You are making me want to dig out my big stack of Mary Gentle books this week
Books, Toys, Cards, Games Personal library of SFF/Pulp/Gothic/Weird/Penny Dreads/Classic Crime/Kaiju/RPGs No follow backs if too much politics or AI. Devon UK https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/127259529-kds https://www.librarything.com/profile/KevDS
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You are making me want to dig out my big stack of Mary Gentle books this week
Nope, still a fail. Pulled out a bit of a cheap attack which I couldn't manage alongside blocking it, healing, de-stresses etc. Just too much even with a fully over-powered party. Crazy - this is only boss 2 of 5 in the campaign
Oh my, I even killed The Collector (first time ever). This run is going to really hurt when I inevitably fail!! 😂 #darkestdungeon2 #videogames
I don't want to push my luck, but oh my that is quite the set up going into the 3rd route of Act 2 in Darkest Dungeon 2. Never ever had that many positive relationships. Usually by this point I just have 3+ negative ones and no positive! #darkestdungeon2
It is. Goes nicely with my #Lovecraft ones by Francois Baranger
The swagger..
Someone has not been fed and it’s obvious. #SookieTheFarmCat
Random planet with lots of high ground
Already read it! Hope you enjoy yours too
A very real problem to concerned about
Nicholas Cage fans too?? Damn and to think I was ever concerned about future generations losing out on cultural icons. Safe hands!!
Great news. Plus well done for hooking them into the first in a series!
Did an author talk today for half a dozen high school students who had all chosen Orphan Planet as their summer reading assignment. What a delightful, engaged, inquisitive, insightful bunch they were. Books still being read by gen alpha it seems, which is very cool #BookSky #books #author
“…the green planet Yag, which circles forever in the outer fringe of this universe. We swept trough space on mighty wings that drove us through the cosmos quicker than light…” - Robert E. Howard A cool interpretation here #conan #fantasyart #art #swordandsorcery #fantasy #books 🪐📚💙
Some more of the interior art #conan #fantasyart #art #fantasy #swordandsorcery 🪐📚💙
It’s stunning throughout. Double page paintings all through
@obrackenbury.bsky.social tagging you because I know you will appreciate this
Tower of the Elephant by Robert E. Howard and Valentin Sécher It’s here! My last book mail for a while is a classic of the sword and sorcery genre. Each page is illustrated with a gorgeous spread of art alongside the original text 🪐📚💙 @titanbooks.bsky.social #conan #fantasy #weirdwednesday
.. something also owed to the success and influence of Warhammer, Star Wars, Dragonlance/Forgotten Realms and all the prominent authors contributing to those and franchises like Alien today. Some of the Arkham Horror stuff alone is exceptional, transcending the mere "tie in" label it gets given
Most people if they're honest with themselves (me included) have prob held some sort of book snobbery. I was a bookseller in a prominent store for many years - I've seen it from all angles I think as SFF has become more mainstream, tie ins have followed that course to acceptability these days, 1/2
Yeah tie ins get a bad rap due to literary snobbery from some quarters, when actually I’ve read plenty of good ones - from Star Wars, to Star Trek, from video games to board games. Etc
I remember enjoying the first Vanguard book. The only Trek novel I ever read
This might interest you @crutledge.bsky.social
Been nice to spend some proper time gaming. Although between Shinobi, Darkest Dungeon 2 and the upcoming Silksong, I seem to be picking the more stressful ones... Back to job hunting tomorrow
A 3 hour eventful run and the boss annihilated me in under 2 minutes. Wasn't even a fight. Maybe next time "The Seething Sigh, stertorous avatar of ill-concealed rage!"
The Dreaming General was beaten reasonably comfortably thanks to my Plague Doctor going resolute (he survived his over-stressed roll). The party relationship is in tatters from what is was, but they live to fight the final boss! "Success, so long pursued, is rewarded only with creeping revelation."
Death turned up and nearly wiped my party. This might just doom me for the next General. If I can survive it, I have a good chance at the boss
FFS. Spent ages building my team perfectly to a specific boss, but I misclicked the path now I can't fight it and I'm prob screwed for the rest of this run. Sigh
Today's boredom buster is a return to Darkest Dungeon 2 "You were bold once. Be bold once more. Free yourself from this suffocating stillness, fix your gaze on the horizon, and face the fearsome truth... of the Darkest Dungeon."
