Welcome to the Escape Velocity Collection!
We are an opinionated group of friends reviewing all sorts of fantasy and science fiction media. Don’t forget to get to know the curators and visit our curated Collection, where we discuss the stories that never cease to transport us to another world.
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- TV show developed by Christian Linke and Alex Yee for Netflix
- Starring Hailee Steinfeld, Ella Purnell, Kevin Alejandro, Katie Leung , Jason Spisak , Toks Olagundoye and Harry Lloyd
- Released in November 2021
- 1 Season of 9 Episodes, another season upcoming
This review relates to season 1
I watched Arcane a year after its release, after most of the hype around it had died down. I didn’t really know what I had to expect. I only knew a lot of people liked it and that it was based on League of Legends, a game I only knew the basic game mechanics of. Luckily, from the first minutes on, I was enthralled. I binged the whole first season within one day. And it haunted me for months thereafter…
There’s a lot to say about the quality of this series. The animation, to start somewhere, is outstanding and incomparable with anything else I’ve ever seen. Every shot is amazing to look at. Frankly, words fail me in this regard. I feel that if I were a film maker or animator myself, I could more properly describe the many brilliant techniques that were used. I’m not, however, so instead I’ll move to something I have a better understanding of: the writing.
At its core, Arcane’s story revolves around both the utter salvation and ultimate downfall of every person alive ever: their relationships with loved ones. And it explores this theme without ever reverting to the easy storytelling pitfalls. As a result, we get an emotional narrative which never gets truly predictable.
It’s not often that a piece of media makes me care for every one of its characters. However, while watching Arcane, I found myself rooting for literally everyone. Vander, but eventually also Silco. Victor, Jayce and Heimerdinger. Cailtyn and Vi and Powder/Jinx. Honestly, it was somewhat jarring to watch a story in which you hope every character achieves what they want, but you simultaneously know that some of these goals cannot coexist. It’s an impressive feat of storytelling.
I’ve yet to succesfully convince the other curators to give Arcane a try, but I’d certainly say it’s worth the watch!
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- Book written by Robert Jordan
- Published 15 October 1991
- Part 3 of the Wheel of Time series
Struggling with his role as the newly proclaimed Dragon Reborn, Rand sets out alone to test the truth of the proclamation by attempting to fulfil the prophesies, with Perrin and Moiraine following in his wake. Meanwhile, the female protagonists return to Tar Valon to heal Mat, only to receive a new mission of their own. As they all converge on one place in space and time, the stakes rise. Will Rand live up to the prophesies – or will the Dark One triumph?
(Who am I kidding we all know what is going to happen)
What a great classic cover! It would be a shame if it... were to... spoil anything?
Listened to the audiobook with Michael Kramer and Kate Reading – no problem with the narrators.
If you’ve read my reviews of the first two instalments of The Wheel of Time, you will know by now that I am not massively impressed by Jordan’s epic. I was clinging to a sliver of hope that The Dragon Reborn would tie all loose ends together and wrap the trilogy up so satisfactorily that it would make the whole slog worth it.
I’m afraid it didn’t. Instead, when I finished The Dragon Reborn, I mostly felt relief: no more Wheel of Time for me in the foreseeable future. So why won’t I be reading on?
In an unfortunate continuation of a pattern started in The Great Hunt, the main characters split in four different groups right from the beginning of the book, meaning the story jumps back and forth between points of view. This, again, leaves too little time to properly develop any of them.
The peculiar choice to include almost no chapters from the titular character Rand’s point of view does exactly the opposite of what the story needed (that is, a deep dive into Rand’s motivations). Instead, the reader is left wondering why on earth Rand would slink off in the dead of night filled with senseless doubt that is never explored.
The end of the audiobook has a short interview with Robert Jordan, in which he indicates that he wanted to write a story in which the Chosen One does not simply accept his fate. I understand that that is an interesting twist. Jordan absolutely butchered his premise, however, by failing to include a reason why Rand does not want to be the Chosen One. In the previous instalments, he is afraid to go mad and hurt people; but this is a hesitation linked to the ‘side effects’ of his being the Chosen One and not to his being the Chosen One itself. The Dragon Reborn does exactly nothing to solve this. Instead, Rand just isn’t sure whether he is the Chosen One, picks a random line of prophesy, and sets out to fulfil it just to see whether he truly is. That isn’t at all the same as struggling to accept your fate (for a masterclass on how to write that, I recommend Dune).
