Turning 29, again!

Is 40 the new 25? I turned 40 yesterday, and feel great. Mentally, I've finally reached my mid-to-late 20s. Maturity is catching up to me, no matter how hard I try to fight it off. I can understand why my dad was 40 when I, his only child, was born. I'll be even older, of course, when and if I ever become a parent.

I marked the occasion by taking the day off from work. I met up with Jazzy Joe in Queens for a couple of libations, and then did some shopping in Manhattan. I found the book I sought, Knight's Cross Panzers. This is the English translation of Hans Schäufler's history of Panzer Regiment 35, from the 4. Panzer Division, the most highly decorated German division in World War 2. The German edition, So lebten und so starben sie ("How we lived and died," or something close to that), was released in 1973, and I'm surprised it took until 2010 for a translation to appear. The book is full of personal accounts from veterans, both officers and enlisted men. The unit saw more than its share of combat on the Eastern Front, and the accounts seem extremely interesting at first glance. I think Knight's Cross Panzers will be similar to the veterans' histories of Tiger Tank Battalions 503 and 507, which give a human face to campaigns that are not well-known to English language readers.

For anyone interested in the 4. Panzer Division, there's plenty of additional material in existence. Joachim Neumann, a former artillery battalion commander in the division (and a holder of both the Knight's Cross and the German Cross in Gold), assembled a two-volume sort of divisional war diary, which is expensive and hard to find, but follows the unit day-to-day from the invasion of the USSR until the end of the war. This is probably too detailed for most readers, even if the German is easy to follow, even for untrained amateurs such as myself.

More useful for many, and now also hard to find, is a five-volume set by Polish Militaria, which includes an English text summary and photo captions. The archive of the 4. Panzer Division's official photographer ended up in Polish hands after the war, and around 550 of the most interesting photographs were published a decade ago via this set. Soon after, Concord in the USA put out a two-volume distillation of the Polish set, with 200 or so photos in total. This Concord duo, in particular, would make a good companion-piece for readers of Knight's Cross Panzers.

I'm sure it's obvious by now that my attention is constantly being pulled in many directions. On the way to meet Jazzy Joe, riding the NYC Subway, I read most of Red Pearls. This is Michael Moorcock's entry in Swords & Dark Magic, and his latest Elric story. I have a strange relationship with Moorcock, as I love his invention and creativity, but often dislike his writing. The Elric stories, especially the classic early ones from almost 50 years ago(!), are the only work of his I've ever truly enjoyed. Red Pearls is a fine addition to the canon, as it just goes about its business, without trying to mix in outside elements from Moorcock's Multiverse.

Still on the topic of Fantasy, I DMed again this past Saturday, and had what I consider a successful game. I wasn't perfect, but I managed to run several rather large fights without losing track of anyone, or anything. The players had fun in a very challenging adventure (ADAP 1-5: Menace of the Icy Spire), one that I much preferred to the module I was given for my first session. I believe I have been correct in my assessment that the most important thing for a beginning DM, in 4E, is solid preparation. I knew the material and had maps ready, and this made it all progress as smoothly as possible. (I trust all aspects of my DMing will improve with practice!)

Finally, for the Glen Cook fans, Amazon now has the blurb posted for Gilded Latten Bones, the forthcoming 13th volume of the Garrett, P.I. series. It reads as follows:

For Garrett, P.I., loyalty and love come a close second to survival... Garrett's attempt at domestic bliss with the fiery Tinnie Tate is sidetracked when he waylays a pair of home intruders and learns they've been paid by an unknown source to kidnap Tinnie. But as Garrett rushes to find out who is trying to push his buttons, his best friend is attacked. Now, Garrett has to track down both malefactors. Unless they're really one and the same-in which case Garrett might be next...

I hope that between its variety of topics, this post had a little something for everyone.!

To Mega-Therion

A guy came into my place of employment a few weeks ago, wearing a Sirius B tee shirt. I told him that I am a big fan of Therion. He replied that it was the first time anyone had recognized the shirt and commented upon it, in the two years he had owned it! I guess that shows the band's lack of an audience in the USA.

