reality Archives - The Y Logs

Yzabel / May 18, 2016

Review: Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition

Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition by Phil Brucato

My rating: [rating=5]

Blurb:

“I tell you this: We are Divinity.

Reality is ours to bend. To subvert. To command.
We have that power – all of us.

Not everyone knows what to do with it, or uses it well.
Most of us never realize just what it is we are or how much we can do.

Those of us who do… well, some of us are monsters.
Manipulators. Parasites. Tyrants. Fanatics.

And the rest of us never see that monster in our own mirror, only in the reflections of those folks who are not “us.”

Here’s the truth, though: We are ALL “us.” We are ALL gifted,

We can ALL change the world. Most of us remain asleep.

A blessed few Awaken. Fewer still use that power wisely.
And none without consequences.

And so, reality is up for grabs. Where do you stand?

And will you Fall… or Ascend?”

What’s in it?

• Updated profiles of the Council of Nine Traditions, the Technocratic Union, and the Disparate Crafts… with many unexpected developments.

• An epic history of magick and its factions.

• A compilation and clarification of essential and optional rules, including martial arts, vehicles, hazards, cybernetics, the Otherworlds, and far more besides.

• Overviews of paradigms, practices and tools – the focus of your Art.

• Detailed explorations of the epic concepts involved in Mage.

• Chilling looks at the Nephandi and Marauders.

• The Nine Spheres, plus their Technocratic variants.

• Old favorites and new faces from among the Awakened Ones.

• Reality Zones, Paradox, Quiet, the “coincidental vs. vulgar magick” debate, and far, far more…

• New full color original art by Michael William Kaluta, Echo Chernik, Steve Prescott, Christopher Shy, Larry MacDougall, and other classic Mage artists, as well as classic B&W pieces carefully chosen from the earlier editions.

Review:

I took my sweet, sweet time reading this. it’sa huge book—in terms of pages as well as of weight. Actually, that’s the kind of book that makes me feel like breaking into a church to steal a lectern and respectfully place the latter on a pedestal in my living-room, so that I finally have an appropriate reading spot. Except that the whole act wouldn’t be respectful in many other ways.

Anyway.

I discovered Mage: the Ascension in 1998. Possibly earlier than that, if you count the times I had seen it mentioned in RPG magazines. At the time, I was a representative of that rare breed of young (and incidentally female) Storytellers who intended on doing something with this game, apart from using it as a doorstopper. We used to joke about how you needed to go through a whole tube of aspirin before being able to understand what it was about. And yet, I still wanted to try my hand at it.

I never came back from that experience. Even during the years I had stopped gaming, Mage had never left me, not really.

This game is full of possibilities. Full of ideas. Bursting with potential. It’s all about what you do with it, about viewing the world in so many different ways. About interpreting reqlity about you. About shaping your own reality—as a much needed reminder, too, that reality is what we make of it, mages or no mages, and that at least for some things, for a lot of things, there may come a time when you have to decide: do I want changes to occur, and will I be the driving force behind those changes?

This new edition was a joy to read, from one end to the other. Even some 20 years later, it’s still holding that special place in my little shrivelled black heart.

And I shall blame it henceforth for adding “why not run a Technocracy game” to my long list of “must do’s”

Yzabel / April 21, 2015

Review: Twisted

Twisted by Andrew E. Kaufman

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

The psychologist with a troubled past…

Dr. Christopher Kellan spends his days at Loveland Psychiatric Hospital, overseeing a unit known as Alpha Twelve, home to the most deranged and psychotic killers imaginable. His newest patient, Donny Ray Smith, is accused of murdering ten young girls and making their bodies disappear. But during his first encounter with Donny, Christopher finds something else unsettling: the man looks familiar.

The killer with a secret…

Donny Ray knows things about Christopher—things he couldn’t have possibly learned at Loveland. As the psychologist delves deeper into the mysterious patient’s case, Christopher’s life whirls out of control. The contours of his mind are rapidly losing shape, and his grasp on reality is slipping even faster. Is he going mad, or is that what Donny Ray wants him to think?

