2023 Reading - UPDATED

In my original 2023 Reading post made earlier this month, I thought that I had quit reading for this year and was ready to pick it back up next year.  I found myself on Christmas break from work and I decided to get a head start on one of next year's books I planned on reading. I wound up finishing the book I selected so I am updating my 2023 Reading post.  

Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson: I have planned on reading this book for some time now and just got around to it this year.  I was really looking forward to this book because I knew it was part of Appendix N and I've always heard people say it has a great representation of a Paladin as the main character.  After reading this book, what are my thoughts? I expect some pushback on my opinion.

I gave Three Hearts and Three Lions a score of 3 stars on Goodreads. If you're not familiar with Goodreads, books can be rated on a range of 1 - 5 stars.  These ratings do not allow for partial scores such as 4.25 stars.  It's not uncommon for members to give their partial score in their written and I did that in my review.  

My actual score for Three Hearts and Three Lions was 3.25 to 3.5 stars.  I enjoyed the book and found it an easy read, but I had some issues.  I prefer fantasy works to be on the epic or grander end of the spectrum. This book definitely felt like it was more on the mundane end. I prefer reading fantasy books with much more meat on the bone from lore and backstory.  This book seemed to barely scratch the surface.  It did do a good job of representing the conflict of Law and Chaos.  I respect the fact that Three Hearts and Three Lions is a foundational work of modern fantasy, but it didn't match my personal tastes.  

2023 Reading

I usually plan to read 12 books every year, but I failed to do so in 2023.  I didn't even come close to reaching that goal. In fact, I only read 2 books this year!  I made several attempts that turned out to be false starts that I never was able to recover from and continue on with those books for one of several reasons.  I'm not going to post about any of those failures, but I will post some thoughts on the books I did complete in 2023. 

Swan Song by Robert McCammon: I stumbled on to this book while I was browsing in one of the local bookstores.  I had never heard of the book or the author, but I decided to take a chance on this one. I did watch a few YouTube reviews before reading this book and noticed it kept getting compared to The Stand by Stephen King.  I was immediately interested as that's one of my favorite books.  I wasn't disappointed at all in my decision to read this book.  It does share many similar themes with The Stand and I think if you enjoyed one then you would enjoy the other. I think it could very well come down to you getting the most enjoyment out of whichever one you read first.  I would read it again and I will definitely read more works by McCammon in the future.  

Knight of the Demon Queen by Barbra Hambly: I decided to read this book because I enjoyed the first two books - Dragonsbane and Dragonshadow - in her Winterlands series. I remember seeing the first book on the shelf several times at my high school library.  I always intended to read it back then, but I wound up checking something else out before recalling my intentions to read Dragonsbane. One of my goals as an adult it to reading those books that caught my eye earlier in my life, but I never had gotten around to it.  I found all four books in the series at a local used bookstore in very good condition and a really reasonable price, so I bought all of them. I enjoyed the first two books quite a bit and I was looking forward to reading all of them.  The third book, Knight of the Demon Queen, started off good and was consistent with the feel and tone of the previous two books but I hit a snag later in the book. At that point, part of the story takes place in a futuristic cyberpunk setting.  It felt completely out of place to me and my reading slowed to a crawl at this point. I struggled to complete the book and I was very thankful it returned to fantasy in the final chapter.  It threw me for such a loop that I'm now re-evaluating whether or not I want to continue by reading the final book in the series.

Looking Ahead...

I miss the days when this blog was much more active and I'm not happy with the minimal posting I've done over the last several years. I'm at a point where I need to make a decision about what I'm going to do moving forward.  I'm not going to erase the contents of this blog, but I might just shut it down and leave it here in case anyone tis interested in the posts or some of the other content; I do have people still downloading the Adventures in Fantasy character sheet from time to time so that's cool. Some of the things that will affect my decision or my ability to post regularly will be discussed below.

WORK COMMITMENTS

In January of 2024 it will be one year since I accepted a position in the Quality Assurance department of my employer.  Of course, the increased salary came with more responsibilities and more time commitments so that will definitely affect how often I can post on the blog.  Fortunately, the decision to accept this position was the correct one because I do enjoy my job and the challenges tremendously. On top of that, we are in the process of launching two new models of school bus so that will definitely be demanding on my time as well.  I would assume that from December of 2023 to the end of the first quarter of 2024, it will be the most challenging period for us.

SUBJECT OF POSTS

The main subject of this blog will still be roleplaying games and related subjects with various posts about reading, miniatures, fan films, and pretty much whatever else grabs my attention.  I know the OGL drama seems to have settled down, but I think I'm going to look into moving away from using the OGL to post anything.  I'm most likely gong to post nothing but house rules like new races, new monsters, etc. from my campaign but I think I'm going to play it safe and use a different format other than Delving Deeper to post the information. Make no mistake about it, Delving Deeper is still my game of choice and I will always recommend it and my home campaign will be ran using it. I just think for posting stuff in a public area such as this I'm going to use a format inspired by the old gaming products of the past that were "close but not quite D&D".  Maybe I'm being too cautious?  I'm not a lawyer by any means and I don't have the time to commit to writing a new clone from scratch at this point. I did take the time, however, to come up with this new format in a 2 page pdf.  It still needs a little bit of tweaking, but I will post it here in the near future.

