50 Shades of Otherland
With spring, color is finally returning to our dull lives! However, here in the Otherland we have less of a problem with the world turning 50 shades of Gray (pun intended), as we are surrounded by book spines in every color printers can produce. And guess what's the shelf with most of the clown colors? You've guessed wrong, it's Horror! Here, the Emperor of horror - Stephen King - is especially beautifully dressed in all the colors of the rainbow. Perhaps so that the dark content is no longer so overwhelming? Or does it have exactly the opposite effect of making it even worse?
Lovecraft presents us with a particular uncanny color (in the freudian "unhomely" sense), in the short story "The Color out of space".
Here he describes something that we cannot even imagine, namely a color
that does not exist. Wow. Only literature is capable of doing something
like that. If you still feel like playing Twister with your brain
afterwards, Tom recommends "The Case Against Reality" by Donald D. Hoffman.
Here the author explains to us that the colors we see are not real at
all. Great. Nope, I'll just close my eyes and boom, problem solved.
That's why they call me the Solvem Probler. Speaking of funny, some say
that Terry Pratchett might be more hilarious and, in keeping with today's theme, you can pick up his "Colors of Magic"
right away! In fantasy, by the way, color is a popular tool not only to
hide symbolism, but also to establish new systems of magic. My personal
favorite here is Brent Weeks and his Lightbringer
series. He presents us with a new word for magic: "chromaturgy" and
delivers directly: the red spectrum has a lot to do with fire, blue can
be used more (or less) for shooting, while green mages can create
particularly hard armor, among other things. And what white and black
can do is also pretty cool. But magic has its price and practitioners
can literally see it when they look in the mirror - If the color bursts
the iris, they lose their minds. Speaking of eye color, Caro immediately
thinks of Sarah J. Maas. In "A Court of Thorns and Roses", the eye color of EVERY character is ALWAYS mentioned. And they have ALWAYS the color of a gemstone. Whew. Jasper Fforde's "Red Side Story" and "Shades of Grey" are both more political. Similar to Michael Marshall Smith's "Only Forward" or Pierce Brown's "Red Rising",
colors are used in these dystopias to divide and oppress people into
evil systems. Prettier than brown, but just as shitty. Incidentally, the
yellow wallpaper in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's feminist classic "The Yellow Wallpaper" is
particularly ugly. It's so hideous that the protagonist slowly but
surely loses her mind. Just like me, when I try to read Sarah J Maas.
While we're on the subject of yellow, Caro's current favorite "Viriconium"
also deserves praise. The color "gamboge" (a deep yellow pigment
extracted from the gum resin of the Garcinia tree) is used a lot here,
although the city that gives the book its title is actually called
Pastel City because of its pastel-colored towers:
"About him rose the Pastel Towers, tall and gracefully shaped to mathematical curves, tinted pale blue or fuchsia or dove-grey."
Wow, how picturesque. Brandon Sanderson's "Tress of the Emerald Sea" is also particularly colorful. The protagonist comes from the emerald green sea and surrounding the world itself are moons of different colors, from which sand trickles down to fill the seas of sand, which are also of different colors. Certainly pretty to look at, but the color changes the properties of the sand, which can be deadly. Attention Indiana Jones Flashback!
So now let the King inspire you, rebel against the greyness of the big city and dig out your most colorful piece of clothing, we're waiting for you here - with lots of colorful recommendations!
Rainbow greetings from the Otherland,
yours Esther (rocking the frog-green tracksuit today!)
C.S. Friedman answered our burning questions!
Q: How do you feel about today's internet and social media, given your vision of the outernet in TAS?
A: I am amused and flattered to see how closely it mirrors some of the concepts in TAS, notably, the concept that people can be constantly connected to a global network that they can access for communication or information at will. While I used brainware as opposed to computer terminals, it looks like we are now heading in that direction as well, with experiments in using brainwaves to control computers, developed for use by the disabled. Who knows, someday we may have technology that serves us like the TAS brainware does! I did not foresee the ubiquitousness of social networking, or its scope, though networked gaming is in This Virtual Night, and I am going to have to give serious consideration in my next book in the series as to whether I will mention it, make it a prominent feature, or just focus on other plot elements.
Q: The Guerans, despite their supposed acceptance of all kaja, do still seem to be acting a lot on prejudices and biases, e.g. when dealing with iru. Is this a deliberate reflection of Gueran society too being flawed?"
