2021 in Review

Another year in the End Times. Here's what I got up to in 2021:

According to Goodreads, I read more in 2021 than in any other year that I've kept track of. Apparently spending the majority of your time indoors because there is a pandemic going on will give you a lot of book time, who knew?

My favorite books of the year: Catriona Ward's Rawblood, Andrew Kelly Stewart's We Shall Sing a Song Into the Deep, Caitlin Starling's Yellow Jessamine, Carmen Maria Machado's In the Dream House, and Tanith Lee's At the Court of the Crow. In general, it was a good year for novellas, but maybe that's just where my attention span was at in 2021.

I also caught up on or finished two lengthy manga series: Claymore and Black Butler.

If you want to hear more about my favorite stuff of 2021, check out the Best of the Year episode of Bad Books for Bad People.

Speaking of the podcast, we came out of our unplanned for hiatus and managed to get seven episodes out into the world despite months of dormancy. Our episode on Requiem Infernal already seems like a fan favorite.

On the publishing front, I published the first two issues of Strahd Loves, Man Kills and wrote five more issues for publication in 2022. The third issue just dropped, so if you haven't picked it up yet keep in mind that I've already sold more than half the print run. You can expect the zine to get a little bigger in 2022--I'm expanding it from 28 pages of content to 32. I also contributed to the second issue of KNOCK, The Book of Gaub, and another rpg project that should see the light in 2022.

Black Butler, Last Night of Fall, India Fan, Silver Bayonet, and More

Things that brought me delight in December, 2021:

Yana Toboso, Black Butler Vol. VI-XXX

I made the executive decision to make as big a dent as possible in the Black Butler series in December. I can't believe I managed to catch up on all of them! The individual arcs are quite good: the mysterious disappearances of children at an ominous carnival, a locked room murder mystery that ends up inspiring Arthur Conan Doyle to write more Sherlock Holmes stories, a horrific episode about the creation of scientific zombies aboard a luxury liner, a Tom Brown's School Days-esque mystery in a British public school (with bonus left turn into sports manga with a big cricket match), a detour into boy bands and the strange venue that seems to be drawing fans of all social classes into a vampiric scheme, the main cast finding themselves on the run when a doppelganger appears, the maid infiltrating a nefarious manor on the Yorkshire moors, and that's where the series leaves off for now. Can't wait for a new volume to drop in May.

False Memories, The Last Night of Fall

False Memories deals in the kind of Gothic metal that comes from the Nightwish and Within Temptation branch of the family tree. Their sound is accented with touches of symphonic metal and power metal, but it is just a little heavier than many bands working that vein and perhaps even a bit more progressive. Of course, the true test of any band of this ilk is the vocals, which are powerful, melodic, and melodramatic over the course of The Last Night of Fall's runtime. 

Victoria Holt, The India Fan

You'll hear much more about my impressions of Victoria Holt's The India Fan on a forthcoming episode of Bad Books for Bad People, but suffice to say: I'd recommend this novel especially to Jane Eyre fans who want an extra helping of Orientalism as a side dish. We've got a "plain" but "highly intelligent" woman acting as a governess, falling in love with a man of a higher class, the Sepoy Rebellion, the sexual foibles of the beautiful and rich, and a peacock-feather fan that may or may not carry a baleful curse. You know, the usual.

The Silver Bayonet

There is something very appealing to me about the idea of buying a bunch of cheap plastic Napoleons and zombies and making them fight each other using the rules in The Silver Bayonet. Beats shoveling snow, that's for sure.

Green Carnation, Leaves of Yesteryear

Green Carnation is one of those bands that is like an old friend arriving unexpected to the party in a disguise--you never know quite what to expect or when to expect them. The title track on Leaves of Yesteryear possesses what a reviewer termed "gentle proginess," and that's a hard assessment to argue with. Things do get a bit heavier on the other tracks, but it's definitely not a unified style or aesthetic that they're going for. Rounding things out is an acoustic cover of Black Sabbath's "Solitude," a perfect parting shot for the end of a party, really.

