Books in February 2023

 

Reading Track

February 2023 saw me read 10 books with a total of 1,932 pages. 3 novels, 1 graphic novel and 6 roleplaying books. I managed to read every day again. So that's 17 books in the first two months of the year.

The novels included a re-read of The Silmarillion (which has been by audiobook over January and February), the first of First Age's reading challenges. This was a delightful re-read of a favourite; the audio book brought out aspects of the story that my natural reading style doesn't, and also embarrassed me about nearly four decades of mispronunciations with certain characters! I also read the first book in Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy (again thanks to First Age's February challenge) and enjoyed it a lot more than I expected. I also returned to an SF favourite (Neal Asher, the David Gemmell of SF for me), with a new standalone novel, Weaponized. There a subtle hints on how it is a prequel to some already published books that are later in the Polity Timeline. I enjoyed all the books for different reasons so there's not really a standout this month.

The graphic novel was the sequel to the Blade Runner - Black Lotus anime, which was enjoyable, but not really earth shattering. However, it's lore to draw upon with the roleplaying game.

I read Godbound, the demi-god level roleplaying game by Kevin Crawford with was excellent. I do find his writing hard going; there's a lot of text and I think I'll definitely need to go through this again and make notes if I want to run it (which I do). The MÖRK BORG supplements Heretic and Feretory were great additions and both of Chris Bissette's scenarios for the same (Treasures of the Troll King and Into the Bluelight) were excellent and I can imagine getting them to the table.

I didn't really connect with Lukas Rolim's Pacts and Blades, a Moorcockian flavour micro-roleplaying game. It didn't really work for me; I've passed it on to First Age to see if he gets some more from it.

Overall, a good month for reading.

Overview here - https://app.thestorygraph.com/books-read/cybergoths?month=2&year=2023

4 March 2023