Category Archives: Reviews

‘A Sincere Warning About the Entity in your Home…’ Review

cover‘A Since Warning about the entity in your home’ is a short read, just long enough to properly draw you in to its twisted little world but still short enough to be comfortably devoured in one sitting. Written in the form of a letter, sent to the owner of a new property from the unknown previous tenant, writer Jason Arnopp slowly and gradually reveals a disturbing tale. It’s purpose is simple; to present the properties new incumbent with the facts of the situation and let them know of the extreme measures that will be necessary for them to escape a suitably grisly fate.
Continue reading ‘A Sincere Warning About the Entity in your Home…’ Review

Hammer & The Blade

Hammer & the BladeNormally I wouldn’t force myself to write a review for a book like Egil and Nix, but I received it as a Goodreads giveaway and so feel obliged to sum up my thoughts on this excellent little freebie. It’s a perfectly fine book, enjoyable and great in moments (as the titular Egil would no doubt appreciate) but with glaring flaws in others. All in all though this is a good romp through a fantasy world, one that the author Paul Kemp describes with just enough details to tantalise without going beyond what’s important to the plot.

Continue reading Hammer & The Blade

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

Dreamfall_coverAlthough this 2006 adventure game wears its 1999 point-and-click predecessor ‘The Longest Journey’ proudly, I think it’s important to remember that they are fundamentally very different beasts with separate goals and intentions. The point and click gameplay is gone, replaced with a rather bland walk and touch mechanic. The main character April Ryan is gone, relegated to a supporting role, although in her place we have a brand new intriguing heroine. The full bodied adventure in which the main character discovers herself in a fulfilling journey that culminates with the saving of the world is replaced by something much darker, more twisted and spiritual. Thankfully they have retained the brilliantly paced storytelling, superb voice acting and multiple interwoven intricately plotted threads that drag you through a narrative heavy game that offers little besides its heart and soul.

Continue reading Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

14201In any media there’s always a battle between artistry and functionality.

There are writers who are artists at their craft, who fashion words and sentences into things of beauty, and others who just use them to convey a message, for whom the story is paramount and things like proper grammar and sentence structure are merely tools. There’s probably an entire scale between each end of the paradigm and you could fit your favorite writers along it, comparing those whose words are just functional against those who take pains to ensure every word is ‘perfect’. Comparing those with the most engaging and mind boggling plots but who can barely string a straight sentence with those artisans whose story boils down to no more than a contemporary update of Romeo and Juliet. Continue reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell