Long time, no post, but many books and games
It's been over a year since I've posted anything I've read or played.
I got sucked into Fallout 4 for a while. I have the first DLC but haven't played it. I don't want the story to end so I stopped for a while. Also, while I love the power armor, I don't love the humans only sentiments of the Brotherhood of Steel, so I'm staying allied with the Minutemen and the Railroad. Maybe with some player made content, I could explore being a bad guy, but that doesn't seem as possible with this Fallout as it did in Fallout 3.
I'm also still playing Pardus. There was a double war on the Artemis server over the winter. Union vs Federation, then about 3 weeks later the Empire vs. Federation war started. Feds won against the Union and lost to the Empire. It was interesting to see the game mechanics for it. I also got paid 42m in game money for a starbase I owned. That was funny. I now have another one that I've named Deep Thought.
Tera Online also sucks up a lot of my time. It's an online MMORPG and I like the story. Most of the races and character classes are interesting but two are locked to specific races/sex. The Reaper can only be an Elin, which are supposedly an ancient race of magical beings that look like hypersexed preteen girls with animal ears and tails. Elins are only female. The Brawler can only be human females. The Brawler is relatively new and can tank and do dungeons by themselves fairly easily without having to be too overskilled to do so. I'm enjoying playing one as I like to solo everything.
They have revamped some of the crafting and mail system. You no longer have to go to a town/banker in order to get your mail or receive an item, which is great. Also, the crafting seems slightly simpler (or I'm just more used to it now).
I do find going after all the achievements to be part of the game I like the most. I know a lot of people like leveling up quickly in order to get to the end content, but I enjoy all the paths up to the end. Two of my characters (Slayer and Brawler) have unlocked the permanent raptor mount you get for travelling almost everwhere and climbing mountains.
I did try creating a Reaper character to find out it starts at level 55. Just doing the beginning storyline for them brings you up to level 57 or 58. While the character play is interesting, I found the game hangs a lot while playing that character class. Playing the others doesn't, unless I started with the Reaper first.
I haven't played Path of Exile since before the last update. It's great but sometimes other things take over for a while.
I've read a bunch of books and graphic novels recently:
Hellblazer
by Jamie Delano
graphic novel volume 1 - not finished with this one yet. The movie Constantine is based on these.
Hellboy
by Mike Mignola
graphic novels volumes 1 & 2 - I really liked these and would not have bought the first one if I had known my brother had it (and volume 2). I see where they pulled the movie story from both volumes.
Aliens Omnibus
by Mark Verheiden
graphic novel volume 1 - Interesting, the stories varied and sort of continued on from the second movie. Written before the third movie came out.
I Hate Fairyland
by Skottie Young
graphic novel volume 1 - So fucking funny! I can't recommend this one enough. The art and story are great. Seven year old girl wishes to go to fairyland, gets stuck there for 33 years. Kills everything!
Sunstone
by Stejpan Sejic
graphic novels volumes 1-4 - Wow! Yes it's a story about two women who end up having a Dom/sub relationship and how their love grows. It is very thought provoking and the way the artist/writer deals with the subject of BDSM relationships is very interesting. I highly recommend them, especially after there is one backstory about how the woman who is the dominant has an experience with someone she thought was experienced but wanted more and more and more to fall into subspace and ended up getting hurt. These are written/drawn by the guy who did the Witchblade series.
The School for Good and Evil
by Soman Chainani
books 1-3 - I'm on book 3 now. A different take on how fairytales evolve and how good and evil are developed.
Children of Time
by Adrian Tchaikovsky
A science fiction novel by the Shadows of the Apt series writer. Interesting concept of the development of sentient creatures on a world seeded by humans in the past.
Guns of Dawn
by Adrian Tchaikovsky
A historial fantasy about two countries at war. The war goes on and on with more and more people being drafted, even women. The story is about the main character and how she survives being drafted and goes on to fight, and then with others holding onto one fort while everything else seems lost. They do lose and the end of the story is her reconciling what she's been told over the years about the other country and what she's learned.
Croak
by Gina Damica
A teen girl finds out that her uncle is a grim reaper and she is to be one also. The three novels go over her development as a reaper, her rogue talent, what it means, and how she and other young reapers help save the dead and the living. The other two books are Rogue and Scorch.
Codex Alera series
by Jim Butcher
This series starts with The Furies of Calderon and ends with First Lord's Fury. They are very long books but they suck you in and you forget about everything else around you. The world and characters that Butcher created work well together.
Dark Intelligence
by Neal Asher
A pilot goes on a journey to defeat a rogue AI after he's been resurrected. The stories of all those the AI touches and manipulates are intertwined until the end.
There's more but that's all I remember for now.
