Slate writer Michael Thomsen angered a lot of gamers earlier this week when he decreed that no title is worth playing for 100 hours. Why bother slogging through dozens of hours of grunts and puzzles using well-worn mechanics, he wonders, when almost every other form of entertainment –– even Tolstoy’s War and Peace –– can be finished in a fraction of the time?

As much as his argument feels like a link-baiting “Come at me bro” challenge to those of us who spend hours clutching controllers and keypads,  I agree with almost everything Thomsen says. Of course, he’s missing the bigger picture about what’s actually pissing him off (hint: it’s a problem all video games have) and the few bright spots that promise change is coming.

Video Games Need To Slim Down

Games are too long. They needlessly pad themselves with minimally varied foes. Noted time sink Kingdoms of Amalur boasts a horde of enemies that are virtually indistinguishable from one another.

Experienced gamers can master new mechanics in an hour or two, and often the reward isn’t a series of riveting story chapters or a fun twist on earlier challenges but more tedious grinding with the exact same mechanics.

I love Force-pushing Imperial soldiers as a badass Jedi in Star Wars: The Old Republic. But thanks to years playing World of Warcraft, I was already a master of SWTOR’s gameplay before I ever booted it up. So I have to wade through dozens of hours of the same DPS/Healer/Tank mechanics that I’ve been playing for years, just to find out what happens next in the captivating storylines that are the game’s main attraction for me.

SWTOR is on Thomsen’s list of prime offenders along with other games I’ve played, like WoW, Skyrim and Fallout 3. He also includes a couple I haven’t played: Kingdoms of Amalur and Dark Souls. Most of these titles are guilty of the repetitive mechanics and derivative stories that annoy Thomsen (and me) so much, but Skyrim is different in a way that all games longer than 20 hours should try to copy.

Gamers can trod Skyrim’s dusty paths and snow-capped mountains for upwards of 200 hours if they want, chasing skirts (or man meat), buying up real estate or rising through the ranks of the dark brotherhood of assassins. That’s if players want to. If they’d rather cut to the chase and follow their dragonborn legacy, they can do that too, and in a matter of hours. See, gamers have a choice on how quickly they can complete the part of the game that matters to them and ignore the rest if they wish. Freedom of choice is what’s missing from almost all the other games on the list.

It’s Not (Just) About Art, It’s About Choices

Thomsen argues that video games are capable of being Art (capital A), but few rarely achieve the lofty heights of a Citizen Kane or For Whom The Bell Tolls. Well, duh. He’s forgetting that for all its massive success, video games are still a young industry with barely a few decades under its belt. There are only a handful of video games that have earned that capital A, but how many movies earn that distinction every year? Not many.

The reason it’s so easy to moan over the state of giant games is because of the medium itself. Video games are about interaction: making choices and doing things. Movies and books aren’t quite a passive form of entertainment — our imaginations and minds are still churning throughout — but neither do they slap a sword in your hand and point you towards an undead army eager for your blood. Video games offer us the chance to play make believe in ways that no other medium can.

But there are limitations. We can never do more than what developers allow, try as they might to hide to hide these barriers. This is true even of EVE Online, a space MMO so complex that hundreds of gamers must work together to build the larger spaceships. Minecraft might be the lone exception because it is literally a game of assembling building blocks.

Video games promise us control over our fates. It’s natural then, to expect to be able to save the princess by the time we’re level 5 if we’re fast or clever enough. This isn’t the case, of course (though Skyrim comes close to allowing just that). But it’s why we get angry when a game fails to adapt itself to our desires, like rushing to the end before the 100-hour mark.

And Here’s Why There’s Hope

Ironically, it’s the developers behind the games Thomsen criticized in his article who are taking steps to change the way we enjoy games.

Earlier this month, Skyrim developer Bethesda teamed up with Steam to launch the Steam Workshop, a toolbox and platform for modders to change the way gamers experience Skyrim. From adding simple teleportation mechanics to spells that change the weather, gamers are now in control of this epic adventure in a way that few titles have ever allowed.

In the upcoming Mass Effect 3, BioWare, the developer behind both SWTOR, will allow gamers to ease up on the pew pewing 3rd-person combat if they would rather savor the galactic rescue storyline. After almost 80 hours into my Jedi Consular storyline, I sure wish I had this option in SWTOR.

