Connor Rooke > Recent Status Updates

How Krait sees the sky is very poetic, and kind of terrifying, and probably explains a lot about the inhumi.

Absolutely crushing

A truly legendarily bad cover choice for this edition, alas

This is the section where Elhokar broke my heart

Unclear to me if Hellboy is where it truly started but in comics now, a crown floating above two curved horns is a Hellboy reference/homage/ripoff

I just keep thinking "I wish George R.R. Martin wrote this"

Less than 100 pages left...I can feel the sunk cost fallacy tightening its grip.

There's good stuff here, but it really should have started showing up 200 pages ago

Pfahahahaa

The League of the Scroll is mentioned in the blurb on the back cover, but its first appearance in the actual book is on page 355. Lordy, Williams really makes you work for it.

Hah, a proto-Dibbler!

Ahahaha, oh wow, that's such a strong flash of his later writing

Not finished yet, but the feeling I'm getting is that this is going to leave me hoping that Sims tries either a true anthology/collection of stories or a real single-story novel instead of this kind of halfway blend of the two that this book is.

A list of characters in a Robin Hobb book is just a list of all the ways she's going to break your heart

Right out of the gate, this art is fantastic. Love this.

"Light in a prison", hah

La Befana, for Christmas - I'm either a bit late or extremely early on this. This one doesn't feel fully baked. I do like the last line a lot though. It's...melancholy, rather than sad.

The War Beneath the Tree, for Christmas Eve - awful fucking dark for Christmas Eve, Gene. I like it, but this is the one you go for?

Ah God, I had forgotten Nosey. I shouldn't have.

So Abe is telling a story that he heard from Howard, that he heard from Reverend Mapple, that he heard from Lottie, various pieces of which Lottie heard from her mother, her sisters, her neighbors, etc.

"Three Million Square Miles", for Thanksgiving - I can't measure by eye very well, or imagine a set scale, but I know that I live in a big, big country.

"Against the Lafayette Escadrille", for Armistice Day (I'm running behind). This one has a wistfulness to it I appreciate, and seems much more straightforward than most of Wolfe's stuff I've read.

Sadly, I have finished the short stories in this collection and all that is left are essays on topics that I fear I lack the knowledge, context, and/or executive function to appreciate properly.

"In one cell...there is a jaguar measuring with secret and even paces the time and space of captivity."
Holy cow, man

God, it took me 30 years to read this writer

"He faced these imaginary executions with real terror (perhaps with real bravery)"

Absolute aces work. Atmosphere and mystery and some rock-solid character design. Love me a good evil sorceress.

Death and the Compass - hot DAMN! I am a-hootin and a-hollerin

Scratches the same itch as Incidents in the Night

"Many Mansions", for Halloween. Baba Yaga's chicken leg hut in the far future. I'm tickled by this one.