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      • Chapter 1: Mission
      • Chapter 2: Lindsi
      • Chapter 3: Fusion
      • Chapter 4: Morning
      • Chapter 5: Meridian Park
      • Chapter 6: Filtration
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      • Chapter 8: New Destination
      • Chapter 9: Solar Strip
      • Chapter 10: Power Imbalance
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      • Chapter 12: Self-Determination
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      • Chapter 24: Sightlines
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      • Chapter 26: Escape to Nowhere
      • Chapter 27: Consequences
      • Chapter 28: Hard Vacuum
      • Chapter 29: Spacewalk
      • Chapter 30: Unanswered Questions
      • Chapter 31: Captain on Bridge
      • Chapter 32: Horizon Mission
      • Chapter 33: Answers
    • Mysteries Unite
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Distant Realms

~ A selection of tales from across the Multiverse! Travel via Waypoint to learn more…

Tag Archives: Reviews

Sometimes I Even Review Them

17 Mon Oct 2016

Posted by Metalwings in Reading

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Tags

Fantasy, Recommendations, Reviews

The only reason I don’t often recommend books is that I rarely know what to say about them. Reviewing can be something of an art, and I learnt mine on FanFiction.Net aeons ago (and emphatically not under my current name), where reviews are primarily for the benefit of the story’s author, rather than another reader. What do I tell other people like me about a book, other than “Hey, you might like this”?

But I have quite a few really good books, having had plenty of time to build up my collection, and I really would like to share them with others. Recently I re-read one of my favourites, having just got it back from the friend I lent it to. This book gave one of my favourite RPG characters her name: Captain Kaylen Myrilesse — but even if I was permitted to talk about her, which I sadly am not, that would be entirely too much of a digression.

Havenstar

Glenda Noramly / Glenda Larke

The world is coming apart. But that’s normal: it has been for countless generations. Eight islands of stability are all that remain of the half-mythical country of Malinawar, and beyond their borders, chaos stretches: a world half unmade, the Unstable. Ever-changing, never entirely the same from day to day, the Unstable is a place in flux. Across it run ley lines, dangerous ribbons of pure power unleashed from the world in its destruction. The ley-lit can see them, sense them, perhaps even command them — the ley-unlit can only be tainted by them, transformed into strange and twisted half-humans, but still with the minds of the people they were before.

Keris Kaylen is the daughter of Master Mapmaker Piers Kaylen, whose life is dedicated to mapping and remapping the ever-shifting Unstable. In secret she draws her father’s maps, bound from ever following in his footsteps by the stifling, unchanging Rule that is humanity’s best attempt to maintain order and stability amidst the ever-encroaching chaos. When her father is slain by a Minion of the Unmaker and his effects returned to his family, she discovers the reason for his death: he had come into possession of an artefact beyond price, a map that could change the world.

The broken lands of Malinawar are sketched for us with a light, deft touch that enables the mind’s eye to colour between the lines, sacrificing neither detail nor pace. Even minor characters typically escape two-dimensionality, with their own lives and desires hinted at beyond the necessarily limited confines of their appearance in Keris’ story, and the wider world of the Eight Stabilities continues to move along its orderly track in between her sightings of it. Malinawar’s history is shrouded in chaos, yet the curtains of the past shift just enough to gain glimpses of it here and there, and to wonder.

Havenstar has long been one of my favourite books, and I absolutely recommend reading it if you can get your hands on a copy. It seems to mostly be out of print, but Amazon (of course…) are still selling it (albeit at a high price), though the author has since changed her pen name to Glenda Larke and I prefer the cover of my original copy. (Both links go to Amazon; the second is the listings for the old version, which can be extremely cheap used but runs the risk of, well, being a used book.)

And I’ve now discovered that she’s written a lot of other books since then… *vanishes into a book hole*

Games You Gotta Play: Part I – Dust

24 Wed Jun 2015

Posted by Metalwings in Games

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Tags

Fantasy, PC Games, Recommendations, Reviews, Top X

It might look like I’m wandering off my usual topic here, but this is really a home for everything about storytelling — and trust me, this post is all about storytelling. So here we go.

A while back, I picked up a game called “Dust: An Elysian Tail”. It looked seriously pretty, and like it might be a bit of fun. But I picked up a bunch of games around that time, and for a while, it went unplayed, waiting on my digital shelf. Then, one day last year, I thought “here’s something I haven’t played, let’s give this a shot” and loaded it up.

How do I explain without spoilers? Let me see if I even can, because above all else I must, because the beauty of the story is how it shifts as you learn it. I began to play with a fairly neutral baseline of expectation, and at first I wasn’t sure whether or not I’d keep going. Leaning on the fourth wall is usually a complete dealbreaker for me, and somebody put a paw right through it several times in the first few minutes. But, I was curious, and the introduction had set up some expectations that I wanted to see play out. So I kept on going.

By the time we’d reached the first key location, I’d already begun to care. I watched reactions, including inexplicable ones, and I wondered: was my theory right? It seemed about right. Surely something would confirm or deny it.

Continue reading →

A New Tale Begins: The Fused (also: a review!)

19 Sun May 2013

Posted by Metalwings in Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Books, Chapters, Fused, Mysteries Unite, Reviews, Sci-Fi

Pardon my radio silence over the past few days, I’ve been quite busy with that most unfortunate of things, real life! However, that doesn’t mean all’s quiet on the writing front, just that I haven’t had either the time or the right mood to blog. So, what’s new? Well, first and foremost and making my week, the wonderful Catherine Russell (who writes a very funny story! I’m partway through the serial Pinholes at present!) has written a review of Mysteries Unite!

The rest of today’s post is about yet another story: today, I’ve put up the beginning of “The Fused“. The first part has been kicking around for a fair while, and perhaps putting it up here will encourage me to hurry up and write the rest of the poor thing! This is not all of chapter one, it’s the first scene – new scenes will be added to the chapter until said chapter is complete!

The Fused is set on a generation ship, drifting between the stars. It’s been out there so long that the colonists no longer really know where they came from or where they’re going: the ship, with its immense habitat domes, is their world. But the respect they once had for their majestic vessel is all but gone, and as part after part of the ship has been removed or abandoned to make way for other developments, the day of critical mission failure draws ever closer. Cut off from the colonists, the ship’s computer sends a projection amongst its people to find someone who will be able to repair it before it’s too late, pitting two teens from across the generations against time, entropy, and short-sighted self-interest.

A Review!

16 Thu May 2013

Posted by Metalwings in Writing

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Before the Sun Fades, Fantasy, Reviews

Without any prompting from me, my wonderful friend Duck (@Mildertduck on Twitter) wrote up a review of “Before the Sun Fades” last year (while I was still in the Angry Robot competition), and is kindly letting me post it here now that this blog is underway! I fully intend to archive any reviews I can get my hands on, not just the good ones… honest! Other than fixing a typo (“Before” -> “When” in the story title), I haven’t changed a word.

Continue reading →

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