The Meta Is Strong in This One

[davidgillon]

 Recent Reading:

Just Stab Me Now, Jill Bearup

"I had such a beautiful evening planned: candlelight, dancing, flirtatious threats, and what do I get? Grand Theft Equine."

Lady Rosamund Hawkhurst is having a bad day. Not only has her plea to the queen for help with her skeevy liege lord had an equivocal answer, but she's come out of it charged with a diplomatic mission to the other side in the ongoing war, which has already killed her husband (opening her up to the advances of said skeevy liege lord). Rosy is actually a logical choice for the mission, not only was she born on the other side of the border, but her sister is married to the new king. But given that, why has she only been given one man as an escort? Is she being set up?

Meanwhile Caroline Lindley is having problems with her new romance novel, because her heroine refuses to tamely follow the lovely enemies to lovers plot she had laid out for her.

Jill Bearup has a youtube channel with half a million subscribers where her main thing is really good fight analysis, along with related stuff such as dissecting female fantasy armour in all its ludicruousness. One of her spin-off ideas was a series of short segments where she played both sides of a romance author finding her heroine has really awkward opinions about the practicality of her enemies to lovers plot. And which many of her fans urged her to turn into a book. A year or so later, here we are.

I liked the original shorts, but I was a bit worried as to whether she could carry off the writing. The first half dozen pages are a little ropy but after that it settles down. One thing she did have to do was to expand on the Caroline side of the plot, well, actually, to give the Caroline side of things an actual plot, but she managed that. The Rosamund side is still clearly the focus of the book, but there is an actual B-plot now. Obviously there's a whole meta level to things and if you just want a straightforward fantasy romance then you might have come to the wrong place, but if you don't mind literary meta games it's perfectly readable.

The Untold Story (Invisible Library Book 8), Genevieve Cogman

Book 8 of the series, and things are coming to a head. Librarian Irene Winters, her not-boyfriend Kai the dragon prince, great detective Vale, and her new apprentice and teenage Fae bookworm Catherine are facing up to the likelihood that series big-bad Alberich is probably going to try and take out Irene in the near future, never mind that he's her father, and they should probably get their retribution in first. Complicating things, the Library is increasingly playing politics to keep the Dragons and Fae in balance, rather than keeping the Dragons and Fae in balance by stealing unique books from all the worlds of the multiverse, while the rumour-mill is whispering that entire worlds are disappearing. Something must be done, and it's probably going to have to be Irene doing the doing.

As an end to the series I rather liked this, the plot-logic makes sense and the story goes where the storytelling needs it. But honestly, I think I always preferred the simple book heists we and Irene started out with.
 

Currently Playing:

I'm waiting for the 1.0 release of Seven Days To Die, due later this month, after which I'll start a new playthrough of that, but in the meantime:

Marvel, Midnight Suns

The XCOM II engine meets the Marvel Multiverse, meets a deckbuilding combat mechanic. I picked this up because it's this week's free game on Epic (until 4pm tomorrow). It's spawned out of the Midnight Sons, a Marvel team I'd never even heard of, even if some of the members are more familiar (Blade!). The plot is Hydra has awakened Lilith, some sort of demon queen, who wants to bring about general lamentation. It's happened before, and that time she was stopped by her sister Sara/The Caretaker, and Lilith's child, the Hunter, a new hero, recently resurrected, who you get to customise as you go. Along for the ride are the usual bunch of Marvel misfits:

On the team so far: Doctor Strange, Iron Man, Captain Marvel, Scarlet Witch, Blade, Ghost Rider (Robbie Reyes), Magik, and Nico Minoru.

Just passing through: Spiderman, Ghost Rider (Johnnie Blaze)

Batting for the wrong team: Fallen Venom, Doctor Faustus

I've only played the tutorial and the first mission, so I haven't progressed very far or met everyone yet. I'm not a total fan of the deckbuilder mechanic, you end up with fewer options than the XCOM engine normally gave you, but it's interesting and AIUI you get better control of the decks as you progress. It is slightly annoying that even major powers like Doctor Strange and Captain Marvel start off almost evenly matched against Hydra grunts, but I guess that's the normal problem of trying to serve up fan favourites in a scenario that also needs to include less overpowered characters.

Overall: worth it at the price.

Subnautica

Survival on an alien ocean world that starts to develop definite horror overtones as you explore further, "We shouldn't have gone so deep!"

I've played this before without actually getting very far, this time I'll see if I can be a bit more systematic about making progress into the underlying plot. Rather gorgeous graphics matched with the normal survival game build this to discover that to go on and build the next thing mechanics.