Humblewood

Humblewood Campaign Setting by Christopher Pinch
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So I've had my eye on this for a while and saw Hit Point Press had an "imperfect" version on their website for ten bucks plus abnormally high shipping so I finally grabbed it. I haven't run a campaign in a couple decades at this point and since three of my prospective players grew up on Disney and the other is a furry, this seemed like a resource that would get some use.

First off, some of the character races are adorable. Just check out the Strig knight on the cover! The Birdfolk and their Humblefolk neighbors don't seem overpowered compared to the standard 5e races aside from the Vulpin's charm person ability. The Mapach seems inspired by Rocket Raccoon from Guardians of the Galaxy but who the hell cares, honestly? That's probably how I'd want to play them. No complaints on the new PC races. I would have no qualms about including the races in this book in a Planescape or Spelljammer campaign to flesh out those settings.

I like the background of the world but I'd like more detail on that. The campaign area isn't that large and a lot of the book is devoted to a series of adventures rather than fleshing out the setting a bit. Alderheart, the main city of the setting, doesn't get as much detail as I'm accustomed though not ever city needs to be detailed as much as The Rock of Bral or City of Greyhawk, I guess.

The presentation is up to 5e standards for the most part. Some of the art is iconic. I have the imperfect version and it's pretty damn good.

So who would most like this? I think if you're group is into stuff like The Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal, Disney's Robin Hood, Redwall, and/or Mouseguard, you'd probably get a kick out of this. Who hasn't wanted to run Sir Didymus from the Labyrinth? I think if you'd want to run a campaign just based on what's here, you'd have some work on your hands.

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The Three Stooges vs. Cthulhu #1

The Three Stooges Vs Cthulhu #1 by Adam F. Goldberg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While fishing for their dinner, the Three Stooges encounter a delirious fisherman. They borrow his boat and find things man was not meant to see...

American Mythology has been making hay with Three Stooges comics for years now but I never felt like picking one up despite being a Stooges fan in my youth. When I saw this was being released, it drew me in the same way Archie vs. Predator did.

This is funny shit. Adam F. Goldberg and Hans Rodionoff capture the voices of the Three Stooges very well. It felt like an old Stooges short most of the time, albeit with a huge special effects budget. Diego Tapie hands the art and colors, drawing in a cartoony style that suits the comedic nature of this sanity blasting tale. Rob Jones does the lettering and is the reason I heard about this in the first place.

So how do you stay true to both the Stooges and Cthulhu Mythos? Goldberg and Rodionoff tread the line. The Stooges are up to their usual antics but they keep Cthulhu from doing anything ridiculous. HPL is the butt of some jokes but it's all done respectfully and doesn't seem out of character from what I know of Lovecraft.

Four out of five stars. I guess I'm buying more Three Stooges comics now.

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Macho Man: The Life of Randy Savage

Macho Man: The Life of Randy Savage by Jon Finkel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ohhhh yeah! This is the biography of one of the best wrestlers of all time and that wrestler is the Macho Man Randy Savage, dig it!

I hated Randy Savage with a passion as a kid for what he did to Ricky Steamboat leading up to their showdown at Wrestlemania III. I eventually softened and enjoyed his matches, even though he seemed genuinely crazy a lot of the time. When the ARC of this became available, I jumped on it.

This was pretty bad ass, even though it failed my usual wrestling book test by taking 20% to get to the wrestling bits. With Macho Man, I had to make an exception because Macho Man's obsession with baseball and his insane dedication to be a pro adds a lot to the rest of the tale.

Finkel covers Savage's life and career from beginning to end. He goes pretty deep into the pre-WWF stuff, which is what I was most interested in. The book feels a little lopsided, though. I think I was around 60% at Wrestlemania III with 15 or so years left to cover. WCW is given a brief account and the aborted TNA run isn't even mentioned. The rest of the book is excellent, though. Very thorough. There's a lot of stuff I've never heard before, like Savage making Jake Roberts take the bite from the cobra first and a lot of the ICW and Memphis stuff was new to me.

This is an ARC so I wasn't too harsh but I noticed a couple errors. The championship Angelo Poffo beat Wilbur Snyder for was the NWA United States Championship, not the NWA Championship. Also, Tito Santana's finisher was the Flying Burrito, not the Flying Jalapeno. There was also a sentence in the Ric Flair angle that 'Ric' was used instead of 'Randy' talking about baseball.

Errors and not going into Savage's later career as much as I would like, this was a fantastic wrestling book. 4.5 out of 5 stars. So Snap into it!

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Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse

Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse (D&D Campaign Collection - Adventure, Setting Book, Bestiary + DM Screen) by RPG Team Wizards
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the classic D&D setting, Planescape, translated and reimagined for the fifth edition of D&D. I said 'reimagined' but never read. It just resets things to baseline and brings things in line with the 5e characters and creatures without fundamentally changing the setting. The factions are back as they were in the original box set, portals are the same, the overall philosophy of the setting is present, and Sigil and the Lady of Pain are much as they used to be.

