Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons by Michael Witwer

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This book is not a biography as much as it is a series of vignettes and anecdotes and I thoroughly enjoyed this book despite itself. Witwer is forced to make up some scenes and they often feel made up. There are some cheesy elements within the writing and structure, but at its heart, it's a fascinating tale about the rise and fall of Gygax's gaming empire.

Having grown up as a gamer, this history brought back many memories and so I cherished reading this book. I especially enjoyed the ending which delved into Gygax's enduring legacy. There's a great quote from Adam Rogers (editor of Wired magazine) who wrote, "Gary Gygax died last week and the universe did not collapse. That surprises me a little bit, because he built it" (p. 230). (To be fair, that credit should be shared with Dave Arneson who co-created D&D and died the following year).

Unfortunately, because of the narrative structure, the book leaves huge gaps in the timeline and leaves the reader yearning for more. Despite the book being over 300 pages long, the actual content is only 242 (the ending is filled with notes, a bibliography, a timeline, etc.) and with so many white pages between chapters, it's probably closer to 200. Hence, it's a quick read, but fails to give the full picture. It's unfortunate that no one took the time to write Gygax's biography while he was still alive and could easily fill in those gaps. I'm hopeful that a more thorough biography appears in the future as Gygax and Arneson both deserve one.



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Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters by Dick Winters

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I wasn't sure what to expect in a book called Beyond Band of Brothers and so I was a little bit surprised to see that it basically covers the same ground as the original book and HBO series. The only major difference is that you're seeing it from the POV of Dick Winters, the leader of Easy Company.

Having read the original book and watched the HBO series numerous times, there really isn't much more to get from this book and yet I still enjoyed it. Even though it covers the same ground, there are a few moments here and there that are unique to Winters as well as his opinion of events. I thoroughly enjoyed it.



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The Fiddle is the Devil's Instrument by Brett J. Talley

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


It's difficult to write in another author's well established universe, in this case Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, and really stand out. To that end, this collection of stories both succeeds and occasionally fails.

First, it succeeds at the most essential level: its writing. The stories are all interesting and certainly draw you in. Talley's modern style could easily attract readers into the Cthulhu mythos who might find Lovecraft's original stories too archaic and his lengthy descriptions tedious or too difficult. To that end, these stories are much more accessible to modern readers than the original source material. The problem is this: as a teenager, I noticed that all of Lovecraft's characters either die or go mad and most modern Cthulhu stories continue this trend so that the stories become predictable. Talley is frequently guilty of this (as an author, I confess I am guilty of this as well), but when he strays from the formula, his stories stand out. Indeed, our first story, "The Fiddle is the Devil's Instrument," is a strong start to this collection. Talley creates a strong and eerie mood that captures the feel of Lovecraft nicely, but then takes a turn in a different direction. My only criticism here is that it didn't feel self-contained, instead it felt like the opening chapter to a novel and to that end, I would have enjoyed reading more. But leave them wanting more is an old showbiz adage and so I happily continued.

The second story, though not my favorite, stands out because it's so outlandishly different from anything else I've read in the genre. Our protagonist is a rodeo clown! Again, Talley creates an interesting situation, but this time he falls into the predictable pattern of most Lovecraftian horror. In fact, the dramatic sting of the story's ending relies on the reader being familiar with Cthulhuian mythology, but to anyone already familiar with it, the second half of the story will also feel all too familiar.

Our third story, "What the Dead Can Tell" is one of my favorites in the collection. Talley seems like he writes best when he escapes the standard conventions of Lovecraft and updates the mythos to our modern times (well, more modern anyway). I don't want to reveal too much, but this story takes place during the final days of the Cold War as special agent Crowley (no comment) interrogates a KGB agent about the strange satellite findings deep in the country's interior.

Even though "The Space Between Spaces" follows the traditional Lovecraftian formula almost to a fault, draping it modern science (it takes place at the Large Hadron Collider) somehow makes it more fun and for that reason I enjoyed it even though I knew exactly where it was going.

I don't wish to summarize each of the stories, so suffice to say that there's no doubt Talley can write well and pull you through his stories, but it's what he does within that structure that decides if they will stay with you or not. Unfortunately, he ends too many stories with either someone's last words or the dramatic sting of a final line. Sometimes it works, but other times it doesn't and in the case of "The Piper in Yellow" I thought it completely unnecessary as it erases any subtlety to an otherwise enjoyable story.

Despite these problems, this is nevertheless a collection of mostly satisfying stories that traipse through the dark shadows of cosmic horror and I would certainly recommend it to anyone who is a fan of the genre.




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