POST FREQUENCY

At this point, I think the best estimate I can make for 2024 is committing to post once per week. I can use whatever subject I like so the post may come any day of the week.  I could post for "Miniature Monday" one week and then "Fan Film Friday" for the next.  That does NOT mean I won't pick up the pace at some point but once a week should not be an unrealistic goal. 

REACHING THE DECISON

I plan on evaluating progress every 90 days of 2024.  I've also started bullet journaling for work and for home/recreation so that has helped me quite a bit.  I like having concrete plans on paper that I can look at and track progress. I never used the bullet journal method before, but I used to track things much better and I lost that in my recreational activities, so it fell by the wayside and took a backseat.  Hopefully, I can maintain a healthy and productive work/life balance from now on.  It's not unhealthy right now but it is somewhat lopsided, and I need to correct the course.  Let's see what happens on the road ahead...

[Miniature Monday] Grave Wraith

 

Ugh...work has been demanding lately.  I just realized it's been a month or a little over since my last post.  We had a four-day weekend at work, so I decided to paint this Grave Wraith miniature that I've been meaning to paint for a while.  I began by opening the miniature, cleaning it with dish soap and water, and then mounting in on a base.

The second step was painting the main color.  I went with a Skeletor inspired color for the robe.  I also decided to add in some black in the face area and a few other small areas.

Then I painted the gravestone and the sword as well as the tiny Skeletal fingers wrapped around the hilt of the sword.

Then I painted the earthen area by the feet and gravestone.

Next, I did some touchup in the areas that need it done.

 

Finally, I did a wash on the miniature and then put a coat of Brush on Sealer once the wash had dried.  

[Miniature Monday] Naga Part II

I completed the second Naga using mostly Vallejo Xpress Color paints for the majority of the miniature.  I would have used them for all of the miniature but there are not metallic paints in the range as of yet and when I returned to buy more the display rack was already down to less than half full. It went much quicker than the Naga I painted in another post.  I will definitely buy more of the Xpress Color paints because they make the process so much quicker to complete.

[Miniature Monday] Vallejo Xpress Color

I made a stop at one my local FLGS locations on Friday and noticed they had a rack of the Vallejo Xpress Color paints setup in their shop.  I tried the standard Vallejo paints when I first started painting and I have remained a fan of them ever since.  I have tried a variety of paints, but I still maintain a healthy selection of the Vallejo range in my collection.  

After browsing through the rack, I decided to pick up three bottles of the Xpress Colors to test them out on an unpainted miniature this weekend.  I still had an unpainted Naga miniature in my collection.  I decided to paint it so I could compare it with the other one I painted a while back. I did not finish painting the Naga but it wasn't because I was disappointed with the results.

I used Snake Green (far right) for most of the body and yellow for the mid-section of the front.  You can tell the difference between the other Naga (left in the picture) and this new one.  The reason I chose to stop painting is because I'm enjoying using this paint and I'm going back to pick up the other bottles before I continue painting.  We get our bonus payout at work this week and that's going to be my splurge item.  

The Xpress Color paint is really smooth and flows like milk.  It's going to take a minor adjustment on my painting method but that's not a bad thing.  I can skip the wet palette for these, and it seems like one coat will most likely do the trick.  Simply put, I can paint more miniatures in a shorter amount of time.  Since my miniatures are for in-game use rather than competition or showcase then that's perfect for me.

 

[Miniature Monday] I Need a Working Space

I have no completed miniature to showcase in this post but here's a look at my current painting area.  Yes, it's part of my kitchen countertop and I need to change it.  I'm going to be on the hunt for a reasonably priced desk or table and some sort of paint stands (or something similar) to get this mess moved from my kitchen to the other room.  I always thought I was just going to have a few bottles of paint and a few miniatures because I intended to give this part of the hobby a try and put it back down.  Now I have over 40 bottles of paints, several sets of brushes, and an accumulated collection of miniatures waiting to be painted.  I'll update in the future when I get a dedicated space.

 

[Miniature Monday] Mind Flayer

 

I've had this miniature for a while, but I was holding off until I thought I was good enough to paint it reasonably well.  I finally got tired of waiting and decided to give it a whirl.  I didn't have to remove any paint or any major rework during the painting process so I'm pretty happy with the results.  I now have a table ready Mind Flayer for my collection.  I need to look into some of the other old monsters such as Beholders and Ropers sometime in the future.

02/5 - 02/11 is a Wash

For the week of 02/05/2023 to 02/11/2023 there will be zero content posted other than this post.  My new position at work finds me really enjoying what I'm doing but this week was a curve ball and required an extraordinary amount of overtime.  I put in 70 hours, and I just don't have it in me.  A temporary lull in posting and then it should pick back up soon.   

[Fan Film Friday] Never Hike Alone 2: A Friday the 13th Fan Film

A sneak peek at the Friday the 13th fan film, Never Hike Alone 2.