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Michael_S_Miller
Michael S. Miller has played with stories all his life. As a game designer, he has published the superhero role-playing game With Great Power. As a writer, he pens the sword-and-sorcery tales of Oshala the Hex. He lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, three cats, and far more books, comics, games, and movies than his grandchildren will possibly want to inherit.
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Comments
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I really enjoyed the descriptions of the games, particularly the way Banks is able to describe the feel of gameplay without getting into any of the actual rules. The alliances, betrayals, feints and attacks are all so vivid, because I’ve done those …
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Yes, The Culture is definitely a utopia. People want for nothing. I love the detail that scary urban legends start with “and they left their Terminal at home” the same way ours start with “I had no cell phone reception”, because being in contact wit…
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Finished the audiobook yesterday. Really enjoyed it.
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Yes, but I think that actually added to my confusion. In The Graveyard Book, they were actual, individual characters. Here, Jack Tar is a sort of collective noun that's addressed in the singular. "Jack doesn't like that" means (I think) &q…
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Other than it being set in the Royal Navy and all the characters being British subjects, one of the British-isms that tripped me up a bit was the use of "Jack" or "Jack Tar" as a collective for all enlisted men in service. At one…
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Yes, the characters were great and really vivid. It was a nice contrast that one of the very first non-Harry Gilmour characters we get a glimpse of is the arrogant, high-class spotter plane pilot, and then we close out with that assistant to the VIP…
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Yes, the engineering details were clear and illuminating. It helped convey the constant danger they were living in and the constant effort needed to simply stay alive.
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In general, I liked the tactic of skipping the confrontations. It made Harry Gilmour's big landing-party action on the Russian tug surprising in its immediate detail, but then also allowed Black to fake us out with thinking that he was dead and then…
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The sense of claustrophobia was well done. Also, the physical closeness of the crew (something about being so close you couldn't fit a ruler between their faces struck me). The sense of danger was constant, along with the limited options and the con…
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Sounds very cool. "World's End" is a very fitting inspiration for a concept album, with all the different genres and the frame structure of "travelers stuck at an inn telling stories during a storm."
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Surgeries are no fun. Hope that your wife is on the mend soon.
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I'm late to the party, but I've still got a few weeks so I looked at the Amazon price. I don't know if I hit a one-day sale or something, but the regular price for the audiobook was $10.49 on Audible (owned by Amazon), or $8.99 if I bought it on the…
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Huh, I've never read it but have a worn copy on my shelf. Must have picked it up at a used book store some time. February is a tough month as far as reading time goes, but maybe this is a sign that I need to do more to participate.
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I'm enjoying the narrative style, but maybe I just have weird taste. The bit that @Apocryphal quotes is when Essun is so stressed that she loses control of her powers. The fact that the narrative voice loses control of itself at the same time makes …
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Also, another observation I had was that the strong, distinctive narrator's voice teases the idea that the narrator will be a character and the fact of the narration will figure into the story itself. I'm a sucker for stories that exist within thems…
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I really enjoyed the style of the writing. I'm not 100% certain why I connected with this, and am excited to learn more, when I often bounce off cryptic world building. Maybe it's because the fantastical setting is described using a pretty standard …
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Ah, I see. That's the "public link". But this is the "shareable link" https://calendar.google.com/calendar?cid=NWlhcjc4bHJ1MGhnYWlsa2MxdW82bGg2YWdAZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ Here's the web page embed code: <iframe sr…
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Awesome! The revised Google calendar is up: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=5iar78lru0hgailkc1uo6lh6ag%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America%2FNew_York If anyone has any issues, or wants the specialized URLs for embedding, link…
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Do what you think is best, @NeilNjae . I can delete that calendar and create a brand new one from the spreadsheet pretty easily. Just let me know what you decide.
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Okay, first attempt at the Google Calendar is up. I've made it public, so you shouldn't need to use Google Calendar to view it. Here's the link: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=uthpt0lpmhm58234gbgrjv04fc%40group.calendar.google.com&am…
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That means I will start and as long as I don't bounce off the book as hard as I bounced off The book of the New Sun, I'm in.
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Once you settle on a schedule, and after the holiday, I'll make a Google calendar. Let me know when things are final, @NeilNjae
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I see your point, but without Ogion, wouldn't Ged have just become a goatherd or a pirate, like any other Gontishman? That doesn't make A Wizard of Earthsea Ogion's story. Good mentors serve to expand our perspective on the actions we might take in …
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Yes, @Apocryphal both skill and "craft" (magic) are the same thing, just different methods of people to shape the world around them. Thanks for finding those links, @RichardAbbott The bits of the Old Speech that she published are pretty s…
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That's a good point about the dynamic being more Arthur/Merlin (particularly the Once and Future King version) than Gandalf/Aragorn. I've still got Tolkien on the brain after the long read and the RPG I'm still dabbling with based on that reading. …
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Yes, @Apocryphal is right, any game with personality mechanics or beliefs could reflect the way the changed nature of the world pulls at the hearts and souls of people in it. A Powered by the Apocalypse-style game would likely use a custom move. So…
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It had been many years since I’d read this book. The one thing that stayed with me all that time was Children of the Open Sea and their dance above the abyss. I love how their culture is so different from that of the Archipelago, but also follows ma…
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I agree that magic on Earthsea is all about language. It’s based in the Old Speech, which cannot lie (except when spoken by dragons). It can perform all kinds of feats, particularly those of illusion, but it cannot stop death, just like language. A…
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I got the impression that Ged didn’t expect to survive this quest, even from the beginning. Maybe I’m seeing his equanimity in the face of his demise and reading it as fatalism, but that was my impression. Plus, he’s already seen that punching a hol…
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I like how Arren grows from that wide-eyed teenaged exuberance of fawning over The Archmage to a young man, who can see the world for what it is, and react accordingly. I also like how LeGuin takes so many classic fantasy tropes about kings and bot…