A: First, I don't see this as a statement about Guerans in general with the Iru. Every individual has their likes and dislikes. Extroverts will always be a little frustrated dealing with introverts. Iru don't always understand subtle social cues, which means that half the social toolkit of the Nanatana becomes useless. Someone may resent the time it takes to communicate with a kaja that has difficulty focusing on the conversation. I would not call that a "prejudice" or certainly not a "bias." You can design a society where all types are accepted, but that does not mean they will all be seamlessly compatible or like dealing with each other. One might even argue that the core of Gueran philosophy is identification of personal likes and dislikes as private feelings that should not impact social interaction. Various customs such as the order of precedence are meant to aid with this, in which kaja with less social flexibility take precedence over those who are more adaptable. As an Iru, for example, Masada does not like to shake hands. If he refrains from doing so, it is expected this hesitancy will "outrank" any desire of others to make physical contact. Everyone tries to accommodate everyone else, but when there is conflict, sometimes guidelines are required.
There are many scenes where Guerans are seen making small gestures to accommodate the limitations of other kaja, notably when the Guildmistress arranged the color and positioning of her seating to make her guests comfortable.
A: I don't think a college professor is "elite", save that this one is
well known. This Virtual Night shows a Gueran teen with a kaja that is
socially disruptive being given the choice between tempering that
tendency or finding a profession where it is an asset rather than a
problem. Gueran philosophy says that every human being has unique
strengths, and identifying an occupation where one will fit in and be
able to make the most of his or her assets would be a focus of
education, perhaps with counselors whose job it is to aid in that
process.
The goal would be for people to find an environment where they do not
have to expend effort to adapt to the needs of others, but fit in
naturally.
Find the full interview on our website, following this link!
Science Fiction
Death of the Author
Orion: €24,50
Zelu is having a tough time at her sister’s wedding, dodging unwanted comments on her non-traditional lifestyle, her job as a novelist, her disability, and her lack of a husband. It seems like everyone’s got something to say.
Then she gets knocked down twice in quick succession: fired from her university position and rejected by a potential publisher. Zelu is lost. Alone in her hotel room that night she pushes her troubles to one side and starts writing a book totally different to the ones she has written before. A science fiction. Rusted Robots.
Nnedi Okorafor’s latest work is something else. It paints a painfully realistic family drama on love and fame intertwined with a fantastic science fiction world, as what starts as two different story-worlds gradually melds into a murky whole. I think this is probably one of Okorafor’s most autobiographical outings to date. It is a clever way to explore the challenges of being a writer while belting out a perfectly good sci-fi novel along the way. Okorafor can summon up the latter with a click of her fingers, so it is interesting to see her go hard in with the realism, too. It also has definite Greek tragedy vibes to it: jealous siblings, unrealistic parental expectations, fluctuations of fortune and misery, and extreme acts of bravery. Not for nothing has this one got the literary community drooling. As with all of her sci-fi, I think this would be a great starting point for those who have never strayed out of the comfortable confines of the general literature section.
[Tom]
Lake of Darkness
Orion Publishing Co: €16
The startship Niro and the startship Oubliette are orbiting the black hole QV Tel when Captain Alpha Raine begins to act suspiciously. Raine claims he has been contacted by some entity within QV Tel, an entity which has been sending him signals.
This is of course impossible, since nothing can travel out of a black hole, only in. Raine is diagnosed as mentally unstable and confined to the medical bay, but by the end of the day he has broken loose and the crews of both ships are dead. Now quarantined on another world, Raine is studied by a historian, Saccade, interested in 20th-century sociopaths. She is disturbed by her interview with Raine, but even worse begins acting strangely herself. It seems something may have come out of the black hole after all. Something that is acting like a virus, and is spreading its way across the universe leaving a trail of bodies in its stead.
Adam Roberts' new novel Lake of Darkness has reviewers bending over backwards in praise, with accolades from The Guardian, The Times, SFX and even New Scientist. The topic itself is not new. Roberts cites recent scientific papers on black holes, but pretty obviously also draws on films such as 90s cheesetastic space-horror Event Horizon, Danny Boyle's underrated Sunshine, and the David Tennant-led Doctor Who double episode “The Impossible Planet” (I won’t name the second part, because, y’know, spoilers).
