The Shame of Motley, Second Person, The Mount
Pretty wide selection this time. I'm almost out of books once more, so clearly I will have to see what folks in the bookclub are reading.
The Shame of Motley (Rafael Sabatini): As Sabatinis go, this is pretty minor -- it's no Scaramouche or Captain Blood (and indeed I see from wikipedia that it was written 15-odd years earlier). Large parts of the plot are blatant ripoffs, and the parts that aren't generally revolve around this guy who's sworn vengeance for being forced to wear a jester outfit for three years. But, this is Sabatini, and therefore awesome. It's got duels, intrigue, romance, mistaken identities, historical personages, and poison. I really have no other requirements. (I've only read The Three Musketeers, which is better than this but not as good as the other two Sabatini novels I've read -- anyone else have an opinion on Dumas vs Sabatini?)
Second Person: As most of you know, this is a collection of essays on narrative games, in the broadest sense of the term. It's a little tricky to review because it has a half-dozen different purposes: it's trying to give an introduction to the field for people who know nothing, to give a history of the field for people who know a little, to give insight into particular famous works for people who are already familiar with them, to categorize the past, analyze trends in the present, and suggest directions for the future. Some of it's written for academics, some for game designers, and some for lay people; some's for programmers and some for artists and some for authors. Consistency is not the book's strong suit.
However! On the whole it was a smashing success, at least for me. There are three major sections in the book (rpgs/board games, computer games, and large-scale games like MMORPGs and ARGs), and every one has some great essays. I'm pretty well-acquainted with all the surveyed areas and still learned a lot. There were definitely some essays that were too artsy or too academic for my tastes, but I imagine there is someone out there who will dig 'em, so ok by me.
I had a few complaints. For one thing, some of the essays are too short. I know it's tricky trying to keep the overall book to a manageable size, while still including a wide array of people (and the book does a really good job of getting all sorts of designers, players, and critics to comment), but nevertheless, a lot of essays were so short they were only barely worth including. It probably would have been better to cut half of them out and double the length of the remainder. A few were too long (but those folks were mostly friends of the authors, so I imagine they got the prime slots). Some were too vaporous -- the essays where people talked about specific things tended to work better than people's attempts to analyze whole genres or entire communities.
But, really, all of these are pretty minor. I totally suggest getting this if you're interested in the subjects it covers. My picks for the best essays in each section, if you want to cherry-pick:
- Tabletop Systems: Ken Hite's Call of Cthulhu essay, Rebecca Borgstrom's story-machine-theory essay, James Wallis's story-in-games essay
- Computational Fictions: Jordan Mechner's Prince of Persia design discussion, Jeremy Douglass's analysis of Shade
- Real Worlds: Sean Thorne's essay on Puppetland with his students, Jane McGonigal's I Love Bees discussion, Jill Walker's analysis on quests in World of Warcraft
The Mount (Carol Emshwiller): This is a coming-of-age sf novel. You can tell it's a coming of age novel because the guy's mother is missing, he hates his dad, and he falls in true-love-forever with the first person of the appropriate age and gender that he meets. You can tell it's sf because the premise is aliens have taken over earth and they make humans carry them around on their backs. Normally I will happily accept whatever thing a book takes as its premise, because books are more interesting if you go along with them, but this one was kind of a strain. The aliens could make a space ship to come to earth, but their feeble legs won't let them walk around and they don't have any good way of fixing this? It seems like that would be the first thing they'd fix, and the last thing they'd give up. There are various good bits in here where the humans are creepily treated like horses, and the aliens hint at some interesting biology and society, but the good bits tend to be crammed in and not really complete enough. So probably give it a miss unless you've got some unusual fetish for this kind of thing.
Next up, I am pleased to see, is the sequel to Swordspoint. Should be good stuff.
The Shame of Motley (Rafael Sabatini): As Sabatinis go, this is pretty minor -- it's no Scaramouche or Captain Blood (and indeed I see from wikipedia that it was written 15-odd years earlier). Large parts of the plot are blatant ripoffs, and the parts that aren't generally revolve around this guy who's sworn vengeance for being forced to wear a jester outfit for three years. But, this is Sabatini, and therefore awesome. It's got duels, intrigue, romance, mistaken identities, historical personages, and poison. I really have no other requirements. (I've only read The Three Musketeers, which is better than this but not as good as the other two Sabatini novels I've read -- anyone else have an opinion on Dumas vs Sabatini?)
Second Person: As most of you know, this is a collection of essays on narrative games, in the broadest sense of the term. It's a little tricky to review because it has a half-dozen different purposes: it's trying to give an introduction to the field for people who know nothing, to give a history of the field for people who know a little, to give insight into particular famous works for people who are already familiar with them, to categorize the past, analyze trends in the present, and suggest directions for the future. Some of it's written for academics, some for game designers, and some for lay people; some's for programmers and some for artists and some for authors. Consistency is not the book's strong suit.
However! On the whole it was a smashing success, at least for me. There are three major sections in the book (rpgs/board games, computer games, and large-scale games like MMORPGs and ARGs), and every one has some great essays. I'm pretty well-acquainted with all the surveyed areas and still learned a lot. There were definitely some essays that were too artsy or too academic for my tastes, but I imagine there is someone out there who will dig 'em, so ok by me.
I had a few complaints. For one thing, some of the essays are too short. I know it's tricky trying to keep the overall book to a manageable size, while still including a wide array of people (and the book does a really good job of getting all sorts of designers, players, and critics to comment), but nevertheless, a lot of essays were so short they were only barely worth including. It probably would have been better to cut half of them out and double the length of the remainder. A few were too long (but those folks were mostly friends of the authors, so I imagine they got the prime slots). Some were too vaporous -- the essays where people talked about specific things tended to work better than people's attempts to analyze whole genres or entire communities.
But, really, all of these are pretty minor. I totally suggest getting this if you're interested in the subjects it covers. My picks for the best essays in each section, if you want to cherry-pick:
- Tabletop Systems: Ken Hite's Call of Cthulhu essay, Rebecca Borgstrom's story-machine-theory essay, James Wallis's story-in-games essay
- Computational Fictions: Jordan Mechner's Prince of Persia design discussion, Jeremy Douglass's analysis of Shade
- Real Worlds: Sean Thorne's essay on Puppetland with his students, Jane McGonigal's I Love Bees discussion, Jill Walker's analysis on quests in World of Warcraft
The Mount (Carol Emshwiller): This is a coming-of-age sf novel. You can tell it's a coming of age novel because the guy's mother is missing, he hates his dad, and he falls in true-love-forever with the first person of the appropriate age and gender that he meets. You can tell it's sf because the premise is aliens have taken over earth and they make humans carry them around on their backs. Normally I will happily accept whatever thing a book takes as its premise, because books are more interesting if you go along with them, but this one was kind of a strain. The aliens could make a space ship to come to earth, but their feeble legs won't let them walk around and they don't have any good way of fixing this? It seems like that would be the first thing they'd fix, and the last thing they'd give up. There are various good bits in here where the humans are creepily treated like horses, and the aliens hint at some interesting biology and society, but the good bits tend to be crammed in and not really complete enough. So probably give it a miss unless you've got some unusual fetish for this kind of thing.
Next up, I am pleased to see, is the sequel to Swordspoint. Should be good stuff.