Bloodborne: The Veil, Torn Asunder

Bloodborne: The Veil, Torn Asunder is the fourth and (for now) final volume of the Bloodborne comic series. And it's a pretty damn good one, but just like the previous volume, A Song of Crows, it doesn't stand well on its own. The Veil, Torn Asunder actually goes a step further than Eileen the Crow's outing and requires the reader to be familiar with not just the Bloodborne universe but also every Bloodborne comic that precedes it. And even then, with all that, and even if you're well-versed in the available lore, you're still going to have to delve quite a bit in order to figure out what is actually going on here.

A man walks the streets of the city of Yharnam, haunted by a singular moment in his past, a moment where the veil of reality itself tore apart, and where it seemed as if something monstrous stared back through the breach. Convinced that what he saw was real, the man resolves to understand the truth of the shapeless form that once met his gaze, and while the Blood Moon rises he relinquishes his hold on reality in a desperate bid for the truth.

But in this nightmare world, too much truth can very well drive one insane. 

Under the guise of one man's search for the ultimate truth of his world, writer Ales Kot delivers a story that is ostensibly somewhat lacking in plot, but that nonetheless satisfies as it delivers some awesome gothic horror-artwork and an intriguing mystery hidden behind an experimental meta-narrative.

I really quite enjoyed this one, but it was an enjoyment borne rather from trying to figure out what the story was actually doing when the read was over than any kind of immediate gratification during the read itself. Awesome art is great to look at, but if the cohesion and natural progression of the story they depict between them is missing, when you don't know what the hell is actually happening, then the story can be as well thought out as can be, it'll be very hard to give it its due. And this is where that figuring-out comes in, because it is pretty hard to grasp The Veil, Torn Asunder unless one has a lot of knowledge of the things Ales Kot brings into this story.

Which is why I'm going to go into exquisite detail in the next post.

Print-on-Demand Warhammer Collection Completed

 After years and years of looking out for this one I finally, with the help of a friend, was able to add The Incomplete Zavant Konniger to my shelves.

When the Black Library released the Incomplete Zavant in their Print on Demand range back in 2008 I held off on buying it for a while, foolishly believing that Print-on-Demand meant -Print on Demand- and that I could pick up a copy whenever I wished. Besides, I had already read the novel, and all this edition did was add a single extra short story to the package so I figured there was no real need and no rush to make quick work of obtaining it. I did want it though. I mean, look at that cover and tell me you don't think it looks fine as hell.

So when I eventually tried to get the novel I was rather annoyed to find that the book had gone out of print, out of stock and that it wouldn't be reprinted any time soon.

Because of course.

Anyway, I've got it now, and I read that short story I hadn't read before, and as expected it was a fun one. The Case of the Scarlet Cell, or the Reikerbahn Butcher follows Zavant and Vido as they track down a brutal killer in the streets of Altdorf.

I don't have much more to say because even though it is a fun tale, there's not much more to it. There's not really a mystery to solve, as all the clues, and pretty much the answer to the whole thing ends up being practically tossed into Zavant's lap on page 2. Good crime fiction this isn't. But what it is is enjoyable, good, enjoyable Old Warhammer fiction. Back from the days where the setting didn't take itself too serious and where everything felt much more adventurous.

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As a bonus here's the completed collection.

I've read all of these, barring Marks of Chaos and the Fleischer omnibus.

I'm actually looking forward to reading the first as I've only recently learned that the novel uses Valten, the supposed reincarnation of Sigmar, in its story. I was a big fan of the character and I would avidly read the battle reports in the White Dwarf issue that introduced him, so knowing that Marks of Chaos might be the one to actually focus on him, even if it's just a little bit, I have to say, it makes me rather eager to dive back into the Old World.

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For Chris.

The Hedge Knight

God damn, this one is good.

If you haven't already, go pick this one up.
And I'm saying that as someone who was completely disillusioned with Martin's world after how Game of Thrones ended. I didn't have any interest in reading any of Martin's other work, Ice and Fire or otherwise, but after deciding to give this one a go, still having it lying around in the shadows, drowning in dust, I'm again firmly of the opinion that Martin's writing is just simply stellar and that when he finally finishes the Song of Ice And Fire saga, it will easily wash away the bad taste of HBO's Game of Thrones.

