Book review: Siege of Terra: The End and the Death: Volume I
Book: Siege of Terra: The End and the Death: Volume I
The Horus Heresy Warhammer 40,000 novels have always been about expanding some basic lore concepts known since long: The Emperor created 20 space marine primarchs, the forces of Chaos spread them through the galaxy, The Emperor reunited them, at a certain point some, led by the favourite and warmaster primarch Horus Lupercal rebel, and although in the end are defeated, slain some loyal primarchs and leave the emperor heavily wounded and destined to sit forever in the golden throne.
After more than 50 books on the general story arc, Games Workshop/Black Library (their editorial wing) decided to elongate the money making machine a bit more, and divide the final confrontation (the Siege of Terra) in apparently another further 9 titles. Don't get me wrong, lore is the single best thing about the Warhammer 40k universe, but at times is clear the lore expansion is secondary to adding more volumes.
Although this novel is the 8th title on the Siege of Terra series, I wanted to begin with it because it's the most critical point: Loyalists are losing the war, the enemy is almost at the palace gates, reinforcements are not going to arrive in time, and the Emperor must do a final gambit to turn the tides: Go out and fight Horus.
So I'm probably missing a lot of context on some of the characters, and I indeed felt some of the side-stories felt a bit lacking information, so that's on me. But being a long book (more than 650 pages according to my eReader), and considering there will be a second volume (I sincerely hope they don't go too far and make it 3 parts), while reading I got the impression that there was a significant amount of fill content. The story advances, but at slow and very deliberate steps, also leaving you with a multi-faceted cliffhanger everywhere.
The writing is excellent, and having a lot of small chapters, each focusing on one of the characters or "groups" helps to keep clarity, but my impression was that it is intertwining, twisting together both three really important story lines (the Emperor, Malcador, and Horus) with lots of, at least for now, weird secondary quests and adventures, some of them a bit odd and even a tad silly.
Still, I think it's a good read, and combined with the remaining volume will become the new expanded lore about that truly important moment in the WH 40k universe. It could simply have contained the whole story in a single title.
Book review: Diablo III - The Book of Tyrael
Long ago I reviewed Diablo III: The Book of Cain, and as you might guess, Diablo III: The Book of Tyrael continues on similar grounds, expanding the lore and adding some new beautiful drawings into the mix.
This title is not as appealing as the first one, because it picks most of the texts and notes from the Diablo 3 and often merely expands them, decorating the content but not really adding anything new. It does however fill details only vaguely hinted at in the game, such as the witch Adria's background, and a lot of filling around the factions, clans, character classes and cities seen and mentioned in the game.
Having notes from multiple sources (Leah, Deckard Cain and Tyrael), at times feels a bit chaotic, but in general works nice and makes it feel a bit more "casual", a collection of notes joined together instead of a real book. I disliked a bit that the font is a bit small and the background is not bright enough, so at times is not easy to read the text, I get that the illustrations are great but legibility should come first.
Sometimes interesting, sometimes boring, that's my general feeling about it.
Status Update: March 2023
Almost no painting and no boardgaming, so I'll focus on RPG and adventure videogames.
Finished
Mass Effect Andromeda
I picked this title in a sale, and was a pleasant surprise. Despite some rough edges, repeating mechanics and still some weird character faces (the game features a lot of procedurally generated content, but has improved from the initial release), story-wise it felt different and refreshing, and I enjoyed a lot some of the teammates and their side-quests.
You also get to visit quite a few worlds with nice variety and great level design, and being a different story helps to provide different adventures. There are also quite a few boring "filler" quests, But there is enough content and pseudo-mini-games that I registered more than 50 hours before the ending.
Highly recommended for Mass Effect fans, as for now there's nothing else in the horizon.
Mass Effect Legendary Edition (1st game)
I wanted to revisit commander Sheppard's adventures, so I also got the Legendary Edition trilogy with a nice discount, and, after ME Andromeda, decided to replay the first title (for the 3rd or 4th time). Despite of the graphical improvements, it begins to feel the weight of time, especially regarding scenarios: Most non-critical side-quests reuse even the same maps with different generic prop placements; the scenarios feel big and vast but really empty; and the Mako sections (a land vehicle you drive and shoot from) have improved but are still dull and become really boring by the end of the game.
And yet, story-wise is still awesome, as it is playing as a purely evil character (a "renegade"), solving most situations in a badass but funny way, often involving fighting. Later titles became less appealing in regards to the main story, although secondary quests were the best I can remember; ME1 originated everything and it still feels to me like one of those classic sci-fi movies that you can re-watch from time to time, never getting tired.
Ongoing
Valheim
Ongoing, slowly progressing as I read tiny bits of initial strategies and learned that my initial world seed was not very too good, but thankfully you can travel "between worlds". So I could move the character and inventory to a more suitable one, with more varied biomes, more terrain, and less tiny island-like.
