Thoughts and Images

Book: Arena Author: William R. Forstchen Pages: 297 Hard Core Scale: 1/4 Normal Scale: 5/10 Publish Date: 1994 About: A city of squabbling royal houses hosts a yearly magical tournament to keep the peace, raise money, and pay tribute to a planeswalker who lords over them all. A one eyed mage, Garth, enters these games for his own reasons. Review: The first of the MTG books written early on before retcons set down Dominaria’s unique charm. Funny what stuff was still relevant back then that exists to this day. Also funny timeline wise Urza is running around beginning people for resources while this book is going on. The book is half in the bag. It is mechanically written well and some old school plot points pop with excellent resolution of conflict. However, a lot of the book demands on mystery that is very obvious. The book is also terribly sexist. It fails the Bechdel test entirely. One can argue the society as a whole represented being sexist is a point as it is very m...

Book: Hitherto A Lion Author: Rikki Simons Pages: 352 Hard Core Scale: 4/4 Normal Scale: 10/10 Publish Date: 2018 About: The human species faces extinction. The Boezch race dead set upon erasing them from existence. Now the lion Fel wearily hunts, compelled, across the long Savanna space colony, watching these events unfold followed by a haunting song and a dream of a familiar human woman. Review: I have waited for over a decade for a book like this again: A book written of this caliber and depth in the second decade of the 21 st century. Yes, this is written by that Rikki Simons the comedy and comic writer and voice of Gir in Invader Zim. There is nothing comedic about this work though. This is a dead serious work of art, a masterpiece. Haunting, beautiful, hopeful, it is a work of the human potential. Writing with the capitol W it is story, poem, musical cacophony, lessons in love in all of its forms, reflection of existence, and the line between man, beast, and machine. ...