I think you could perhaps improve the poker game by spreading out the process of drawing cards. Perhaps start with one common card already displayed instead of getting three on the first round. ...
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/10/Thirsty_Meeples_October_2024.html#1728733749
Yeah, very much the style. I now have a copy (with the Jackie Fox promo character).
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/10/Thirsty_Meeples_September_2024.html#1728397505
Glad to see you can turn the dials up to 11. Sounds a bit like Umlaut in board game form.
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/10/Thirsty_Meeples_September_2024.html#1727814030
Fair point. I think (a) I have met Trey as a male-coded name in the US, and (b) for purposes of talking with weight to traditional Oresteians who still seem to carry some expectations of gender r...
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/09/The_Kindly_Ones__Melissa_Scott.html#1725982489
Interesting you decided the Mediator was a "him". The book never says. First time I read it I was convinced they were female. Second time I thought they were male. Third time female. I guess th...
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/09/The_Kindly_Ones__Melissa_Scott.html#1725982135
Barrister: "And finally, I shall show that the accused is guilty of twocking ..." Judge: "Twocking? What is that, pray tell?" Barrister: "Er, it is the vernacular employed by our law enforcement ...
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/08/Just_Stab_Me_Now__Jill_Bearup.html#1725138477
I'm dimly aware of what it means. It just doesn't work for me as a joke, especially from a British author writing a pseudo historically story.
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/08/Just_Stab_Me_Now__Jill_Bearup.html#1725025802
Lord alive, I am not American, and I am not interested in computer games and would not be part of the target audience for the wretched thing, but even I have heard the phrase "Grand Theft Auto" a...
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/08/Just_Stab_Me_Now__Jill_Bearup.html#1725013207
Enjoyed the review!
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/08/A_Coldness_In_the_Blood__Fred_Saberhagen.html#1725006894
The phrase "Grand Theft Equine" does nothing for me, it's neither funny nor ironic or anything else. I suspect it works better with a US audience where "Grand Theft Auto" is an actual offence. In...
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/08/Just_Stab_Me_Now__Jill_Bearup.html#1724965080
Thanks! Makes sense I suppose if that was before his vamping.
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/08/A_Sharpness_On_the_Neck__Fred_Saberhagen.html#1724015299
Radu is mentioned in THE HOLMES-DRACULA FILE as a possible explanation for the facial resemblence of the two titular characters.
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/08/A_Sharpness_On_the_Neck__Fred_Saberhagen.html#1723896402
Well, congratulations on your persistence. I spent that evening mostly in cold water.
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/08/Neighbourly_Games_12_August.html#1723746055
Decided to give this a read, as it's adjacent to something I've been writing, and boy oh boy is it good.
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/07/The_Outside__Ada_Hoffmann.html#1722786346
She won't leave until the cats are out. When you extinguish adjacent to a cat, it runs away from the noise. Yeah, this has potential.
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/07/Summer_Stabcon_2024.html#1721553952
Well, we did abandon her in favour of the cat. Hey, there's a variant. A burning house with a little old lady and lots of cats. You've got to save her and as many cats as possible. But the cats m...
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/07/Summer_Stabcon_2024.html#1721553425
True, I think the fire got to her before we abandoned the building.
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/07/Summer_Stabcon_2024.html#1721547640
We did lose one person in Flash Point ... the old lady with the oxygen cylinder on the upper floor. "We could throw the oxygen out of the window and she'd quickly follow."
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/07/Summer_Stabcon_2024.html#1721518564
Chris—thanks, I hadn't been able to verify the final chapter's appearance in various editions. The ending you have is the ending of the penultimate chapter in the version I read. (Wikipedia s...
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/06/The_Commodore__C__S__Forester.html#1719314624
Not knowing about the inaccuracies made it a lot less irritating to me than to you. (I assume the set of pistols Barbara gives him is the too-early tech?) My copy ends with him coming down with...
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/06/The_Commodore__C__S__Forester.html#1719313512
About that final chapter: I had no memory at all of him actually going home. OK, it's a long time since I read it, but my memory ends with his fever-dreams. It can't be a very gripping chapter, I...
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/06/The_Commodore__C__S__Forester.html#1719313094
Oh, good point on the Brennan. I read volume 3 because someone was suggesting it should be Hugo-nominated, but it didn't grab me. Probably I should start from the beginning; that usually suits me...
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/06/Scales_and_Sensibility__Stephanie_Burgis.html#1719302552
Collins did indeed get pretty irked with White Wolf over that, though as you say they did eventually come to terms. I think there's a lot of suing over film plots because (a) ripping off spec s...
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/06/Dominion__Fred_Saberhagen.html#1719302496
I'm reading the last one at the moment. I've found the series quite uneven overall, but never to the point of giving up, and some of them are great fun.
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/06/A_Matter_of_Taste__Fred_Saberhagen.html#1719302063
Yeah, Sunglasses seems to have been hugely influential. When Vampire the Masquerade came out just a few years after Sunglasses and appropriated far more tropes from it and its werewolf-themed s...