On the plus side, I am a massive fan of all of these. And Roberts runs his version of events in an incredibly imaginative view of the future. His writing is also genuinely thrilling when it wants to be and the book is absolutely stacked with allusions. The author has clearly done his homework, and it feels like you would need several PhDs to pick up on everything that is going down. On the minus side, if I'm honest, I found the register annoying. It often descends into a combination of scientific jargon and wannabe street slang. There is a lot of talking down to the reader, which I get is part of the narrator’s personality, but it grates after a while. And some of the characters tend to sound the same, which again may be an intentional critique of future humans (none of them can read or write after all, because AI does all of that for them), but it does mean the dialogue drags, especially in the group scenes. Overall, though, I had fun with this one. The discussions on black holes are properly on the cutting edge (event horizon?) of modern science. And I even warmed to the writing style as it went along. By the end, I was impressed how many different philosophical conversations Roberts had managed to get into what is, on the surface, a sci-fi-horror B movie.
[Tom]
Girlfriend on Mars
Profile Books: €14
"Nice work, superstar. Who knew? You’re not just a pretty face."
After years and years of the same old thing, Kevin’s girlfriend Amber wants out. Modern life has simply got too much: crippling rent, mindless TV series, home-grown drugs… In fact, she wants out so much that she is taking a ship to a different planet. On the reality show MarsNow, Amber will head over to the planet Mars for good. (One way is fine but the tech to bring people back is not that great.) Her boyfriend Kevin can only hope she is voted off the show before taking off, otherwise their relationship is as good as dead…
Deborah Willis takes a satirist’s eye and uses it to take apart the present and future of reality TV, in what ends up being layers of comedy, cultural criticism, and a painful form of wisdom. Amidst the jokes and the sarcasm, Girlfriend on Mars asks some very serious questions, like why in the middle of looming environmental catastrophe we are all still trying to chase public recognition and wealth. Don’t be fooled by the simplistic set-up on this one. There is an unexpected and often frustrating realism to both Amber and Kevin: neither are black and white in their motives or moralities. Willis takes our modern obsessions and puts them under a strong (comic) lens.
[Tom]
Third Rule of Time Travel
Little, Brown Book Group: €15
"Was I dreaming?
I saw him! I saw someone.
He looked at me.
I’m going crazy.
It’s the machine.
The machine is tearing my mind apart."
...read it again. Welcome to the future. Time travel is an everyday reality, controlled by three unbreakable rules. First, you can travel to any random point within your own lifetime, no further. Second, you can travel for exactly ninety seconds. Third, you can only observe your timeline, not interact with it. Good luck.
I was impressed by Fracassi’s Boys in the Valley, by the unpredictability of the plot and character development within a very recognisable, classic horror framework. The Third Rule of Time Travel similarly attempts to take on the much-trodden time-travel narrative and tell it in its own way. Numerous writers have tried this over the last decade, with results ranging from the subtly impressive (Chiang’s "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate", for example) to the plain disappointing (Riddle’s Lost in Time - urrgh). I think Fracassi’s offer is moving more towards the former, even if he is clearly more of a thriller writer than a scientist. Where the details of protagonist Beth Darlow’s machine are lacking, the book makes up for it in her tense character arc, the unknown psychological effects of her new machinery, and the creeping realisation that the laws that hold our universe together might be more malleable than we thought. Fracassi definitely knows how to keep you on the edge of your seat, and if I could go back and read it again...
[Tom]
Fantasy
The Chronicles of Ludwich#1
Gogmagog
Watkins Media Limited: €15
“Go and get stuffed, you arse-wiping, shit-eating, tallow-sniffing, chiffer-chaffing, sons-of-whores! I’ll feed you to the five-legged mare!”
This is my first Jeff Noon-experience (here in collaboration with Steve Beard) and it was a blast! Somewhere between The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi, The Boneships and An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors The Chronicles of Ludwich also feature a boat – the Juniper – and a big part of the story takes place while we're going up the river Nysis towards the big city of Ludwich. The lady who would win a swearing contest against any old sailor and who provided the quote above is the Juniper’s skipper Arcadia ‘Cady’ Meade. She’s over a thousand years old. And, oh, she’s also a human-plant hybrid. Together with a mysterious girl and a mechanical man she goes on a journey to… Well, to what…? To take part in a fight good versus evil? Image and Mirrorimage? Preservation and destruction? Mythology-wise there once was a great dragon called Haakenur who after her death turned into two opposing, spiritlike shadow-creatures, the benevolent riverlike Faynr and the destructive Gogmagog, “a Creature of Smoke and Ash”. Apart from Gog, Magog and Lud (whose name we find in the second title of the duology) there are many hints at (not just) christian religion – I’m sure if I talked to people who enjoyed the book as I did, we would find many many more. Other themes like metamorphosis, birth, death, renewal, procreation, dreamquests and rites of passage make the story appear trancelike and metaphysical. At the same time we have salon-brawls, fist-fights and many witty dialogues that bring it back down to earth. This is so cleverly done and the prose is beyond awesome!
