Books in August 2025

August 2025 saw me read another eight books and 2,234 pages. For reference, this was one book and some 700 pages less than last year, but the data is a little inaccurate as I've actually read a raft of shorter 'In Nomine' supplements in PDF that I didn't bother recording.

So far this year, I've read 78 books and 19,886 pages. I am ahead on numbers of books read.

The mix this month included two roleplaying games, a short story collection and a single non-fiction audiobook. That was Borderlines by Lewis Baston, which was an enjoyable journey through the borders of Europe, illustrating how the interior of the continent has shifted around and the impacts of border changes. 

The roleplaying games were both ones that I hope to run soon - In Nomine and Coriolis: The Great Dark. 

In Nomine gives players the chance to be angels or demons, fighting the battle between heaven and hell on Earth. I will be running this at Furnace in October. I last played this some time back in the late nineties when it first came out, in an excellent game run by Ric based around the Northern Ireland peace process. 

The Coriolis book is the sequel to the previous edition of the game; rather than rebuild the setting (after the three campaign books comprehensively trashed things and put everything up in the air), Fria Ligan decided to follow the story of a refugee/explorer fleet that set out beyond the Third Horizon, hopefully following the course of the Nadir, a lost colony ship. However, when they get to their destination, they find many problems; the setting is one of exploration, dungeoneering (almost) and factional conflict. It's much more slickly done and presented than Coriolis: The Third Horizon, but I still love the original setting. However, I hope to run the campaign set once it's available properly in the new year and I'm looking forward to a game with a very different feel.

The collection of shorts was the latest edition of Clarkesworld Magazine (#227). I've had a subscription for quite some time but rarely read them properly, so I'm trying to get better at that. 

We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker is a twisty tale of small town drama, in which a criminal is released back into the community and not well received. Things escalate, and we follow the chaos that ensues, turning everyone's life upside down. Recommended.

The Hungry Gods by Adrian Tchaikovsky sees several tech entrepreneurs returning to Earth after many years on Mars and beyond, assuming the population has been wiped out with climate change and collapse. However, the survivors have been more tenacious than expected, and become involved in the very real struggle between the three returnees and their very different visions of what the world should be like. These visions don't really involve the survivors, who are an inconvenience. There are hints that the fate of their ventures may not have been as good as they like to make out. I did enjoy this a lot, but I preferred his previous book Bee Speaker, which I read back in June 2025, which has similar themes.

Ben Aaronovitch's Amongst our Weapons is the latest Rivers of London book. This returns back to the main character, Peter Grant, who is about to become a father. He faces some terrifying experiences, including the North of the UK! I really enjoyed this and the pages slipped past effortlessly.

The final book that I read was Richard Adams' classic Watership Down. I read this on a nostalgia trip while on holiday. As a child, my parents used to take us to Devon or Cornwall, and I'd have a pile of books to read (indeed, finding the space to stash them was a key part of holiday packing for the car), and this book was usually there (along with Andre Norton's Solar Queen, some of Rosemary Sutcliff's Eagle of the Ninth books, and others like Sir Arthur C Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama). Anyway, I decided to read it again, and was reminded just how well written it is. Delightful.

Overall, a decent month. It will be interesting to see how September will go, as I'm travelling for work a fair bit, but also have convention preparation to do.

1 September 2025

Books in July 2025

July was a quiet month for reading for me. Lots going on with work and some time spent on writing projects that nearly made me miss my ' read every day' objective.

I read five books, for a total of 1,788 pages. That brings me to 70 books and 17,627 pages for the year. This month I read two non-fiction books, one roleplaying book and two novels.

The non-fiction books were The CIA Book Club by Charlie English and Liftoff by Eric Berger. The former was a fascinating tale of how the CIA funded and helped organise the sharing and sale of literature that was banned in the communist block. The story is focused on Poland, explaining how vital the sharing of literature and ideas was to Solidarity's success. 

Liftoff was a gripping tale of how SpaceX transitioned into becoming the leading provider of rocket launches. It was gripping, tense, and reminded me of why I respected Musk's drive (although I really dislike his management approach and values) and the achievements that were made. Unfortunately, that's all tainted by his foray into politics. However, this book captures the feel of a start-up business really well.

The roleplaying book was Tales of the Old West, which is the first historical take on a Western based roleplaying game. It uses Fria Ligan's Year Zero Engine and is really nicely written. I hope to run this at Furnace in October. Having run and played YZE games before, this looks like a great one.

I revisited the past this month with Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave. This is her Romano-British Arthurian Merlin trilogy's first book. It has a special place in my heart as my Grandmother introduced me to it and I have read it multiple times. This was a return after more than a decade, and it was as wonderful as ever. I recommend this series if you fancy something Arthurian but a bit different. The series definitely influenced the way that I ran the Pendragon roleplaying game in the past.

Finally, I read Paul Vidich's The Poet's Game, a modern day spy story set mostly in Russia and the US. A former spy finds that he cannot escape his past as he's asked to help make contact with a former asset by the CIA. I found this a bit of a page turner, and look forward to the next book from the author.

I'm on holiday in August so the reading rate may accelerate again.

3 August 2025

Longplay is now available on the Mac

One of my favourite iOS apps, Longplay, is now available on macOS, either directly from the publisher or via the Mac App Store. I originally posted about the iPhone version back in January 2021.

TL;DR: One of my favourite iOS apps is now available on macOS. This presents your digital music albums as wall of covers. It's very configurable so you can go all High Fidelity and choose your own sorting scheme.

It's a very simple concept; it just shows the album covers of the music that you have. You select an album and it plays the whole thing. 

The image above shows you everything that you need to know, and will probably give you a good flavour on the albums I've played a lot (at least since I got this MacBook Pro).

You can nuance that. For example, I usually sort the albums in priority of addiction and have the size increase the more plays that the album has had. You could reverse that and do it by how much you've neglected the album.

You can also have the player controls only start or stop the album, or allow access to move forward and back amongst the apps.

