This is the fifth of seven Death Gate Cycle books, and unlike the previous four sees Haplo return to one of the realms (namely Arianus) rather than exploring a new one.
As usual, I’ll try and keep spoilers to a minimum.
The book’s quite enjoyable but is a weaker link in the series. The return of old characters (Bane in particular, who is referred to but does not feature in any other book save the first) is welcome, and the antagonists are subtle and sinister.
However, a problem with returning to Arianus is that much of the storyline is a little too familiar and akin to that of Dragon Wing, the first book. It’s also too slow, particularly in the first half of the book.
Unlike some previous instalments in the Death Gate Cycle there is relatively little revealed about the Sartan, or the Sundering, the war with the Patryns and so forth, which is a shame.
A strength of the book is the return of one strong character in particular from Dragon Wing, and the divergence between Haplo and Xar, the Lord of the Nexus with whom he once shared an absolute loyalty.
The introduction of the Kenkari elves is another positive. I can’t quite recall whether they’re explicitly mentioned in Dragon Wing, but the concept of soul-capturing definitely is. The Kenkari build on this theme and play a critical role in the story.
Hand of Chaos is not a bad book, just a little too slow, and with not quite enough excitement or revelation compared to its immediate predecessors. I’ll be ordering Into The Labyrinth, the sixth part of the Death Gate Cycle, when I buy my next batch of books.
This is a sort-of sequel to the fantastic Legionary Unofficial Manual, by Philip Matyszak (I’ve just seen there’s a Gladiator Manual out as well, also by Matyszak). Like Legionary, it’s a light-hearted, entertaining, concise but nevertheless intelligent book crammed with juicy titbits.
My knowledge of knights and the medieval period is essentially rubbish, so a lot of the stuff in Knight was new to me. The book covers a lot of ground, including how to become a knight, how to impress at tournaments and jousts and how to conduct sieges and battles.
The bits I found most interesting were about armour, siege weapons and retinues. Like most people, I knew the basics of armour but didn’t know about different suits for tournaments and battles and enjoyed reading about the advantages of plate armour, chainmail and boiled leather armour. Similarly, the trebuchet wasn’t new to me but there were a number of siege engines that were. Formations/units seem far less formal than in Greek/Roman armies, with a knight often having one or more squires, likewise pages and some servants plus numerous horses.
Throughout the book, (which is a nice solid hardback), there are oodles of medieval pictures and numerous quotations from medieval works (some of them by knights themselves).The author also does a good job of comparing many different knights and their fortunes and styles. John Hawkwood, for example, was born not only a commoner but a bastard, rose to become Florence’s favourite (and most expensive) mercenary and had a glittering career slightly besmirched by an unsound approach to spending money.
Prestwich also highlights the interesting doublethink of the chivalric code. Honour matters above all, yet peasants seem to be strangely exempt and are fair game for extortion, murder and all manner of general unpleasantness.
The book blends the serious stuff of history with rather more witty remarks and snippets of information (I particularly enjoyed the bits about football being a peasant’s game, and the penalty for suicide being death).
Knight, like Legionary, is an excellent sort of book, suitable for history buffs or those who enjoy light reads peppered with mirth. I learnt a lot more from this than did I from Legionary, though this is probably because I know sod all about the medieval period (similarly, I prefer Legionary, but only because ancient history interests me more than recent stuff).
The only real problem I have is that when checking the spelling of Matyszak’s name for the purpose of writing this review I stumbled across the recently released Gladiator Unofficial Manual. Damn, you Matyszak! Don’t you have enough of my money already?
[Incidentally, for those wanting a strictly serious but nevertheless excellent book on gladiators I can recommend Fik Meijer’s Gladiators: History’s Most Deadly Sport].
In a few weeks the sixth series of New Who will be upon us. As you might expect, this post will probably have spoilers so if you’d prefer to stay spoiler-free, don’t read beyond this point.
I’ve got pretty mixed views about New Who. Sometimes it’s laughably bad (Dobby the house doctor and the appalling Master probably being the lowlight of the new series so far) and sometimes it’s fantastic (The Impossible Planet, Blink).
I think Matt Smith’s a pretty good Doctor. He’s good at sarcasm, which is important, but is not so good at menace or rage. He’s helped by the fact that Moffat’s a far better writer than RTD, who deserves kudos for resurrecting the series and little for some of the deus ex machina storylines and retconning he dreamt up.
Amy Pond and Rory (who I loathed initially as another stereotypical idiotic bloke to Amy’s smart girl, but has rather grown on me) also come back, as does the smarmy River Song.