Also, I love stories that feature “a world that has moved on”. Not that long ago there was a society highly advanced in technology, with artificial men, bombs and whatnot. Now we only find remnants and ruins of that. The present has become more magical, but still has to deal with this inheritance. I am also an adoring fan of our protagonist Cady, a gal you won’t find everyday! Not least because in the audiobooks Matthew Lloyd Davies lends her an absolutely unforgettable voice! The story-telling is complex enough that, like me, you may decide to listen to the audios a second or even a third time or pick up the paperbacks after all. Because in a first go you simply can’t catch it all. Which is great. Great, great, great. What a wonderful discovery!
[Caro]
Horror
The Weird and the Eerie
Watkins Media Limited: €13,50
Reading Mark Fisher sets me on fire. Everything the man has produced in his - unfortunately very short - life I have devoured and want to pull again and again from the shelf. The Weird and the Eerie in particular created new pathways in my brain, which have permanently changed my view on literature and culture. I've been using the words ever since, whether to impress my colleague Tom or to explain my own grotesque paintings.
Here are the basic ideas, explained briefly and concisely:
The Weird: There is something where there should be nothing.
The Eerie: There is nothing where there should be something.
For a more precise analysis, pick up the book and let yourself be whisked away to a world beyond our own.
My own journey didn't end with Mark Fisher, however, as I like to skip to the bibliography at the end of the book to consume everything mentioned here. And oh boy, this path really led me into abysmal depths, like Hauntology, Monster Theory and even the Conspiracy against the human race. And there is still so much more to discover.
[Esther]
Penguin Archive
The Daemon Lover
Penguin Books Ltd: €9,50
A quick shout in the dark for the folks behind the Penguin Archive collection who have come out with a host of gorgeous little red and white reprints for classic short stories. They all look amazing and would fit in Arthur Dent’s dressing gown pockets, but highlights for horror fans include Edgar Allan Poe’s Hop-Frog, Mary Shelley’s Transformation, and Bram Stoker’s The Burial of the Rats. And don’t feel you have to stop there. My personal favourite is Shirley Jackson’s The Daemon Lover, the lesser-noticed highly-disturbing little sister of prom queens The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House, and We Have Always Lived at the Castle. It's about a bride-to-be who awakes on her wedding day to find that all traces of her fiancé have disappeared. Where is he? What is he playing at? Did he ever exist?
Non-Fiction
Crash
HarperCollins UK: €14
“Trying to exhaust himself, Vaughan devised an endless almanac of terrifying wounds and insane collisions: The lungs of elderly men punctured by door-handles; the chests of young women impaled on steering-columns; the cheek of handsome youths torn on the chromium latches of quarter-lights. To Vaughan, these wounds formed the key to a new sexuality, born from a perverse technology. The images of these wounds hung in the gallery of his mind, like exhibits in the museum of a slaughterhouse.”
What a ride.
The concept is quickly explained: after a car accident, the main character suddenly experiences arousal from car crashes. And finds like-minded people who take sexual pleasure in dented metal, mutilations and leaking gasoline. At first it sounds like strange porn, but it is told in such the sober, detached but simultaneously lyrical way Ballard is famous for. Even if the blood, sperm and brake fluid are splattered all over the place, reading it feels less like sinful voyeurism and more like a sober observation of people walking straight into Thanatos.
In the end, you emerge physically scratch-free from a book that feels like a car accident. It is obvious that the book still leaves a mark, but less in the area of eroticism and more as a parable about how people are using each other and their relationship with machines. A topic that feels very contemporary but was written in 1973. Zadie Smith addresses this in the introduction and explains:
„The real shock of „Crash“ is not that people have Sex in or near cars, but that technology has entered into even our most intimate human relations. Not man-as-technology-forming but technology-as-man-forming.“
And like a classic Ballard, the author takes collective dreams of humanity and reduces them to absurdity, perverts them and takes us into a hell that is hot and cold at the same time. Where the erotic is combined with the disgusting and in the end you gain some introspection, but more with the question of which scars you're hiding to enjoy that kind of book.