I love the app because it reminds me of browsing through my old CD collection. You can see the images and get reminded of albums that you used to love, or that you meant to give another go. You can do this with the Music app, but it's nowhere near as delightful.

It looks like the publisher has a trial version on their website, if this sounds like something you'd like.

19 July 2025

Returning to 'The Crystal Cave' thanks to a new edition of Pendragon

I mostly read new books these days; rarely do I revisit favourites as often as I'd like to, but over the last week I've been diving back into Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy (which is actually six books if you include the three extras that she subsequently wrote). These were published in the early 1970s originally, and take a post-Roman view on the Arthurian legend. The original trilogy focuses on the magician Merlin, and tells the story from his perspective, starting from his boyhood.

I was originally introduced to the series by my paternal Grandmother, who absolutely loved them and lent me her set of books to read, telling me that she thought that I would enjoy them. She was correct about that and the stories became firm favourites. 

My Grandmother also bought me the first edition of the Pendragon roleplaying game from Chaosium, which I ran as a lunch time campaign at our school roleplaying club. My take was far more Roman in flavour than Greg Stafford's more traditional La Morte d'Arthur approach, but it works just as well with the slight refocus.

I was prompted to re-read the book after I picked up a copy of the core books for the new edition of Pendragon (which on an initial skim looks like it could be the best since the original for inspiration). It set my mind wandering back to the old campaign we had and Mary Stewart's books.  I can't help but smile and think of my Grandmother (OG, or Other Grandma, as she was known) who - although she rarely saw me - knew me enough to share a fantastic set of books. 

This isn't the only set of books I've started to dig back into; recently I also read the first of Michael Scott Rohan's Winter of the World Series, and I plan to return to that as well. I also need to pick up the Iain M. Banks reread at some point, and I suspect that the AppleTV+ adaptation of Neuromancer will see me revisiting William Gibson's Sprawl. 

Obviously, I really recommend the Merlin Trilogy. I also recommend checking out the third of Rosemary Sutcliff's Eagle of the Ninth related books, The Lantern Bearers, which also has a great more Roman flavoured take on the Arthurian legend. 

From a non-fiction perspective, Lost Realms by Thomas Williams is worth a look, as it tries to explore the history of the realms that sprung up after the Romans withdrew and the economy collapsed; there is a fantastic description on the impact on Lincoln, with the city becoming a shadow of its former self. Fantastic in the sense that it was inspirational for ideas for gaming.

13 July 2025

Books in June 2025

June saw me read eight books, and only a single roleplaying game. This brings me to 65 for the year, so ahead of target for the book a week I set myself as an objective. Page count was at 2,663 with a year-to-date total of 16,008.

Only a single non-fiction in June, Timothy Snyder's On Freedom, which I recommend as a follow on to his warning about fascism, On Tyranny. Written before the present US administration, this was a warning that sadly wasn't listened to. 

The roleplaying book I read was the first book of Invisible Sun, The Key. I found it intriguing, but hard work. Then again, every Cypher System game I have read has been a slog in the character generation system. There's enough here to intrigue me, and I am looking forward to reading The Gate. I'm hoping this doesn't become the large white elephant black cube in the room I have my gaming books in.

I read two books that were gaming adjacent. First of all, Marc Miller's Agent of the Imperium. This was much better than I'd anticipated and was quite a page turner. It brings up new lore about the Traveller Charted Space universe and is quite a fun time jumping epic. The other was Simon Stålenhag's Swedish Machines: Sunset at Zero Point. Stålenhag is linked to Fria Ligan, and created Tales from the Loop, and this is his latest art storybook. It's a beautifully illustrated LGBTQ tale of abandoned machines and growing up.

I also enjoyed the second Mickey 7 book, Antimatter Blues, which wasn't quite as good as the first but had a great energy to it. I will look out for future stories. 

Simone St. James' The Broken Girls is another supernatural horror tinted (or should that be tainted) murder story, and kept me turning the pages. I'd picked it up because I'd enjoyed her Murder Road last year. 

However, I have two books tying for my favourites this month.

The first is Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter? by Nicci French. This follows the story of a family whose mother disappeared when the children were growing up. A neighbour is assumed to have killed her, but her body is never found and it could have been that she just left. The tale covers the time of the murder and the modern day, when the family has reason to meet up again. However, as they do, some of the other children affected by the murder are starting a podcast to try and find out the truth. It gets messy, and you see the impact of the original disappearance on everyone involved. 

The other is another Adrian Tchaikovsky book, Bee Speaker. This is the third book in the Dogs of War setting and followed a mission from Mars returning to a post-slow-apocalypse Earth, on a rescue mission for the distributed intelligence, Bees. It gets messy. Transhuman science fiction excellence. 

Overall, a good month.

3 July 2025

Books in May 2025

May saw me read less books than the previous month, but as I was deep in administration for the North Star convention for the first two weeks on the month, I think that wasn't unexpected. I did manage to read 10 books and 2,003 pages, which brings the year-to-date figures to 57 books and 13,075 pages. That means I've hit the target for the year (52 books, one a week) which I expected to as it was set as a baseline.

I read four roleplaying related books, three novels, a short story and two non-fiction books.

The roleplaying books were a re-read of Deepnight Legacy for Traveller in preparation for running it at North Star, and then the Solemn Vale roleplaying game line (the Wyrd Abacus engine). I covered the main Solemn Vale book in a first impressions post here, and then followed that up with Tales from the Wyrd (a collection of adventures set in Solemn Vale, which seemed very useful) and Summer of Strange. The latter is set in the USA in the 1980s, and is a blend of the young adult based genre that was popular in films at the time. It's set in small town America, and the players will take the characters of young adults (17 to early 20s) who encounter strange and horrifying things. Eventually, the town is doomed by some kind of event (three examples are given) and the only chance of stopping it is the actions of the players. Nasty things can and will happen. Overall, I prefer Solemn Vale to the Summer of Strange, but they're both very good.