The terror that binds them…

In this taut psychological thriller from Andrew E. Kaufman, bestselling author of The Lion, the Lamb, the Hunted, a tormented man must face his fear and enter the mind of a killer to find the truth…even if it costs him his sanity.

Review:

(I received a free copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

Easily a 3.5 stars, and even a 4 for the first two thirds. There are so many twists and turns that you don’t know anymore what’s true and what isn’t; who’s playing with whose mind (the author with the reader’s, for sure); whether the killer is a psychopath or a victim in need of medical help; whether the doctor himself is being manipulated by both past and patient, or by one of those only…

And I loved this. I really did. It was almost headache-inducing, but in a good way, making me form one hypothesis after the other, only to find out I had to discard it. Christopher does have reasons to worry, considering his own history with psychological disorders (his mother must definitely have been everything but a helping hand even before the tragedy), and it’s actually a wonder he could keep functioning and clutching at wanting to discover the truth, as well as protect his present family. At the same time, I liked how he approached the case with an open mind, considering Smith may be faking, yet trying nonetheless to see if there was something else behind this. His empathy, as well as the love he showed for his family, contrasted deeply with the lack thereof and the coldness of Loveland (what an ironic name). Because all things considered, all we see from this hospital is Alpha Twelve, not the rest. The rest might as well not exist.

On the other hand, I wasn’t so thrilled about the last part and the ending, hence my actual rating, lower than the one I had intended to give at first. The story had an emotional side I did like, but it also seemed like some kind of easy way out. While my earlier hypotheses were wrong, I think I may have started suspecting the final twist (or something very close to it) just a little too soon, and once it was confirmed, part of me couldn’t help but think “that’s it?” Everything before was twisted and freaky and indeed freaked me out in places, yet in the end, I didn’t feel as strongly for the story and the protagonist as I did previously. Perhaps also because the few chapters it took to get there felt like one too many?

I’d definitely recommend this novel—depending on the rating scale (since I’m posting this review on other websites as well), it’d be either a 3 or a 4, but it’d remain in the “I liked it” category. However, I felt a little let down by the last third and the ending, even though it wasn’t the predictable it could’ve been.

Yzabel / October 30, 2014

Review: Broken Realms

Broken Realms by D.W. Moneypenny

My rating: [rating=1]

Summary:

Mara Lantern doesn’t believe in metaphysical powers and alternate realities. That’s about to change.

After a jetliner plunges into the Columbia River near Portland, Oregon, everyone survives. So why do crash investigators have a hangar full of bodies, one for each passenger except Mara? Before the plane goes down, she glimpses a new reality, one with scales and snouts, fangs and gills. She sees a boy running down the aisle carrying a ball of blue light, chased by a girl who could be her clone. By trying to help, she unwittingly unleashes dozens of creatures on an unsuspecting world and sparks a series of events that threatens her life, her family and everything she believes. To save them, she has to embrace a power she cannot comprehend.

Review:

(I got a copy courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

I’ve debated again and again, whether I should give this book 1* or 2, so let’s say it’s a 1.5. I wouldn’t deem it as bad per se. In fact, it dealt with themes I’m usually fascinated with: parallel worlds, and manipulating the very fabric of reality. But it was just so long. It felt so long. It felt as if it picked up by the 75% mark, which was too late to muster much interest in me, and I’ll be honest: if I hadn’t got it through NetGalley, if I hadn’t considered myself as owing it a review (and a full read), I would havd stopped reading it days ago.