I enjoyed it incredibly, but I also love reading complex and dystopian literature, with nasty twists and an intelligent underbelly. If you like that too, this classic is for you and if you can't get enough of it, you should watch the Cronenberg film adaptation straight afterwards or go to Therapy.
If all this is too blatant for you, which I can absolutely understand, you should rather pick up Becky Chambers. The nasty thing about this book, however, is that you almost feel a bit called out, because the author manages like few others to portray the complexity of people, although some of his characters read more like decals. I had the feeling that this created an even greater contrast to the extremely explicit scenes without drawing the reader in too much.
Damn does this narrative twist work well here.
If you understand that this isn't about erotica, but something completely different, the novel has the potential to absolutely ride under your skin. Perfect for people who are a bit weird. Hehe.
[Esther]
Futuromania: Electronic Dreams, Desiring Machines & Tomorrow's Music Today
Orion: €27,50
Simon Reynolds and Mark Fisher single-handedly [double-handedly?] brought hauntology kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century with their exposure of the music industry’s obsession with digging up the past and presenting it to the consumer anew.
Record. Label. Repeat. You know all those 90s tunes you keep hearing in the supermarket with AI vocals over the top? Reynolds and Fisher had them flagged ten years ago. Reynold’s newest book investigates music’s fascination with the future and artists’ (often failed) attempts to represent it through sound.
All-round eye-opening, as always with Reynolds, but it is specifically worth a look for Otherlanders even just for the last chapter, which examines the way future music is represented in sci-fi. Enlightening. Oh, and it has an epic playlist, if you feel like tapping your toes to Donna Summer while contemplating the next millennium. (And who doesn’t?)
[Tom]
Parasol against the Axe
Faber & Faber: €15
Three young women travel to Prague for a hen party, each carrying the ghosts of their former friendship. Once they arrive it is clear that they have unresolved issues. Something is off, and not just in their interactions.
The very streets of the city are home to the weird and the eerie. Taxi drivers know where to take people without even asking them. Monstrous figures roam the backstreets in the early hours of the morning. And everyone is reading a book that seems to change its content anytime someone puts it down.
Helen Oyeyemi dropped onto my radar a while back through "If A Book Is Locked There's Probably A Good Reason For That Don't You Think" - long title, short story, all-round excellent. Along with Link and Enriquez, Oyeyemi belongs to a modern power-sub-group of writers who defy easy categorisation. She crafts texts that slide between realism, magic realism, weird fiction, and something else entirely. Parasol Against the Axe is her love letter to Prague, her home since 2013. It is wild, smart, and every now and again plain lovely. As is characteristic of Oyeyemi, though, she likes to mislead and ambush the reader, and (trigger warning) there is a twist in the last quarter here that just took me out. Like, strong-cup-of-tea-put-the-book-down-for-a-minute took me out. The writer has experienced depression in the past and writes very openly about it in several of her books, and if you are in a dark place emotionally this is probably not for you right now. If you feel ready though, I thought it was fascinating, and I am genuinely glad I read it.
[Tom]
RPG
Monty Python's Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme
Exalted Funeral: €51,50
Now listen here. Those chaps over at Exalted Funeral have put together a jolly good educational history module based on hard historical facts and some silly comedy troupe from the 1900s.
Titled Monty Python’s Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme, it came out this spring and is absolutely not a roleplaying game. Instead, it is a system designed to recreate a mediaeval world replete with warring factions such as Arthurian knights, French chevaliers, Papal emissaries, Brianoian sects, Vikings, upper class twits, mooses (meese? möösäe?), and God. It is your job to accurately represent this murky era of British history.
No game masters here. (Remember, this is not a game.) Instead, one of
you will take on the role of Head of Light Entertainment (HoLE for
short) and adopt one of 18 possible personalities as you guide the
performers towards the ideals of educational programming and put
together an informative and nourishing game piece of home
entertainment. HoLEs range from bawdy actresses, east-end gangsters,
football heroes, the Spanish inquisition (didn’t expect that, did you?),
and a penguin, and can be fired, replaced, or exploded in the course of
the programme, so no sitting back thumbing through rulebooks for you.