Will these measures address Thomsen’s criticisms of the industry? I doubt it, at least at first. For one thing, few developers have BioWare and Bethesda’s resources to experiment. But it’s nice to remember that a game that takes us 100 hours to beat takes far, far longer for developers to cobble together. They probably want to get it right even more than we do.

Count to a Trillion is that rare book that makes me wish I was a brilliant mathematician, and, even more unlikely, from Texas. Yes, from Texas. If that isn’t the mark of a special book then I don’t know what is.

In the future of an alternate Earth, countless wars have reduced much of the world to the equivalent of a backwater hicksville except for pockets of civilization that include the land formerly known as Texas. A young man with the improbable name of Menelaus Illation Montrose grows to adulthood there with an equally improbable mathematical gift that allows him do things like design pistols that use advanced physics equations to launch zig-zagging bullets and intelligent countermeasures.

Reading about evasive bullet maneuvers should be boring as all hell, but it’s Wright’s own gift that infuses these seemingly mundane intellectual puzzles with a pulp vibe similar to the old Conan novels by Robert Howard that I used to love as a kid. Instead of sword fights and voodoo curses, however, it’s AI programming and higher order sociopolitical negotiations that determine who lives and dies.

I have a theory that we’d all be better at math and physics if our high school text books included tales like Count to a Trillion. Montrose’s thrilling exploits almost make you want to grow up in a post apocalyptic Lone Star state.

The gawky Texan is always a whisker’s width from death and insanity, first as a gunfighter, then later as a crew member on humanity’s last hope for redemption: a great spaceship headed to a source of nearly unlimited power floating in space, as well as an alien artifact that could hold the secrets of the universe.

Montrose injects himself with a “super genius” serum to help comprehend the alien artifact. But when he comes to, he’s back on Earth and decades have passed, enough time for the world to enter a strange new golden age presided over by his former crew mates and a beautiful, mysterious princess somehow born on a spaceship filled only with men.

Usually I hate when authors pull the amnesia/black out trick on me, but I was OK with it this time around because then I could try to solve each new riddle facing Montrose. Don’t expect to see all the answers, however, as Count to a Trillion is merely the start of a new series and ends on a mother of a cliffhanger. I desperately want to see what comes next.

While Count to a Trillion is frequently brilliant fun, it’s not all flowers and genius. Characters outside of Montrose are severely underdeveloped and female characters in particular receive short shrift.  It’s disappointing that there are only two women in the story, and both identify so strongly with their archetypes — one is a mother, the other a princess — that they never feel like real people. But you don’t read pulp novels for the nuanced characterization, and Count to a Trillion is a pulp novel at heart however large its brain is.

TL;DR: Check out Count to a Trillion for hard sci-fi with a lively and unlikely pulp groove. 

Like everything else in the insanely addictive Flash game, Realm of the Mad God’s mechanics are absurdly simple, like dum dum simple.

For moist noobs (me) and maxed out vets there’s always just one life, two abilities, four equipment slots and seven keys to make it all happen (and four are just to putter around). It’s almost the opposite of modern MMOs like BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic and Blizzard’s World of Warcraft which shove dozens of abilities in your face as you scrape past the early levels.

Both SWTOR and WoW have larger gaming environments and established canon that prevent easy fixes but here are a few changes I’d suggest the bigger MMOs learn from my new favorite action-RPG-MMO-click-click-fight-fight game (which just hit Steam — check it here, it’s FREE).

1) Instant Teleportation

As anyone who’s forged a virtual lightsaber or donned an imperial agent’s uniform knows, the force is not strong in SWTOR’s grouping functions. It’s easy enough to team up on the starting world where everyone is within 10 feet of each other. At later levels, however, players have to hop on a speeder, shuttle or pterodactyl thingie to group up. And Vader help you if you’re travelling to a different planet and have to wade through the purgatory of endless orbital stations. So why can’t we skip the whole mess and use ROTMG’s teleportation system?

Realm players can instantly join any player in the world regardless of the distance or specific location. Instant teleportation doesn’t exist in the Star Wars universe (I think, I’m certainly not an expert), but players already have two instant teleportation abilities: one travels to a same-world base station (30-minute cooldown), the other backtracks to the main fleet (18-hour cooldown). It wouldn’t be a stretch to add a third teleportation ability — lets call it a troop shuttle — with a 2-hour cooldown so BioWare could still tax everyone on those delightful pterodactyl trips.