The setting of the game is really good, but at the beginning the "survival" part is your real challenge. And I'm loving the norse mythology vibes.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3
Dreading the insanely long previous playtimes to feel you are advancing, I don't know why I almost parked this title. Well, actually I also think that the heavily scottish-like accents, while not new to the series, had something to do. They are very noticeable because the first hours involve a lot of talking between many different characters, many of them with the accent. Plus some weird stuff that I don't yet know what it means (no spoilers).
Still, pushing my way through slowly as I guess the remaining folks I'll meet will be more "generic English" voiced. It will probably be my main RPG target for the following months as I'm eager for the story and how it fits with the previous titles.
New
Conan Exiles
As if one survival game (Valheim) wasn't enough, I went and picked another one! Also just began playing it so it's still early to form a reliable opinion. Your first steps are quite hard (dying of thirst, hunger, or killed by any human I find), and so far I've been just learning to survive, and chopping trees and rocks to be able to build a (tiny) house. Everything requires a lot of materials and breaks so soon!
The hugely varied crafting system is what lured me into this title, so let's see how it evolves. It also looks to contain a huge world to explore.
Hogwarts Legacy
Just began playing this one. Planning to take it slowly, as I like the movies and world lore but I'm not a real Potterhead.
Book review: The Thing
The Thing is one of my all-time favourite movies. After watching it again recently, I spent hours inside IMDB's trivia and fact sections, and when one comment mentioned "the novel", I had to dig deeper. I then found not only that there is a novel about the movie, but the even more interesting fact that the novel is based on the movie script, but not on the movie itself. This means that there are a few differences between both, making the book a nice addition. After reading it, here are my thoughts.
First of all, the book contains way more dialogue and background details about the party members. In some cases would still feel like redundant information in the movie, but at times the dialogs provide better explanations, like why folks act as they do, or we learn that Macready is a Vietnam veteran (not just a badass pilot). I must say that the movie still was able to compress and distill the most relevant parts of the conversations, it is still quite comprehensible. Just not as detailed.
There are also a few scenes totally missing from the film and a few others that were shortened, especially during the second half of the book. The last chunk, without spoiling anything, is very similar in concept, but with a few notable changes in execution.
And of course, there are a noticeable amount of changes: While "the thing" in the movie is very shape-changing, the book tends to attempt to revert to its original form (or at least a preferred form), resulting in many of the scenes involving the creature playing differently. The expedition voices way more of their thinking on how they guess the monster thinks and acts, providing more context on why they later do other actions. MacReady's character feels a bit different too, maybe having too many angles inside a not-too-long book (around 200 pages).
Overall, the reading felt like a very curious experience, something very familiar and known, and yet new and different. Recommended if you enjoyed the movie.
I wonder if there are more similar cases of books written before the movie was filmed...
Book review: Snow Crash
Now that the metaverse is one of the most trending buzzwords, I wanted to read "the source" of the "connected virtual online universe" concept, so I decided to pick and read Snow Crash, from Neal Stephenson. After reading it... the word that best summarizes my opinion is "disappointment".
I must confess that I came hyped. After reading Ready Player One and, more recently, Neuromancer, I was ready for some cool virtual world geekiness. What I found is a futuristic world with a weird mixture of technological concepts, humour, action and bizarre ideas, and only the first one felt (mostly) nice.
Sometimes, reading certain technological ideas I'm amazed that the book was written in the early nineties. It presents really well the idea of an alternate 3D virtual world, ruled by code algorithms and connection bandwidth, with avatars, digital currencies, and other concepts that have materialized, albeit in different forks. Concepts like requiring more processing power to render complex effects in the metaverse, being able to cheat the physics laws and security measures because everything is governed by code, and even "coders and hackers" being a highly valued workforce are correct. But other times you feel the author just grabbed some technical term and applied it without any real research about its meaning. Still, the tech part is more than fine and really what merits going through the whole book instead of discarding it.
The humour... kills me. I'm perfectly fine with sci-fi movies containing non-trivial doses of humour (e.g. Demolition Man), but here too often I found myself thinking "WTF...". The book basically alternates between adventures in the real world and the metaverse, and almost everything that happens in the real world felt either stupid or uninteresting. And the names of the characters and real world references are also quite dumb... "Hiro Protagonist", "Y.T." (from "Yours Truly"), all the pizza delivery nonsense...
The action is mostly absurd, combining super-hero like characters (e.g. "the best swordsman in the world") with opportunistic situations and boring scenarios. I don't understand how, with all the potential plots that could come (and have appeared in literature, movies and games both after and before) the real world story is so decaffeinated.
And the bizarre ideas... without entering in any spoiler, the whole "snow crash" concept is the biggest WTF. When I first learned what it refers to, I almost stopped reading the book, because it felt such a dumb concept, and kind of cheat to try to make the plot more interesting. It is also embellished with pages and pages of descriptions of the origins, and paragraphs and paragraphs of an explanation by the main protagonist when he fully understands it, up to the point that feels as a justification of why such a "concept" is real (in the book).
I wanted to believe. I was ready for a nice ride. But instead I found some very cool ideas almost buried by a poor plot. I only recommend reading this book if you wish to research about the source of the metaverse and/or player avatars.
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