The non-fiction were both audiobooks. First up was Autocracy, Inc. by Anne Applebaum. This was a (quite depressing) look at the rise of autocracies and oligarchs across the world, and how democracies are failing to react to prevent themselves being vulnerable to them. The second was How Democracies Die by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky. This was written in the shadow of Trump's first presidency and discussed how democratic norms could be dismantled in the USA, especially as many of them are unwritten conventions rather than codified in law or the constitution. It's scary to see much of what these books warned against happening now.

The fiction books started with the second of Christopher Fowler's Bryant and May mysteries, The Water Room. This is a slow-paced and fascinating investigation into the murder of a woman who appears to have drowned in a dry room. I enjoyed how this twisted and turned.

I followed this with A Spy at War, by Charles Beaumont. This was a sequel to A Spy Alone which I read back in September. Both of these novels are dealing with the influence of Russia on the UK government and institutions. This novel is a sequel and is mostly set in Ukraine during the current war. Overall, I enjoyed this and will keep an eye out for any more books by the author.

Mickey7, by Edward Ashton, was the final novel that I read. This has recently been turned into a film, but I'd had the novel in the to-read digital stack for a while. It's a slightly darkly-humorous story of a man (Mickey) who has volunteered to join a colony expedition as the 'expendable'. This means that they have scanned his brain and memories and can create a new clone-body when he dies. Hence Mickey7. We're seeing the story from the perspective of the seventh iteration of Mickey, as the colony struggles to survive at its new home. There are also tensions, as the religious beliefs of some of the crew and the captain are that this technology is an abomination and that Mickey is a soulless monster. The pages turned easily in this, and I've just started the sequel.

Finally, I read one short story, Human Resources, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. This is set in the same world as Service Model, albeit slightly earlier. The protagonist is a Human Resources officer in a company that has shed most of its workforce because of the use of near sentient robots. It's a creepy view of the slide towards the collapse of society as the character knows it.

Overall, a good month. I'd probably rate The Water Room as the best of the fiction (Mickey7 came close) and How Democracies Die as the best of the non-fiction (if only because it taught me a lot about how the US governs itself).

1 June 2025

Books in April 2025

A belated post on last month's reading, mainly as work and preparation for North Star consumed all my free time.

I read 14 books during April, for a total of 2,673 pages. That brings me to 47 books and 11,072 pages this year. As I belatedly write this, I've already broken through the target of 52 books for the year. The month's reading was dominated by roleplaying games as I continued my way through Deepnight Revelation for Traveller, and also two other Traveller related books for scenarios I was running.

Overall, I really liked what I read with Deepnight Revelation. I read through all the expansion books, which would be invaluable if you wanted to run this epic campaign. I also read the alternative route in the campaign (Deepnight Endeavour) and Mysteries on Arcturus Station. The latter takes the Classic Traveller murder mystery, adds a prequel and updates it for the current version of the game. It still allows you to set up one of the players as a murderer, which is cleverly managed. I also read Far Horizon again so that it was fresh in my mind before I returned to the game after a four month gap. I wrote about that experience last month in this blog entry.

I had a single non-fiction book this month, a profile of Volodymyr Zelensky called "The Showman", written by Simon Shuster. Now, I've seen criticism of this in some of the reviews out there, but it seemed to come across as a pretty balanced and human account of a person placed in an extremely challenging situation and rising to it. It certainly didn't make me any less sympathetic to him or Ukraine.

I managed two novels this month, with two novella collections as a tasty side-dish.

The first novel was Nick Harkaway's Sleeper Beach which is a future noir SF detective story, a sequel to the excellent Titanium Noir. Great writing and story, and a continued contrast of the lives of the effectively immortal Titans (rich folks with access to rejuvenation treatment) to the rest of humanity. I highly recommend both these books.

The second was Andrew O'Hagan's Caledonian Road. This is probably best described as a tragedy as you can see the metaphoric car crash coming as you follow the life of a pundit and art academic as he mixes with the landed gentry and brushes shoulders with Russian Oligarchs. Very much a sharp take on modern London and our elites, this was an impulse buy and I found it quite hard to put down.

The two novellas were The Drop and The Catch by Mick Herron, both set in the Slow Horses world. They were enjoyable and exactly what you'd expect if you've read any of the series.

My favourite for the month was Harkaway's Sleeper Beach. 

Books in March 2025

March was a very focussed reading month, with a lot of science-fiction and a lot of the Traveller roleplaying game. I read 2,900 pages and twelve books, bringing me to 34 books in the year, and a total of 8,424 pages. The reading streak is at 814 days.

I'll start with the roleplaying books. I worked my way through the epic Traveller Deepnight Revelation campaign, which comprised four shorter books. This is very much a taster for the campaign; there's enough here to run it and give you a good understanding of what is going to happen, but there's a fair bit of work for the referee. The start and finish of a truly epic campaign are covered in detail, and the mechanics are given for developing the road trip between. I suspect that most referees will be tempted to pick up the extra books that Mongoose have written that flesh out the journey between; I know I will.

I also worked my way through three books which will support my next campaign; Mongoose's Bounty Hunter, and Moon Toad's The Bounty Hunter Handbook and The Jägermeister Adventure. The latter two complement each other well. The Mongoose book is shinier & glossier, feeling more like The Mandalorian with lightweight mercenary tickets. The Moon Toad book is gritty, detailed & realistic, feeling like a procedural TV series, and edges it in my preference. I've detailed The Jägermeister Adventure elsewhere.

I also finished Conflict by David Petraeus and Andrew Roberts. This was a good overview of how conflicts have developed since 1945. I enjoyed the book, but found the difference between the chapters written by Petraeus and Roberts jarring. Petraeus' sections were much more detailed but lost the big picture and key themes that are throughout the rest of the book.

Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shroud was an interesting read. I found it more like a thought experiment in a first contact situation. It also cleverly threaded three different perspectives together. I did find it hard going in parts, but it came to decent conclusion.