The season is split in two by a three month break, suggesting a climactic event in the middle of the season, possibly leading to a storyline that’s resolved at the end. Fingers crossed that River Song gets fed into a giant mincing machine.
Rumours regarding the daleks and cybermen abound, with some suggesting the old-style daleks (the gold ones, rather than the New Paradigm teletubby daleks) will come back. I don’t know if this will happen but I’d like to see the Mondas cybermen return.
The fantasy author Neil Gaiman has written a stand-alone episode to be aired in the first half of the season, and the series will continue the cracks in the universe/TARDIS exploding storyline from season 5.
The TARDIS explosion causing the cracks in the universe suggests someone (or thing) highly intelligent. So, the Master or another evil Time Lord (most of them seem to be evil, now I come to think of it), the daleks, or possibly another race, whether new or an obscure old one, seems likeliest.
If I could dictate the plot, I’d have the Time Lords properly return at the end of the first half of the season. I think the Time War was a decent idea but locking away both sides was foolish. Why apparently deprive the series of its two most important species and then force the writers to constantly contrive reasons for how this dalek or that dalek magically escaped?
Speculation has suggested Amy Pond might get slightly murdered just before the season splits. I’m not so sure about that. My own preference would be the permanent axing of River Song.
Matt Smith is not thought likely to go at the end (or in the middle) of the series.
I hope the season of two halves approach works. It should make a nice change from the overblown End Of The Cosmos finales that were becoming rather predictable and obvious.
Vagrant Story was amongst the last and the best of titles to be released for the original Playstation. It’s presently available through PSN, I think, and well worth a look if you never had the pleasure of playing it back in the olden days (2000).
It’s an action RPG featuring Ashley Riot as the protagonist. The player guides Ashley through the abandoned, haunted city of Lea Monde, hunting a prophet thought to be responsible for the death of a nobleman. The prophet, Sydney, captures Ashley’s companion Callo early on, and is also hunted by the Crimson Blades, led by Romeo Guildenstern. The player will also uncover some of Ashley’s history as well as learning more about the main plot.
The music is an excellent feature (one of several) of the game. Numerous tracks are top notch and most are at least enjoyably above average. There is no voice acting. Instead, the characters speak through ye olde speech bubbles. This works well, and is helped by the fantastic translation (by Alexander Smith) which transforms the script into a more archaic form of English. It’s perfectly understandable and has a dash of Shakespearian eloquence which helps immerse the player in the world of Lea Monde. More than that, the game also features a little sprinkling of French, German and Latin which works nicely.
Combat is almost flawless. Excepting the very first few fights, Ashley can execute combo attacks if the player is good enough at timing. But, the more combos the enemy is struck with the higher the Risk gauge rises. Higher Risk lowers the chances of hitting the enemy and increases the damage Ashley takes, introducing an element of strategy to combat.
In addition to this, weapons are highly varied according to material, range and damage type. Materially there are half a dozen different options, from wood to silver. The player has access to a number of workshops in the game, and in these weapons can be combined to create new means of killing enemies. Range can be anything from very, very short to pretty huge (crossbows were always good for killing bats). Players have access to staves, swords, axes, maces, spears and crossbows. Damage type is another intriguing variable which hasn’t been replicated much in subsequent games, I think. Weapons can cause piercing, slashing/slicing and crushing damage. Some enemies are vulnerable to one particular type or resistant to another.
There’s a wide range of enemy archetypes. Many are stereotypical (zombies, bats) but even some of those are excellent (the massive dragons were always fun to kill). There are some slightly creepier and more original foes, such as child-like ghosts or a gigantic iron crab.
Ashley can also learn magic. By acquiring grimoires and using them once he is taught how to perform a certain spell. Elemental resistance/attacks can be very useful in certain fights.
Graphically, the game is clearly dated, but this does not detract from it materially. The only area it slightly annoyed me was in the Snowfly Forest, where the screen is somewhat cluttered and seeing enemies can be tricky. Generally, Lea Monde is enormous, well-designed and fun to play through.
One feature I loved at the time was the award of titles (the ancestor of trophies) for certain deeds. Killing a massive enemy, slaying a certain number of foes with a given weapon or suchlike would yield a title. Vagrant Story also includes a New Game Plus feature, as after the game ends Ashley acquires a key needed to unlock certain doors that cannot be opened in an initial playthrough.
For those wanting a look at it in action, I recommend the excellent review by MetalJesusRocks on Youtube:
So, what score would I give it? 9.5/10. It’s not quite perfect, it’s merely trouser-explodingly fantastic.
