Matthew Hunter

L1: The Secret of Bone Hill Dean (Thic Duc), Matt (Lenny), Coby (Warin), Chris (Malag), Norsk (Brian), and Jeff (Amathar) are returning cast members. As we left the party, they had just defeated a human wizard and his bugbear shaman ally, then kidnapped a baby bugbear after slaughtering his playmates and eating their brains. They searched the wizard’s laboratory, which caught Amathar’s attention enough that he came out of hiding, though he stayed invisible.

L1: The Secret of Bone Hill Dean (Thic Duc), Matt (Lenny), Coby (Warin), Chris (Malag), and Norsk (Brian) are returning cast members. As we left the party, they had made camp in the fortified temple at the top of Bone Hill. Amathar was still missing after taking a nap while under an invisibility spell. The party had left Thic Duc with the wagon to wait for Amathar, but after noon came and went with no sign of the mage, Thic Duc rejoined the group immediately following their battle with the bugbear shaman, drawn by the sounds of battle.

L1: The Secret of Bone Hill Matt (Lenny), Coby (Warin), Chris (Malag), and Norsk (Brian) are returning cast members. As we left the party, Barron had been traumatized by losing his familiar Alphonso so soon after loosing his zombie pet Mr. Crackers. He returned to Rookroost to rethink his life and try to regain his sanity. At least, that’s what the note said. When they hurried down to the docks to try to stop him, or maybe to make sure he got on the boat, witnesses at the docks reported a diminutive half-elven ranger carrying a hog-tied hobgoblin in a large sack aboard a ship instead.

A Wastrel’s Tale is (probably) the first book in a swords and sorcery zombie apocalypse series. The story revolves around a member of an order dedicated to fighting necromancy with the use of arms and specialized magic, yet for decades now there have been but few necromancers. Indeed, only one of any notable talent or skill, and that one in captivity. An ideal condition for a third son who would dearly love to spend his life training, drinking, and wenching, no?

An Airless Storm follows up on the adventures of Andrew Cochrane and his security service of interstellar mercenaries. Following their initial success in funding their operations, the company has ordered more ships and larger ships. But their enemies are doing the same. The book has the same vaguely Heinlein-juvenile feel, and the plot armor is less perfect. Mostly it represents an improvement, but the ratio of people talking about their plans and engaging in covert operation shenanigans versus space battles is still pretty high.

Peter Grant’s new novel, The Stones of Silence, is set in his science-fiction universe, sharing it with his two other series starting with Take the Star Road and War to the knife. It’s unclear to me if the setting is intended to be the same, or just happens to be similar in a generic science fiction way. The setup for his new series is interesting, but shares the flaws of the earlier works.

L1: The Secret of Bone Hill Matt (Barron), Mariel (Leah), Coby (Warin), Chris (Malag), Jeff (Amathar the Grey), and Norsk (Brian) are returning cast members. As we left the party, they were recovering from the ambush that had nearly killed several of the party members. After resting there overnight, with the delay allowing for Leah to catch up with the group, Norsk to refine his methods of assassination, and Barron to learn new spells (this time, to Amathar’s amazement, casting them correctly), the party chose to follow the ogre trail to a cave on the nearby hillside.

Brief Cases by Jim Butcher is a collection of short stories in the very popular Dresden Files series, named for the central character Harry Dresden, Chicago’s only professional wizard – or at least the only one with an ad in the phone book. I don’t normally go in for short story collections, but occasionally with an established universe my completionist instincts will kick in. In this case I had already read Side Jobs, a similar collection by the same author in the same universe.

A sequel to Sufficiently Advanced Magic, On the Shoulders of Titans manages to significantly complicate the plot. The number of characters who may not be trustworthy or whose interests may lie in a direction other than that of their allies grows to very nearly equal the number of characters in the book. Thankfully, the “magic school” elements of the plot are reduced almost to insignificance; the main character barely attends class and spends only a limited amount of time on screen taking tests.

What do you get when you combine an interesting magic system, a lot of influence from video games, a competent but emotionally distant author, a dash of gender ambiguity, a token pinch of political preaching, and yet another book about a child who goes to magic school? Apparently, you get a pretty good stew of a book that’s enjoyable to read, intellectually interesting, and only rarely makes me want to throw it against the wall for brief periods.