Caimh McDonnell's A Man with One of Those Faces was an enjoyable crime romp, with a sharp wit and use of language set in Dublin. A case of mistaken identity spirals out of control. Recommended and I'll be reading the next book.

I read Max Barry's Providence which follows the crew of an AI-controlled space warship in a ware with an alien species. The quirk is that the ship is so automated that the crew are almost there for PR purposes. We get to find out their quirks, and how things play out when everything goes sideways. I enjoyed this.

Finally, after a gap of perhaps 40 years, I returned to Michael Scott Rohan's Winter of the World series, with The Anvil of Ice. This is slow-paced but well written fantasy novel about a young thrall who becomes a Smith capable of wending magic into that which he creates. We follow the start of his journey, as he is apprenticed to a dark and mysterious Master Smith, and then his story when he leaves. I really enjoyed revisiting this, and look forward to reading the next!

3 April 2025

Public Service Broadcasting - York Barbican - 27th March 2025

Gargarin!

Thursday night saw me returning to see Public Service Broadcasting for the third time and the second time on this tour. The eldest was meant to be with me but was ill, and I didn't find anyone else who could come along at short notice. This was the second leg of the tour that I went to earlier in the year, so very much focused around The Last Flight, plus a great selection of favourites.

It was a bit of a crazy day; a work event had been arranged after I bought tickets, and I ended up heading back up the A1 from Rutland, hoping that there wouldn't be an traffic issues. Fortunately, there weren't. A quick hello to the family, a bite to eat then off to York.

The support act - She Drew the Gun - were excellent. An all-all woman band from Liverpool, the singer caught my attention from the start with the powerful poem that she used to introduce between songs. The words landed, and the songs were equally good. I've subsequently checked out more of their music and I really like it.

This was the poem, in case you're interested.

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/2A5KcbwpPRs84k3XEH6QxZ?si=eafac211bcf946f5

They played:

1. Origin Song
2. Washed in Blue
3. Mirrors
4. Howl
5. Behave Myself
6. Poem
7. Panopticon.

EERA was with the Public Service Broadcasting again, and really added something to the performance. Her mike was turned down a bit low at some points, unfortunately.

That was the least of the worries; when the introduction for PSB was drawing to an end, there was a huge crackle and the whole stage went dark. JF Willgoose appeared on stage with a tech, and the audience took it with good humour. We restarted 15 minutes later. 

 

Everyone got into the concert quickly, relieved that it was just a short delay. And then, third song in (People Will Always Need Coal), everything went pear shaped again. Fortunately, it was just a quick restart. After than, there were no visible issues and I think that it got the crowd behind the band.

It was a great performance. They played 18 songs, one less than planned due to the technical issues. The track we lost was 'If War Should Come', which should have been before Spitfire. Here's the setlist:

1. Electra (with EERA)
2. The Fun of It (with EERA)
3. People Will Always Need Coal (with EERA)
4. Progress (with EERA)
5. Der Rhythmus Der Maschinen (with EERA)
6. E.V.A.
7. Night Mail
8. The South Atlantic (with EERA)
9. Arabian Flight (with EERA)
10. Monsoons
11. A Different Kind of Love (with EERA)
12. Spitfire
13. The Other Side
14. Go!

Encore.

1. Blue Heaven (with EERA)
2. People, Let's Dance (with EERA)
3. Gagarin (with EERA and She Drew the Gun as the Cosmonauts)
4. Everest (with EERA)

  

This was the first time I stood for the concert. I was about four rows back from the front, and it was a great atmosphere, but I felt it in my legs after. I only took a few pictures (you can see the rest) as the band asks you not to at the start (and certainly not to spend the whole concert watching through a 4" screen). I didn't want to take that many, as the energy and fun on the floor was more than engaging enough.

And then it was time to go, and I headed off very happy and  slightly deaf (the Apple Watch kept on giving me 90dBA warnings), having had a thoroughly good evening.It did take nearly 30 mins to get out of the Q-Park carpark though!

Books in February 2025

 

Cover Collage for February

February was a month with lots of reading; twelve books and 3,039 pages which is higher than my usual. Three roleplaying game books, one graphic novel and the rest were a mixture of fiction. I have also been working my way through an audiobook which is around the nineteen hour length but I didn't quite finish that in the month.

The graphic novel was the latest compiled volume in Titan's Blade Runner line, called Tokyo Nexus. It didn't add a lot new to the canon, but it was an interesting perspective of a city and culture that I haven't seen before in this universe.

One of the roleplaying games, Comrades, was a re-read as I ran it at Revelation 9 this month. If you fancy a game which gives you the chance to play a revolutionary cell against an oppressive regime, then it may be the Powered by the Apocalypse game for you. The other two books were both supplements for the Traveller roleplaying game, my forever game. I read Solomani Front, the sector guide book to the region of space that includes Earth, a literal frontline. Lots to go at in this one and it definitely gives a different perspective on the Third Imperium (as an occupying power). I also read Rim Expeditions, which is focused on the exploration missions far to rimward that the Solomani Confederation is staging. Again, a useful and different addition.

On to novels; I ended up reading more crime based novels than usual. There's no real reason, but each book I read tends to be a reaction to the one before.

Satu Rämü's Grave in the Ice and The Clues in the Fjord are the first two of four (so far) Icelandic noir crime thrillers, and very enjoyable reads too. Bizarrely, the English editions have dramatic titles whereas the Icelandic editions use the names of characters in the books instead. The stories relate to the work by the only detective in a remote part of Iceland who is partnered by a Finnish intern officer. I will continue reading this series when the next few drop.

I also read The Undoing of Violet Claybourne which I thought was going to be some kind of cozy manor Agatha Christie style manor house tale but it was so much more. The tale tells of two young girls, one from a privileged background (think Downton Abbey but down at heel) who meet at boarding school. The less privileged one is invited to stay for Christmas and she is drawn into events and her loyalty to her friend is put to test by the friends older siblings. The repercussions get followed through to the Second World War and beyond. It was done very nicely and a touch more brutal than I expected.