¨ANTEDILUVIAN¨ Trailer (2025 version). Full animated short here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHsz... . Homage to Victorian Paleoart. This scene is based on ¨life in jurassic europe¨ by B. Waterhouse. trailer music by Björk: ¨overture¨ . #animation #dinosaurs #victorianart #paleoart #retrosaurs
Can never be enough
Out now (mine arrives tomorrow) 🪐📚💙 #conan #swordandsorcery
I enjoyed it, but I wont say I understood everything. It'll likely need multiple reads to grasp even half of it and some of the allegory is beyond me. There are however utterly brilliant bits in there
New Sun requires commitment - it's one very heavy, very layered story broken into four chunks that you either read until the end or give up on after book 1. Urth of the New Sun is a sequel to those events
Shinobi doesn't need walkthroughs as the secrets aren't too hard to find as they are marked on the map as purple areas. Normally though I will avoid a guide unless I absolutely cannot work it out after hours of trying or I am otherwise done with the game
Ooh I was very tempted by this
Succumbed to my seventh Castlevania of the year - Portrait of Ruin #Castlevania #videogames
I remember enjoying the “half proof” of this one before it came out. Still not read my full hardback though (in defence it’s quite heavy..)
It's been a very, very long time that I've bought a new game and played it outright until finished. My games colection is filled with "started"
Finally! After 4 intensive gaming days, Shinobi: Art of Vengeance is completed with 100% secrets found - even the secret boss beaten! Was great fun. Had some rage inducing secret areas towards the end though It would really suit a full metroidvania @lizardcube.bsky.social #videogames #switch2
The first four books were decent enough. Hopefully this clears some things up
I've also got a few new games to work through. General retro stuff, but Shinobi (should finish today), Silksong (Thursday - woohoo!) and I might succumb to Ninja Gaiden Ragebound if I can find funds for it.
I don’t normally buy into monthly goals or book planning, but there’s a few books I want to get to so I’ve made a small pile for Sep including a couple of weird horror titles: - Algernon Blackwood - Strange Eons by Robert Bloch - Wakening the Crow - Leigh Brackett - Urth of the New Sun 🪐📚💙 🩸📚
Nah. I read like 3-4 and went out twice
One of my favourite books
An omen of murder.. bsky.app/profile/kdsb...
They swarm here in their hundreds. Outside my window. Watching. Plotting..
I've started work on my English Civil War project after a year away from the painting table. This is the first of my four Parliamentarian infantry units cleaned and assembled. 28mm miniatures from Bicorn. #wargaming #28mm #tabletop
Demons, 54mm and 28mm
The first one is still fine for what it is. And the latest one is barmy enough to sit alongside some of the barmy Toho ones from the 80s and 90s. The middle 2 I keep just so I don't have a Godzilla gap in my dvd/blu ray collection
Yeah that's all fine, it's just didn't feel any different when hitting mobs as to not hitting them with normal attacks. You also start with almost no skills and the one I had was so resource intensive, it was barely usable. It prob improves, but starting combat is very poor
Murder in the skies..
Her writing is a bit clunky, but her storytelling and imagination more than make up for it
Yesterday I played Torchlight 2 for the first time. It was fun, albeit not quite as good as Diablo 3 (the combat doesnt feel as satisfying or varied) Here’s my hammer wielding engineer and his pet, Roger the Rhino
I'm not a huge fan of his. I read a couple in my younger years; they were OK at best
Mind you, I'm only a quarter way through my huge Leigh Brackett omnibus which is thoroughly enjoyable so far (although I've creased the spine slightly which hurt me deep..)
Almost time to start my weird horror pile. Algernon and Blackwood and Robert Bloch to start perhaps
I haven’t seen it, but I’ve enjoyed reading the vastly different opinions on it. Been enough tear downs that I’ll likely pass on it. The franchise has been downhill after Aliens anyway
I had the Kane one, but I didn’t like the film or its portrayal of Howard’s character so got rid of it. Be interested to know if the novelisation overcame the flaws tho esp with Campbell at the helm
This will be my first of his to read, although I do own Purple Sapphire
Interesting. Didn’t know he wrote novelisations
Fun thread. I haven't read many good novelisations outside of the original King Kong, so this made for interesting reading and put a few on a wishlist to explore at some point
Very nice!
Last Pantheon is great. Haven’t read my Devils Road yet. About all I recognise!
Oh my. I have them on kindle and I have the first one reprinted with the original cover art, but this is tempting..
Okay, now I have 7 out of the 8 Guy N Smith crabs novels. Thanks to this brand new reprint. Just one more…
Phew!
