Nate > Recent Status Updates

Figuring out the gunplay mechanics...LOL. This is way past any D&D bow and arrow/magic missile fuckery. It gets worse with automatic weapons.

The tension in this has been ratcheted up to superuncomfortable levels, which is where crime/mystery/thriller fans live and breathe. We make omelets in this motherfucker, recite poetry, and go to the bank during rush hour with this kind of stuff. But when it starts to edge me to truly anxious levels I have to salute the author, every time.

Thoughts so far:

-This has been excellent and very much the companion piece to the previous novel.
-I don’t mean to be crude, but the unexpected yet totally fitting cameo made me have an orgasm.
-How do you even follow the Elvis Cole origin story?

The similarities paired with cool and interesting differences between DND and this is making this relatively fun and easy to learn. Of course, the beautiful illustrations are great and the dedication to Lovecraftia can’t be faulted.

I’m gonna try to start running some games of this with friends so I splurged on the 7th edition hardcover.

It’s so bizarre how brazen and flowery Barker’s prose is in this, his first novel. Even more bizarrely, it works! I’m already captivated by this unnamed thief’s descent into hell in immediately-postwar Warsaw. Look, the Grand Guignol term gets applied a lot to literature but I really think it’s appropriate here.

Ugh, I buy Constantine TPBs to NOT have to confront the ghastly long-living specter that is the Vietnam War. Why can’t this just be about some fucking cockney-accented demon of foot diseases or some whimsical shit?

I still love this run. The beautiful and crude artwork with the black-humored, crabby, left-leaning, Thatcherite-zeitgeist-complaining setting and the truly creepy/odd plot lines just make it impossible not to love.

The fuck is “avocado toast”?

Couldn’t find anything remotely close to where I’m at chronologically at the bookstore so I went home with this one. I love the big unignorable cover with the classic late-80s early-90s purple, teal, and navy blue.

This book is still brilliant, but the fact that Cole is mentally designating people who smoke pot as “hopheads” in 1999 is fucking hilarious. Next he’ll be calling alcoholics dipsomaniacs.

I’m cheating by skipping ahead a little, but I couldn’t get ahold of the preceding two. It’s not really bothering me as this one’s already earned five stars. Crais was NOT fucking around with this one.

Thoughts so far:
-Instant points for continuing the Yeoman/Fortunato teamup.
-I initially didn’t care for Sewer Jack and Bagabond but they’re both compelling in this one.
-There’s a henchman in these books who is called Kafka ‘cause he looks like a giant bipedal roach.
-Wraith is like an actually interesting and cool Kitty Pryde.

The stuff with Lucy has been romantic as shit, which is refreshing in a PI novel. It’s so much more rewarding than the main character just fucking the shit out of one or two beautiful women as he goes about solving the crime.

YEOMAN!!! I fucking love this character.

Man, the Great and Powerful Turtle story in this was sublime. I also gotta admit I’m enjoying Dr. Tachyon, and Captain Trips is amazing. I also have an odd fascination with Chrysalis, and not just because she’s a British woman with transparent skin and thusly an exposed vascular system, muscles, and skeleton.

Man, it’s insane how good Sandford has gotten at creating extremely inconsequential characters and making them relatable and even instantly likable—no matter what walk of life they come from.

CLARA!!!

Relevant video: https://youtu.be/26J0uDIGErM

Man, this new weirdo is seriously gross. Kinda reminds me of Koop from Night Prey, just admittedly less capable and scary. Hopefully he gets the rough stuff at the end of this one.

Thank the gods for the first book in a while with a truly creepy and cunning freak for Davenport to scrap with...this is my shit.

LOL at the author using fucking BULLET POINTS to explain whodunnit. Methinks we should dial it back a bit next book, Professor Sandford.

I cannot BELIEVE some fuckin’ nobody called Virgil Flowers got his own series before the mighty Del Capslock. This worries me that Del gets cooled before Flowers is brought in and that Flowers’ whole existence is Sandford trying to atone for that.

This book definitely is a heavyweight in the Byzantine Crime Plot stakes...somewhere below Ellroy but above Connelly.

I’m an idiot and didn’t expect Weather to show up. This...complicates things.

These books have become consistently funny and this one is no exception. The most unintentionally funny part is Davenport’s consistently successful manipulation of the media, usually in the form of attractive female reporters. Who do you think you’re fooling, Davenport?

Meeting an old flame at a joint called The Bell Jar is one of the worst ideas I can think of...

Not really digging the return to Secret Prey’s format of a billion and a half suspects for Lucas to sift through with ultra-limited cryptic chapters from the antagonist’s POV. It’s weird because Carmel and especially Clara from the last book were such captivatingly disturbing characters. I am excited to see Del again, though.

Okay, this has been suitably epic and psychologically tormented—but even Bakker hilariously overreaches, most notably with this “the honey of unwashed anuses” shit. WHAT?!

Man, these are the most miserable fucking books of all time. Reading this and the third Dune book at the same time is starting to feel like an exercise in unconscious masochism.

I’ll fucking NEVER understand Lucas when it comes to women. Honestly.