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/06/Dominion__Fred_Saberhagen.html#1719267294
There's also The Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan, which seem to be a regency-inspired fantasy world, and Jane Austen’s Dragons series by Maria Grace. Jo Walton’s Tooth and Claw ha...
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/06/Scales_and_Sensibility__Stephanie_Burgis.html#1719266811
I think I lost interest in the series about here and didn't finish them one. But if you review them, I'll be interested to see if the books perked up. I find Saberhagen's Dracula series of hist...
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/06/A_Matter_of_Taste__Fred_Saberhagen.html#1719265560
You've mentioned it before, still haven't seen it in my usual channels (I don't DRM so those are quite restricted).
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/06/Minor_Mage__T_Kingfisher.html#1719174169
Have you tried "Fighter Fred and the Dungeon of Doom"?
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/06/Minor_Mage__T_Kingfisher.html#1719086364
No, but I may have asked you about it when I'd just read it. There is currently more than a month of latency between my finishing a book and the review getting posted.
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/06/Starconvoy_EH_76__M__H__Questus.html#1718981768
Hang on, that bit about perfidy seems familiar. Have you reviewed this before? Or do mil-sf writers use identical tropes too often?
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/06/Starconvoy_EH_76__M__H__Questus.html#1718972731
I don't know much much influence even someone as commercially successful as Saberhagen would have had over his book jackets, though I suspect not much. In several of the books I've noticed that D...
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/06/Dominion__Fred_Saberhagen.html#1718874779
The only one I know offhand is Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, which I think is more Napoleonic than Regency in emphasis; I'm afraid I don't get on with her writing style. One thing that works ...
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/06/Scales_and_Sensibility__Stephanie_Burgis.html#1718874271
I think there's at least four "regency, but with dragons" novels or series out now. It's becoming a subgenre!
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/06/Scales_and_Sensibility__Stephanie_Burgis.html#1718858221
I remember buying it based off the front page blurb that said "in the tradition of Mary Stewart and Steven King" which wasn't a pairing you see every day. (I probably figured out it was a Dracu...
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/06/Dominion__Fred_Saberhagen.html#1718858045
I remember being quite surprised by this novel since in an unusual bit of restraint the US first edition did not mention Dracula in the blurb or cover. So it actually came as an interesting WTF? ...
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/06/Dominion__Fred_Saberhagen.html#1718857490
Read on some vacation I think last year. I liked it as fresh take on Heyer-style romance, but don't remember the details. I got what I expected and a bit more. Intriguing indeed.
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/06/Scales_and_Sensibility__Stephanie_Burgis.html#1718747101
The thoroughgoing divergence of the political-media class as a whole from what most people actually want was very clear over the EU even before it became utterly blatant over Palestine. But I hon...
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/06/The_RogerBW_Manifesto__2024_edition_.html#1717667821
On re-joining the EU, I agree entirely we should do it, but the EU won't be interested until there's a solid political consensus in the UK, and we're quite a way from that. It would also have to ...
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/06/The_RogerBW_Manifesto__2024_edition_.html#1717665077
Any of these things might have made for an interesting story if they had been included, indeed if Newitz had mentioned the problem at all.
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/05/The_Terraformers__Annalee_Newitz.html#1717424673
"if Destry has been created as property for the company, why does her mindset (entirely controlled by them) even include the concept of not obeying orders?" Well, there are possible explanation...
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/05/The_Terraformers__Annalee_Newitz.html#1717073053
The seedy theatrical landladies lasted until at least the 1970s. Trust me on this.
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/05/Smoke_and_Mirrors__Elly_Griffiths.html#1715858821
For all we ever learn, the selection is entirely at random; it just happens to be five women across this five-book series.
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/05/Dark_Minds__Michelle_Diener.html#1715264086
Why have no earth men been kidnapped by the aliens? Or is this a Mars Needs Women situation?
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/05/Dark_Minds__Michelle_Diener.html#1715263099
I should add, up to now I've had the Autumn covid booster on the NHS same as the flu jab due to an underlying condition. This private jab is my sixth in total.
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/04/Private_Pokey.html#1714573201
When I asked at Boots I was told the reason it's hard to find on their web site and you can't pay online for it yet is this is a trial by Boots to see if there is demand for private covid vaccina...
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/04/Private_Pokey.html#1714573074
Ashley: £100 each. Apparently there is only one other company providing it at all, "PharmaDoctor", and they supply individual pharmacies. (Even Boots don't make it particularly obvious on their ...
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/04/Private_Pokey.html#1714568647
Like every other government which bought more doses of covid vaccines than could be used before their expiry dates, the UK government destroyed quite a large number (mostly AstraZeneca, which bec...
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/04/Private_Pokey.html#1714563948
So, how much did it cost? And, besides going to Boots was there any other than the outrageous cost to the process?
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/04/Private_Pokey.html#1714550755
I've also paid for a private covid vaccination at Boots, partly because I'm going on a cruise and that's a notorious environment for disease spread. In my case I was able to do a 25 minute bicycl...
https://blog.firedrake.org/archive/2024/04/Private_Pokey.html#1714490445