Starting to get ever closer to Hollow Knight level of difficulty on the scret bonus areas in Shinobi..
Nice. Not read that Tessier yet, but I've enjoyed his work before
They took off and circled above the house a couple of times and vanished Tricksy birds..
The crows are gathering outside my window again There’s a murder brewing…
It’s a fun series
Some of the Radium Age books from MIT Press I have collected so far. I’m not sure I’ll get a full set of these as I already own things like The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson, but we will see when money is flowing again 🪐📚💙 #booksky #scifi #radiumage
That Matheson and all those bottom shelf books of Robert Bloch and Monster She Wrote books are well worth getting
The best sci fi is coming from everywhere. Men, women and every possible culture. It’s coming from indie, trade and self published. If people narrow their search to US/UK writers only in a bookstore, then their conclusions are naturally going to be wrong
According to Futurama, all you need is a guitar and to win your girl from steel-drivin’ man using a psychic 3D printer
They’d never be able to keep it quiet for more than half an hour let alone days.
Two new book additions 1) The Greatest Adventure by John Taine (1929, reissued by MIT Press as a Radium Age book) Predates Mountains of Madness as a book about Elder Things in Antarctica 2) The Jaguar Mask by Michael Deluca. A mix of hard boiled and surrealism #weird #lovecraft #horror 🩸📚
Red is home console collections Purple is for Arcade collections Blue is for Home PC collections (Amiga, Commodore etc) It's basically where all the games on that cartridge originate from before being converted for the Evercade
On top of that, we are seeing smaller/indie SF publishers pop up regularly to cover the gap the big publishers temporarily vacate. And they compliment what stalwarts like Solaris and Angry Robot are doing in the middle of the pack
Horror had a similar issue and now it's a juggernaut these last few years, but that's not necs represented in the shops (altho moreso in the US and some high street stores have brought it back here). SF is far too ingrained, far too strong to just "die away", esp given the amount of SF out there
Retail yes, but that's a different discussion. Publishers are struggling so they are narrowing their focus into pushing the current boom bubble which is always temporary. High Street stores is a bit more complex and would need longer than I have here to go into
I agree it's thriving. And part of it is that we are also getting so much more SF (along with the other genres) out of other countries. Chinese SF and Afrofuturism for example is getting stronger and more widely published.
Yeah, but that's not represented online or in the indie/self published scene. Lots of doom and gloom about the future of SF which I very much do not share or agree with. It's a new era sure, but it's telling new stories - many of which are coming out of other countries
My Neo Geo Evercade cartridge arrived. Includes Metal Slug, King of Fighters 2000, Shock Troopers, Ironclad, Sengoku and Magician Lord
This guy!? He was annoying in the 80’s..
Jeez, it's been a long time between monthly updates and it means I'm still working through the backlog! In April '23 we played 32 different games, 8 of them for the first time. See the breakdown at: www.3spellcastersandadwarf.com/gaming-blog/... #tabletopgaming #boardgame #boardgames
Pretty sure GI Joe didn’t have to put up with this nonsense Rocking the soundtrack on some of these levels though
New Shinobi not only has Saturday morning cartoon villain dialogue, it takes inspiration from other games. Battletoads anyone..? #videogames #shinobi #retrogaming
Was Star Master the one with the touch pad controller on the Atari or am I thinking of a different game?
ANOTHER NEW CART ANNOUNCEMENT! The Llamasoft Collection for Evercade brings together 27 zarjaz hits from the hairiest Yak in the business, including multiple versions of several games! Preorders open today. Releasing in November!
NEW CART ANNOUNCEMENT! Activision Collection 1 features 15 all-time classics from the games industry's first third-party developer. Includes Pitfall!, MegaMania, River Raid and more! Preorders are open... TODAY! Releasing in November.
Let's talk Botanical Gothic and look at 1 paperback from hell www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlEy...
Spores of Doom is an excellent collection given how many important stories and authors are there. I found some of the connection to the theme a bit tenuous though If you like nature themed ones, they do a very good insects themed one as well as a 'Weird Woods', in the Tales of the Weird set
I really enjoyed Airside. I went down a rabbit hole of watching some of the films mentioned and following up on all the easter eggs. A great bookend to his career I thought Perry Rhodan - nice big series there!!
That game is far too stressful. All they do is poo everywhere and try to snitch on each other! I was exhausted from them and glad to go out slaughtering things!
Nevah! Stand firm upon that flimsy ground! 😅
She's right though ;)