Participants, meanwhile, can choose one of several Situations, including Eremites, Troubadours, Churls, Monarchs, and Enchanters, along with a host of accoutrements and retainers to buff them up. This gives them some background, but the real core mechanic of the system is the trait role. Each participant has a series of traits, including chastity, decorum, glibness, wisdom in the way of science, and animal husbandry. The better you are at a trait, the larger the die you can roll for it. As a participant, you get plenty of those common old d6s and d20s, but now you can also impress your teachers with d14s, d18s, and even the magisterial d30. Strewthing (maxing out your roll) means you can use the next die up from now on; spamming (rolling a one) moves you down and earns demerits. You can also get demerits for annoying the HoLE or rolling above 20 – this means you have taken everything too seriously and made everyone uncomfortable. Several demerits earn a beshrewment, or a dire consequence. All this means you may start out as a knight with expertise in authority and valour but quickly lose all your authority and valour and become adept in bardistry, only to be unexpectedly killed as the recording studio is stormed by accountants. Although there are lots of parts in motion, the system is remarkably simple once you get into it, and it really promotes improvisation and storytelling.
For the HoLE there are plenty of quests to get things underway, ranging from novice to expert and potentially forming an entire campaign, should the characters live that long. But even without the quests there are a load of notable historical figures and mediaeval creatures here to weave into narratives. King Arthur, Kargol the Amazing, Tim the Enchanter and Death. Animated bread rolls, giant snails, keep left signs, and half a bee. The many extra dice tables allow HoLEs to whip up scenarios at the drop of a helmet – with options for thoughtful expression selectors, shoppe names, different types of dog, and general answers to any question.
This may now be the single greatest thing I own.
[Tom]
Shadowdark RPG
Arcane Library: €57.95
Author Kelsey Dionne accomplished not one, but multiple great feats with her first game system.
Before Shadowdark, Arcane Library published third party content for the
largest Role-playing game of this planet (that is Dungeons &
Dragons, currently in its 5.5th iteration). Her new book breaches the
gap between this modern take on fantasy adventuring and its roots: The
slow and dangerous decent into ever deadlier caves and catacombs,
interspersed only momentarily by bouts of downtime when visiting
peaceful cities and villages. Back then, players had far less tools and
tricks that were mechanically part of their character and instead had to
rely more on their (the players') wits and schemes. This is part of
what many call old-school role playing.
The book's illustrations underline the callback to an era of gaming that
is so nostalgic for many players, blatantly obvious from the cover art,
featuring a magnificent rendering of a Beho- sorry, Ten-Eyed Oracle.
Shadowdark takes from modern D&D what it needs (Advantage & Disadvantage, relative freedom of choice for character creation, iconic monsters and ancestries) and leaves out the bloated and overpowered remains. Characters, especially at low level, die fast, only gaining experience for finding valuables and spending them, be it on equipment or on binge drinking for a week. Magically inclined characters do not have pages upon pages of complicated spells prepared that can save them from unforeseen circumstance and fighting characters can't withstand a deep fall or impalement by spike-trap just because they've bulked up.
Kelsey Dionne also added some new mechanics that really make the game shine. But don't take it from me, take it from the numerous awards the book won in 2024, including, but not limited to, the four (!) Ennie Gold Awards (Product of the Year, Best Game, Best Rules, Best Layout and Design).
So grab a copy and a couple of friends and descend into the dungeon, but come prepared, those torches will only last you an hour of real time.
[Nortey]
Escape Castle Dracula
Templar Books: €21,50
On a particularly busy Saturday, not only did Wolf have to do 90% of the
work alone, but he also had to help me find the damn steak to distract
the other wolves with! Jokes aside, what a wonderful escape from reality
in the form of an (haha) escape book. Insanely interactive, crazy cool,
gorgeously drawn and maybe a little substitute for when the RPG group
can't coordinate the dates again! You don't just move through maps, but
simultaneously through the entire gothic horror genre, find a lot of
hidden gems and every time you think you think (pun intended) you've
solved a puzzle there is another one waiting - which is even harder to
solve! Find the keys to unlock the room from the yellow wallpaper, free
Christine from the Phantom of the Opera or dismount the evil Ichabog
Crane..and so much more! It's Horror! It's madness! And its infinite
Fun!
Just so you know, you won't find Waldo here, because he's probably already been eaten.
[Esther]
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