I don't understand that, as the group is one of the pioneers of operatic, symphonic Heavy Metal music. Actually, Therion is really more of a project, as it consists of founder Christofer Johnsson and a changing, sometimes rotating, cast of supporting players. The brothers Kristian and Johann Niemann held down the lead guitar and bass positions, respectively, from 1999 to 2008. They were joined by drummer Petter Karlsson in 2004, though he also left in 2008. The lineup with those three was probably the best Therion has ever had, so it saddens me that the 2007 double album Gothic Kabbalah was the one studio project to include them all.

Mats Leven and Snowy Shaw assisted as vocalists in this era, with all five contributing to the songwriting. It gave Gothic Kabbalah (and the concert CD/DVD Live Gothic) a dynamic lacking in the band's previous work. The album confounded many listeners upon its release, as the songs were more accessible, and less bombastic, than the rest of Therion's catalog. Were they selling out? Hardly, instead they were bringing the concept to its fullest realization. That's now clear, listing to the material with an experienced ear, three years after its release. The older songs, even many of the great ones, sound plodding and underwhelming by comparison. I would very much like to have heard what this crew could come up with on a second go-round.

Leven left, and Shaw has done so too, though Snowy did contribute vocals and songwriting to the forthcoming Sitra Ahra CD. But Therion is for all practical purposes a new band, and this is perhaps the fifth time in its history that this has occurred. It emerged triumphant from all previous changes, so I need to have some faith, based on Johnsson's track record. But the shoes to be filled were never before so large. I have a nagging fear that Sitra Ahra will somehow be a disappointment. I hope I'm wrong! Eight years ago, I had low hopes for an album by Nightwish, a band heavily influenced by Therion, but Century Child turned out to be my favorite of theirs, so, as Chris Tonozzi likes to say, anything's possible.

Here's a sort of game to play, listen to these two samples, and decide if there's any similarity. The first is Helheim from Therion's Secret of the Runes album. The other is a Waffen-SS March from the World War 2 era. For all I know, both were influenced by some earlier source, but it is also possible that this was a sort of in-joke by Johnsson. If the latter is the case, it would likely be because Secret of the Runes was intended to emulate Wagnerian operas, and Richard Wagner was a favorite of many leading Nazis. As well, Heinrich Himmler and the SS leadership dabbled in concepts based on Nordic Mythology, the subject of the CD. Regardless, please note that I'm not accusing Johnson of any negative associations, but the similarity is there to be heard!

I'm writing this before bed on a Friday night. The plan is for me to DM an adventure known as Menace of the Icy Spire, on Saturday afternoon. I like this one a whole lot, so I'll give it my best and hope the players enjoy it too.

That's MR. DM to you!

I finally did my turn at DM-ing a 4E D&D game on July 10. I jumped through all the hoops necessary to make it happen, and if I was falling asleep by the end of it, after a very long day, it was worth the effort. I think the players had fun. They recognized that I was dealing with an unusual sort of module, and unusual composition from them.

The adventure apparently presumes that most characters will be human, since it involves being hired by a Dragonborn (a sort of Lizardman, somewhat like Dragonlance Draconians) to shepherd him and an Elven girl to a wilderness location. The twist came from three of the four player characters being Dragonborn themselves. So I ad-libbed much of the initial portions of the adventure, to reflect that Dragonborn players would handle the events differently than what the creators of the module intended. The encounters in the adventure involve insect and worm monsters, rather than two-legged beings of the human or recognizably-similar sort. The actual fighting went rather easily for the players, because they happened to have a perfect set of powers for dealing with their opposition. All in all, I would have chosen a different module for my debut, but it was the one I was given, and the improv moments were certainly fun.

Today, a week later, I ventured back out to the good old Montclair Book Center to see if they had any interesting new acquisitions. I found one book that I had my eye out for, the recent anthology Swords & Dark Magic. I couldn't pass up a like-new copy for only $8. This is the Sword & Sorcery collection filled with new stories by leading names in the field, including Glen Cook, Steven Erikson, Michael Moorcock, and Joe Abercrombie. I've only read the Cook, so far, but look forward to all of them.