But that's besides the point. The Knight of the Seven Realms trilogy of novellas, of which the Hedge Knight is but the first, take place a hundred years before the events of A song of Ice and Fire and though the story obviously takes place around certain very recognizable names and places, the stories themselves stand perfectly well on their own.

And even with the caveat that Martin still has story developments for Dunk and Egg planned, and that he'd like to get to them eventually, and that likely the story might end in a way that will be terrible for some of the characters, the Hedge Knight is still a story very much worth picking up.
And I gather that the other novellas, and their respective comic adaptations, continue that trend.

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Yes, obviously I know that this comic, The Sworn Sword and The Mystery Knight are adapted from the Dunk and Egg novellas, but it's a different format, and so, just as comics might not be an acceptable medium for some, so might prose novels not be for others. Everyone can have their pick, and for me, right now, for a variety of reasons, of which time and a limited attention span are just two, this comic adaptation is my pick.

Boy, that's some disclaimer. Super defensive and everything. You'd think somebody said something, but really, nobody did.

The Colonel's Monograph, Graham McNeill

Boy, I think I might've left this too long. It's been over a month now since I read this one, and though this seems to have been a bit beneficial for my opinions on it, I confess I can't remember much on the particulars of it. Maybe that's for the best, because what I do remember is that I was quite annoyed when I finished the story.

Recently widowed archivist Teresina Sullo has been invited to catalogue the personal library of one of the heroes of the imperium, the late colonel Elena Grayloc, the valiant commander who led the only surviving Astra Militarum regiment out of the madness of the infamous Dark Suns campaign.

She travels to Grayloc manor, where she is aided by those left behind after the colonel's apparent suicide. But it swiftly becomes clear that there is a mystery at work in Graylock Manor and darkness and danger besides. Gripped by the deepening mystery of the colonel's past Teresina follows up on the mad ramblings of the last archivist to work at Graylock manor, and she fervently begins to search for the tome that is rumoured to hold all the answers she seeks: the colonal's secret Monograph.

The main problem I had with the Colonel's Monograph is that it is the first of all of the Warhammer Horror stories, both the novels, the short stories, and the middling length fiction I've read so far, that seems to validate the arguments directly against a Warhammer Horror label, the idea that these stories wouldn't differ so much from the rest of the Warhammer fiction, and that there was no real warrant for a special Warhammer Horror branch.

It's not so much that the story isn't horrific, but rather that it feels terribly run of the mill. It is a story that pretty much goes exactly the way you expect it to go. The kind of story that I believed would inevitably be put out in this range; "Warhammer but specifically Horror!".
The Colonel's Monograph is the kind of hack writing that seems to validate general reader opinion that all that Warhammer fiction is is this kind of derivative throw-away fiction , filled with sensationalist elements, that is written specifically to cater to a juvinile and immature audience that hasn't read all that widely.

I'm being unduly harsh, but it's also pretty much the way I do see it.

There's a place for this fiction, and I frequently do enjoy it, but it would be nice if we could just get better.

Derivative is underlined above because it's my main problem with the story. Maybe it's just that it adheres so much to classic horror and gothic fiction, in such a way that it feels less like a pastiche and more just of a straight up copy of what's come before. Sure, the elements are 40k, but pretty much nothing else is original.

I have read some reviews of this one on Goodreads and apparently this is precisely what the audience wants: It wants those tropes and familiar situations, but just set in the Warhammer settings, and all I can do is shake my head in annoyance.

Another problem, one with 40k fiction, Warhammer fiction/ lore, in general, is that there is so little that is mysterious and will continue to remain mysterious. These are massive universes, that have articles, lore books, game rules and what-have-you dedicated to conveying as much information as possible, and of which more are put out every so often, and, as a result, everything that is being written is required to adhere to certain rules. Originality does not thrive here, and so horror as well can not really thrive. There's always a usual suspect, there's always a name that'll dispel whatever tension has been built up...
Whatever evil is afoot in the Warhammer Universe, whatever phenomena, whatever terrible and mysterious thing there might be crawling in the shadows, needs to fit in a familiar mold.
And there's already some definite precedent for the evil in the Colonel's Monograph.