Full Dark House is the first Bryant & May mystery from Christopher Fowler (who I first encountered with Roofworld). It follows the first and last jobs of a pair of detectives who lead the Peculiar Crimes Unit. The Blitz is underway and there is a murder in a theatre which them must solve. Cutting to the modern day, Bryant is murdered and May must uncover the links back to their first case. This was a steady paced delight, and I'm glad I picked up a good few of these recently when they were promoted at 99p each.

I dived in the British noir of Ted Lewis' Get Carter. It's a long time since I saw the film so this was a delight to read and I note that there are at least two others in the serious (although at least one appears to be a prequel).

I read the third of the Damascus Station books by David McCloskey, The Seventh Floor, which seemed to wrap things up for the agents involved in the earlier books. Enjoyable and engaging, it is as all spy-fiction must be, a tale of betrayals both political and personal. Recommended (but only after you've read the first two).

Two science-fiction books rounded this month out; Adrian Tchaikovsky's Walking to Aldebaran, and Gareth L Powell's Future's Edge. I've had the Tchaikovsky for a while, as he continues to write faster than I can read his books. The story tells the tale of an astronaut who's the last survivor of a mission to a strange object found beyond Pluto. A good book but suffers from the fact that I didn't really like the narrator in it. The Gareth L Powell is the story of an archaeologist who has been infected by an alien nano-virus but may now hold the key for saving all the sentient races in the local area of the galaxy as some very deadly foes have started to emerge. I really enjoyed this and read it over two evenings.

Best of the month is hard to choose, but if I take it on ratings then it would be a toss up between Future's Edge and The Grave in the Ice, with The Seventh Floor just piped at the post.

Onwards.

1 March 2025

Books in January 2025

 

My reading in 2025 has got off to a good start, with nine books finished and a total of 2,460 pages read. Of those books, one was both non-fiction and an audiobook, two were roleplaying games and the balance novels.

The non-fiction book was Gina Martin's "No Offence but..." which would probably get me frowned at by the current US administration. It explores common phrases and how they can impact on people who aren't from the UK's dominant white (and male) culture. I learned a lot and loved the way that this was presented; Gina Martin alternatives with other writers as they go through the audiobook, so it reflects a diverse set of voices. Definitely worth the time.

The roleplaying books were "The Lost Caravan" which is a road trip set after an alien invasion. I liked this, but it's very much a one-shot campaign, albeit one that would probably play out differently every time you run it. Starting from a variety of locations, your caravan crosses from one side of the USA to another and becomes increasingly involved with the events of the invasion. Not sure that I will run this but definitely don't regret the impulse purchase.  I must read Fria Ligan's "Electric State" and compare the feel of that to this. 

I also read "Tokyo: Otherscape". Gorgeously illustrated, well written and evocative, it didn't quite land for me. I'd hoped it would make me super-excited about this setting from the publishers of City of Mist, but although there were a couple of moments where I though 'Oh that's interesting" it didn't give me the GM tingles. It's a shame in some ways as the way the City of Mist Engine has been built, this looks like really well built system for any cyberpunk type game. Perhaps running this at Revelation in February will change my mind a little.

Non-fiction was varied. My favourite two books for the month were Charles Stross' "A Conventional Boy" and Derek B. Miller's "Radio Life".

The Stross delightful mixes the early 1980s Satanic Panic over roleplaying games with a geek's first game convention and twisted cults in the Laundry universe. Miller's book is a post-apocalyptic tale in a future were humanity has collapsed back from a technological high. It reminded me a little of the Legacy: Life Amongst the Ruins roleplaying game in flavour and was extremely well written. Loved the thread of hope for the future in this story. I do like Miller's turn of phrase and all his books so far have drawn me in. 

"Norwegian by Night" is another novel by the same author which I also read. In this one, a former US Marine is living with his grand-daughter in Norway, when he witnesses a killing and ends up trying to protect a small child. The protagonist perhaps has the early signs of dementia, or perhaps it's the weight of the years that he has lived. I enjoyed this and it was quite different.

"Galveston" is by the show-writer for the first season of True Detective and it shows. There's that intimate feel of the south of the USA. The main character is a flawed career criminal who faces a set up that puts his life in danger. Overall, a good book even if I never liked the protagonist.

"Good Girls Don't Die" was a return to Christina Henry. It's a twisty tale of three women who find their lives threatened when they end up somewhere they don't expect to be. Their stories intersect and come to a fast but effective conclusion. 

Finally, I read Sarah Penner's "The Conjurer's Wife" which was a short novella about the wife of a Conjurer (no surprise there). They are performing in 1820s Venice, in a show that seems to have real magic. Olivia is his assistant and wife, but a secret from their past is about to be revealed. Enjoyable, even if I did half-guess what the reveal would be.

Blog Archaeology

I mentioned in the State of the Blog 2024 post that I was frustrated because I couldn't find the files to recover the mid-2000s posts due to the issues on the website and with Rapidweaver. 

I've started going through a different route now, having found a full preview build of the website that covers that period on the old MacBook. I've brought it live and the cut and pasting has begun. At the point I've completed migration of 2005 and 2006, which are quite fascinating as the end of 2006 is just before our eldest (who will be eighteen in January) arrived!

I'm quite pleased with this. You'll find the entries under the relevant dates on this blog.

Books in 2024

You set off on thrilling quests, followed cryptic trails of secrets, and explored the shadows of the human psyche. The narratives flowed at a comfortable, engaging tempo.

That quote is the summary from my end of year wrap-up on the StoryGraph and it's pretty much a fair representation of my reading for the year. 

I read a total of 102 books with 30,602 pages which is one less book than 2023 but 2,710 pages more overall (about a month extra). I've continued doing day-to-day tracking with The StoryGraph which tells me I've read every day for 724 days now. It may have only been a page or 1% of a book, but it's been steady. That steady pace really shows on the graph of 'books read' below; there's much less variance. 