I loved the beginning: that scene in the plane, one set of people dying while another replaced them—raising from the start the question of “who is real?” Can we call people from Mara’s world “the real versions”, or are their “dopplegängers” just as real? It’s all in the eye of the beholder, and one soon comes to realise that things aren’t so easy. It’s not simply about sending people back to their original realms. It’s not only about the poor ones who died and were replaced by “evil” counterparts, because while some of those counterparts were indeed rotten, others were pretty decent people. And that’s the key word: people. In that regard, you can’t read this book with an all-or-nothing approach.

Unfortunately, the characters and the way they made their way through the story seemed off balance to me. There was a lot of talking, of explaining, something that was partly unavoidable (considering the theories behind the various worlds and how to affect them), but too often I caught myself thinking that the characters took their sweet time getting to actually tackling the problems. Again, I guess it was logical, in a way (for instance, convincing Mara of her powers in a snap of fingers would have been just… bad); only it happened in ways that made the story drag.

Maybe the premise of “every single passenger survived vs. every single passenger died”, something that really grabbed me in the blurb, would have deserved more spotlight (as it was, the ones who should have cared packed up the investigation pretty quickly—and I’m talking of several people here, not just a certain person). Maybe the plot would have called for more action on the main characters’ part (all the scenes at the repair shop didn’t strike me as particularly useful, and I suppose they contributed in dragging things down). At this point, it’s hard to tell, becaue everything’s got muddled in my head. I never found enough interest to read more than a few chapters at once, despite somewhat wanting to know where the plot was going.

There are intriguing things in this novel. Alas, I just couldn’t remain interested for very long, nor invested in the characters and their relationships.

Yzabel / August 25, 2014

Review: The Anatomy of Dreams

The Anatomy of Dreams: A Novel by Chloe Benjamin

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

It’s 1998, and Sylvie Patterson, a bookish student at a Northern California boarding school, falls in love with a spirited, elusive classmate named Gabe. Their headmaster, Dr. Adrian Keller, is a charismatic medical researcher who has staked his career on the therapeutic potential of lucid dreaming: By teaching his patients to become conscious during sleep, he helps them to relieve stress and heal from trauma. Over the next six years, Sylvie and Gabe become consumed by Keller’s work, following him from the redwood forests of Eureka, California, to the enchanting New England coast.

But when an opportunity brings the trio to the Midwest, Sylvie and Gabe stumble into a tangled relationship with their mysterious neighbors—and Sylvie begins to doubt the ethics of Keller’s research, recognizing the harm that can be wrought under the guise of progress. As she navigates the hazy, permeable boundaries between what is real and what isn’t, who can be trusted and who cannot, Sylvie also faces surprising developments in herself: an unexpected infatuation, growing paranoia, and a new sense of rebellion.

In stirring, elegant prose, Benjamin’s tale exposes the slippery nature of trust—and the immense power of our dreams.

Review:

(I got this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

2.5 stars because I liked the concepts in this book, but found the execution wanting.

The story bounces between a few time periods, allowing us to see what’s happening in two “levels of present” (the first one being Madison, where Sylvie and Gave meet Janna and Thom) and two “levels of past” (high school time, then the beginning of Sylvie’s involvement in Keller’s research). I’m mentioning this because it can be a potential deterrent to some readers. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a kind of narrative style I tend to enjoy, and since I had no problems following it and piecing things together, I’m putting it in my “I like it” category. There was just one part, though, towards the last third, where I felt that it wasn’t handled that well. Too bad.

My feelings when it comes to the characters remain lukewarm. The story’s entirely told from Sylvie’s point of view, but in the end, I’m not sure I got to “know” her. Same with Gabe and Keller, perhaps even worse. They all seemed to be here for the plot, and not as full-fledged people. Granted, their research consumed a lot of their life during the course of the novel, yet I think I would’ve felt Sylvie’s plight much more if I could have related to her as to a “real” person (no need for she and I to have anything in common: just more character development in general). There’s her painting, but what about Gabe’s occupations? Was there only work here? What about Janna, who was definitely in a good position to notice what was going on? There would have been more to tell about them all, and the lack of such information, in the end, diminished in my opinion the ethical questions surrounding Keller’s research, as well as the degree to which each of them was influenced by the experiments.