2) Automatic Grouping

Probably my favorite feature in ROTMG is how all players within eyeball range of each other are automatically buddies, sharing in experience from downed foes with no divvying up for who did the most damage or any of that nonsense. In the face of a Lich or Ghost King, there is absolutely no reason not to team up, instantly and without negotiation. Spanish, German and other languages show up in chat all the time, but the most essential messages get through quickly: “Heals,” “Cura,” or “HP” all get the point across.

The downside to such easy grouping is that loot can be difficult to nab, and it does fly in the face of SWTOR’s storytelling style where each player is the lone hope for the universe. But that’s a faintly ridiculous notion for an MMO anyway, and at least this way we can quickly find companions (the real kind) to aid us in the heroic quests moping quietly in the corner of our logs.

3) World Events

After the many lesser gods of a realm are defeated in ROTMG, all surviving players in the land (up to 85) storm the lair of the mad god himself, Oryx. Mighty stone guardians, hulking minions and finally Oryx await those who survive the castle storming and the many horrors roaming the halls. Surviving to the end is a relief almost as great as the anticipation for fabulous loot.

I know Rift and WoW are more into these world events, and SWTOR does have its own PVP battleground system, but it lacks spontaneity and the greater importance that BioWare strives so hard to infuse in the rest of the game. What’s perplexing is that each SWTOR world already has its own world boss, a brute swelling with hit points and powerful attacks. Why not have him go on the rampage every few days?

Jedi, smugglers and troopers — or their darker kin — would rush to quell the threat. And if these brothers in arms could automatically teleport into the fight and battle for the common good without having to deal with the bureaucracy of negotiating into an oversized Ops, wouldn’t that be the kind of unifying cause that has the galaxy searching for heroes in the first place?

The Mass Effect 3 demo arrived today and I’ve already sampled the Xbox 360′s single player mode. What does it taste like, you ask? Like the sweet, sweet nectar of bachelorhood. But no time for tears of loneliness and cartons of chinese food that can never fill the emptiness no matter how much we eat –– to my demo impressions!

Despite my Commander Shepard’s history of compassionate ass-kicking (Paragon!) in ME 1 and 2, the ME3 demo doesn’t load previous play throughs, instead requiring a fresh restart of the Commander’s backstory and appearance. I suppose it would have been too much for BioWare to reveal what happens when my two f*** buddies girlfriends run into each other, but I still expected to see some consequences from the dozens of choices I’ve made during previous adventures. Without a jilted lover throw down or commendations on my bravery (yes, I’m vain), the brief intro felt sterile and lonely generic.

Also disappointing were cinematics that feature painfully robotic body movements and choppy facial animations. In all fairness, I’ve been playing a lot of Star Wars: The Old Republic lately, and it’s a testament to ME3′s voice actor cast (many of whom are in both titles) that it stacks up audibly, but the facial textures in particular look blocky and mouths move far too quickly. If you’ve seen the creepy animatronic Chuck E. Cheese performers then you know what I’m talking about. Were the Mass Effect cut scenes always this robotic? Probably, but Bioware has raised the bar with SWTOR and even its other titles look terrible in comparison.

Fortunately, the opening sequence feels monstrously epic. The Earth’s military council is still a pack of cowards and the devastating Reaper onslaught quickly returns Commander Shepard into his/her customary role as Earth’s only hope. Watching the alien invaders raze skyscrapers and blast innocent civilians should be a stirring sight for anybody who calls Earth home.

With Captain David Anderson’s help, players are introduced to movement and basic combat mechanics, though the final introductory fight sequence lasts far too long for the meager amount of bullets I had. In the end I was forced to rely on Yo Mama jokes and my puny Biotic powers to peck away the Reaper attackers.

Players are given the option to jump straight into combat (Action), ease the fighting difficulty (Story), or play the traditional mix of both with the Role Play option. Veterans should be fine with any option, but I’d recommend newcomers to consider going with the Story mode because combat is no walk in the Citadel.

The second half of the demo skips players further into the game where they’ll need a firm handle on the cover system to survive. First timers don’t get much hand holding here. Dozens of points need to be allocated to boost squad mates’ abilities and talents, which can be a tough order for those who haven’t been introduced to the many different Biotic abilities and other power ups.

By the end of the demo, a towering mini boss has to be brought down alongside waves of grunts, and it’s imperative that players maneuver across the battlefield to flank enemies and find cover against heavy artillery. Blasting the bad guys from cover is fluid and fun, but I often found myself stupidly jumping into a field of bullets when I tried to reposition my camera angle. I’ve had similar issues with other shooters like Gears of War so the issue could be me, but it still felt far too easy to accidentally leave cover or get backed into a corner by one of my own squad mates.