It's the second year in a row that I've read more than a hundred books, although my target has remained firmly at 52, one book per week. Twenty-nine of the books were roleplaying games.

My Goodreads account is still live, mainly as my Kindle is linked to it, but only shows 86 books as it's awkward adding small press books.

Most read (non-RPG) authors were Adrian Tchaikovsky (no surprise there as he is so prolific and good at what he does), Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Aliette de Bodard and Len Deighton.

I enjoyed revisiting Len Deighton's Game, Set and Match trilogy as part of my preparation for Revelation. That also drove a block of non-fiction reading and a great way to engage with my eldest who went to the city looking at the Cold War and World War 2 as part of his Modern History A-Level. I finally, after many years of intent, read some more books by Emily St. John Mandel, and didn't regret it. I was delighted when I discovered that two of the stories were very much interlinked very subtly (Sea of Tranquility and The Glass Hotel).

It was with some sadness I read Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The City of Mist, a collection of short stories which will be his last published work as he has passed away, but the tales themselves were delightful. David Mcloskey's Damascus Station and Moscow X brought some new spy fiction with bite. Aliette de Bodard's science fiction novellas remain a delight - my favourite for the year was A Fire Born of Exile.  Alastair Reynolds brought his Prefect Dreyfuss stories to a great conclusion in Machine Vendetta. Adrian Tchaikovsky's Saturation Point was his story that I enjoyed most of the multiple books that I read; very cleverly done hostile environment based story.

The book that haunted me most from the year was Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. Set in modern day Ireland, it depicts a slow slide into fascism and civil war which is absolutely chilling and goes some way to answer the questions people often ask about 'Why didn't you do something?' or 'Why didn't you leave?' when they see a country falling apart.

The book that I found hardest to put down was Murder Road by Simone St James. Bought on impulse, it hooked me and I tore through it. The Curse of Pietro Houdini by Derek B Miller was equally engaging; set around Monte Cassino during the allied assault in the Second World War, it was another impulse purchase which delighted.

I went through a lot of non-fiction this year, again mainly when driving. Two books about the Troubles - Say Nothing (Patrick Radden Keefe) and Killing Thatcher (Rory Carroll) - reminded me just how bad things were. Checkmate in Berlin (by Giles Milton) was a fascinating tale of the occupation of Berlin and the path to the segregation of the city. Empireland (Sathnam Sanghera) and Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People about Race (Reni Eddo-Lodge) made me look hard at myself and the way I see the world. Sort Your Brain Out (Dr Jack Lewis and Adrian Webster) was a fascinating look at how your brain works and influences your behaviour that built nicely on work I've been doing professionally in the safety space. I still try and pick books that I think I'd be unlikely to read normally for the car, as I find that I can work my way through them more easily when listening. Often I'll pick up and skim the books afterwards.

Overall, a great year of reading, and I'm already digging in for the next year!

2 January 2025

Books in December 2024

December 2024 saw me reading 10 books for a total of  2,362 pages. This month saw a spike up in the number of roleplaying books that I read, but there was some excellent fiction and non-fiction along the way.

I read His Majesty, The Worm, which was fascinating as a design exercise. Using tarot driven mechanics it codifies and structures dungeon-crawls in a very interesting way. There's a lot of ideas to unpack in this and I can see myself dipping back into it. It's beautifully presented and structured, but I can't see myself bringing it to the table in the near term. I think that this one was more of an inspiration.

This Ship is a Tomb is a procedurally-generated depth crawl into a starship that has been thoroughly corrupted by evil otherness, very much in the style of the film Event Horizon. Naturally, it's for Mothership but it could easily be hacked to another game engine. I could imagine using this but part of me wonders if One Breath Left (which I reviewed previously) would be a more pragmatic way to scratch this itch.

Metro: Otherscape is the core book for the new game setting from the publishers of City of Mist. It's very well written and the evolution of the game engine makes it much more slick, but I'm not certain that I will love it as much as its predecessor. It will be interesting to get this to the table at Revelation. What I've seen I like, but it will be good to explore this in play.

I also did a complete re-read of Far Horizon as I ran it on 30th December 2024.

The bridge between roleplaying and non-fiction was Shannon Appelcline's excellent history of the Traveller roleplaying game, my forever game, This is Free Trader Beowulf. A Christmas present, I devoured it all in a single day. Recommended if you love Traveller.

The other non-fiction (audio)book I went through was Say Nothing (Patrick Radden Keefe), which was a fascinating and chilling insight on the Troubles. I may watch the Disney+ version if I get a moment, but the book is a skilful journey through how the dynamics of the asymmetric conflict changed and escalated.

I also read several fictional books. Nick Harkaway's Karla's Choice was a worthy new George Smiley story. The style was different, but there were enough echoes of his father's writing and approach to not feel jarring. I loved the way that this was done but I do hope that to doesn't stop Harkaway continuing with his own books, as I find his science-fiction (for example, Titanium Noir) excellent.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia always delights, and Signal to Noise was no exception. A group of teenagers in Mexico find a way to cast magic, which brings consequences. The tale is told looking back some years later and is definitely worth a look.

Devil's Day, by Andrew Michael Hurley engaged me more than Starveacre in the end, but it's a dark tale of life at the edge of civilisation.

The final book was a standalone Polity novella by Neal Asher, Jenny Trapdoor. It's not one to read if you suffer from arachnophobia but otherwise it's quite good fun and was a good page-turner for the end of the year.

Music in 2024

Music in 2024...

So this is what I played most that was released in 2024 according to the Apple Music app. As previous years, I've not managed to work out how to do this for music played in 2024, as I can't see how to filter on play count for only that year. 

I'll rank this by the highest play by release. It's worth saying that singles and EPs can be disproportionately high because they tend to repeat if I'm playing music via my iPhone. If a single is part of an album that was released this year, I will credit the album instead.

1. Hats Off Gentlemen, It's Adequate - Copenhagen

A second year at Number 1 for HOGIA, and no surprise here as this is hauntingly beautiful. This is a single from their album that's forthcoming in 2025. Could they make it 3 years in a row?