Andrzej Sapkowski, Baptism of Fire

Another book in the Witcher series down, another episode of Valley of Plenty to come on Bad Books for Bad People. It's interesting how each of the novels in this series has a different purpose, and therefore has its own bespoke structure. The previous novel was all about unveiling the explosive start of the war and establishing who is doing what and where they are doing it. Baptism of Fire, on the other hand, is a more conventional fantasy journey through the horrors of the war already underway. As such, it's more about Geralt finding his fellowship with companions, though of course, since this is the Witcher, he'd much rather be going it alone.

Cold Hands Dark Hearts

Cold Hands Dark Hearts is a supplement for the Big Eyes Small Mouth rpg, an anime-inspired game that I have zero experience with. The premise of the supplement is that players will play Darkstalkers-style monsters with an anime flair, fighting against a greater threat to the supernatural world. Characters could include vampires, mummies, shapeshifters, oni, and other staples of Gothic horror drawn from both Eastern and Western traditions. 

The book is fairly terse; I'm not entirely convinced that it gives you everything you'd need to play it the way it wants you to play. Also, the art style is definitely not going to be for everyone. (It is not, in fact, for me.) It's got a heavy manga influence, but done in a cutesy way that reminds me of Slave Labor Graphics' comics for goths. However, there is one innovation here that I think is very worthwhile: instead of text or a timeline describing the events of the setting's backstory, it uses a comic to convey all that info. That's such a huge improvement, it's a shame that hasn't become a more standard practice.

Opera Diabolicus, Death on a Pale Horse

Opera Diabolicus specialize in over-the-top, theatrical metal. Death on a Pale Horse is their second album; even though it arrived about a decade after the first, it is still obviously a continuation of the same project. The choral and operatic elements are present, as are the heavy riffs and dramatic vocals, but there are some new bits to enliven the proceedings, such as progressive touches that verge on giallo soundtrack vibes.

Tanya Kirk (ed.), Spirits of the Season: Christmas Hauntings

Since Valancourt didn't release a book of Victorian Christmas ghost stories last year, my girlfriend bought me this volume from the British Library's Tales of the Weird series to fill the holiday gap. Spirits of the Season collects a number of spooky Christmas tales, with authors ranging from well-regarded innovators in the field of spectral literature such as Edith Nesbit and Algernon Blackwood to lesser-known scribes like A.M. Burrage and H. Russell Wakefield. Some stories are fairly light, but some are also surprising in their brutality.

Heretic, Ikhon, and GM Wall of Doom

Enough time had passed that I had forgotten what I pledged for from this Mork Borg kickstarter. I'm not going to call Heretic a zine (because it isn't, sorry), but it is a nice expansion of odds and ends for Mork Borg, including new classes, rules for firearms, and a handful of adventure sites. Ikhon seems a little over-produced for what it is; shame it was misprinted, too. The Wall of Doom is quite sturdy; I have no doubt that it would quickly prove invaluable for anyone running the game.

The Murder of My Sweet, A Gentleman's Legacy

The Murder of My Sweet is definitely on the lighter end of things I usually listen to, often placing themselves more in the poppy hard rock arena than the metal one I tend to enjoy more. Still, this is a pretty fun album. I take it that it's the "sequel" to the through-line story initiated on another band's album, but I can't follow that thread at all. Good record to unwind to, even if the vocals are maybe a little too prominent--often overshadowing the instrumentation to a degree.

The Witcher season 2

I was really looking forward to the second season of The Witcher, but I have to admit that I merely liked the season rather than loved it. On one hand, I think it is more important for any adaptation to chart its own course rather than stick slavishly to the source material. On the other hand, there were some big narrative decisions that just didn't thrill me. The main cast continues to be great in their roles, but the story feels a little off the rails to me. There are great moments, but I'm not sure how well the whole thing hangs together--the season does feel a bit like a side-story by the end of it. Still, I'm game for another season, even though the tv show is my least favorite iteration of The Witcher.

Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos

Strixhaven is admittedly a bit of a niche D&D product. Unlike other books that adapt Magic: The Gathering sets to 5e, Strixhaven is less of a setting book and more a campaign meant to cover the exploits of a group of students as they navigate their educational journey at a school of magic. The rest of the book, which includes a brief overview of the school as a setting, bits and bobs for creating characters, and a bestiary of fellow students, mages, and monsters, is meant to support the campaign rather than the other way around.