Saving the world is a common gaming trope, but Mass Effect has managed to offer a fresh take thanks to its amazing cast of diverse characters. Only a handful of old allies make an appearance in the demo, but vets will be happy to see Garrus, Wrex and Liara rejoin Shepard in a fun cinematic that reminded me just how well BioWare can create a sense of camaraderie. It really does feel like the gang has gotten back together.

The Big Picture: Veterans of the series will be happy to see old friends return in some surprisingly challenging shoot outs that reveal just how much higher the stakes are this time around. Newcomers should consider lowering the difficulty, especially since the combat mechanics, while upgraded from earlier ME games, are still not quite as polished or reliable as in a true shooter.

Nobody plans to work at McDonald’s for the rest of their lives, but I know hundreds of people who dream of writing for a living. As this sad but neat-o graph from Onward Search reveals, an entry-level position flipping burgers is probably more lucrative (and stable) than slinging words for a living.

I haven’t worked at a McDonald’s but I did my time in retail growing up so I’m acquainted with the soul-sucking powers of the cash register, and nobody looks good in a hair net. Whether it’s a celebrity gossip blog or a personal finance newsletter, publications also use a factory model to churn out their product to as many people as possible.

The difference is that people want to write for a living.

People want to write so badly that they’ll agree to do it for a non-livable wage. And for those who do step into the social media machine, they get so caught up in the daily hunt for clicks and follows that they’re rarely developing the management and reporting skills that will get them to the next rung on the ladder. It’s enough to make people ask if social media editors are real people. They are, but they’re not very well rewarded for what they do.

So for aspiring writers out there, go ahead and practice your craft. Learn how to write snappy headlines and irresistible ledes. But don’t forget to learn the management and planning skills that will net you that writing dream job without having to settle for a McDonald’s salary.

[Via Mediabistro]

I almost had the chance to interview Orson Scott Card about this book, but the opportunity fell through in the end. Too bad because he’s one of my favorite authors. Shadows in Flight isn’t close to Card’s best work, but average for him is the ceiling for most authors. Read the original review here.

For some silly reason Shadows In Flight is being marketed as a possible standalone novel. I suppose itcould be read that way but you really should read Ender’s Game at the least, and the followingShadow saga for good measure. Yet even within the context of one of the most gripping and thought-provoking visions of humanity’s not-too-distant future, Shadows in Flight feels like an incomplete novel. Still, fans of Ender’s jeesh will find a thoughtful tale that adds new wrinkles to their understanding of the Enderverse and paves the way for what could be an exciting new chapter in this excellent series.

The last time we saw Julian “Bean” Delphiki, he was having a pretty bad day. The teenaged giant had abandoned his wife to board a spaceship along with his three most gifted children in the hopes of achieving relativistic speeds and buying enough time for Earth’s scientists to find a cure for the genetic mutation that granted him and his children incredible intelligence as well as the unstoppable physical growth that would eventually kill them all.

About five years have passed on the ship while hundreds of years have passed on Earth and now even the children of the children of the scientists who promised help have moved on, leaving Bean and his own brilliant brood left to solve the mystery of their own slowly approaching demise. The relationships between the three genius kiddos and their dying father provides much of the conflict in the first quarter of the book. The echoes of Ender’s struggle to find his place among his Battle School mates are loud and clear as the three young siblings squabble and peck at one another. One early scene in Shadows could pass as a re-creation of a pivotal fight in Ender’s Game.

Just as I was preparing for some action-packed genius kid brawling, however, the story switched speeds and direction. A new mystery arrives on the horizon and the three children are forced to put aside their fears and work together to tackle this new threat. I’m purposefully light-footing around the plot because it’s a simple one and the barest details will destroy most of the surprises. Newcomers will find the children’s adventure interesting, but readers who have at least read Ender’s Game will be rewarded with new insights into a rather large presence in that book.

I read somewhere that Shadows was originally meant to be a longer tale and this feels right. The meaty adventure promised by the first half never quite arrives despite the occasional near-death encounter. It doesn’t help that the minuscule cast provides too few ingredients for Card, whose strength has never been characterization, to work his magic. In Ender’s Game, Card could get away with thumbnail personality sketches because the Us vs. Them narrative between Ender and just about everyone (his classmates, the Battle School staff, the Buggers) was so compelling. Maybe I just miss the thrilling battles fought by Bean and Ender in previous books, but that loving feeling was largely absent this time around.

