Review copy provided by the author.

When Ken Liu's The Grace of Kings came out in 2015, I found myself unable to review it objectively. Objectivity was impossible. The stories I'd heard as a child about the fall of the Qin dynasty and the rise of the Han had been incorporated into a Polynesian-themed wuxia fantasy, blending elements made ( Read more... )

So let's talk a little bit about short fiction reviews, the rhetoric of 'best', and stuff like that.

Neil Clarke had an editorial recently in which he argued that short fiction reviews don't have much value - his proxy for 'value' being whether they drive readership, in terms of measurable impact on incoming web traffic. With some exceptions - he ( Read more... )

After playing through the campaign in Halo 3 again so I could get my 400+ gamerscore, I have to say that the sheer bullshit quotient of its last level should have prevented it from getting a perfect score from anyone.

I'm not surprised it didn't, mind. (It was, after all, Halo 3.) But that level is just amazingly awful and unfun in every ( Read more... )