Green Lung, Black Harvest

Green Lung sound like Black Sabbath headlining a festival on Summerisle. There is a great deal of warmth, if not outright sunlight, on Black Harvest, but it's always in service of illuminating the dark pagan underbelly that this doom outfit excels at. The retro vibes at work aren't just a throwback or dull pastiche; Green Lung adds something to the tradition all their own.

Zin E. Rocklyn, Flowers for the Sea

Flowers for the Sea is one of the short novella-length fictions that Tor seems to specialize in lately. A pregnant woman aboard a seemingly doomed ship, itself floating amid a dimly defined apocalypse, readies herself to give birth to the child she can only ever think of as a parasite. And once the child is born, we're knee-deep in a chosen-one style story that is more The Omen than it is the coming of the Christ child, if you catch my meaning. I'm not sure I've read a more brutal depiction of birth, and this is certainly not a feel-good story that eases the anxieties that come with global climate change.

Light of the Morning Star, Charnel Noir

Charnel Noir was Tenebrous Kate's pick for album of the year over on this episode of Bad Books for Bad People. Since Kate is one of the few people whose musical taste matches my own with an unusually high incidence of congruence, I had to check it out. And she was right, it's great! Light of the Morning Star are like the hypothetical answer to the question "What if My Dying Bride came out of the black metal scene instead of death metal?"

Andrew Maclean with Jordie Bellaire, Head Lopper vol. 2-4

After finishing the first volume of Head Lopper, it was a foregone conclusion that I'd need to read the rest of it. So, onward into a fantasy land rife with monsters and decapitations. The second volume, Head Lopper & the Crimson Tower, is a bit of a dungeon crawl. The third, Head Lopper & the Knights of Verona, explores the Head Lopper's backstory in greater depth. Things move into fantasy political intrigue in Head Lopper & the Quest for Mulgrid's Stair. No matter what mode of the genre the comic is currently exploring, the big action get underwritten by a surprising amount of heart.

The Black Sepulchre

It's weird that the first bit of this Dark Heresy adventure series seems harder to come by than the next two parts, but now it is mine. It's incredible that they felt the need to make this rather thin book a hardcover to match everything else in the line, but the adventure itself does look sound. I'll probably end up adapting it to Wrath & Glory rather than playing it with Dark Heresy, but the base potential is there--which really is about all you can hope for with published scenarios, I reckon.

Yana Taboso, Black Butler Artworks vol. 1-2

Not only did I read all of the Black Butler manga over the last three months (well, all of it that has been translated into English), I also spent some time browsing the first two artbooks for the series. They reproduce the covers and color pages from the manga, as well as including promotional art and crossover bits as well. Surprisingly thick and luxurious paper in these volumes!

Eve's Bayou

Eve's Bayou is probably a weird pick for the holiday season, but I saw it was soon to be leaving one of my streaming services, so the time was ripe. If you haven't seen it, the movie centers on a well-to-do family in Louisiana, particularly on the father's infidelities and the effect that has on his wife and daughters. There's also some interesting intersection with hoodoo, history, and fate that take this to a Southern Gothic place, rather than just a standard drama. The hoodoo angle becomes especially captivating as a lens into the way children want--badly want--to have some sort of power to steer the adults who are failing them.

The Empath, Procreation Myth, Teatime

Three fictions for your entertainment and edification:

"The Empath"

- Raquel S. Benedict, Blood Knife

"Procreation Myth"

- June Martin, substack

"Teatime"

- Zin E. Rocklyn, Tor

Best of 2021

 

Episode 52: Best of 2021

Jack and Kate look at what they've read and watched in the year that was 2021 and make some recommendations in the world of books and beyond. The rules of engagement are simple: the hosts each choose one movie, album, TV show, and book that was the best experience of its kind encountered during the first half of the year.

Join your hosts for a discussion that ranges from various ways to hunt supernatural creatures to cursed hunks to weird acting choices by 80s pop stars. 