Also learned three words today:
apparatchiks - member of a communist party apparat, or a blindly devoted follower, member, or official of an organization (like a corporation or political party). [from Merriam-Webster]
parlous - full of danger or risk. [from Merriam-Webster]
byungjin - the parallel development of the economy and nuclear weapons. Kim Jong-un (leader of North Korea) has used it to describe his vision for the country. [from The Guardian]
I got sucked into Fallout 4 for a while. I have the first DLC but haven't played it. I don't want the story to end so I stopped for a while. Also, while I love the power armor, I don't love the humans only sentiments of the Brotherhood of Steel, so I'm staying allied with the Minutemen and the Railroad. Maybe with some player made content, I could explore being a bad guy, but that doesn't seem as possible with this Fallout as it did in Fallout 3.
I'm also still playing Pardus. There was a double war on the Artemis server over the winter. Union vs Federation, then about 3 weeks later the Empire vs. Federation war started. Feds won against the Union and lost to the Empire. It was interesting to see the game mechanics for it. I also got paid 42m in game money for a starbase I owned. That was funny. I now have another one that I've named Deep Thought.
Tera Online also sucks up a lot of my time. It's an online MMORPG and I like the story. Most of the races and character classes are interesting but two are locked to specific races/sex. The Reaper can only be an Elin, which are supposedly an ancient race of magical beings that look like hypersexed preteen girls with animal ears and tails. Elins are only female. The Brawler can only be human females. The Brawler is relatively new and can tank and do dungeons by themselves fairly easily without having to be too overskilled to do so. I'm enjoying playing one as I like to solo everything.
They have revamped some of the crafting and mail system. You no longer have to go to a town/banker in order to get your mail or receive an item, which is great. Also, the crafting seems slightly simpler (or I'm just more used to it now).
I do find going after all the achievements to be part of the game I like the most. I know a lot of people like leveling up quickly in order to get to the end content, but I enjoy all the paths up to the end. Two of my characters (Slayer and Brawler) have unlocked the permanent raptor mount you get for travelling almost everwhere and climbing mountains.
I did try creating a Reaper character to find out it starts at level 55. Just doing the beginning storyline for them brings you up to level 57 or 58. While the character play is interesting, I found the game hangs a lot while playing that character class. Playing the others doesn't, unless I started with the Reaper first.
I haven't played Path of Exile since before the last update. It's great but sometimes other things take over for a while.
I've read a bunch of books and graphic novels recently:
Hellblazer
by Jamie Delano
graphic novel volume 1 - not finished with this one yet. The movie Constantine is based on these.
Hellboy
by Mike Mignola
graphic novels volumes 1 & 2 - I really liked these and would not have bought the first one if I had known my brother had it (and volume 2). I see where they pulled the movie story from both volumes.
Aliens Omnibus
by Mark Verheiden
graphic novel volume 1 - Interesting, the stories varied and sort of continued on from the second movie. Written before the third movie came out.
I Hate Fairyland
by Skottie Young
graphic novel volume 1 - So fucking funny! I can't recommend this one enough. The art and story are great. Seven year old girl wishes to go to fairyland, gets stuck there for 33 years. Kills everything!
Sunstone
by Stejpan Sejic
graphic novels volumes 1-4 - Wow! Yes it's a story about two women who end up having a Dom/sub relationship and how their love grows. It is very thought provoking and the way the artist/writer deals with the subject of BDSM relationships is very interesting. I highly recommend them, especially after there is one backstory about how the woman who is the dominant has an experience with someone she thought was experienced but wanted more and more and more to fall into subspace and ended up getting hurt. These are written/drawn by the guy who did the Witchblade series.
The School for Good and Evil
by Soman Chainani
books 1-3 - I'm on book 3 now. A different take on how fairytales evolve and how good and evil are developed.
Children of Time
by Adrian Tchaikovsky
A science fiction novel by the Shadows of the Apt series writer. Interesting concept of the development of sentient creatures on a world seeded by humans in the past.
Guns of Dawn
by Adrian Tchaikovsky
A historial fantasy about two countries at war. The war goes on and on with more and more people being drafted, even women. The story is about the main character and how she survives being drafted and goes on to fight, and then with others holding onto one fort while everything else seems lost. They do lose and the end of the story is her reconciling what she's been told over the years about the other country and what she's learned.
Croak
by Gina Damica
A teen girl finds out that her uncle is a grim reaper and she is to be one also. The three novels go over her development as a reaper, her rogue talent, what it means, and how she and other young reapers help save the dead and the living. The other two books are Rogue and Scorch.
Codex Alera series
by Jim Butcher
This series starts with The Furies of Calderon and ends with First Lord's Fury. They are very long books but they suck you in and you forget about everything else around you. The world and characters that Butcher created work well together.
Dark Intelligence
by Neal Asher
A pilot goes on a journey to defeat a rogue AI after he's been resurrected. The stories of all those the AI touches and manipulates are intertwined until the end.
There's more but that's all I remember for now.
Also learned three words today:
apparatchiks - member of a communist party apparat, or a blindly devoted follower, member, or official of an organization (like a corporation or political party). [from Merriam-Webster]
parlous - full of danger or risk. [from Merriam-Webster]
byungjin - the parallel development of the economy and nuclear weapons. Kim Jong-un (leader of North Korea) has used it to describe his vision for the country. [from The Guardian]