A sequel is already in the works and the ending leaves the door open for an adventure with galaxy-wide consequences. I enjoyed Bean’s return in Shadows, but the stories yet to come for his brilliant children are the ones that I really want to read.

SumOlogy: A thoughtful return to the Enderverse that sets up the next great adventure rather than delivering it. 

Score: 7/10

A couple of weeks ago I forked over far too much money for my first gaming PC. I get heart palpitations when I think about having to do anything more complex than turning it on or off, but hey, SWTOR!

It’s a lot like if BioWare took World of Warcraft, polished it to a glossy sheen and then plunged it into a Star Wars bubble bath. Lots of familiar mechanics but everything feels more momentous, like me beating down 20 more soldiers and blowing up 20 more glowing boxes will actually help the Republic take down the Sith. I must be a sucker for detonating glowing boxes.

Chicks, man

Yesterday I hit level 23 on my rock-chucking, wind-passing female Jedi Consular. Yes, I’m playing a girl. Normally in MMOs I’m strictly into dudes (why doesn’t sound that right?) but in SWTOR it’s all about the voice acting. I love David Hayter in the Metal Gear series –– “I’m no hero, never was, never will be.” –– but word on the forums was that he and fellow voice actor champion Nolan North deliver painfully generic performances in SWTOR. The insane amount of dialogue in The Old Republic means I’ll be hearing my little person speak for hours over the time I play, so I refused to settle for an OK performance. I almost went male Bounty Hunter because of its actor’s amazingly deep, testosterone-y voice, but the consular play style fit me better (I was pure mage in WoW). The variety and quality of voice work in SWTOR puts even Skyrim to shame. I looked them both up on IMDB and with about 300 credits, SWTOR has more than four times as many listed voice actors as Skyrim. Even on my rinky dink earphones (I forgot to buy speakers for my computer – d’oh), the tiniest roles carry enough emotion and nuance to belong in a major motion picture. Even the jibbar jabber aliens sound good.

No going back

The other day I downloaded demos for Rift and Guild Wars, two MMOs that I always wanted to play but couldn’t because of the no PC thing. Both had fuzzy graphics and relatively clunky controls compared to SWTOR, but it was the deafening silence that turned me off both. I’ve leveled to 80 on WoW and completed enough quests to save Azeroth dozens of times over (that place owes me big time). I did all that with barely a peep from the hundreds of dwarves, elves, humans and gnomes who asked for my aid and the absence never bothered me. But after playing SWTOR for just a couple of weeks, I don’t know if any other MMO will feel complete without a voice begging me to clear out that bandit hideout or recover this invaluable cheese wheel. Not every voice acted quest in SWTOR is amazing, and I still hit the space bar to skip through the end sometimes. I use subtitles because I don’t want to miss any important details. But the very act of hearing an impassioned plea to clear out the spice peddlers from Nar Shaddaa means I’m far more likely to remember that one throw away quest than the gravest mission I ever completed during my years in Azeroth. But hey, maybe that’s just me. Are you enjoying the voice actor work in SWTOR or do you not care? Do you think BioWare screwed over itself and the entire industry by getting people like me hooked on the expensive feature? Let me know in the comments!

Year after year, I’m reminded that the holidays are the perfect time to catch up with the really important things in life. Friends and family? “Bah!” I say to that. I’m talking about video games, man. Video games and books.

Last week I learned that Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, one of my favorite games of all time (see for yourself; it’s on my official list),  has been on Xbox Live for years. Years! Of course I reupped my XBLA account (username Ppong102 — add me!) and purchased the game within minutes. Meanwhile the AC unit I’ve been meaning to uninstall for weeks remains comfortably perched on my window sill. It’s called priorities, people.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

In less than a week I’ve already passed 130 percent completion (it goes to 200.6 percent if you know what you’re doing) and rediscovered why I loved it so much fourteen years ago. Oh my god  I am old.

The XBox’s analog controls aren’t quite as sharp as the PS1′s D-pad that I lovingly groped for so many hours back in the day, but it’s still plenty sharp. Alucard remains inhumanly graceful, and his voice acting is still so atrociously overdone that it completely justified this piece I wrote in tribute recently. The graphics, however, have aged terribly. Each sprite occupies approximately one-fifth of the screen and all of Alucard’s animations could probably be counted on a single hand that lost a couple of fingers in a nasty cheese grating accident.