I’m getting bogged down in details (like the inexplicable reason why the female protagonists, who were well on their way to saving themselves again, had to be rescued by a male character in the end again), but I think that shows that these irritations were what stuck with me most after reading the first trilogy in The Wheel of Time-series.
The Wheel of Time isn’t trash, it’s just functional and uninspired, outdated and uninteresting. Perhaps some people want deeply comfortable fantasy that fits the worldview of 20th century. I feel that even those people can probably find better candidates (the first thing that comes to mind is Raymond E. Feist’s Riftwar Cycle, but it’s been a while since I read those).
Either way, I think that, in a day and age in which the genre has so much to offer, the opportunity cost of reading The Wheel of Time over one of the great alternatives that are out there is just way too high. Sorry folks.
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- Movie directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein
- Starring Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, René-Jean Page Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis and Hugh Grant
- Released 31 March 2023
- Runtime: 134 minutes
- Based on the table top roleplaying game by Wizards of the Coast
After their last heist went south, bard and a barbarian freshly out of imprisonment are looking to gather a new party for – you guessed it – another heist to set everything right that went awry the last time, while both are also looking for closure regarding their last relationships. Unsuspectingly, they end up entangled in the plot of a villain with intentions far more nefarious than their own…
If you have ever played a table top roleplaying game, and had trouble explaining the experience to someone, this is the movie to recommend: it feels eerily similar to playing the game.
When I first heard a Dungeons & Dragons movie was being made, I honestly expected it to be the cash grabbiest of cash grabs (and being a grudging customer of Games Workshop, I unfortunately know all too well what a cash grab looks like). And I was afraid they were going to stick with the Game of Thrones-style grimdark fantasy setting (that I honestly tend to prefer, but it needs to be done right). Then I started hearing some positive things about the movie and figured I shouldn’t act like a boomer cynic and give it a shot. I’m really glad I did!
Honor Among Thieves is a movie that knows what it is, and, perhaps equally importantly, it knows what it is not and does not try to be what it cannot be.
It is light, it is fun, it is over the top. It is not serious, or grim, or original. It leans into tropes and clichés with a big wink. Its emotional arcs are functional, but it does not try to tug your heartstrings too much. And most importantly, it is genuinely fun. It made me laugh out loud in the cinema, which is rare because generally speaking I don’t do humour.
Even though I do not doubt that Honor Among Thieves is a funny, if bizarre, movie to watch even if you have not played a table top roleplaying game, a lot of the movie’s quips are aimed at the RPG audience – and they strike home, hard.
As a forever-DM (for those not in the know, the person who perpetually has to tell the story as opposed to playing as a character in it), I felt genuinely attacked a couple of times. The feeling when one of the main characters cuts straight through the dramatic monologues of one of the people they encounter, or when the druid fucks up all your plans by wild shaping into something stupid you hadn’t thought of…
Overall, I felt like the movie captured the feeling of playing a table top RPG surprisingly well: from the chaotic plot structure, bizarre player ingenuity messing with the DM’s best laid plans, the complete uselessness of the bard class, to the balance between character moments and cinematic fights, it feels like (at least some of) the movie’s creators understand what D&D is about.
The fact that the movie boast some decent acting (Hugh Grant is great!) and visual spectacle is just the cherry on top.
I would heartily recommend Honor Among Thieves, especially to folks familiar with TTRPGs. Just don’t go into the movie with high expectations – you’re not about to watch some masterpiece, but a fun flick that is guaranteed to leave a smile on your face.
I’d heard a lot about this movie. Most of what I’d hear was along the lines of “I wasn’t expecting much, but it was actually really fun.” To be super honest, I wish I’d gone into this one blind. It was fun. I did enjoy it. However, it definitely took a while to win me over. The movie definitely has a lot of build-up before I felt like it had genuinely “started”. Once it did though, it was super fun. If I hadn’t known the movie would be fun in advance, it would have had the chance to gradually win me over. Instead, I had expectations that weren’t quite met in the first half hour or so.
Still, I found the movie really fun overall. It’s an adventure movie that can be enjoyed even by those unfamiliar with Dungeons and Dragons. Of course, the little nods to game elements and D&D tropes are great and make the movie even more fun for those who are familiar with the game.
Personal highlights for me were the scene with the dragon – which came totally out of left field – and the wild shape scene. I also really enjoyed the character of Xenk.