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Honestly. it's really not that bad. I actually was going to write something way more positive, but I think I just wanted to vent a bit about the nature of Warhammer in General.
Sometimes I get too serious about the dumbest things.

Death Stranding

Done, You Bastard.

I both Loved and Absolutely Hated this thing. And I really hope Kojima gets reined in somewhat in future games; because despite of how many hours I spent on it, despite of how awesome some stuff was, despite how intricate the world and lore was, how correct the mechanics were implemented... There was also too much frustration to make this game anything but an annoying memory.

Got the platinum though.

Let me show you exactly what I mean when I say this game is frustrating.

In this mission you have to carry someone on your back from one part of the map to the other.

There's a lot of stress here, and in this particular clip I had just gotten through an area where some enemies had attacked me. I was just trying to get to an area that was far enough away for me to save my game.

Though I laughed out loud at the time, the situation wasn't so funny that I didn't have to re-load an earlier save to undo the damage. There were a lot of times where there was no fun to the fucking-up at all.

But then, as annoying as the game is, I also remember talking to my sister about the story and various events in the game, and what I was describing didn't come across as anything less than spectacularly awesome.

And it is, it really is, Death Stranding is pretty awesome.

But. Even keeping scenes like the above in mind: I hope there won't be another game like it.

Because the 'game' aspect of Death Stranding was the most annoying thing I've played in years.

Great story, awesome moments, okay soundtrack, jaw-dropping perfomances, but My God, such annoying, frustrating, scream-out-loud gameplay: this is Death Stranding in a nutshell.

And Kojima wants to do a game about Artificial Intelligence next?

Oh God.

2020 Reading Goals

For 2020 I have another list of reading goals even though I wasn't able to cross off all the books I wanted to read in 2019. I don't consider that a failure as I did actually manage to finish off many of the smaller novels I had been planning to read and a whole bunch of others besides, and in fact, the only one on my list I didn't get around to finishing, the big one, ended up being, despite only barely having reached the halfway point, one of my favourite reads of the last few years.

You see, back in November I realized I very much enjoyed reading Infinite Jest and I felt I would be doing both it and myself a major disservice if I just forced myself to finish it within the set time frame, which is why I let it slip a bit, mostly in order to let the read settle. There were other complications too but those have been ... dealt with... *eyes the Death Stranding case meaningfully*.

With that in mind, I should say that even though Infinite Jest will remain the big reading project for 2020 it'll probably be done quite a bit before the end of the year, barring any major mishaps.

Other than that, there's a few other things I absolutely want done this year:

I want to keep up with the Warhammer Horror books as they come out, and I'm already behind a bit with those. Someone else still has a Horror Audio Drama of mine so I'm waiting 'till that returns to me to plunge into that. When I get it back, I'll continue reading/ listening and reviewing. Though I have a few thoughts still lying around on the Colonel's Monograph, so I'll be posting those soon.

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I'd like to continue, and finish, my Paradise Lost read + the accompanying posts.
I'm a bit scared of this one, because I'm not good at all with protracted projects, but this is one I should really finish off. Because, you know, as a lover of eschatological fiction and all, it's pretty bad that I still haven't finished off the granddaddy of all Devil tales.
I remember loving the work on the accompanying blog posts for each book, and it would be nice to have that continue.

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I'm also going to finish reading the Aspect Emperor cycle, as I'm pretty sure I'm gonna get spoiled if I leave it much longer. I'm not sure at all if I'm going to review these, as the blog's already full of my thoughts and observations on the series. But if something comes up that interests me I'll undoubtedly write about it. There's some interesting bits where the Judging Eye and The White Luck Warrior show some clear influences from Blood Meridian and I definitely had something I wanted to say about that (all positive of course).
I've read the first two, but have avoided all spoilers on The Great Ordeal and the Unholy Consult.
It's also way past time to plunge back into depravity.

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Begin reading and/or, depending on how engaged I am, finish Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, hopefully before the promotional material for the Television series starts appearing, but that's a foolish notion, I'm guessing.

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Read at least the first 4 novels of the Michael Moorcock collection, and begin posting my Moorcock Library posts, of which some have been done for years (and boy, will it be nice to get those out of the drafts-section), and review the 3d and 4th of these as Fantasy Masterworks.