Haunted Girls and Women, Satanic Panics and the Death of Mythos, Spirit Medium Books

Three worthy reads:

On the Haunted Lives of Girls and Women

- Rachel Eve Moulton, Literary Hub

Satanic Panics and the Death of Mythos

- Aisling McCrea, Current Affairs

Top 10 books about spirit mediums

- Laura Purcell, The Guardian

Time of Contempt

Valley of Plenty 4: Time of Contempt

Welcome to the Valley of Plenty! In these green and gentle pastures, Jack explains the plots of stories from the Witcher series to Kate, who feels like she already completed her tour of duty in this particular fantasyland. In this bite-sized episode, Jack explains what he's learned about the world portrayed in Andrzej Sapkowski's Time of Contempt, the second novel in the ongoing saga of Geralt of Rivia and his various adventures and... not-so-adventures.

Where do Witchers go for professional advice? What is terrible about going to a wizard party? What is a sound investment in this fantasy universe? All these questions will be answered in this episode of the podcast! 

Strange Tales, Dragons, Victoriana, 1614, and More

Things that brought me delight in November, 2021:

Pu Songling, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio

Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio is an 18th-century collection of Chinese folktales. Published after Pu Songling's death, the book features a hundred and one tales that range from a paragraph in length to ten pages or more, but most are a scant few pages in length. Here's what I've learned from Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio: fox-spirits will probably cause you a lot of trouble if you meet one (but they might also do you a good turn, so I guess you roll the dice on that), guys will immediately have sex with strange women who enter their chambers at night even if there is a good chance that they're ghosts, and Taoists are extremely weird, possess magic, and are often in need of a thorough scrubbing in the bath.

Fizban's Treasury of Dragons

It's interesting how infrequently dragons actually feature into a game called Dungeons & Dragons. Fizaban's Treasury of Dragons aims to fix that by presenting dragon-themed character widgets (such as variant dragonborn types, two draconic subclasses, and feats), lore about the role of dragons in the D&D universe, lair information, adventure seeds, random tables, and a bestiary filled with new types of dragons and dragon-adjacent foes such as draconians, dragonblood oozes, and eyedrakes. Fizban's Treasury is essential for anyone who wants to run a dragon-centric campaign, but for the rest of us there are probably enough bits and pieces here to make this worth considering.

Victoriana: Free RPG Day

Victoriana's premise is right up my alley: imagine Warhammer-style characters going on steampunk adventurers in the nineteenth century and you've got the gist. I've owned previous editions of the game (each edition has used a different system), but I've never been able to actually get it to the table. I'm curious to see if the new edition, which is based on 5e D&D's rules, will be the one to do the trick or if this attempt to capture a segment of D&D's audience is destined to crash and burn. If nothing else, I can play through this Free RPG Day adventure to get a taste.

Opera Diabolicus, 1614

This will inevitably read like gatekeeping, but I believe that if you aren't into at least one ridiculously over-the-top band like Opera Diabolicus, you aren't a real metal fan. Opera Diabolicus's Gothic theatrics will definitely appeal to fans of King Diamond, Powerwolf, and Ghost. More playful Therion fans might also get something out of the operatic flourishes and symphonic bombast. Also, there are many songs out there about Erzebet Bathory, but 1614's "Blood Countess Bathory" is one of the best.

Peter Fehervari, Requiem Infernal

Tenebrous Kate and I have much more to say about Peter Fehervari's Requiem Infernal on Bad Books for Bad People, but for now it will suffice to say that this book will appeal to anyone who won't mind a little Event Horizon or Uzumaki atmosphere popping up in their Space Nuns with Guns fiction. The Warhammer 40k books continue to be much better than they have any right to be; isn't tie-in game fiction contractually obligated to be awful? If so, we have a clear breach of contract with Requiem Infernal, which is an engaging sci-fi horror novel in its own right. It's also an incredibly strange novel; it's quite surprising, though commendable, that Games Workshop is willing to publish books like this that run contrary to their established "lore."