If you’re looking for a story with a lot of emotional depth, this likely won’t be the movie for you. While there is some attempt at this, it ultimately falls pretty flat. I would argue that that’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. In my personal experience, D&D games can get emotional, but really only when it involves player character deaths. Unless you’re in a campaign at the level of Critical Role or Dimension 20, I think the stakes are rarely at a level where you genuinely end up sad. This will vary of course, I’m sure there are lots of campaigns out there that do get genuinely emotional. Still, I do think that’s relatively rare.
All in all, it’s a solid 4-star rating for me. I’d like to see them make a sequel actually. I’d watch that.
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- Book written by Sequoia Nagamatsu
- Published 18 January 2022
- Standalone
In this interconnected short story collection, generations progressively further into the future attempt to deal with the impact of a devastating global pandemic. As death becomes an everyday reality, how will society adapt? How will we deal with the loss of children, of parents, of friends? How will humanity recover? Focussing specifically on Japanese-American and Japanese perspectives, How High We Go in the Dark is both refreshing and at the same time deeply disturbing.
I listened to the audiobook with separate narrators per story – all of them a pleasure to listen to.
I wanted to escape from The Wheel of Time so I asked Robin to recommend me something different to listen to and… well, this is the other end of the spectrum.
How High We Go in the Dark is a very dark, thought-provoking, sometimes bizarre collection of interlinked science fiction stories (where have we seen that before!) with stories set progressively further into our future, beginning a decade from now and ranging towards the launch of a generation ship to colonise the stars, and beyond.
Even though the stories have different main characters, the protagonists are linked, often by blood but always by their Japanese heritage. The stories revolve around the impact of an incredibly deadly pandemic on global society. In particular, Nagamatsu explores the results of the proximity and omnipresence of death – an inevitable aspect of life that our society has largely sanitised and hidden away.
Nagamatsu takes a more literary approach than most science fiction writers and explores that societal impact largely through human interaction (as befits a professor of anthropology).
How High We Go in the Dark has almost no plot and no explicit worldbuilding, but drops the reader into social situations progressively further removed from our time. The changes in society that happened in the meantime are apparent only between the lines. Expect no laser guns or space battles, but rather personal and gripping accounts of what it means to be Asian-American, viewed through the lens of a possible dystopian future.
I thoroughly enjoyed How High We Go in the Dark, even as a reader that generally prefers more plot-heavy books. I loved how Nagamatsu built an interesting world with occasionally bizarre elements, that still feels very grounded – especially given his writing seems so minimal on explanation or background.
Robin might not write a review because she read the book a while back, but if you generally enjoy what she is into, I would definitely recommend this: straddling the divide between science fiction and literature, this book is both engaging and thought-provoking.
Even if you are not into the more literary side of the genre, especially the first two stories in the book are absolute gems, and both of them would well be worth reading separately of the rest of the novel.
Be aware, though, that How High We Go in the Dark is, well… very dark. You won’t be reading this book with a smile…
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- Novel written by Diana Gabaldon
- Published 01 June 1991
- Part one of the Outlander series
It is 1945 and Claire Randall, a former WWII nurse, is on a second honeymoon with her husband. During their idyllic trip through Scotland, Claire accidentally stumbles through a magical stone circle and ends up 200 years in the past. Here she finds herself lost amidst the war between the Scottish and the English, and she is pushed into a marriage with a young, hot, Scottish warrior.
I have to admit I’m not sure why I decided to read this book. I’d watched the first season of the TV-show, and I didn’t really care for it. I suppose I thought maybe the book would be better? I usually try to give popular things a chance because if lots of people like something there must be a reason why.
As far as the positives go, I would say the first 250 pages or so were quite enjoyable. It’s definitely a page-turner, and the mystery of the stone circle is intriguing.
Unfortunately, everything goes rapidly downhill as soon as Claire marries Jamie. From that point on, the only things that matter are (nonconsensual) sex and torture. You can’t get through 20 pages of the second half of the book without Claire and Jamie (but mostly Jamie) having to Get It On.
At the halfway point the plot loses any sense of direction it initially had. Don’t expect this book to have a beginning, middle and end. You’re only getting the beginning of the story. This series is meant to be TEN BOOKS LONG. Because you’re not getting a resolution (and if you are familiar with the TV-show knowing that there will not be a good resolution anytime soon) the second half of the book feels like a deeply thankless exercise.
