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Book Review: The Cold Eye by Laura Anne Gilman

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Being the Devil’s Left Hand is not the easiest job that Isobel could have chosen, but she did choose it, fought for it, and has proven herself, so far, to be a solid choice to ride the Territory on the Boss’ behalf. Now that she has some miles done on her circuit, Isobel’s life as the Devil’s Left Hand continues. As before, her partner Gabriel, as per his own agreement with the Devil, continues her training. But even as Isobel is  growing into the role, new dangers are arising, dangers that the two of them may not be equal to face. Dangers great enough perhaps to threaten even the Devil himself. The Cold Eye is the second Devil’s West novel by Laura Anne Gilman, following Silver On the Road.

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Book Review: The High Ground by Melinda Snodgrass

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Her Imperial Highness Mercedes Adalina Saturinia Inez de Arango, the Infanta, the eldest daughter of the Emperor of the Solar League, has a problem. She’s a woman. Her father, the Emperor, has managed, like English King Henry VIII centuries ago, to wind up with no male children to name as heir. The conventions and expectations of his society make naming a female heir a dicey proposition, especially because the Heir is expected to attend and graduate The High Ground, the “star fleet academy” of the Empire. The High Ground, however, has never had female cadets before, and so the attendance of the Infanta is a change too far for many. Thracius Ransom Belamor, to his chagrin called Tracy by everyone, has a different problem. In the aristocratic, near feudal world of the Solar League, being from the middle class and unconnected to the noble Fortune Five Hundred families means that his scholarship to the High Ground is a poor billet indeed. In social circles far beyond his normal station, even aptitude and hard work may be far short of what Tracy needs to survive, much less succeed, at the Naval academy.  The High Ground is the first in the Imperials series by Melinda Snodgrass, and tells the story of Tracy and Mercedes’ attendance at the titular High Ground.

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Book Review: Red Tide, by Marc. J Turner

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Epic Fantasy sometimes takes just a dive into the deep waters to swim around to find oneself. Especially in a summary of a book’s plot.  To wit: The Rubyholt Isles, to the south of the realms of the Sabian League and to the east of the burgeoning empire of Erin Elal, is a pirate-dominated tangle of dangerous seas and hard men and women. It’s also in the right position that any force from outside wishing to attach the Storm Isles of the Sabian League or land on the continent in the territory of Erin Elal must come to terms with the Isles, first. The pirates are too dangerous a potential adversary, and too valuable a resource, not to.  And so when the head of an expeditionary force from the distant Augerans shows up in the Rubyholt Capital, the Storm Isles and the Empire alike take notice, and are forced to take action, before it is too late. Red Tide is the third volume in Marc Turner’s The Chronicles of the Exile, following When the Heavens Fall and Dragon Hunters.

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Game Review: Timewatch, by Kevin Kulp

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“History is not written by the victors, it’s written by the people with the time machines.” — Robin D. Laws Time Travel, as one of the earliest streams of science fiction literature, is similarly one of the earliest themes and modes in roleplaying games. From Timemaster to GURPS, to Continuum, and many others, characters acting as adventurers, patrollers, and explorers in the corridors of time and space have been a staple of science fiction roleplaying. Timewatch, written by Kevin Kulp and published by Pelgrane Press, is the latest iteration of time-travel roleplaying games. The default setting of the Timewatch RPG is the familiar line of a Time Patrol who monitors and keeps History on track. The Timewatch have a citadel in the out-of-time-and-space locale just before the singularity event that creates the Big Bang, and it is from that point that they monitor changes to the time stream due to outside agency, and then when one is detected, the agents are dispatched to discover why history has gone off track, and to correct it. Time’s track goes off because of, not usually pure chance as in the matter of Voyagers!, but rather because of other time travelers. Thus the players are pitted against would-be meddlers in history ranging from misguided do-gooders looking to kill Hitler to mutant time-traveling intelligent cockroaches seeking to create the nuclear apocalypse that will bring their species into existence. The opposition wants to change history permanently, and it’s up to the PCs to foil their plans and fix it.

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Book Review: Atlas Obscura

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The world is stranger, more magical, more strange than you can possibly imagine. Since 2009, the Atlas Obscura website has been a destination for people who want to look at, or add to, the ever growing database of strange and wondrous places and things in the world. From giant balls of string to glowworm caves, Atlas Obscura has been a blessing for people looking to escape the spreadsheets at work for a bit. And now there is a book. Atlas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders, written by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras and Ella Morton, takes 700 entries from the Atlas Obscura website and rewrites them into a handy hardcover book. The book is arranged by region, drilling down to the state level in the case of the US. The variety of the 700 entries is a mixture of the small, the large, and the unexpected. Be it the agricultural museum of Cairo or the Kola Superdeep Borehole, or one square mile Carcross Desert, or the sign post forest at a spot on the Alaska Highway, there are sites from places you might never get to. And then there is the CIA Museum in Langley, and the Hobo Museum in Iowa, Carhenge in Nebraska, the old mechanical clock in Salisbury Cathedral, and other places  and things you can really visit. Each entry provides directions on how to get to see it for yourself, cautioning the reader in cases where one has to dare going onto a closed locale, or even dare a trip to North Korea. It’s all implicit invitation for travelers to follow in their footsteps and see the wonders with their own eyes.

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Excerpt from The Found and The Lost by Ursula K. Le Guin

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We here at the Skiffy and Fanty Show are big fans of Ursula K Le Guin. At least one of us thinks she’s Nobel Prize for Literature worthy-good. So, today, we present an excerpt from The Found and the Lost, the collected volume of Le Guin’s novellas from Saga Press. The other volume in the recently published set, covering her shorter fiction, is  The Unreal and the Real. Gorgeous covers, the both of them.

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