Symbaroum brings a complete Swedish tabletop fantasy role-playing game to a wider English-speaking audience in a hardback volume or as a PDF. Not the first tabletop game to achieve this transition by any means, Symbaroum might seem unusual in that it only appeared in it’s original language format in 2013. Funding the translation by IndieGoGo, […]
A dangerous urban fantasy: A review of Beyond the Boundary
The opening scene in Beyond The Boundary will catch your attention. The series will hold it. In short; this anime should be on your watch list. A society of spirit warriors secretly battles against spirits on Earth that only they can see. One of the first of these powerful youmu the team goes up against […]
Say goodbye to your sanity: A review of FutureQuake 28
A friend tipped me off to FutureQuake, providing a copy for me to look at and muttering about 2000 AD. I was happy enough to take a look. I’ve no shortage of comic books to read but I always try and make time for recommendations. I was surprised at Future Quake. It was much better […]
Weirdly charming: World Conquest Zvezda Plot
The start of this anime reveals that a single teenager, leader of the Zvezda, manages to conquer the modern world. That doesn’t really set the scene at all, it just means that despite what happens next; they did it. After that brief intro we’re then introduced to a bunch of unlikely misfits that seem to […]
An omnibus of magic: A review of The Mage Storms
The Mage Storms is an omnibus edition from Titan Books that brings together the three books Storm Warning, Storm Rising and Storm Breaking from Mercedes Lackey. As it happens, despite all the books to her credit, my only previous encounter with Mercedes Lackey was with Elemental Masters: Blood Red. I found that book to be […]
An introduction to Josei: Review of Bakumatsu Rock
I liked the premise of the series. Take a Japan where back in the 19th century, the dark rulers of the Tokugawa Shogunate ruled and banned all performers from singing any son that wasn’t a “Heaven’s Song”. These Heaven’s Songs work by brainwashing, calming and subjugating the masses. Skip forward and enter Sakamoto Ryouma and […]
Loyal droid or junk? A review of the R2-D2 desktop vacuum
Here’s a safe bet – Star Wars toys will be all the rage this Christmas. I was pondering Star Wars gifts for my godson and his brother but wasn’t sure if they’d seen the films. After all; The Phantom Menace came out in 1999. That’s 16 years ago and neither boy is 16. As it happens […]
Doubles up on gigantic: A review of Shipstar
Shipstar is the follow on to Larry Niven and Gregory Benford’s Bowl of Heaven. Unusually for a sequel, it’s a much better book. The action picks up in the aftermath of Bowl of Heaven and the humans are in deep trouble. They’ve found this gigantic spaceship-thing built around a star and have learn the hard […]
Deadly power struggles: A review of The Boy Who Wept Blood
The Boy Who Wept Blood is the sequel to Den Patrick’s The Boy with the Porcelain Blade. I really enjoyed most of Porcelain Blade; with some of the flashbacks as the exception, they felt like a bit like filler when I really wanted to get on with the action. The Boy Who Wept Blood has […]
What’s more dangerous? Belief or bullets: A review of Slow Bullets
Slow Bullets is a novella from Alastair Reynolds. The sci-fi is set at a time where humanity has expanded to very many planets but split into two. A war rages between the Central Planets and the ones of the Periphery. The government uses a device embedded into its soldiers and people to record their identity […]