SLA Industries, 2nd Edition

SLA Industries is one of those long and storied rpg lines that I know almost nothing about it, save that it has a byzantine backstory and a cultishly devoted niche fanbaseBut now that there's a second edition, there's no better time to check it out, right? SLA Industries might fill the hole for me that cyberpunk games have generally failed to satisfy. It's essentially a game about "operatives" being sent on violent, cloak-and-dagger missions, but it has the added edge of positing an extremely weird and idiosyncratic vision of the dystopian future. (As opposed to cyberpunk visions of the future that already seem as quaint and wholesome as 1950s rocket ship fantasies compared to where we've ended up in real life.) The cyberpunk comparison seems apt, as SLA Industries has page after page of weapon porn.

Ad Infinitum, Chapter II: Legacy

As a marker of how long the pandemic has been going on, I picked up Ad Infinitum's first album near the start of it all and now I've gotten their second and the pandemic is still ongoing. Chapter II: Legacy is a concept album about Vlad the Impaler; couple that subject matter with Ad Infinitum's brand of symphonic metal and I'm absolutely sold on the entire package. Interesting to hear some deathcore or djent influences creeping in, but I don't mind them in the least.

Dark Heresy, the whole line, really

As I become more and more enraptured by the idea of running a Warhammer 40k rpg, I've begun to look into possible sources of inspiration. Although I'm most likely to run Wrath & Glory as my system of choice for this endeavor, the old Dark Heresy line has absolutely become my go-to trove of ideas. These books really did come out of a special zeitgeist in gaming history. Yeah, the rules in them aren't great (they're fiddly and favor failure in a way I don't like), but the combination of evocative art and textual deep dive made them an extremely attractive package at the time and an unimpeachable resource today. 

The Veil

The Veil is an anthology series from the 1950s hosted by Boris Karloff, who often plays at least a minor role in each episode. "Horror" probably isn't the right descriptor for The Veil; rather, it is a show that dramatizes "unexplained phenomena," such as prophetic visions, hauntings, and the like. Think of it as a quainter Time-Life Mysteries of the Unknown: slightly spooky, but ultimately pretty cozy. As a bonus, one episode is set in my beloved Gloucester, MA.

Terror Thirteen: A Horror RPG

Everyone has encountered their fair share of fantasy heartbreakers at this point, but horror heartbreakers are a little thin on the ground. Enter Terror Thirteen, an obvious labor of love. I have to admit, it was the homeliness of the cover that drew me in; it is an apex of the "my little brother drew this" style of rpg art. And yet, at first blush, the game itself seems like a pretty solid option for horror gaming. There's evidence that thought about what goes into creating different flavors of horror has had some effort put into it, even if Lovecraft is hanging out in the Victorian horror section for reasons that elude me. I bought this on a lark for an extremely low price, but it actually seems fairly playable. It's mostly a trad rpg, with 3d6 + stat + skill vs target number as the basic resolution mechanic, but there are some newer school elements like bonds that factor into the design as well. I need to do a deeper dive into this, but it is a charming artifact in any case.

Andrzej Sapkowski, Time of Contempt

As part of the ramping up of excitement for the next installment of Netflix's Witcher, I'm back on my Sapkowski bullshit with Time of Contempt, the novel that picks up where Blood of Elves left off. I'll have more to say about this novel when Valley of Plenty returns to Bad Books for Bad People, but this is a pretty interesting book in that it doesn't give Geralt much to do (except get dragged by a wizard) and it poses interesting questions about the futility of trying to maintain a stance of neutrality in a world rapidly going to hell.

Kendare Blake, Girl of Nightmares

Girl of Nightmares is the sequel to Kendare Blake's Anna Dressed in Blood and the conclusion of the duology. Cas, a ghost hunting teenager armed with a magic knife, becomes obsessed with venturing into hell to retrieve the formerly murderous ghost girl he fell in love with over the course of the first book. There's not much ghost slaying in this one, but there is a sinister-ish order of pseudo-druids and a forest full of suicide zombies. Also, I have to say, the ending of this book really did take me by surprise! It didn't go for the expected happy ending; the curveball was much appreciated.

