Knights & Knaves Alehouse

Gentlegamer wrote:I'm back in Houston, too.

Well Hell's Bells. We've got Texans crawling out of the woodwork! Someone organize a Texas Old School RPG Convention.

grodog wrote: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!

Surely you're familiar with the old Dragon article "From the City of Brass to Dead Orc Pass" (by Ed Greenwood, IIRC)?

northrundicandus wrote:

Gentlegamer wrote:I'm back in Houston, too.

Well Hell's Bells. We've got Texans crawling out of the woodwork! Someone organize a Texas Old School RPG Convention.

Can we hold it in Cross Plains?

Methinks Howard would approve.

Gentlegamer wrote:

grodog wrote: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!

Surely you're familiar with the old Dragon article "From the City of Brass to Dead Orc Pass" (by Ed Greenwood, IIRC)?

But of course

Just (well, last night) finished A. Merritt's Burn, Witch, Burn, which was just as good as all of his other stuff. It's not fantasy, but rather supernatural horror/mystery. Very short, very quick-reading (it took me three days, but I imagine many folks (including me in other circumstances) could read through it in a single sitting). The 1936 movie The Devil Doll (which I haven't seen) is apparently based on this book, but it must be pretty loosely based since none of the character-names in the cast list match the book and neither does the synopsis ("ex-con seeks revenge on those who framed him" ). There is now only one A. Merritt novel (Creep, Shadow, Creep - also a horror, rather than fantasy, novel) plus a book of short stories (The Fox Woman and Other Stories) and an unfinished novel that was completed by a different author (The Black Wheel, with Hannes Bok) that I have yet to read.

Just finished Vance's Rhialto the Marvellous a couple days ago. I've know moved on to T.H. White's The Ill-Made Knight (the third book of the Once and Future King series, and the last to be published individually).

After that, I'm resolved to plow through Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita and Peake's Titus Groan, two books that I've begun but never finished, as well as finishing up Once and Future King (Candle in the Wind only, probably won't get into the posthumous Book of Merlyn).

Probably a good idea, the Book of Merlyn blows goats. For one thing, a lot of the content was cut and pasted into the first book so it's largely content you've already read, and for another, even characters like the amazing socialist badger fail to relieve the turgid pages of monotonous moralising...

rogatny wrote:After that, I'm resolved to plow through Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita and Peake's Titus Groan, two books that I've begun but never finished, as well as finishing up Once and Future King (Candle in the Wind only, probably won't get into the posthumous Book of Merlyn).

You may want to read parts of Titus Groan outloud. At least the signature character descriptions. It's a thick book but Peake reads like a post-Victorian Charles Dicken. Take your time, read it in chunks, and have fun! Hopefully you have a version that uses Peake's own illustrations, they really help set the tone. There is a good audiobook version if that helps.

I've tried to read Once and Future King 2 or 3 times but keep getting stuck before it ever got going anywhere. I've heard that earlier editions didn't have the Sword & the Stone material (?) and it sounds like I need to hunt down an earlier version.

Currently reading Vathek, but it's been a busy week so haven't gotten far.

Casey777 wrote:Currently reading Vathek, but it's been a busy week so haven't gotten far.

Oooh, how's that going Casey? I haven't read it yet, but picked up a copy a few years ago.

Casey777 wrote:I've tried to read Once and Future King 2 or 3 times but keep getting stuck before it ever got going anywhere. I've heard that earlier editions didn't have the Sword & the Stone material (?) and it sounds like I need to hunt down an earlier version.

Or you can always just skip Sword in the Stone.

I could never get into Once and Future King. I got past Stone, but I just didn't care afterwards.

I just started reading "The Maze of Peril," by John Eric Holmes. I plan to post a review when I'm done and have time.

Finally finished HP7 tonight. It'll take a couple days' persepctive before I'm able to come to a solid conclusion about how well I liked it. This absolutely has some of the best scenes in the book -- there are more thrilling action/suspense sequences in the first 3/4 of this book than the entire rest of the series combined -- but I found the ending awkward and things didn't come together nearly as well as I'd hoped/expected they would -- except for chapters 33 and 34 I thought pretty much everything from chapter 31 on was a big letdown, and it casts a pall over the entire book (and even, to an extent, the entire series). I suspect I'm going to end up ranking this below Books 4 & 6 (both of which I very much enjoyed), but ahead of Book 5 (which IMO was vastly bloated and overlong and pretty much a complete mess, with only 2 good scenes - chapters 29 and 34-35). Books 1-3 were so different in tone and style from the later ones that it seems almost impossible to compare them.

Comparing the two series a whole, I think His Dark Materials was both better written and had much more depth (even though, as discussed earlier in this thread, I don't agree with its core philosophical thesis -- at least it had one) and is almost certainly the superior artistic achievement, but it wasn't as much "fun" (funny names, comic relief characters and scenes) which is why it didn't catch on with the same sort of mass-popularity, I suppose.

T. Foster wrote:Finally finished HP7 tonight. It'll take a couple days' persepctive before I'm able to come to a solid conclusion about how well I liked it.

Allright, how long until someone thinks you mean the seventh Harry Potter book and responds accordingly.

T. Foster wrote:Just (well, last night) finished A. Merritt's Burn, Witch, Burn, which was <snip>.

I just picked up the commemorative edition of The Moon Pool with an introduction by Robert Silverberg. Is this one of Merritt's finer works in your opinion?

--Jeff T.