Knights & Knaves Alehouse

Stik wrote:China Mieville's Perdido Street Station.
I'm about a hundred pages in, and it's very good so far. Very quirky and unusual, not your typical fantasy novel.

I finished this while on vacation last week. I found it generally excellent, but I think the editor could have axed 100 pages or so out of it. Alas it seems to me that when authors become famous they start thinking that editors are too quick to cut stuff out, when truly those excisions would have made a better book! I really enjoyed the Slake-moths though, and I plan on statting them out for AD&D and Call of Cthulhu/Stormbringer. They'd probably work quite well in Gamma World too! I found those parts of the book very Lovecraftian. Other parts of work reminded me of HPL's Dreamlands.

I also want to thank PapersAndPaychecks for mentioning China Miéville a few posts back. I'd seen Miéville's books before, but never bothered to check out what he's written. He seems to have that incredibly creative spark that Michael Moorcock possessed 'back in the day', by taking elements that have become passé in fantastic fiction and igniting them again into a burning beacon of ingenuity!

P.S. He's also evidently played a lot of D&D. The book has references to adventurers on the hunt for gold and experience.

Mordenkainen wrote:I'd love to get my mits on the Elric stuff, but it's hard to find.

Have you tried used bookshops? I see copies of the Elric stuff at my local Half-Price Bookstore all the time.

northrundicandus wrote:

Mordenkainen wrote:I'd love to get my mits on the Elric stuff, but it's hard to find.

Have you tried used bookshops? I see copies of the Elric stuff at my local Half-Price Bookstore all the time.

I was lucky enough to find the 6 books (complete set) at a used book store recently. I've read the first and it's not much to my taste but Moorcock does have interesting ideas here & there.

Just finished "The Bloody Crown of Conan" TPB (containing "People of the Black Circle," "Hour of the Dragon," and "A Witch Shall Be Born.")

Now on to "Nifft the Lean."

Was reading Magician: Apprentice (again.... kind of on-off with that one), but lost interest in favor of Jack McKinney's Robotech novelizations, of which I'm almost done with the 1st generation.

Also been reading Transit to Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers again. An underdog of fantasy if there ever was one. Sort of Conan-ish in a few ways without feeling like a rip-off.

Recently finished The Hand of Kane, a collection of 4 Solomon Kane stories/novellas by REH. Two of them ("The Hills of the Dead" and especially "Wings in the Night") were absolutely terrific, as good as all but the best of the Conan stories; the other two ("Hawk of Bashti" and "The Children of Asshur") are fragments -- unlike with the Conan fragments, these weren't finished off by posthumous collaborators, they just end mid-story, which is a mixed blessing (it's good not to have Howard's prose adulterated by inferior collaborators, but it's frustrating that the stories just stop with no closure). I assume all of these stories (as well as those from the other two Kane books I have -- The Moon of Skulls (which I've read) and Solomon Kane (which I haven't)) are included in the recent Del Rey omnibus edition. Good stuff, makes me want to read even more Howard.

northrundicandus wrote:

Mordenkainen wrote:I'd love to get my mits on the Elric stuff, but it's hard to find.

Have you tried used bookshops? I see copies of the Elric stuff at my local Half-Price Bookstore all the time.

I reiterate that the major downside of having North move to Houston has been that there's another old-schooler prowling the exact same Half Price Books. There's a load of the 2e spell compendiums and two Van Richtens Monster Hunter Guides there, BTW. $13 each.

After about a year of not being able to really get into any fiction, I've been on a spree lately. I just finished T.H. White's Sword in the Stone and am now about a third of the way through Bellairs' Face in the Frost.

My reading plan after that is as follows:

1. White's Queen of Air and Darkness (a/k/a Witch in the Wood)
2. Vance's Rhialto the Marvelous (which I've begun reading a number of times, but never finished)
3. White's The Ill-Made Knight
4. Peake's Titus Groan (which I've also begun a number of times, but never finished)
5. White's Candle in the Wind

When I'm done with that, I'll start a new list, which in all likelihood will include Shelly's Frankenstien, Haggard's She, Vance's Dragon Masters, and Fowles' The Magus.

northrundicandus wrote:

Mordenkainen wrote:I'd love to get my mits on the Elric stuff, but it's hard to find.

Have you tried used bookshops? I see copies of the Elric stuff at my local Half-Price Bookstore all the time.

Sadly, there are no bookstores in this part of the country.
The nearest one is about 2 hrs away, and it is not a hobby bookstore that carries pen-n-paper RPG books, AFAIK. I get my books thru Amazon, or in PDF from Drivethru or RPGnow.

This is not a very literate location, and I suspect that books are regarded with either suspicion or outright dread by the natives, such that running a bookstore turns no profit. Thus, no bookstores here. I keep the fact that I read very secret, otherwise I may be lynched by a mob of angry peasants with torches and pitchforks!

I'm taking a break from re-reading Fafhrd and The Mouser stories to read CAS's Tales of Hyperborea courtesy of Necronomicon Press. They're very entertaining mythos stories in a fantasy setting. A late-comer to Smith, I am enjoying the hell out his writings.

northrundicandus wrote:I also want to thank PapersAndPaychecks for mentioning China Miéville a few posts back...

Oh sure, I've been pimping Mieville for years, but no one picks it up until P&P says so.

The Scar and Perdido Street Station are the best of his works that I've read. Looking for Jake, his short stories collection, is somewhat uneven (and I haven't finished it yet... I still have to read the last story). Iron Council is a notch below his other two Bas Lag novels, but I'd still say anyone who read the Scar and PSS will probably want to pick it up. I've not read King Rat or his newest book, a young adults' fantasy book, the name of which I've forgotten.

Next on my hitlist, recommended by a friend and fellow gamer, is Gotrek & Felix the first omnibus.

Ancalagon wrote:Next on my hitlist, recommended by a friend and fellow gamer, is Gotrek & Felix the first omnibus.

You won't be disappointed, I think. It gets a two thumbs up from me, too.

Mythmere wrote: I reiterate that the major downside of having North move to Houston has been that there's another old-schooler prowling the exact same Half Price Books. There's a load of the 2e spell compendiums and two Van Richtens Monster Hunter Guides there, BTW. $13 each.

I'm back in Houston, too.

I'm reading Farmer's last World of Tiers novel, More Than Fire (I found a paperback in a Philly bookstore for a few dollars on my trip over Memorial Day week), and really enjoying it. I have been giving a lot of thought to gates and their uses in my up-coming Maure Castle campaign, and it's filled with inspiration for such!