This isn't the kind of thing you read from cover to cover so I'm slowly digesting it over the next few days. It's impossible to encompass all the 2e Planescape material in three slim books but this does a good job as a starter set. Hopefully there's an incoming book of planar locations and more player options but I'm not holding my breath. There are copious references to the 5e DMG, which makes sense since it's way planes heavier than early editions.

The books are well organized. The first details Sigil, the Gate Towns, Factions, and presents a couple new player backgrounds and some new feats. There was no bariaur as a PC race option but I don't know how popular they are/were. Also, I'm mostly reading this as a nerd and not someone who is going to play any time soon.

The second book is the usual monster manual. New creatures and some resurrected ones are present, along with stat blocks for things such as Githerzerai Futurist and other elevated forms of familiar creatures.

The third book is an adventure that starts in the Mortuary ala Planescape: Torment with the characters having little to no memory of their former existence. I only read the setup in the event I might actually get to play this some day.

There's also a DM screen and some maps included in this slipcase. The maps are of Sigil and the Outlands. The screen has the usual screen stuff.

As I said, I haven't fully absorbed the material just yet but I already like it better than last year's Spelljammer release. The setting is as I remember it and not a vaguely similar product with the same name like Spelljammer. Not to shit on Spelljammer, one of my favorite settings of all time.

Age apparently hasn't brought all that much additional wisdom for me re: Planescape, though. It seems a little overwhelming to conceive a campaign that maintains the flavor of the setting as opposed to more standard settings like Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms. Oh well, I'll figure that out when the time comes.

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High Cotton

High Cotton: Selected Stories of Joe R. Lansdale by Joe R. Lansdale
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I first read this in that quasi-mythical time before Goodreads. In fact, I thought I'd lost it but my brother found it when he was cleaning out the trunk of his car a few years ago. I'm waiting on the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen book I'm missing so it seemed like a good time to give it a whirl. Thanks to the magic of getting older and forgetting a lot of stuff, it was like a mostly new reading experience.

I was 23 when this came out and it was early in my Lansdale fandom. Now I'm pushing 46 and I've read over 50 Lansdale books. Half a life later, this is still a kick ass short story collection. It shows off Lansdale's versatility. There are funny stories, horror stories, crime stories, sf stories, and just plain fucked tales.

I've been on Goodreads for 15 years and still don't know how to competently review a short story collection. Mr. Weed Eater, the tale of a blind man plaguing a good Samaritan, is still one of my favorites. Trains Not Taken, an alternate history tale where Wild Bill Hickok is just a clerk, hit a lot harder than it did back in the day. Other stories, like The Night They Missed the Horror Show and An Incident On and Off a Mountain Road, are just as kick ass as they were back when I could barely grow decent facial hair.

I wouldn't say there's a dud in the bunch. There's a plethora of n-words scattered throughout, something that might turn off some readers but that's how the caliber of people Lansdale frequently writes about talk.

High Cotton is a short story collection that packs a wide variety of punches. Five out of five stars.

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The Autobiography of Matthew Scudder

The Autobiography of Matthew Scudder by Lawrence Block
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lawrence Block's recovering alcoholic detective Matthew Scudder sits down to pen his autobiography...

I unexpectedly got this ARC in the mail from Lawrence Block's camp. When you get an ARC from your favorite living crime writer (or one of his guys), you drop what you're doing and get down to business.

The Autobiography of Matthew Scudder really feels like Scudder writing a series of journal entries about his life, from his birth to a brother who died in infancy that may or may not have impacted him, to eventually becoming a cop and later the whiskey drinking detective we first met in The Sins of the Fathers.

Essentially, it's more background to a well loved character that doesn't cut the legs out from anything we already know about him in any substantial way. There are no "Everything you know is wrong!" revelations. Block's style is as it ever was, as smooth as good whiskey. The account of his past fleshes out his past a bit, more details about Estrella Rivera, Elaine, and Danny Boy Bell, for instance. We learn more about his time as a cop and even some of his pre-police activities like taking up boxing and thinking of becoming a plumber before he decided to become a cop.

There's a line Matt uses about meeting friends and wondering if he'll ever see them again. That's what this book feels like, probably the last Matthew Scudder book and maybe even Lawrence Block's last one. Is the Autobiography of Matthew Scudder essential? Probably not. Will Matthew Scudder fans want to read it? Absolutely. My only gripe is that like a bottle of good whiskey, I wish it had lasted a bit longer. 4.5 out of 5.

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Tod is God

Tod is God: The Authorized Story of How I Created Extreme Championship Wrestling by Tod Gordon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a biography of Tod Gordon, the money man and brain behind Extreme Championship Wrestling.

I snapped this up when I saw it on Netgalley. Tod Gordon, the father of ECW? How could I pass this up?

This is the best wrestling book I've read in a long time. The Gordster doesn't waste any time and makes with the wrestling in short order. Tri-State Wrestling Alliance dies and Tod Gordon's Eastern Championship wrestling fill the void, eventually becoming the Extreme Championship Wrestling some of us knew and loved back in the day.