Despite all that, SotN is as fun as I remember. Dracula’s palace is huge and even my memories and a helpful Internet map couldn’t stop me from getting lost, again and again. And more important than the game’s sheer size is how many secrets are buried behind false walls and tucked within vases positioned juuuust out of reach. You’re almost always rewarded for exploring, if not with a powerful new sword than perhaps with a familiar, or at the very least a percentage point checked off your completion total. With the beautiful, haunting soundtrack to accompany the adventure, I’m pretty sure I’ll earn that 200.6 percent sooner rather than later. Will I want to do it again as Richter Belmont however…

Madden NFL 2012

As wonderful as it is playing through SotN again, I’ve had to break up the retro gaming with some more modern fare. Madden NFL 2012 had been sitting on my counter for weeks until I decided to get virtual revenge on the Baltimore Ravens for the victory they squeezed out over my Niners.

I won’t write a full review here, but it was nice to discover that my years of playing past Maddens made ’12 extremely easy to pick up and play. That’s probably a downside for many gamers but I’m not complaining. I tried out a regular and fantasy franchise mode and I can confirm that both are capable of pilfering an entire day if you’re not careful. I’m still irked that EA hasn’t figured out a way to give my team realistic stats when I’m playing 5 minute quarters. Isn’t there some kind of multiplication conversion that can make my measly totals compare with all the simulated teams that play more than twice as long? I dunno. I just want the league to recognize Frank Gore’s awesomeness once in a while.

The Superstar mode has been surprisingly fun, though I can only imagine how boring it must be if you pick a defensive player, or –– god help you –– a lineman. Playing as a rocket-armed but raw QB helped me pick up more nuances in the passing game, but I wish my coaches expanded the playbook beyond the same dozen pass and run plays. I’m not Vince Young, you guys.

I have to say something about the commentary too. I like Cris Collinsworth. I think he’s a smart guy and an insightful commentator. Virtual Cris Collinsworth, however, THAT guy I want to stomp on his peepee. Both he and virtual Gus Johnson frequently misname players’ positions, repeat the same calls again and again and again (and again), and perhaps worst of all, make EXTREMELY judgmental comments when I decide that I don’t want to gamble on my kicker booting a “routine” 60-yard field goal. C’mon Madden, you’re better than this. Aren’t you?

Dark Souls

Which brings me to Dark Souls, a game so outrageously difficult that its tagline is “Prepare to die.” I have a feeling that publisher Namco Bandai would’ve included maniacal laughter after the tagline if it could have. I haven’t played it yet, but I moved it to the top of my rental queue. I have no intention of actually beating the game, but I feel like I have to make the effort. In so many ways it seems like a game that I dislike: there’s barely any plot; you’re expected to lose, again and again; and there’s almost no gameplay beyond fighting and dying. Still, I think it’ll be good for me, like the time I fell down a mountain backwards. Sure I almost died, but it made a great story.

The Alloy of Law

Speaking of stories, last week my review copy of Brandon Sanderson’s The Alloy of Law arrived in the mail. I opened it up on Wednesday and by Saturday I was finished. I enjoyed it, but like all of Sanderson’s work, I can’t recommend it wholeheartedly.

The Alloy of Law is a Mistborn novel, but it’s not a direct sequel to his Mistborn series (which is fortunate because I haven’t quite finished it). It takes places in the same world, but hundreds of years after the time when Vin and Sanderson’s other heroes have passed on. Brand new characters take the stage, and they’re just as thrilling and hollow as any other character that Sanderson has created. I won’t go into it much here –– after all I have a real review to write –– but I will say that Sanderson understands his strengths, namely his marvelous magical systems and dashing fight scenes and puts on a proper show with them in Alloy.

Well, that’s more than enough for now. Check back here in the near future as I continue to write stuff –– promise. In the meantime, what are you playing or reading? 

If it weren’t for my friend Katie’s book club, there’s a better than even chance that I would be dead in a ditch somewhere. It’s that good. Today I got to enjoy the summer weather in Central Park while I recounted my first memory (being terrified of a Peter Pan song) and drank 7 Up out of a beer bottle. Here are a few pictures I took of the meet-up that Katie says are to be used for propaganda purposes. The book was Moonwalking with Einstein, in case you were wondering.

I call these little fellers “The Many Faces of Mr. Glasses.” Because my glasses make them look like faces, see?