels? Some people might not care about formats but I'm guessing the ones who actually buy paperbacks would, I know I do. Might as well wait for the omnibus at that point.

The Rise of Nagash trilogy is one of my absolute favourites by the way.

Anyway, Master of Mourkain is pretty typical of the Old World.
Dark creatures hide in the shadows, away from the light of man, preying on the good folk of the Empire. This one follows a vampire who's been listening to something in a necromantic ziggurat at the heart of a city, something that has been sending him whispers of encouragement all this time, urging him on to take power and to turn the world into a paradise for the undead, if only he would come and claim it.
As you can guess, it won't play out as expected.

As with the best stories in Warhammer Fantasy, there's the sense of a mysterious and threatening world beyond the confines of what is depicted in the story. It's the feeling you get from reading a good sword and sorcery story. Adventure around every corner and dark monsters in the shadows, humanity living among the echoes of a forgotten, ruined past and deadly secrets and so on.

Pleasant little tale. I might pick up some more Warhammer Fantasy in a while.

For now I'd like to take a moment of silence for the Old World, dead now, murdered by corporate greed, divvied up and cast adrift into chaos, to be brought up again for whenever the time is opportune. Because nostalgia always sells.

Fuck you, Games Workshop.

The Blessing of Iron, 40k
By Anthony Reynolds. This is a space marine tale following an Iron Hands marine named Dolmech who is on a penal world to put down a prisoner uprising. We follow him as he singles out a worker for an unknown purpose. A worker that might be hunted by another party as well.

Mystery, intrigue and death in the shadows. Quite a lot of fun but because of my familiarity with the nightmare universe of 40k the ending was always a foregone conclusion.

The Memory of Flesh, 40k
By Matthew Farrer. This story actually fits neatly with The Blessing of Iron.
The writing style's a bit different and this fits too given the Iron Hands nature and how further down the path towards technologising himself Brother-Sergeant Dolmech has gone. These beings are not human anymore, and the writing felt suitably alien to me.
By the way: The only story in this collection actually about fighting aliens.

I liked how well the two stories work together. A darkly poetic full circle, too.

Perihelion,40k
The last tale is an Inquisition story by Dan Abnett.
Here, in the saga of Gregor Eisenhorn and Inquisitor Ravenor we are at the point after the events in the Ravenor Trilogy where these once allies and friends have come to meet each other again. The now radical Eisenhorn is labelled Diabolus threat Extremis and designated agent of Chaos and as such is actively hunted by the inquisition that he was once a part of.
Now, the title's 'perihelion' is the closest point of orbit of a celestial body around the whatever its orbital focus is around, generally this is a star. Here, Gregor is the celestial body orbiting the once vibrant star of his once close friend, the point of his focus, Gideon Ravenor.

The backdrop to the story is an inquisitorial symposium determined to curate an ancient library that's on the edge of being divided amongst several recipients.
In 40k just as anywhere else (smirk), old libraries have a tendency to attract dangerous esoteric lore and the gathering of inquisitors and their retinues have come to give their judgement.
But soon a bloodbath unfolds.
Abnett leaves you guessing as to who's who as the story unfolds, a restrained filtering in of information and backstory serving to keep the attention where he wants it. An excellent magician performing his tricks.

The story is a reminder that Abnett at his best, really is still one of the best. I'm hard-pressed to label Bowden or Abnett as the best writer in Black Library's stable. Their styles are different, but both are masters at what they do. With Abnett there's usually a remove though, a tendency to have a dampened emotional connection with the story. There's, after all, a reason Gregor's face is paralyzed or that the world of Tanith, is dead and gone. In the hostile universe of 40k emotional attachement is dangerous and we can only ever show the grim outside. The soldiers of Tanith are grim because of their loss, and their trauma is locked tight and deep. Gregor's facial paralysis serves the same purpose.

These things accomodate that barrier, the distance to an emotional catharsis. The characters are grim and filled with purpose, but their emotional pain is only ever hinted at. Abnett shows us the outside in the moments of inner upheaval, but never the true depth of it. It's a great trick and works quite well.
Bowden on the other hand, tends to imbue his characters with emotional melancholy and introspection that hammers home their sense of loss and self-knowledge (howsoever much they might lie to themselves).
I've mentioned before that his Night Lords are the most human space marines I've ever read and though I've been out of it for a while, the statement still holds true.

Ending
So, a good little primer of what you can expect from what Games Workshop puts out there.
I enjoyed going back to an old interest of mine and it reminds me that tie-in fiction isn't something to be sniffed at. I'll likely go back and read some more of it, one of these days.

Review: Carver Hale: Twisting the Knife

Been on the look out for this one a while and I lucked out on ebay the other day.
Read it pretty quick as it's a rather short little comic, give or take 50 pages.

Verdict:

Ehhhh, yeah it's alright.