Tod doesn't really go out of the way to put himself over. He's a funny guy and obviously smart but doesn't sugar coat the decisions that came back to haunt him later. He's also open about the sex and rampant drug use behind the curtain in ECW.

I've probably read 50 or more wrestling books at this point and watched a shitload of documentaries but El Gordo reveals tons of stuff I never knew; the good, the bad, and the extremely fucked up. I don't want to spoil too much but Paul Heyman isn't the Sainted Father of ECW a lot of people make him out to bed.

Crazy shit aside, the Gordonator also makes the nuts and bolts of the wrestling business interesting. Not as interesting as the sex and drugs but it's really cool that guys like Terry Funk and Kevin Sullivan lent a hand when they could.

That's about all I've got to say, I guess. I'll refrain from saying Tod is God hits like Sabu on a table but imagine that I did. Five out of five stars.

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Tommy and the Order of Cosmic Champions

Tommy and the Order of Cosmic Champions by Anthony J. Rapino
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When Tommy's life begins unraveling the summer before junior high, the Create A Character contest for He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, sorry, Order of Cosmic Champions is all that's keeping him going. When he doesn't win the contest, something else grips his attention...

I've already forgotten how I learned about this book but it sounded interest. '80s nostalgia, coming of age tale, etc. I had the issue of He-Man magazine as a kid with the create a character contest in it. Oddly enough, the winner, Fearless Photog, wasn't actually made into 2012, something a twitter peep filled me in on.

Anyway, this was a fun coming of age tale with some grim beginnings. Tommy's parents' marriage is on the rocks, his best friend has turned his back on him and joined up with a bulling shithead, and, damn it, that Create a Character contest is his one glimmer of hope.

SPOILER ALERT - Tommy goes on an odyssey across multiple states with only Fierce Phantos as his companion as he goes up against Skullagar and his minions on his journey to find the contest winner and ask him to pull some strings and get Tommy's Mechani-Ghoul character made into an action figure.

First, I'll get my gripe out of the way. This is a Young Adult book written in the last couple years. It's also got a pretty good helping of 1980s nostalgia in it so who's the audience supposed to be? That's pretty much my only gripe.

I found Tommy all too believable as a nerd who was betrayed by friends for more popular ones as a kid. As a father, I was mortified at how little Tommy's parents were paying attention to him. Sure, their marriage was falling apart but they still had a kid to take care of.

The quest aspect was believably done. Tommy's friendship with Fierce Phantos was well done and left up to interpretation for the most part, although what was Carlos looking at and what's with the REDACTED Tommy picked up at the end? I also liked that Tommy's quest did him good but didn't completely fix everything. Still, the ending was very satisfying.

I wonder if any effort to secure the Masters of the Universe license was made for this. It was a little odd that they referenced TV, comics, and movies from the '80s but He-Man and the Masters of the Universe became Masculon and the Order of Cosmic Champions. Whatever. Everyone knew what they were talking about.

Four out of five stars.

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God is Disappointed in You

God Is Disappointed in You by Mark Russell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

To set the stage, I went to Catholic school for grades 1-12 and I haven't been to church much in the last 10-15 years other than weddings and funerals. Mark Russell is my favorite comic writer these days so I was surprised he wrote a book about the bible and naturally had to pick it up.

The back cover describes it as irreverent yet faithful. From what I remember from daily churchings and twelve years of religion class, I'd say it is. It's also extremely accessible and doesn't read like it was written in another language thousands of years ago.

Russell, aided and abetted by Shannon Wheeler's New Yorker style art, turns each book in the bible into a hilarious 2-6 page summary, peppered with humor but keeping the central message. Kind of like a Drunk History version of the bible. It was extremely entertaining and while irreverent, didn't feel like it was shitting on the source material.

Five out of five stars. I'm glad I have Apocrypha Now on deck.

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The Turnout

The Turnout by Megan Abbott
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When their ballet studio catches fire one night, Dara, Marie, and Charlie invite a contractor into their lives but he's clearly after more than just another job...

I've been out of the novel loop for a few years but I took advantage of a 2.99 sale on this a while back and I finally had time to read it.

Like I've said before, I enjoy all of Megan Abbott's books but the ones that hit the hardest are the ones about the secret lives of women. This one, about the dark underside of ballet, is firmly in that vein.

Dara and Marie are intensely close sisters, former ballet stars who trained under their ballerina mother. Charlie, Dara's husband, is a now broken down ballet dancer their mother took in when they were all teens. When a contractor threatens the close bond between the three, the train to hell leaves the station.

Even more than most of Megan Abbott's books, The Turnout almost feels like a Jim Thompson book. The inevitable trainwreck is coming and you have to grab on to something and hope you survive the crash and the aftermath. And what an aftermath it is!

I didn't understand teenage girls when I was a teenager and now I'm kind of terrified of them. The Megster shows us the horrible lives ballet dancers lead, from eating cotton balls soaked in ranch dressing instead of actual food to keep their weight down to hiding razor blades in each others' shoes. It was apparent that Dara, Marie, and Charlie were keeping some dark secrets from the beginning but I didn't think they'd bubble up the way they did.

That's about all I want to say. Five out of five stars.

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