I wouldn’t really recommend this book to anyone, but if you struggle with descriptions of sexual assault don’t read this book. It’s full of it. Just stay away from Outlander.
- Video game developed by Daniel Mullins Games
- Directed by Daniel Mullins
- Published by Devolver Digital
- Published 19 October 2021
- Roguelike Deck Builder, Trading Card Game, Point-and-Click game
- Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Linux, macOS, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox series X/S, Nintendo Switch
- Playing time: about 15-20 hours to beat the game
Inscryption is a such a gem of a game. It manages to communicate what it is all about before you have even made your first move: when opening the game, the only option available on the start screen is ‘continue game’ with ‘new game’ greyed out. The eyebrow-raising never stops from there.
Inscryption is, at its core, a card game not dissimilar to, for example, Magic: the Gathering or Hearthstone. It has a deck-building mechanic that may be familiar to players of Dominion or Slay the Spire.
The game’s first section will take a while to beat, resetting your progress and deck every time you lose. In between runs, however, it is possible to leave the table where you are playing cards and subject the little cabin you are playing in to a thorough inspection, allowing you to complete puzzles to improve your deck, and, ultimately, progress beyond the first stage.
Once you do, you will find that Inscryption is not just one card game, but an unholy amalgamation of no less than four different deck-building card games glued together by a story told through found footage videos. I will not describe more, because I don’t want to spoil all the twists and surprises.
Inscryption has fun gameplay that, in itself, would merit a positive review. But what makes the game really interesting, is that it plays with the concept of a ‘video game’ in a way that reminded me of The Stanley Parable. It tries to – and succeeds at – reaching beyond the screen and grabbing the player itself, with bizarre elements such as cards talking to you to evaluate your plays as you make them and an army of flying bears beating you to death if you do too well.
Inscryption is a mad vision of a game, but one that constantly pulled me in and that made me want to go home from work early to figure it out. I would 100% recommend it to anyone familiar with Magic-style card games or lovers of the subversive type of game that fucks with your mind.
My only gripes with Inscryption are that at times it does a poor job of explaining game mechanics and that the user interface is often a bit janky. But then, given the amount of different games, interfaces and mechanics in the game, we really shouldn’t judge it too harshly for that.
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- Artificial Intelligence, Atmospheric, Card Game, Deck Builder, Exploration, Fantasy, Found Footage, Grimdark, High Replayability, Horror, Humor, Indie, Investigation, Linux, MacOS, Male Author, Microsoft Windows, Mockumentary, Mystery, Nintendo Switch, Occult, Paranormal, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Point-and-Click, Rogue-Like, Science Fiction, Single-player, Stand Alone, Surrealistic, Trading Card Game, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Review: Arcane – Netflix
Review of Netflix’s Arcane. In the thriving city of Piltover, a research to combine magic with technology leads to unrest in the city’s politics. Meanwhile, Piltover’s Undercity is once again disturbed by ambitions of rebellion.
Review: The Dragon Reborn – Robert Jordan
Rand sets out alone to test the truth of his proclamation as the Dragon Reborn by attempting to fulfil the prophesies, with Perrin following in his wake. Meanwhile, the female protagonists receive a new mission of their own.
Review: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves – John Francis Daley & Jonathan Goldstein
In a movie that feels eerily similar to playing a table top roleplaying game, a bard and a barbarian freshly out of imprisonment as a result of a heist going south are looking to gather a new party for – you guessed it – another heist to set everything right that went awry the last time.
Review: How High We Go in the Dark – Sequoia Nagamatsu
In this interconnected short story collection, generations progressively further into the future attempt to deal with the impact of a devastating global pandemic and the countless dead on our society, focussing specifically on Japanese-American and Japanese perspectives.
Review: Outlander – Diana Gabaldon
It is 1945 and Claire Randall, a former WWII nurse, is on a second honeymoon with her husband. During their idyllic trip through Scotland, Claire accidentally stumbles through a magical stone circle and ends up 200 years in the past.
Review: Inscryption – Devolver Digital
In this subversive rogue-like deck building point-and-click puzzle horror game (yes, all those descriptors apply!), you battle your way past various bosses, worlds, game mechanics, games interfaces, horror videos, puzzles, and your own sanity in an attempt to get to the other side of whatever it is you are trying to get to the other side of. Please don’t ask me to describe this game.
