Some of My Favourite Media:
PETER
Welcome to my curator page!
While I spend most of my waking hours slaving away as an attorney for a large commercial law firm, I like to spend my free time escaping from reality in all sorts of stories and games – fantasy, sci-fi, horror, you name it. When I’m not reading, writing, or painting miniatures, I like to hit people (or more likely, get hit) with a sword.
In my speculative fiction, I like plot-heavy stories that still make you connect with the characters, and world building that is not just interesting and exotic, but that actually works on a historical, geographic, economic or scientific level. I like stories that put your brain to work. I’m a sucker for the classics and love to read older stuff to get an idea of how genres and tastes evolved over time. I like games that have a strong narrative element – even in board games, I like the ones that give you the feeling you’re setting up a colony on a distant planet over ones that may be more balanced but feel less alive.
Nowadays, what with my job and life in general getting in the way, I don’t spend nearly as much time gaming or reading as I used to, but I still listen to as many audiobooks as I can and I try to make time for everything else. But sometimes, everything that is out there that I would still like to see or read or play is overwhelming. If you feel the same, please look around! Your time is precious, and we all want to spend it on the very best the genre has to offer!
Realistic or grimdark settings
Characters getting punished for their mistakes
Tightly written plots and well-foreshadowed plot twists
When magic is a mystery (and you sometimes wonder whether it is magic at all)
When the story structure itself wows you
Realistic economic and geographical worldbuilding
Writers that trust their readers to figure it out by themselves and do not feel to need to explain every detail
When the stakes in a story grow beyond the point where it is relatable
Love triangles and sappy romance
Superheroes
When stories or games take way more time than they have any right to
Whiney main characters
Really competitive games
Poorly executed politics
Pet PeeveS
Historical inaccuracies in medieval fantasy settings (especially in combat)
Humanoid aliens in sci-fi
Characters inexplicably having really modern mindsets/sensibilities in settings where that makes no sense
Needlessly edgy characters in order to make things ‘dark’
The thing where the dainty woman always has to be the archer even though shooting a 100+ pound warbow takes far more strength than properly wielding a sword
Characters that do dumb stuff but get away with it
Writers coming up with a new name for their orc-race despite the fact that they are clearly just reskinned orcs
Fantasy names with a bunch of open vowels and unexplained ‘ä’s or ‘â’s
Recent Contributions
Review: When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain – Nghi Vo
Chih is a cleric from the Singing Hills monastery, travelling the world gathering stories. When a pack of tigers threatens to eat them while they are on their way to a mammoth waystation, Chih offers to tell the tigers the tale of the scholar Dieu and her tiger wife Ho Thi Thao instead. Whether the tigers like Chih’s version of the tale remains to be seen.
Review: Mortal Engines – Christian Rivers
Tom Natsworthy is an apprentice historian in the traction city of London – a mobile metropolis chasing other traction settlements across the hunting grounds to devour their resources and enslave their people. Tom’s life is turned upside down when he meets heroic explorer and head historian Thaddeus Valentine – and witnesses a failed attempt to assassinate him.
Review: The Empress of Salt and Fortune – Nghi Vo
Chih is a cleric from the Singing Hills monastery, travelling the world gathering stories. When they arrive at the abandoned palace of Thriving Fortune, they meet the old woman Rabbit, a former handmaiden of the empress In-yo, the Northern princess that became the Empress of Salt and Fortune. Rabbit narrates to Chih the story of In-yo’s rise to power at court.
Review: Mortal Engines – Philip Reeve
Tom Natsworthy is an apprentice historian in the traction city of London – a mobile metropolis chasing other traction settlements across the hunting grounds to devour their resources and enslave their people. Tom’s life is turned upside down when he meets heroic explorer and head historian Thaddeus Valentine – and witnesses a failed attempt to assassinate Valentine.
Review: The House in the Cerulean Sea – T.J. Klune
Linus Baker is one of the Department in Charge of Magical Youth’s most experienced case workers: his knowledge of the Rules and Regulations is impeccable, and his reports are precise, professional and unbiased. When he is called before Extremely Upper Management, he still fears his job is on the line – but instead, he is tasked with writing a report on one of the Department’s most classified orphanages, hidden somewhere on an island near a fishing village, far away from the city. Equipped with a thin stack of files on the children in the orphanage and its master, Linus boards the train with Extremely Upper Management’s warnings still ringing in his ears. Though Linus Baker has met his fair share of magical youth, what he will find in the house on the cerulean sea is a shock even to him…