C.T. Phipps's Blog, page 73

Is Starcraft grimdark?: Darker than expected RTS storytelling

This essay will contain spoilers for Starcraft, Brood War, and Starcraft II.

    Already, I can hear some of you sniggering in the background. Starcraft? Grimdark? We're talking about Blizzard's other successful real-time strategy series, right? The one with the little cartoon space marines, aliens, and space elves, right? The one that isn't Warhammer 40K but is similar enough that at least one of the designers played it before the franchise moved in a different direction. Why y...

Hard Luck Hank: Screw the Galaxy by Steven Campbell review

    HARD LUCK HANK is notably the first book I ever saw advertised alongside one of my books and every single volume of the series has been advertised alongside my Supervillainy Saga books, almost in tandem. This factor, along with the hilarious covers, made me finally shell out the money to buy a copy of the first book. I'm currently on the fifth book, interrupting my work in writing my Lucifer's Star sequel and reading other series to read the books one after the other.

 ...

1000th post!

1000th post!

Woot!

Thanks for everyone who has followed me!

Dead Rising 4 review

    I love the Dead Rising series. I didn't play the third game but that's more due to bad timing more than anything else. However, a opening appeared in my schedule which I've decided to devote to finishing off Dead Rising 4 after starting it before Christmas and then move on to doing reviews for the Starcraft series that I'm only now catching up on (after it being almost 20 years since I last played it).

    So, what is Dead Rising about and is this installment...

Best Reviews for Lucifer's Star

Well, obviously, I'm going to tell you to read LUCIFER'S STAR. I think it's probably my best work alongside CTHULHU ARMAGEDDON. However, if you don't think I can be trusted to be objective about my own work (perish the thought), I thought I'd share some of the best reviews of my space opera epic.

Beauty in Ruins

Bookwraiths

Booknest.EU

Grimdark Reader

Not everyone agrees on what they liked and some had elements they disliked but all of them treated the book fair.

The Last Colony (Old Man's War 3#) by John Scalzi review

    American pioneer heritage is something which has kind of a sordid history once you peel back the legend and myth-making which was deliberately added to it. Disease, exile of religious dissidents, slaughter of locals, and shameless land grabs are the least of it. I was hesitant about John Scalzi's take on the subject with the story of Old Man War protagonist John Perry taking up the role of a colony head in a book series primarily about the evils of colonization. I shouldn't...

The Grey Bastards by Jonathan French

"Live in the saddle, die on the hog."

    THE GREY BASTARDS have been on my list of things to review for quite some time but I've been distracted a lot from my reading due to a tidal wave of other good books. Still, I never lost my desire to read about half-orc calvary fighting against full-blooded orcs along the borderlands. The excellent art on its front intrigued me as well. Which goes to show you you can judge a book by its cover.

    The premise. as mentioned,...

Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames review

"We're getting the (mercenary) band back together."

    KINGS OF THE WYLD is a book which I have to give extremely high marks because it's a story I haven't read before. This is kind of a weird thing to say but it fits with something that exists as a major problem of fantasy. Specifically, it's very rare we get anything resembling new stories in fantasy. The actual premise isn't all that original ("going to rescue a mercenary's daughter from a siege") but the handling of the sto...

Please Don't tell my Parents I have a Nemesis by Richard Roberts review

    The Please Don't Tell My Parents series is a great series about a middle-school (now high school freshman) collection of supervillains who are too nice to be bad guys but too mischievous to be heroes. The books have very low stakes, for the most part, and are really more about exploring the complicated network of lovable weirdos which exist in the Los Angeles superhuman world.

    The last book, I Did Not Give That Spider Superhuman Intelligence was unrelated...

The Ghost Brigades (Old Man's War 2#) by John Scalzi review

    THE GHOST BRIGADES is the sequel to John Scalzi's OLD MAN'S WAR and switches from the geriatric seventy-five-year-old recruits to the newborn Special Forces clones who serve ten years from birth in a decanter until they die in combat. This is about as far from an old man's war as you're going to get, which is disappointing since clone armies as a far less innovative subject than the idea of extremely old people fighting aliens. The Republic Commando series by Karen Traviss,...