Cook's tale is Tides Elba, which tells of a minor adventure of the Black Company during the years between The Black Company and Shadows Linger. I think many fans will enjoy this look at the simpler time, when Croaker was merely the surgeon and annalist, and not the leadership figure he became later on. I happen to prefer the latter-day character (based on the ability to watch his career-arc and see him grow into his role), but I suspect I'm in the minority here. Even if this story isn't of vital importance to the overall storyline, it was good to revisit the characters. It almost feels like another of the lengthy chapters in The Black Company, only set after the climax at Charm. Will there be more such slices of the unit's history forthcoming? I believe the planned future books, A Pitiles Rain and Port of Shadows, are to be continuations from where Soldiers Live left off, and not fill-ins for the existing timeline. It could be a good thing to eventually have a Black Company short story omnibus, similar to the Soldier of an Empire Unacquainted With Defeat collection for the Dread Empire.

Swords & Dark Magic has received excellent reviews so far, so don't let the meh cover art scare you off, if you like any of the authors involved. I'll post additional comments as I read more of the stories.

NYC and Cool, Cool Kitties

This is the first post I've typed up on my laptop computer. I just got this new toy, an HP and my first ever laptop model, around 10 days ago. I've used my friends' Macs before, that turned out to be good practice for getting accustomed to a different sort of keypad and using my a touch pad in place of a mouse. The most important aspect of this acquisition is that I'll no longer be at the mercy of my desktop computer. That one is over 5 years old, and showing strain from the years of heavy use. It sometimes has trouble contacting the server I access, which left me with difficulty in emailing some people in a timely manner on an important matter.

This new laptop will also aid me in my D&D efforts. I promised a DM-ing update, but my debut was postponed until July 10. Even that ran into a roadblock, but as of this writing, I believe I have sidestepped that. I've been familiarizing myself with an adventure titled Faint Hope, and the gaming should commence roughly 23 hours from now.

There's a trend developing for Ian C. Esslemont books to receive nautical-themed covers. The illustration above is an in-progress design for his forthcoming Stonewielder. It's by Steve Stone, and is even better, IMHO, than his previous fine efforts for Esslemont's Night of Knives and Return of the Crimson Guard. Stone has been Steven Erikson's primary UK cover artist, but only his painting for Deadhouse Gates was used on the American edition. The rest, starting with Memories of Ice, had art by Todd Lockwood. I seem to be in a distinct minority in really liking Lockwood's work. His efforts have been widely derided around the web, and Tor has apparently finally bowed to fan pressure. Already, Tor's Dust of Dreams used a modified form of the book's UK artwork. Now, I see that Midnight Tides and The Bonehunters have been retro-fitted with Stone paintings. I assume this will please many readers. The Stonewielder cover has quickly received acclaim at MalazanEmpire.

BTW, Malazan fans, or the merely curious, should check out the read/reread that just began at Tor.com. It had an abortive start a few months ago, but now seems to be ready for a fun year or more of discussion and commentary. I've already posted a comment in one of the threads, and plan to add many more as it progresses.

Finally, here's an off-topic bit of advice. It's been extremely hot in the NYC area lately, especially in my apartment. I don't have air conditioning, and the heat overwhelmed my usually-reliable fans. My kitty, Ember (you can see her pic if you scroll back on this site to over a year ago) was suffering from the heat. I found her on her side, panting, which meant her little body was overheating. I did a websearch on how to keep cats cool in hot weather. The best suggestion I found was to place a wet towel in the freezer for a while, before allowing the feline to lie on it. This was extremely successful in getting Ember back to normal. Even when the frozen parts thawed, just being atop the dampness kept her in good shape. Cats sometimes have an aversion to wet things, but Ember spent the better part of 48 hours on that towel! So don't hesitate to give this a try, if you think it will benefit your furry friends.