To be honest, I was probably waiting for something different, something more linked to the theme of lucid dreaming: Sylvie really not knowing what was real and what wasn’t, for instance, or other people displaying such characteristics. The blurb was in fact more exciting than the story itself, all the more because I’m always eager to read anything that has to do with dreams, nightmares, and blurred reality boundaries. The story showed one patient being submitted to the experiment, and spoke of another one whose actions might or might not have been a direct result of Keller’s study. There was a lot of potential here for dilemmas of various kinds; however, the characters often danced around the issues, only confronted them now and then, and I found this slightly frustrating.

On the plus side, the writing style itself was pleasant enough, beautiful while remaining believable for a first person point of view narrative.

Yzabel / July 30, 2013

Review: Gateway to Reality

Gateway to Reality by Becca J. Campbell

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

Talented artists shouldn’t be waiting tables, scraping by, and living mediocre lives. But that’s exactly what art school graduate Wes Teague is doing.

Then he wakes from a bizarre dream, haunted by the sense that his life isn’t real. A harrowing truth presents itself–the real world lies in his dreams, not when he’s wide awake.

The dream world he enters each night is rich and vibrant. Chicago appears the same on the surface, but chaos runs rampant as gravity, physics, and other laws of nature become fluid, changing unexpectedly. There, Wes’s parents, brother, and sister are strangers. His girlfriend Emily doesn’t recognize him. Wes longs to return, to unlearn the truth about his dual reality.

Wes would sacrifice almost anything to get back to blissful ignorance in a false world.

But now he has feelings for the real Emily.

Review:

(Book provided by the author through ReadIt & Reap 172 in the Shut Up & Read group, in exchange for an honest review.)

The concept of blurred boundaries, of realities that aren’t what they seem, is something that I’ve always found quite fascinating. So, of course, I couldn’t let this one pass me by. “Gateway to Reality” left me with mixed feelings, though, and it’s not easy for me to give it a proper rating.

The story kept me wanting to read more, and delve deeper into the mystery of what’s supposed to be the “real world”: not the one we know, but one called the Existence, in people simply… exist, and where everything is possible, from building items to rooms to whole pocket-worlds, and more. It gave me a few things to ponder, starting with the necessity of having an “escape world” to go to, and how such a world can turn out to be addictive and dangerous in its own way. Besides, it also questions the human nature itself: would we be truly happy in a place where we can do and be absolutely whatever we want, or do we actually need limits for our own good? Existence and Logiverse clearly represented two extreme visions (total freedom vs. a world defined by rules), and both had their pros and cons. The fact that some people went back time and again to the LV opened a vast array of issues of its own.

The downside for me, however, was that in turn, I found the characters less compelling and defined. Wes seems to accept everything at face value, or almost, when I thought he’d be in more denial at first, or would try and find out more, in more drastic ways than he did. The book had a potential of really blurring reality and virtual existence, but it didn’t quite do the trick. Maybe I was expecting a twist or two at some point, too. A few elements, too, felt like they weren’t exploited. The black holes sucking people in, for instance (although there’s one moment, at the end, where a clue might be provided—but that one was planned, whereas the others seemd random occurrences). Why was Wes so concerned about Emily and not about Wendy, whom he saw vanishing in such a hole (after all, in both cases, those characters weren’t the ones he knew in what he believed at first to be his real world)? In fact, too many (all?) characters accept things as they are, and don’t question what should be a huge question mark hanging above everyone’s heads.

I guess my problem, indeed, is that I would’ve wanted more of those subplots to be tackled here, instead of Wes chasing after Emily the way he did. Their story might have been more enjoyable if it had developed in the second installment (since this looks like a series). I kept hoping for more, that never came. This said, I enjoyed the book nevertheless, for its world and all its yet-to-come possibilities.