From the mind of Mike Carey, creator of the Angelic/Demonic epic Lucifer, comes a tale of british gangster vengeance set in a world where demons scheme against one another, while riding shotgun in the bodies of humans.

The black and white art, by Mike Perkins and Dylan Teaugue, is not very good but there's little to comment on as nothing's really outright awful nor is there anything particularily awesome, apart from the two colour covers included at the back of the comic which are both in their own way, incredibly bad-ass.

The only instance in the entire book where
Carver's face tattoo doesn't look like a completely stupid idea.

The story itself is a pretty rote vengeance story (but not really).

Carver Hale is the right-hand man of a local big gangster. When 3 seemingly invulnerable goons walk through a hail of bullets and assassinate the big gangster's entire outfit, puttting an extra bullet in Hale's heart for good measure, it's revealed that the big gangster wasn't human at all, but a demonic spirit that was targeted by a rival demon. With the end of that gangster's body the demon spirits himself into the bullet in Carver's heart.
Hale is reanimated by the demon, forced to do its bidding and so begins a bloody tale of vengeance.

Again, it's not really bad. It's just a little unambitious.

There's glimpses of a larger world but its mythology is so sparsely hinted at that it never becomes  anywhere close to being interesting. There are several mentions of a war and some namedropping to various locations, Lucifer and demons. But the demonic spirits themselves look like someone took a swift glance at an hr Geiger picture and then tried to replicate it by memory.

The lady of the Thorns is an interesting character but very underused and mostly just inserted to appeal to the teenage boy audience. I'm not complaining, mind you.

Shades of Clive Barker. Lust and Disgust.

A typical british crime romp mixed with Keanu Reeves' Constantine. Though the guns in that one are definitely a lot cooler.

Not bad, but certainly not great; mediocre then.

Also; name-dropping Belgium. Points added or deducted?

Swords and Deviltry, Fritz Leiber (Centipede Press edition)

To tie in with the theme of the Discworld this week, here's something that arrived recently.

The first novel of the adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser; Swords and Deviltry in its new and very beautiful Centipede Press edition.

Fritz Leiber's creation is in large part responsible for Terry Pratchett's work. Ankh-Morpork is a direct parody/homage to the city where most of the adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser take place; Lankhmar.

The ties are most noticable in the first two published Pratchett novels; The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, (note the two adventurers exiting the city at the start of the series?) but following characters around in Ank-Morpork never fails to evoke memories of reading the adventures in Lankhmar.

Incidentally, the influence of Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar stretches far beyond Pratchett's Discworld.
Where Ankh-Morpork inhabits the shining rays of witty satire and cheerful humour cast by the sun of Lankhmar, Warhammer's cities of the Old World squatly brood in the shadows that it casts. Warhammer Fantasy: the dark and grim cousin to Discworld. Sort of.
The monstrous rat-infested sewers of the cities of the Empire, the steampunk colleges of Nuln and Altdorf, the warlike Talabheim and Middenheim, mercantile Marienburg or even haunted Mordheim; Lankhmar's shades are just everywhere.

Here's a bonus picture comparing Swords and Deviltry with the 'Masters of the Weird Tale: Fritz Leiber' cover, which is also done by artist Tom Kidd. 

Small note; I don't have the MoftWT book. The dustjacket was included with a previous order.
It's something that Jerad Walters does to extra protect his items. He likes to include excess publishing paraphernalia and small extras for people that order directly from the Centipede Press site in their shipments. Not that I'd actually call this small. This almost unheard of level of generousity is extremely pleasant and very much appreciated.

Embossed on the cover; Fafhrd and the Mouser 

Up next: the skullglass wasn't included. I just needed something that was able to hold down the page without creasing it, while I could show the book's contents.

Internal artwork also by Tom Kidd.

The book's contents include, besides the induction and the three short stories that make up the original contents of Swords and Deviltry, also introductions by Michael Moorcock and Fritz Leiber himself, three small pieces from Leiber's friend Harry Fischer, one detailing the origins of the two heroes, one in specificity the creation of the character of the Mouser and the last a short tale by Fischer, written in 1970, in response to that one's dissatisfaction with the origin story for the Mouser as it was laid out in The Unholy Grail by Leiber. It's worth noting that he lets his tale neatly dovetail into that one, thereby not clonflicting with the established canon of Leiber.
There are also 2 Gray Mouser poems and a lengthy interview with Fritz Leiber himself.

This post won't be a review of the Fantasy Masterwork that are the books of Lankhmar as I've read those particular books quite a while ago now and I'd be hard-pressed to remember much of them. To do a review of the 2 collections I'd have to do a re-read and I simply do not have time to do so.

I do remember that Swords and Deviltry and the earlier novels of Lankhmar were the best of the lot. And that the Snow Women, the first true story of Deviltry, is by its composition, concepts, imagination and dry wit, easily on its own, an unassailable masterwork of literature.
The pages just breathe frost and ice crystals just fly off the pages.

Here are some extra pictures with bonus hand (mine).