Azzarello, Bermejo, Batman: Damned

In Damned, after the Joker is killed, Batman is left wondering if he is responsible for his arch-foe's death. True to character, Batman becomes obsessed with this question, which leads him into the depths of the DC Universe's supernatural underground. He meets several off-kilter versions of notable odd DC characters, such as a skinned Deadman, Etrigan as a rap god, and ranting, homeless Specter. The answers Batman seeks aren't easy, and the truth he finds might be worse than anything he's fought on the streets of Gotham. Damned has beautiful art throughout and a tense little story.

Kathleen Jennings, Flyaway

When a teenager trying her hardest to lead the most normal life possible discovers that the brothers she thought long-gone might be lingering near her rural Western Queensland home, she takes two former friends on a veritable odyssey in which the mythic history of small town life explodes into view. It's blood and magic all the way down, of course. 

There's a blurb praising Flyaway from Kelly Link on the back of the cover, which makes a lot of sense; if you like Link's deft language and peculiar magic, it feels safe to say that you'll like Kathleen Jenning's as well. Flyaway contains an amazing amount of world for such a slim novel; even more impressive is how it is all woven together by the final pages.

Vlad Dracula Tarot

I was interested in this tarot deck when I first saw it being kickstarted, but at the time the money just wasn't right for it. Luckily, it seems to be quite a success story: I recently found out it had entered into wider distribution. Lovely art, but you have to wonder: is it even possible to get a truly positive outlook on the future when using something called Vlad Dracula Tarot?

Perilous Garden: The Art of Der Orchideengarten 1920 (16-24)

Time has a way of running away from you; I got a notification that the newest collection of art from Der Orchideengarten was on its way to me, which prompted me to remember that I hadn't yet looked at Perilous Garden. Perilous Garden is essentially more of the same: a collection of the fantastic art that accompanied the stories published in the German precursor to Weird Tales. Interesting historical tidbits also abound; for example, one issue of Der Orchideengarten eschewed the usual focus on macabre and fantastical tales to instead offer a plea for the return of prisoners at war still suffering in Russia and Siberia.

The Great, season two

Comedies are not usually something I get too excited for, but the over-the-top cruelty of the first season of The Great really appealed to me. The second season is just as mean. Catherine manages a coup, tries to keep Peter under house arrest, and has to navigate pregnancy, her vision for Russia, her feelings for her husband, and the pig-ignorant decadence of her court. And no one, including Catherine, is particularly likeable or "good." Deluded, yes. Good? No. Fantastic stuff; I hadn't laughed that much in a very long time.

Andrew McClean with Mike Spicer, Head Lopper & the Island or A Plague of Beasts

Michael of Metal Earth recommended Head Lopper to me, and since I can't remember him steering me wrong with a comic, I got a copy of the first volume while it was on a deep discount. He has still not led me wrong. There's a Mignola energy to the art and a Robert E. Howard energy to the storytelling, which is a pretty perfect pairing. There's bog wizards, giant wolves, blue-skinned witches, and a whole lot of decapitations. What more could you ask for? Head Lopper: it does what it says on the tin.

Bitter Blossoms: The Art of Der Orchideengarten 1921 (1-6)

Of course, there was no way this series could draw to a close on a positive note, given the nature of the history involved. Der Orchideengarten was one more casualty of the terrible times that led to World War II. It's all downhill here here, I suppose, and there is one more volume to come by my math. Art became more sparse in the 1921 volumes, but what is here is, of course, remarkable. One fun bit of synchronicity: one of the tales that gets an illustration is one of the Pu Songling stories that I read at the start of the month!

Cowboy Bebop

The release of the live-action Cowbow Bebop got me interesting in watching the cartoon version, which I had never seen before. I can see why it is regarded as a classic. It's got heart, it's not derivative of other media, doesn't rely on cameos and Easter eggs to keep your attention, has great action...basically, it's everything everyone lies and says that The Mandalorian is. No way I'm watching the live-action version though.  

Tiamat and Warduke

I'm still in amazement that there is a line of D&D Funko Pops, particularly now that it has moved on to a couple cool characters I first encountered in the 80s cartoon and toy line. Tasha, when?