2. Pet Shop Boys - Nonetheless

Actually by the Pet Shop Boys was the album that hooked me to them, and I still enjoy listening. This got played a lot when I got it but it hasn't stuck with me quite as well as some of their other albums. The track Loneliness gets this its high placing.

3.  Hats Off Gentlemen, It's Adequate - One Word That Means the World

What, they've got two places in top three? This is the slightly earlier single released by HOGIA which is all about the Soviet Officer who refused to take the Cuban Missile crisis nuclear when his submarine flotilla was under a lot of pressure from the US blockade.

4. Andre Soueid - Al Ein

Soueid is a Lebanese Violinist who I was introduced to at the local cinema which plays music videos rather than adverts. He does do classical music but also more modern, dance-like material. His violin soars gloriously above the rest of the music. Definitely worth checking out. Here's an example on Soundcloud from a concert.

5. Hans Zimmer - Dune: Part Two (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

I found the second soundtrack more approachable than the first and it goes on in the background quite often.

6. Maxïmo Park - Stream of Life

The lead single from this album saw Maxïmo Park back on form, catch but with a sharp edge. Great band, fantastic live too when I saw them.

7. Public Service Broadcasting - The Last Flight

It's not my most played album but it's probably my favourite this year. PSB return with a fantastic themed album about Amelia Eckhart. It's glorious and beautiful and different tracks catch me at different times. I loved the live show so much I'm catching it again at York next year.

8. David Gilmour - Luck and Strange

The track 'Between Two Points', where Gilmour's daughter Romany sings is my favourite on this. You know what you're getting with his music, and the album doesn't disappoint.

9. Faithless (feat. Amelia Fox and LSK) - I'm not alone (Rest Well Maxwell)

Faithless return with a track dedicated to their former frontman. It's catchy and a fitting tribute. I just wish they could give a date for release of  'Champion Sound'. Again, a single so that influences the position.

Overall, a nice mix there. I did buy several Marillion albums, but they've been concerts or the special editions so the play hasn't been as high.

1 January 2025

State of the Blog 2024

Overview for the year

 I've posted more to the blog this year (125 posts vs 95 in 2023) but I've no real explanation why, especially as my posts on Shadows of Atlantis haven't been a numerous as the ones that I did for Curse of Strahd. Interaction is up (92.8k unique views vs 83.6k last year) and I continue to see a lot of interaction around posts on Mastodon (and if I post on various Facebook groups, especially the Traveller RPG one, that often spikes traffic). 

Traffic was particularly high between February and May, then became stable at a low level (even through the RPGaDay hoopla) before jumping up in December. That spike is most likely a combination of holidays and the repeated Traveller posts that I've made.

The top ten posts in 2024...

My most viewed post in 2024 (and now all time) was the review of Wulfwald, which landed before there were many other reviews out there. It was one of my more in-depth walk-throughs and seemed to be attractive to folks out there. It had a lot of traffic via Bluesky and Mastodon.

The second highest was one talking about Dice by pCalc which was boosted by the app's creator on Mastodon and got a lot of views. This was part of RPGaDay 2024, which I did in full.

Reviews of Dragonbane, Outgunned, Cepheus Universal and Orbital 2100 all got a lot of interest, as did the TravCon 2024 after action report. A block of that is the Traveller hard-core!

Eighth place saw a post on GM Screens from November 2023 which was boosted by Xaosseed and somehow stayed popular into 2024. This was closely followed by an RPGaDay post on the A|State Tower screen. Unsure what drives the interest in screens, but fascinating to see.

The last entry in the Top Ten came with this months post on the forthcoming availability for The Encyclopaedia of Dagudashaag in print, a December post, so obviously there's a hunger for new Traveller content.

If I wanted to keep this just to posts from 2024, then I need to bring in the eleventh placed post, where I broke down 17 years of games that I've run at Furnace. 

Overall, I'm still enjoying keeping the blog. 

I've had some frustrations getting the older material migrated; the browser on my old MacBook has been deprecated and I can no longer download a copy of RapidWeaver 7 to put it on the newer MacBook Pro (as Realmac Software have moved to a subscription model and old versions aren't available on the App Store or their site). I have considered subscribing, but I'm not convinced that I'd be able to open the older files easily enough. It may be that I need to use the preview export of the blog and cut and paste from that, but the priority is migrating the remaining data from the MacBook is it's gone very slow and DropBox doesn't support the app anymore (although I can get access via the browser).

One thing that Mastodon has taught me it to take the time to put Alt-text in for images where possible. If you don't do that on the social network there, you get gentle reminders from others!

If you want to catch me on social media, I'm easily findable. The bridged account from the Fediverse drives most of my interaction with Bluesky because I have found I enjoy the engagement quality of Mastodon often better. I don't generally accept Facebook requests from folks I'm not sure I know, so reach out if you're trying to link up that way so I know why!

Anyway, here's to 2025, and another year of blogs.

1 January 2025

Babylon 5 - Back to Season 1 (2258)

 

The Season 1 Cast

In case you've not come across it, Babylon 5 is a science-fiction series set in the later 2250s aboard a large diplomatic space station built to try and engender peace between the various polities and alien races. Run by the Earth Alliance, it's a crossroads in space. Ultimately, it will fail in its objective but out of that crucible a better future will emerge. The series ran for five seasons and ended up with several spin off movies and TV-series. The show has a harder-SF flavour than Star Trek. The show's creator pitched the series to Paramount; they rejected it but it was almost certainly an inspiration for Deep Space Nine which premiered just before Babylon 5. I much prefer Babylon 5.

One of my favourite SF series is Babylon 5. I've watched it fully at least three times (when it was transmitted, when I got it on VHS, when I got it on DVD) and recently I started to rewatch it on the HD stream from Amazon Prime. I picked it up reduced during the Black Friday events, only to find out the week after that it's gone on Prime for free. I'm not regretting it though.