Half of the Von Bek novel will be a re-read, but the rest is all new. I did also read 2 of the Elric novels at that time and there was a bunch that I then wrote for the blog, but for some reason I never actually posted that. I'll have to see where I'll post that, but it'll probably be my "Introduction to the MMC" first, then "Elric1", then "Elric 2" and then "Von Bek".

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Read C S Friedman's Coldfire trilogy. This one's been on my shelves way too long as it is.

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Also, because I was busy with it at the end of 2019: Finish reading the last book in the Terror 8 series,  The Tooth Fairy, and finish reading the Dragon Waiting and give it a Fantasy Masterwork review.

That last one had been taking a while because it's quite a dense book that requires one to have a lot of knowledge on things historical and a host of smaller elements besides. It's been quite a challenge to understand and interpret a lot of what the book is doing.
A few minutes ago I actually finished the story, and I feel myself not up to the task of even giving the thing a regular review. I'll just let it settle for a week or so, read the accompanying Draco Concordans to make as much sense of it as possible and then begin setting down my thoughts.

There's a lot more I want to do this year, but these are the ones that I feel have priority, either because they've been on my mind, or shelves, so long, or because they're about to be adapted into some form of media or other.
I find that if I plan too much, I tend to get disheartened, so by keeping my must-reads relatively few, I leave myself some room so I can toss in a random interesting book every once in a while.

The 2019 Done and Dusted Pile, and a little update

Behold, the books that I read in 2019.

It's a more than respectable heap of books, given the dumpster fire of a year I've had. Much of my frame of mind of the past 12 months is reflected in the abundance of horror novels and works of a particularly nihilistic focus; The Vastarien Magazines in particular

but I've also actually managed to cross off a few books that I've been meaning to get to for a while. Titles that any reader and lover of fiction will undoubtedly have heard of; The old Man and the Sea, Beowulf, The Stars my Destination, The Turning of the Screw, Slaughterhouse 5, Roadside Picnic, The Art of War and The Crying of Lot 49.

Also, titles that have gotten used to staring at me in silent, unwinking judgment have also been dealt with; Exquisite Corpse, Lois the Witch, The Spook House, The Grimscribe's Puppets, The Haunted Doll's House, DarkWar and Winter's Dreams, Eldritch Tales, The Green Mile; these have been on my to-be-read shelves for literal years and I'm super happy that I can place them on the big shelves now, out of the dark into the light.

I've also read a bunch of short stories, and though in most cases I finished off the collections I began, there were a few that I didn't quite conclude with. They'll probably be read this year.

I won't do a top 5 of books of 2019 as the blogging is on a bit of a backburn for the moment, as I'm very much going through a season of gaming right now.

Before I began the blog I used to have these 'seasons' where I would obsessively devote all my free time to one specific hobby for a number of months before tiring of it abruptly and switching to another. From gaming to reading to Warhammer to Watching movies and so on. For the past few months I have been gaming more and more, starting from the Witcher 3, to Dead Rising 4, to rogue-lites, to Death Stranding, and now, for the moment Code Vein, which is kinda shit just FYI but nonetheless addictive, and so, reading has definitely become more and more sidelined in favour of obstinate escapism.

It also doesn't help that my book of choice at the moment just happens to be an unexpectedly difficult challenge. I knew The Dragon Waiting was going to be a tough nut to crack, but I didn't quite expect to have such a difficult time engaging with it.

The story requires one to be quite familiar with history, for one, which I really am not but which isn't a problem, but which secondly, and more importantly, requires one to be amazingly intuitive pretty much all of the time. Logically, politically, emotionally, and for the time being this seems to be a little out of my reach, even though it hasn't been like this for me before. I'm honestly wondering if I've been struck stupid in the past year.

Anyway, I'll post more regularly from now on, even if it's occasionally just going to have to be some incoherent trivial nonsense. We'll see how it goes, but for now I'll leave you with a reasonably blurry picture of my bookshelves, where I put all the regular non-Warhammer books that I have read and still own.

It's a bit of a dick move finally posting a picture of my main bookshelves with a less than stellar camera. At this point, I should just buy a new phone, but I'd honestly rather spend the money on some more books :p