Terry C. Simpson's Blog, page 6
September 12, 2012
A Weekend of Free boooks
Dear reader,
Several writers from the Alexandria Publishing Group will have books for free over the weekend of September 14-16.
Among those are:
The coming storm by Valerie Douglas
Elon of Aerilann, Elven advisor to the High King of Men, helped negotiate the treaty between Elves, Dwarves and men. He suddenly finds that fragile truce threatened from without by an unknown enemy and from within by old hatreds and prejudice. With the aid of his true-friend Colath, the wizard Jareth and the Elven arch...
August 20, 2012
Epic Fantasy review: King of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
King of Thorns by Mark Lawrence
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Brilliant.
I’m twenty pages from the end and had to stop to write this review before I forget what I have to say. I have never done that before.
King of Thorns is better than the first book. It is brutally brilliant, gruesomely good, and amid the carnage offers slivers of a rainbow before snatching it away in a world and future as grim and real as any out there.
Amid the wickedness that is Jorg Ancrath, you will find wit and wisdom to match....
July 29, 2012
Epic Fantasy Review: The Black Prism by Brent Weeks
The Black Prism by Brent Weeks
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Excellent Read. Right now for me, it’s a 5.
In the Black Prism, Weeks betters what he did with Night Angel.
The Prism offers a wealth of fantastic worldbuilding, good characters, action, war strategy, political intrigue, and plot twists to keep one coming back for more.
The magic system is well laid out. Simply put, a percentage of the populace known as Drafters have the ability to harness colors through light in a skill called Chromaturgy....
July 28, 2012
Ashes and Blood: Book 2 Aegis of the Gods
Here is the prologue to Book 2, Ashes and Blood.
Prelude to Ascension
They arrived at the gathering within the featureless chamber as they always did. A portal slit the air from left to right, turned sideways, and opened into the shape of an eye. Wreathed in oily smoke, many-faceted eyes reflecting the torchlight, tentacles blacker than midnight, the creatures stepped through one after the other. Armor of chitin and ebon steel glistened, and their wriggling minions appeared as if from nothing.
T...
July 13, 2012
Notes from the Founders
From the notes of Jenoah Amelie – First of the Exalted
Prelude to War
I must make these notes before the voices call to me again. Of late, I cannot tell which of the essences they are. Is it light or heat? Or gods forbid, the shade? Does the earth beneath my feet speak to me? Is the very air around me whispering in my head? Or the water I drink? Maybe, it is not the essences within the elements of Mater at all. Maybe, it is all my imagination.
What they promise is so overwhelming. Twice, I have...
July 12, 2012
Fantasy Glossary for Aegis of the Gods
So after resisting for a while and being told by some that they understood most things about my world, I gave in to some who didn’t. I want each reader to grasp the majority of how my world works, and though I’ve worked hard to not info dump and to show my world and how the magic works, some might find certain things hard to grasp. I am partially to blame for this because I do drop quite a bit of the world’s names early in the story and more often than not, the explanation comes in the subseq...
June 19, 2012
White Night : Urban Fantasy Review
White Night by Jim Butcher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’ll keep this simple. This is a great addition to the series. If you know Dresden then it continues much of the same. Great dialogue, awesome insight, witty banter and a way of writing that makes you feel a part of the man. You become attached to Harry’s plight and his issues. At times when he speaks on aspects of the human condition, I found that I could relate. Example at one point when he’s speaking about love, life and pain, I felt that pa...
June 3, 2012
The Dragon’s Path : Epic Fantasy Review
The Dragon’s Path by Daniel Abraham
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Hmmm. Where to start. Well let’s say the rating system here on Goodreads won’t reflect this one correctly. I consider it a 3 and a half. But I’ll have to tag it with a three. Why not at least a 4?
Well, not that it wasn’t a good book, because a 3 says it was a good book. Let’s start with what I loved.
The world and most of the characters fascinated me. The plot was well-laid out and offered some nice surprises and fit together quite well...
May 9, 2012
Deathspeaker – New Fantasy novel
This is an excerpt from my newest WIP that I started today. A nice little tease if I do say so myself. It’s set in Denestia but several thousand years after the current events in Aegis of the Gods.
Deathspeaker
When the dead spoke to Marcus, he listened. Not that he often had much choice. They were persistent that way. And annoying.
Today, they told him who he needed to visit. They seemed to enjoy those trips as much as trying to goad him to take the power they offered. He always resisted. After...
April 28, 2012
Tera Online – An MMORPG worth playing
So over the past couple months, I beta tested Tera Online. I must say it has been the most refreshing experience I have had in playing MMORPGS since World of Warcraft.
When it comes to MMOS, I go way back to the UO days. I enjoyed games like Lineage 1, Legend of Mir, Lineage 2 and countless others. I have not had this much pleasure playing a PVP based game since Lineage 2 and the PVE is nothing to sniff at either.
The combat is simply unmatched in any other MMORPG, be it Guild Wars 2 or whereve...
