Messages

Thanks to Cain, I have been forced to start this series from the beginning (meaning the first book of the Prince of Nothing series) and now I have a lot of reading ahead of me so I don't appreciate that and Cain should feel bad (and subsidize the cost of these books). But at least I don't have to worry about what I'm going to read next for the next eight years or so.

I pulled the first book off a bookstore shelf when I was in 9th grade because the cover looked cool. It is no exaggeration to say that this series has influenced my development into a horrible person. I think you'll have a great time with it.

OK, so, The Unholy Consult.  Wow.  That was an ending.  And then some. 

I really can't say anything without spoilering the shit out of what happened, except I will say Meppa was nowhere to be seen.  So I can only assume he has been secreted away somewhere by Kelhus and has a role to play in the final trilogy.  And as the Last Cishaurim, with power enough to even wow Kelhus, I can't imagine his role being minor.

Yeah, given what Khellus intuited about the Cishaurim at the end of TTT and how the Dunyain couldn't master the Psukhe, I'd expect Meppa to be SOMEONE'S ace in the hole. Either Khellus's or someone else's.

Seeing Khellus having truly run out of Fucks To Give about the crapsack world he lives in is... well, I guess I should have seen it coming, but it's so at odds with the unstoppable force he's painted as in the first trilogy that it's hard to imagine him at the end of his rope, as he seems to be by the end of The Great Ordeal.

TUC is gonna have to wait until I'm back from China and recovered from jet lag, but I am excite.

This "Hobby Lobby gets busted for illicit trade in thousands of ancient artifacts" shit is the first thing I woke up to this morning, and now I feel like my whole brain has been knocked off-center.

4 days until The Unholy Consult is released.

Given the last book ended with a nuke going off, I can't wait to see what happens in this one.  I'm expecting the kind of wham ending we saw with The Thousandfold Thought.  As to what that will be...who can say?

SHIT I FORGOT IT'S JULY

Well I guess I know what I'm doing when I get back from vacation. I already have bookmarks in three other books that I'm dead-set on finishing soon, but some things are more important.

Huh, on Amazon it says it comes out the 25th? Happy Birthday to me, in any case.

BTW, have you encountered any good sum-ups or analyses of the series so far, especially including the ending of the last book? I need a refresher since I've been filling my brain with Malazan while waiting for these books to come out.

4 days until The Unholy Consult is released.

Given the last book ended with a nuke going off, I can't wait to see what happens in this one.  I'm expecting the kind of wham ending we saw with The Thousandfold Thought.  As to what that will be...who can say?

SHIT I FORGOT IT'S JULY

Well I guess I know what I'm doing when I get back from vacation. I already have bookmarks in three other books that I'm dead-set on finishing soon, but some things are more important.

Huh, on Amazon it says it comes out the 25th? Happy Birthday to me, in any case.

Does this mean I have to go back in the box?

Reading all sorts of stuff from the Black Wings of Cthulhu anthologies collected and edited by S.T. Joshi. Full of great weird fiction stories. Really inspiring stuff, and the little introductions by Joshi at the beginning of each book are great too.

I should get back to that collection, it didn't really click for me at the time I was reading it.

Joshi is a excellent Lovecraft historian though; the Penguin Classics collections of HPL's stories are LOADED with annotations that made the stories much more enjoyable for a modern reader to appreciate.

A little over halfway through Dictionary of the Khazars, and I think I've identified what I like so much about it (other than being premium-quality High Weirdness):

It reads like a historical fantasy book written by someone who doesn't read fantasy books. Which, if you consume as much fantasy trash as I do, is incredibly refreshing.

God damn it.

Parts of it read like a very dry, academic rendering of a TGRR dream. It's kind of amazing.

Roger Waldo Emerson?

Let's see if this attachment goes through...

Parts of it read like a very dry, academic rendering of a TGRR dream. It's kind of amazing.

I am about a third of the way through Dictionary of the Khazars. I bought it because of the back-cover blurb, which I will share with you here:

A national bestseller, Dictionary of the Khazars was cited by The New York Times Book Review as one of the best books of the year. Written in two versions, male and female (both available in Vintage International), which are identical save for seventeen crucial lines, Dictionary is the imaginary book of knowledge of the Khazars, a people who flourished somewhere beyond Transylvania between the seventh and ninth centuries. Eschewing conventional narrative and plot, this lexicon novel combines the dictionaries of the world's three major religions with entries that leap between past and future, featuring three unruly wise men, a book printed in poison ink, suicide by mirrors, a chimerical princess, a sect of priests who can infiltrate one's dreams, romances between the living and the dead, and much more.

Now, at this point you might be thinking, "what the fuck," and you would be correct.

A sensible choice. Prey has enough going for it stylistically that I'm totally willing to dive right into it, even though upon playing the demo I can confirm that it is very much "Dishonored 2 in space", but with less stealth.

The way the story integrates the overplayed Video Game Amnesia trope into both the narrative and mechanics is also really well done.

From the vidya gaems podcasts I listen to, it sounds like the Mass Effect IP has been "indefinitely shelved" after ME:A. Andromeda will continue to be supported but, unsurprisingly, we probably won't see a direct sequel.

In my vague attempts to have some financial discipline, I made myself "finish" NeiR: Automata before picking up Prey. By "finish" I mean I got endings A through E of the 26 endings (the vast majority of which are joke endings, of course). There's still one or two interesting ones out there for me, but now I can move on before taking the final plunge and accepting the ending that sacrifices all of your save data (yes, really). If you're the kind of weird asshole who wants to sink 60 hrs into a shiny game with good dynamic music, a BIZARRE story with multiple endings, and sexy robot asses, then this is the bullshit for you.

In regards to Prey: I'm glad I waited, because I've since received info that the PC version is quite good and in certain respects more fun to play. After trying the demo on my PS4, I can believe it. The way enemies can flit around means that mouse aiming is even more better than normal, because the tiny enemies are little fucks who can skitter out of your field of view very fast. Also, it has a futuristic space version of an Art Deco aesthetic (lots of cherrywood, brass/gold detailing, and combinations of sharp angles and geometric curves), and that shit is basically scenery porn for me.

It's not how I'm used to perceiving my body, since I've been a Skinny White Boy for the 25 years prior to this one.

Welcome to not being a kid anymore.   

I woulda kept on with it for a while longer if my glands hadn't tried to kill me