#240

Books

This week I read:

• The Dwarves by Markus Heitz

  I felt like reading something about dwarves. And so I found the most dwarfy book I possibly could: The Dwarves, first of the series of the same name, about a young dwarf raised amongst humans who has to channel his inner dwarfishness to overcome hardships and save all the dwarves (and everyone else).

  I thought the plot developed at a good pace, and Tungdil the dwarf-raised-amongst-humans being the point-of-view character really worked well for introducing the world to us as readers without needing exposition dumps. The ignorant youth heading out into the wide world for adventure is a common trope for a reason. I’ve added the series to my list, so I’ll be checking out the next instalment soon.

Miscellaneous

This week I watched The Last of Us which was very well done, and I have to say I like this emerging genre of “Pedro Pascal escorts a child through a dangerous environment”, having also seen The Mandalorian and Prospect. I’ve not played the game, soI can’t say how faithful an adaptation it is, and I don’t know how much there is left in the story, but I’m looking forward to season 2 when that comes out.

I’d heard about the hospital scene before (in Matt Colville’s “Roleplaying” video), so I was curious to see whether the TV show also handled that as a massacre. Which it did.

I’d probably have done the same in the game.

Speaking of games, today I’ve been checking out Stellaris, which I’ve owned for years but never played. I like Paradox’s grand strategy games. I’ve put many hours into Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis. So I think I probably picked Stellaris up pretty close to launch. And yet it’s just sat there unplayed. Well, no longer.

I think I’m starting to get the hang of it, and I also think I’ve messed up my first game by not focussing on research enough, so all the alien empires are pulling ahead of me at an ever increasing rate. Oh well, there’s always next time.