Down Town

         

        The rundown is as follows: Down Town is one of the strangest and messiest books I have ever read. That judgement takes into account that I read, reviewed, and own copies of both House of Leaves and Naked Lunch. I could throw around a lot of words like "singular" and "unique", and they'd be taken mostly as a cliche. Mainly because a lot of book critics beat them into the ground. But here's the thing: Down Town is actually pretty unique. It's a hodgepodge of New York City historical in-jokes, children's fantasy, fairy tale, clean-earth allegory, and mythology all rolled into one rather bizarre but entirely endearing kludge of a book. Having read it, I'm still not completely sure I read everything I just read, and yet it's perfectly coherent. It's a beautiful, flawed mess.

          And it's those flaws that keep me from writing this off as a complete success. For all the endearing passages and beautiful descriptions, for all the moments it's a wonderful exciting story, there are parts that come out of left field. Characters act in occasionally random patterns. The book swings back and forth between being breathless and describing everything in lavish and lurid detail. Its rhythm is hard to follow, its characters are cyphers save for the main character and his parents, and the ending, when taken as a whole, is as much of a glorious mess as the book that precedes it. 

          BUT! In all of this, once I pushed aside the cynical detachment and actually sort of got behind what Down Town actually was, I learned to love it. It's a beautiful, insane mess with occasional illustrations that get somewhat more unhinged as the book goes along. It's charming, and has such a sense of wonder about itself that it's hard to ignore. It's worth the time to get lost in their world for a while, and I heartily recommend finding it any way you can. More, as always, below.

No One's Been Poisoned and Nothing's On Fire: Strange Tales from the Road (ZenKaiKon 2013) Conclusion!

              

          Sunday began and after a brief scene, I was locked in combat with a Sudoku puzzle for the fate of Johan's story. Quite literally. Upon entering the room, I explained to the GMs what had happened the previous night and that Johan's plan simply refused to work. After a brief scene with the main villain where Johan snarked at him for losing control of the story ("Well then you should have thought of that before giving your villain a soul", I believe was the line), the following exchange occurred:

"So, Caius, how much do you like puzzles?"

"I...like 'em enough..."

              Some background: The previous night, a team had led an assault on the clock tower and the bath house where the villains of the setting had their bases of operations. I can't speak for the bath house, though from what I saw it was a combination of Betrayal at House on the Hill and a dungeon crawl. The clock tower dungeon was a bit different, being a series of puzzles one had to get through to get to the top and confront the eccentric man who built the thing in the first place. Having been closer to where the puzzle dungeon was run the previous night, I had heard horror stories of the kind of things they faced. But the one I'd heard the most ranting about was a Sudoku puzzle in the final room. 

             "Long as it isn't Sudoku." I added hastily.

No One's Been Poisoned and Nothing's On Fire: Strange Tales on the Road (ZenKaiKon 2013) Pt. 2

When we last left our hero, he was trapped in the mind of a soul-eating sociopath and tweaking like there was no tomorrow...

                    Saturday began with another scramble for me to set up plans. I scrambled a lot during this, partially because Johan is an active character, not a reactive one. When you're the one setting up the plans, it's a lot harder to keep them all spinning, especially with about thirty or forty other people running their plans both concurrently and counter to your own. Despite the conversation of the previous night, I had found out that Abby had once again been flung headlong into a plot with me, one more sign that someone, be it GMs or the universe or whatever it is has a sense of humor. So now Abby's character, Kallen, who had been thrown into the same fairy tale as I/Johan was and cast as the Princess, now had a creepy sociopath looming over her and offering his "help" to finish the story she hadn't wanted to be part of in the first place. I'd say I didn't have fun stalking Abby and the players in her plot around. I would really like to. 

I would be lying straight through my teeth. 

No One's Been Poisoned and Nothing's On Fire: Strange Tales On The Road (ZenKaiKon 2013) Part 1

               Start of play begins and I have no idea what the hell I am doing. Normally this is a good thing. Time to pull a few threads, tease a few things out, see what happens. But that's not coming this time, for one big reason: I am scared of the Drop. I am fighting it every chance I get. Silently, I curse my ambition, but I'm not about to back down. I will either do the best damn job I can, or I will lose both sanity and identity in the attempt. No going back now, just forward towards whatever the hell is at the end of this. And for the first time, I'm actually frightened of what I do during roleplay. Walking around in this guy's head would be like hanging out in the hospital from Jacob's Ladder. But at this point, there's nothing else to be done. So I take a deep breath, and go find someone I can traumatize.

Post over at Study of Anime

                 So occasionally I do write for other places than here. A friend on the con circuit, Charles Dunbar, has a site he writes for over at Study of Anime and asked me to do a post on fandom and identity for his project. Being that most of what I do kind of falls under some kind of fandom, both he and his site are awesome, and it's cool that my work would get other places, I jumped at the chance and wrote up an essay about my very strange relationship with fandoms and their dark sides. The post is here, and please do check out the rest of his site and work. He's well worth the time. 

Last Call

    

     Okay, so the rundown is as follows: I love this book. I love it unabashedly, I love it with all my heart and soul, it is hands down one of the best books I have read. The characters, dialogue, and the way history and actual mysticism and mathematics are woven into the fiction all work, and even anyone who isn't well-versed in crazy historical minutiae can enjoy the story of a man storming Las Vegas to claim back his soul and his birthright with no difficulty. Add to this the descriptions, some genuine moments of dread and well-conveyed paranoia from the characters, and a sense of danger that never really lets up, and you have a book well worth reading.

       The downside is, there are a few sequences that never really pay off, and sometimes there is just too much going on sometimes on even one page to keep up with. Also, the main character spends a whole section-- possibly two-- of the book doing some really stupid things against the advice of people who clearly know more about this stuff than he does. But it serves as some good character development, and helps create a line between Scott's self-destructive urges and his need to finish his quest. All in all, the book is worth a read, possibly a buy, and a ride you won't regret taking.

My Top Five Books

                 Normally I would eschew these kinds of lists, as it's kind of hard to distill what I like about books into a simple five-point list or something, but I realize I've talked about the books I love and these five in particular without really naming them. So, since I'm getting a year older today, and this is technically my hundredth post (minus the one about my internet going down), I decided maybe I'd be a little self-indulgent and talk about the five books that, while my tastes may change a lot, have stayed my all-time favorites and will probably remain so for the rest of my life. I certainly hope so. Full list after the jump.