The remaster to HD has been sensible and not letter-boxed the 4:3 print, although there are some widescreen elements (most notably the titles). The CGI may have been cleaned up, but I'm not certain on this. It certainly looks like a work of its time but still looks decent. Photorealistic, it isn't, but it works well.

Possibly the only disappointment is that the various TV movies etc haven't had the HD treatment, and the Gathering (the pilot) is missing from Prime (paid or free).

It's sad looking at the cast photo (along with the missing folks like the Jerry Doyle and Richard Biggs) and realising how many of them have subsequently passed away. I'm also going to call out Michael Hare who completed the series when going through a mental breakdown that only he and the show runner JMS knew about. I always liked his performance; he portrayed a compassionate, honourable but ultimately damaged man well.

The show is extremely clever in the way that it lays its trail of breadcrumbs out, and ends the first 21 episodes with the tables being turned over by events. I love the nascent relationships between G'Kar and Lando Mollari, and the undertone of menace. Of course, the initial threat appears to be the growing 'Home Guard' fascist nationalist xenophobic movement on Earth, but there are hints of more once Mr Morden arrives at the station.

If you've not watched this, it's a great chance to do it now. This season builds the characters and purpose of the station, and ends with the plot starting to accelerate.

A bonus to me is that my eldest (17) caught it a couple of episodes in, and has been hooked by it.

I left the show last night as 2259 started, and I'm sure we'll be back for more later this week.

23 December 2024

Flavours of Christmas

 

The Dark is Rising

I'm presently indulging myself in listening to the BBC adaptation of Susan Cooper's "The Dark is Rising", a story that has always captured the feeling of a Christmas laced with darkness. The book itself had a huge impact on me in my first year at secondary school, around the same time as I read "The Lord of the Rings", and its one that I return to every now and again like Alan Garner's "The Weirdstone of the Brisingamen". The BBC adaptation is near perfect, set in 12 short episodes. It's atmospheric and evocative, and I wish that they'd done some of the other books as well.  You can find it here.

I discovered this through the book; the podcast came much later.

The Box of Delights

Another story that evokes Christmas for me is John Masefield's "The Box of Delights". This one came to me courtesy of the BBC TV series back in 1984. It has many of the flavours of "The Dark is Rising"; Christmas, snow, combined with evil and magic being afoot. Susan Cooper's tale is a little more hard hitting, but the "Box of Delights" isn't afraid to scare. The BBC has shown the series again this December and is releasing it on Blu-Ray. I still have a set of DVDs for this, which replaced my VHS copy. 

I read the book much later; it was satisfying fun, with a style aimed at a slightly younger audience than "The Dark is Rising" but enjoyable all the same.  Reflecting on the original transmission date, I was first introduced to these around the same time.

Winter's Tale

Mark Helprin's "Winter's Tale" evokes similar feelings for me although I came to it a couple of years later. It tells the tale of a young Irishman, Peter Lake, as he attempts a burglary against the backdrop of a snowy winter in New York sometime towards the end of the 19th Century. In the house he finds Beverly Penn, a young heiress, and they fall in love. Surreal, beautiful and haunting, this is a love story as much to the city as the protagonists. Again, it magic and fantasy bleed in, leaving a feel of the surreal. I haven't reread this as often (indeed, I'm still gutted that my early edition hardcover disappeared somewhere with someone in the past) but every time that I do, it brings the same feelings and joy.

If you look for the book these days, you'll often find it titled "A New York Winter's Tale", named after the film adaptation which starred Colin Farrell, Jennifer Connolly, and Russell Crowe. This was done well, but like all adaptation, it differs from the original (although it captures the intent quite well).

I also quite like dipping into the MR James ghost stories at this time of year, both the books and the various BBC versions which are quite satisfyingly done.

What media evokes this season for you?

21 December 2024

Books in November 2024

 

November's reading - cover collage.

Seven books and 2,841 pages in November. Two non-fiction, one roleplaying and the rest fiction. Apparently I'm down by one book but up 32% on pages on October. I'm on 92 books and 28,240 pages in total for the year so far.

The first non-fiction book was Empireland, by Sathnam Sanghera, which explores the impact of the British Empire on Britain. Absolutely fascinating and demonstrates that our multi-cultural society is a reflection of the way we went about conquering large swathes of the globe, and we can't really step away from that. It also explores around the strange way that the UK ignores the British Empire in its school curriculums. Recommended.

The second non-fiction book was Checkmate in Berlin by Giles Milton. This explores the history around the occupation of Berlin at the end of the Second World War and then follows the story through to just after the Berlin Airlift. It's part of my ongoing reading around this space, and will definitely inform any games of Cold City that I ever run! Again, recommended.

The roleplaying book was the Faded Suns Character Book, the second core book for the game. I did find this heavy going as there's loads of lists, but the system itself is pretty simple. I may post some comments about this in the future once I've read the GM's Book.

I re-read The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (Alan Garner) and enjoyed it as much as ever, describing as it does one of my favourite places in my home county with a cracking tale of adventure. 

I enjoyed Francis Spufford's alt-history Cahokia Jazz, set in a world when much of the Native American cultures haven't been wiped out by disease. It presents as a murder mystery, but it also explores the ways that the colonial immigrants to the USA set about wiping out native cultures and influence. An enjoyable story, well worth exploring.

Service Model is one of Adrian Tchaikovsky's latest. I can't believe how prolific he is. The story tells the tale of a robot valet trying to find purpose when his master dies in suspicious circumstances. It expands out to explore the collapse of society in a story that had me hooked.

Finally, I read Jeff Noon's Vurt, which was recommended to me by my friend John. Partly cyberpunk, partly, partly weird reality, the book drew me on all the way through a surreal tale of adventure. I'm still not a hundred percent certain what happened, but I definitely enjoyed it. I will look up the sequel.

Overall, it's a toss up between Cahokia Jazz and Service Model as my favourite new reads.

1 December 2024